She yanked open the door but didn’t, as she’d expected, see him bending over the little green sprouts that had begun to shoot up through the topsoil. Neither was he looking out over the plugs of phlox or the juniper shrubs on her front bank. Perhaps, Maggie thought with a frown, he’d gone around to check on the last project to be completed, the crown vetch on her eroding rear bank.

Annoyed that she hadn’t thought of that in the first place, she started to turn back into the house when a movement near the gully caught her eye. For an instant, basic, primitive fear that slept in her awoke. She thought of ghouls and phantoms and legends of shades that never rest. In the next instant she recognized Cliff. As infuriated as she was embarrassed by her own reaction, she went to confront him.

As she drew closer, Maggie saw the willow, slender, small and tenderly green. Cliff was setting the ball of roots into a hole he’d dug out of the rocky soil with a pick and shovel. He stood perhaps six feet from the slope of the gully, his shirt tossed carelessly on the ground. She could see the muscles in his back ripple as he began to shovel dirt back into the hole. The twinge of her stomach told her that her reaction to him was no less powerful now than it had been before they’d made love.

Maggie straightened her shoulders and angled her chin. “What’re you doing?”

Because he continued to shovel without breaking rhythm, she decided he’d known she was coming. “Planting a tree,” Cliff said easily.

Her eyes narrowed dangerously. “I can see that. As far as I remember, I didn’t order a willow from you.”

“No.” He knelt down to mound and smooth the dirt at the base of the tree. She watched his hands, knowing now what they could do on her body. It seemed he had the same talent with soil. “No charge.”

Impatient with his nonanswers and with her own growing arousal, she folded her arms. “Why are you planting a tree I didn’t buy?”

Satisfied that the willow was secure, he rose. Leaning casually on the shovel, he studied her. No, he hadn’t gotten her out of his system, Cliff decided. Seeing her again didn’t relieve the knots of tension he’d been living with for days. Somehow he’d known it wouldn’t, but he’d had to try. “Some people might call it a peace offering,” he told her at length, then watched her mouth open and close again.