hey were married the next afternoon in Mexicali, just across the border. The ceremony took place in some sort of government office—Honey wasn't certain what kind since she couldn't read the Spanish signs and Dash still wasn't being communicative. Both of them were wearing jeans. She held a bouquet of flowers he had bought from a street vendor outside, and her ring was a plain gold band from a nearby jewelry shop.

The walls were thin and a radio blared Spanish rock songs from the next office. The official who married them had a gold tooth and smelled like cloves. As the ceremony ended, Dash grabbed the copy of their marriage certificate and dragged her outside, all without kissing her.

The warm afternoon air was fetid from the stench of the irrigation canals and fertilizer spray, but she breathed it in joyously. She was Mrs. Dash Coogan. Honey Jane Moon Coogan. She was finally part of someone else.

He pulled her toward his jeep, which was parked at the curb and filled with their camping gear. She knew from past discussions that the vehicle had been specially modified to handle the rough terrain of the wilderness camping he enjoyed. As he drove into one of the government-owned Pentex gas stations to fill the thirty-gallon tank, she remembered all the times he'd set out on one of these camping trips without her and how she had dreamed of going along. Now she was doing it in a way she had never imagined.

They headed west from Mexicali on Highway 2. Heat waves rose off the pavement, and litter blew across the highway. Abandoned tire treads lay at the side of the road like dead alligators, and tired old billboards scarred the bleak landscape. A truck filled with field workers blasted by, its horn squalling. Honey stuck her hand out the open window and waved at them gaily.

"Do you want to get your arm ripped off?" Dash snarled. "Just keep those hands inside."

Having the marriage ceremony behind them obviously hadn't improved his mood. She told herself that sooner or later he would let her know what was eating at him, but until then she was going to hold her tongue.

She had visited Tijuana several times with Gordon and Chantal, but this part of Baja was new to her.

The land was parched and forbidding, a gnarled finger poking into the sea. Several miles west of Mexicali, the highway crossed the top of Laguna Salada, a wide, dry lake bed that extended as far as she could see. Its surface was marked with tire tracks from jeeps and ATVs.

As she stared at the dry moonscape of the lake bed, her eyes began to feel heavy. They had arrived at the ranch just after dark and eaten a silent meal. Afterward, he had brusquely directed her to one of the guest rooms, where she had tossed all night, unable to sleep because she was afraid he would change his mind by morning. She glanced down at the gold circlet on her finger and tried to absorb the fact that they were truly married.

Her shoulder banged against his as he abandoned the highway and began heading across the dry lake bed. "We're camping for the night in one of the palm canyons," he said brusquely. "It's not too accessible, so the developers haven't gotten hold of it yet."

"Not too accessible" proved to be an understatement. The gears of the jeep ground painfully when the small vehicle finally cleared the lake bed and assaulted the steep, rocky slopes that rose off its western edge. For an hour they followed a road that was little more than a rutted track, jolting and jarring her until she felt bruised. Finally, it passed through a narrow cleft in the rocks into a tiny palm-shaded canyon.

Granite walls, wild and rugged, rose high on the sides. She saw the twisted silvery limbs of elephant trees interspersed with palm and tamarisk. As Dash stopped the jeep, Honey heard the sound of running water. He climbed out and disappeared into the trees. She got out herself, stretched her limbs, and looked around for the source of the sound. Behind her, a small waterfall tumbled in a lacy silver mist from the harsh cliff face.

Dash came out of the trees, zipping his pants as he walked. Honey quickly looked away, both embarrassed and fascinated by this intimacy that was exactly the sort of thing she had always imagined a man would do in front of his wife.

He nodded toward the waterfall as he began unloading the jeep. "These canyons are one of the few places with fresh water in all of Baja. There's even a hot springs. Most of the peninsula is dry as dust, and water's a lot more precious than gold. Grab those tent poles."

She did as he told her, but as she was pulling the poles from the back, she caught the end of the longest one on the jeep's frame and they all clattered to the ground.

"Damn it, Honey, watch what you're doing."

"Sorry."

"I don't want to have to spend this entire trip cleaning up your messes."

She bent down to retrieve the poles.

"And do you mind telling me why you're wearing those sandals? I distinctly remember telling you to bring boots."

"I did," she said. "They're with my clothes."

"What good are they going to do with your clothes if we're in the middle of the desert and you run into a rattler?"

"We're not in the middle of the desert," she pointed out as she rose to her feet with the tent poles clutched in her arms.

"You've been spoiling for a fight ever since yesterday, haven't you?"

She stared at him, unable to believe his gall. He was the one who'd been acting as if he'd sat on a porcupine.

He poked the front brim of his Stetson back with his thumb, his expression belligerent. "We might as well set down a few rules right now. That is if you're not too busy dropping things to listen."

"I've never been camping before," she said stiffly. "I don't know anything about it."

"I'm not talking about camping. I'm talking about the two of us." He advanced on her until only a few feet separated them. "First off. I'm the boss. I'm set in my ways and I don't have any intention of changing a single one of them. You're going to have to do a lot more accommodating than me, and I don't want to hear any bitching about it. Understood?"

He didn't wait for her response, which was a good thing.

"I don't concern myself with housework. Expressions like 'splitting the work load' aren't even part of my vocabulary. I don't run a washing machine; I don't worry about whether there's coffee in the cupboard. We hire somebody to do that or you take care of it. Either way." His eyes narrowed. "And that parasite family of yours. If you want to keep supporting them that's your business, but I'm not giving them a penny, and they're not coming within ten miles of the ranch. Is that understood?"

He sounded as if he were giving her terms for parole.

"And another thing." His scowl grew blacker. "Those birth control pills I saw in your case. From now on they're one of your basic food groups, little girl. I already ruined one set of children, and I don't have any intention of ruining another."

"Dash?"

"What?"

She set the tent poles on the ground, then looked up at him, trying to keep her gaze steady. "I've been doing my best not to lose my temper with you, but you've pushed me right to the edge. You know that, don't you?"

"I've barely got started."

"Now that's where you're wrong. You're all done."

His jaw jutted forward. "Is that so?"

"It's so. I never used to be much of a crybaby, Dash Coogan, but since I fell in love with you, I've done more than my share. And I'm warning you right now that you're upsetting me, which means I'll probably start crying pretty soon. I'm not proud of it—as a matter of fact, I'm ashamed —but that won't change the outcome. So if you don't want to spend the rest of this sorry excuse for a honeymoon with a crying wife, I suggest you start acting like the gentleman I know you can be."

His head dipped. He kicked at the ground with the toe of his boot. When he spoke, his voice was soft, a bit hoarse. "Honey, I've never been faithful to a woman in my life."

A spike of pain drove right through her.

He gazed at her, his eyes unhappy. "When I think about my track record and all these years we've got stretching between us, not to mention the fact that we're going to put an end to two careers, I can't believe I'm doing this. It doesn't matter so much about me, but I can't stand the idea of hurting you. I know I must be crazy, Honey, but I don't seem to be able to help myself when it comes to you."

All of her resentment faded, and she was filled with tenderness. "I think I'm a little crazy, too. I love you so much I can hardly stand it."

He pulled her against his chest. "I know you do. And I love you even more. That's why there's no excuse for what I've done."

"Please, Dash, don't talk like that."

He stroked her hair. "You got under my skin when I wasn't even looking, just like a chigger. Everything would have been all right if you hadn't grown up on me, but all of a sudden you weren't a kid anymore, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't make you turn back into one."

For a long time the only sound was the rush of the waterfall behind them.

By the time they had set up camp, the sky had clouded over and a chilly drizzle had plunged the temperature down into the forties. Honey was cold, wet, and happier than she could ever remember.

"Do you mind getting the last of the food?" He zipped the front of the small tent he had set up.

She reached inside the jeep, but before she could pull out the large food tin he had sprung to her side and taken it from her.

"It's not heavy," she protested. "I can do that."

"I expect you can." Leaning down, he brushed his lips over hers.

She smiled to herself as she remembered all the chest-pounding he'd been doing. Dash Coogan had more bluster than any man she'd ever known.

An icy gust of wind blew through the camp site, rattling the wet palm fronds, and she shivered. "I thought this was supposed to be a tropical climate."

"You cold?"

She nodded.

"That's good."

She looked at him quizzically.

"The weather can change fast around here, especially in the winter." He sounded pleased. "This is about the only time of year you need a tent. Normally, I'd have just brought a sun fly to give us shade, keep out the bugs, and let the breeze through. Grab some dry clothes for both of us and that long underwear of yours while I put this away."

She did as he asked, but as she began to head toward the tent to change, he stepped in front of her. "Not that way." Taking her hand, he wrapped a poncho around their dry clothing and began to lead her into the palms.

The temperature was dropping by the minute, and her teeth had started to rattle. "I'm afraid I'm too cold for a hike, Dash."

"Come on now. You're tougher than that. A little nip in the air never hurt anybody."

"It's a lot more than a nip. I can see my breath."

He grinned. "Is it my imagination or are you starting to whine?"

She thought of the tent and those fluffy down sleeping bags where they could be curled up right now and where she could be getting more lessons in lovemaking. "It's definitely not your imagination."

"I can see I'm going to have to get you toughened up."

He led her through a breach in the trees and she caught her breath. Before them in a nest of ferns and mossy rocks lay a small pool with steam curling from its surface into the chilly air.

"I told you there was a hot springs here," he said. "Now what do you say the two of us strip off these clothes and get down to some serious hanky-panky?"

She was already unbuttoning her blouse, but her fingers were clumsy with the cold and he finished undressing first. When he was naked, he helped her peel the wet denim from her legs and then drew her into the pool until he was standing waist deep, but only her breasts and shoulders were exposed. The water felt hot and wonderful against her cold skin. Above the surface her breasts were covered with gooseflesh, her nipples puckered into hard little pebbles. He dipped his head and caught one in the

warmth of his mouth. She arched her neck at the gentle suction. His mouth moved to the other nipple.

After a while he released her and began sluicing warm water over her chilled shoulders, not letting her

dip beneath the surface, but warming her with the water and the palms of his big brown hands.

She began to stroke his hips and the fronts of his thighs beneath the water. Her nipples softened and spread like summer buds beneath his warm fingers. Her hands grew more adventuresome. She stroked him until he groaned.

They were near the center of the pond now, and the water had grown deeper until the tops of her shoulders were covered. "Wrap your legs around my waist," he said huskily.

She licked at the beads of moisture that had formed on his cheekbones and did as he asked.

He played with her beneath the water, his fingers on a rampage, making her gasp as they explored every part of her.

"Dash..." She tightened her strong young thighs around him.

He groaned out her name and drove home.

They stayed in the palm canyon for two days, and during that time Dash seemed to grow younger before her eyes. The harsh lines at the corners of his mouth faded and the bleakness in his green eyes disappeared. They laughed and wrestled and made love until sometimes she wondered which of them was the twenty-year-old. She cooked bacon and eggs on the Coleman stove, and had tears in her eyes the morning of the third day when they left their canyon behind. Dash wanted her to see everything, and since the weather had once again grown hot, they were to spend the next few nights camping along the Gulf of California, or the Sea of Cortes, as it was also called.

"That was the best time I ever had in my life," she sighed when they were back on the highway heading south.

"We'll come here again." His voice grew surprisingly grim. "I imagine we'll have time for a lot of camping in the future."

"What's wrong with that? You love to camp."

"I like to camp when I'm on vacation. Not because both of us are going to be unemployed."

She set her jaw. "I don't want to talk about it."

"Honey—"

"I mean it, Dash. Not now."

He let her have her way and began identifying some of the vegetation and pointing out the volcanic rock formations. As they drove farther south with the hot breeze blowing through the open windows of the jeep, she saw abandoned automobile bodies everywhere, and she began to feel uneasy. There was something almost apocalyptic about the landscape: bleak, parched vistas scabbed with rusted automobile hulks lying on their backs like dead beetles, skeletal vegetation sucked dry of moisture, crumbling roads spotted with animal carcasses. Even the most dangerous switchbacks had no guardrails, just clusters of memorial crosses marking the spot where loved ones had been lost.

An irrational fear came over her, not for herself but for Dash. "Let me drive," she said abruptly.

He looked over at her quizzically. She knew he was a good driver, but she wanted to be behind the wheel. Only if she were in control of every motion of the automobile, every nuance of the road, could she protect him from harm.

"There's a beach-shack restaurant not far from here where we can eat lunch," he said. "The food's real good. You can take over from there."

She forced herself to draw a series of deep breaths and, gradually, she began to relax.

"Shack" was a generous description for the restaurant. It was made of adobe that had once been painted a bilious shade of green, and the mismatched tables were set outside on a crumbling patio overlooking the sea. The patio was shaded by a dilapidated roof covered with flapping tar paper and supported by splintered wooden posts.

"I know the IRS still takes most of your paycheck, Dash, but I thought you could afford better than this."

"You just wait," he said with a grin as he led her to a wooden table with a square of well-scrubbed linoleum nailed over the top.

"Senor Coogan!"

"Hola! Como estas, Emilio?"

Dash rose as an elderly man came toward them. They exchanged greetings in rapid-fire Spanish and then Dash introduced her, but since she didn't speak the language, she wasn't certain exactly how he identified her. Eventually Emilio bustled off through a banging screen door into the kitchen.

"I hope you're hungry." Dash took off his hat and set it on an empty chair.

For the next half hour, they feasted on one of the best meals Honey had ever eaten: quesadillas made of tender flour tortillas with goat cheese bubbling from the sides, succulent lime-seasoned chunks of abalone, avocados stuffed with plump shrimp that hinted of saltwater and cilantro. Occasionally one of them would spear an especially tender morsel and feed it to the other. Sometimes they kissed between bites. Honey felt as if she'd known how to be a lover all her life.

She was too full to eat more than a few bites of the fat fig tart that was their dessert. Dash had put down his fork, too, and was gazing out at the sea. She saw a ridge in his hair where he had taken off his hat, and she reached out to smooth it, barely able to believe that she now had the right to do this sort of thing.

He caught her hand and drew it to his lips. When he let her go, his expression was solemn. "As soon as we get back—"

She tugged her hand away. "I don't want to talk about it."

"We have to talk. This is serious, Honey. The first thing I want you to do is see a good lawyer."

"A lawyer? Are you trying to divorce me already?"

He didn't smile. "This isn't about divorce. Every penny of your money has to be locked up tight so the IRS can't take it away from you because of me. I won't have you paying for rny financial mistakes. It was stupid of me not to have thought of it right away so we could have taken care of it before we ran

off to get married. I don't know—I'm not good about money."

She saw how distressed he was, and she smiled at him. "I'll take care of it, okay? Don't worry."

Her reassurance seemed to satisfy him, and he leaned back in his chair. But now that he had raised the specter of their future, it hung between them. She knew she had to stop being such a coward and face the topic she wanted to avoid. She toyed with the label on the bottle of mineral water she had been drinking.

"Maybe it'll be all right, Dash. Nobody has to know. We can keep our marriage a secret."

"Not a chance. The tabloids have probably already found out. You think that guy who married us is going to keep his mouth shut?"

"He might."

"And what about the clerk who did the paperwork? Or the jeweler who sold us your wedding ring?"

She sank back in her chair. "So what do you think will happen?"

"Our P.R. people will fall all over each other trying to do damage control. It won't do a damned bit of good, but they'll go through the motions anyway so they look like they're earning their paychecks. The tabloids will have helicopters flying over the ranch trying to get photos of the two of us naked. Columnists will write about us in the newspapers. The comics are going to have a field day. We'll be fair game for every monologue on the Carson show. We won't be able to turn on the set without hearing some smartass take a poke at us."

"It won't be—"

"The production company and bullshit artists at the network will convince each other they can make script adjustments and revise the concept. But no matter what they try to do, audiences are going to puke, and The Dash Coogan Show will be history."

She was furious with him. "You're wrong! You're always looking at the bad side. That's one thing I can't stand about you. When the slightest little thing happens, you have to act like it's the end of the world. Audiences aren't stupid. They know the difference between real life and a television program. The network wouldn't drop the show for anything. They've made millions. It's one of the most successful shows in history. Everybody loves us."

"Who are you trying to convince? Me or yourself?"

His gentleness was her undoing. She looked out at the ocean where the waves were sparkling in the afternoon sun, and her shoulders sagged. "We haven't done anything wrong. We love each other. I'm not going to be able to stand it if people try to make something obscene out of the two of us. This is real life. Not a television show."

"But our audience doesn't know us, Honey; they only know the characters we play. And the idea of Janie Jones and her pop running off to get married is just about as repulsive as you can get."

"It's so unfair," she said softly. "We haven't done anything wrong."

His eyes were steady and searching. "Are you sorry?"

"Of course not. But you seem to be."

"I'm not sorry. Maybe I should be, but I'm not."

Their tension eased as each looked into the other's eyes and saw only love.

That afternoon they set up camp on a crescent-shaped white-sand beach tucked into a secluded cove. Dash showed her how to chip fist-sized oysters from the rocks with a hammer and chisel. They squeezed fresh lime juice over them and ate them raw.

It was too chilly for swimming, but Honey insisted on wading, and afterward Dash warmed her feet between his thighs. They made love to the sound of the surf.

The following night they took a room in a small hotel so they could bathe in warm water. After Honey discovered the pleasures of showering together, she went on tiptoe to whisper what she wanted to do to him.

"Are you sure?" he asked, his voice husky.

"Oh, yes. I'm sure, all right."

This time, she was the one who led him to the bed.

The next day they drove deep into the desert and pitched camp. She saw the contorted trunks of elephant trees and granite boulders sculpted by the wind into fearful shapes. Stretches of cardon cactus with vultures perched in their upthrust arms were etched in stark relief against the sky. That evening as they sat around the small fire Dash had made, she watched with apprehension while the sun faded.

"I don't know if I'm going to like this."

"You haven't seen the stars until you've seen them from the desert."

The sun dipped beneath the horizon and a great swarm of birds flew up. She caught her breath. "How beautiful. I've never seen so many birds."

He chuckled. "Those are bats, sweetheart."

She shuddered and he drew her down beside him on the sleeping bag he had unfolded. "Nature isn't prettied up here. That's why I like it. This is life stripped down to its bare bones. Don't ever be afraid of it."

Gradually, she relaxed as she lay on his shoulder and he covered her breast with his palm. The desert was alive with night sounds. Time slipped by as one star after another poked through the sky. Without any city lights to blur their brilliance, she felt as if she were seeing stars for the first time.

Slowly she came to understand what he meant. Everything was so elemental that the two of them seemed to have been peeled bare until nothing was left separating them. No subterfuge, no secrets.

"When we get back, Honey, it's not going to be easy. I just hope you're tough enough to take it."

She propped herself up on one elbow and gazed down at his familiar, beloved face. "Both of us know

I'm tough enough," she said softly. "But are you?"

She could almost see him withdrawing from her, and the closeness between them dissolved.

"That's ridiculous." He angled up until he was sitting on the sleeping bag, his back toward her.

Perhaps it was the spell cast by the desert, but she felt as if a blindfold had been pulled away from her eyes. She could finally see him clearly—not just what he wanted her to see, but everything there was. The vision scared her, but his love had given her courage so she sat up and gently touched his back. "Dash, it's way past time for you to finish growing up."

His muscles stiffened beneath her hand. "What are you talking about?"

Now that she had begun this, she didn't want to finish it. What if she was wrong? Why did she think she knew things about him that the grown women he'd married didn't? And then she reminded herself that those grown women had all lost him.

Getting on her knees, she moved around so that she could see his face. "You have to accept the fact that this marriage is the end of the line for you. And you're not going to get out of it by conveniently tumbling into another woman's bed just so I'll divorce you."

His eyes narrowed, and he shot up from the sleeping bag. "You're not making one bit of sense."

"Bull. You've been using your zipper as an escape hatch since the first time you got married. Your other wives let you get away with it, but I won't." Her heart began to thud, but she'd gone too far to back down, and she rose to stand beside him. "I'm telling you right now that if I find you in bed with another woman, I might take a gun to you, I might take a gun to her, but I'm not divorcing you."

"That's the stupidest thing I ever heard you say! You're practically giving me permission to be unfaithful to you."

"I'm just telling you how it is."

"See, this is exactly what I was afraid of." His speech grew choppy, a clear sign that he was agitated. "You're too young. You don't know the first thing about being married. No woman with half a brain in her head tells her husband something like this."

"I just did." She bit down on her bottom lip to keep it from trembling. "I'm not divorcing you, Dash. No matter how many women you sleep with."

Even in the firelight she could see that his face had grown ruddy with anger. "You're just plain stupid, you know that?"

Some of her fear began to slip away, and she gazed at him with wonder. "I'm really scaring you, aren't I?"

He scoffed at her. "I'm not scared. Hell, no. It's just hard to believe how stupid you are."

She pushed some more. "I can't do anything about the way you grew up. Those welfare people shifted you from one family to another, not me."

"That doesn't have anything to do with it."

"I'm not going to disappear on you like those families did. You can love me as much as you want, and nothing bad's going to happen. I'm your wife for the rest of your life, and no matter how hard you try, there isn't anything you can do to drive me away."

She could see him trying to find a way out. He even opened his mouth to retort, but then a great stillness came over him. Reaching out, she closed her hand over his.

The cactus creaked in the night wind. He spoke softly, still not looking at her. "You really mean it, don't you?"

"I really mean it."

He gazed at her, and even though he cleared his throat, his voice was husky with emotion. "You're the damnedest, most aggravating female I've ever met."

At first she thought it was a trick of the firelight, but then she knew it was no trick at all. Dash Coogan had tears in his eves.