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Page 360

| awakening Sasha. She rolled away from the splash of heat and, reaching around her, she awakened with a start when she discovered that Ashton wasn't there. |

| "I couldn't sleep," he said, moving to the bed to lean over her to kiss her brow. "I've been watching you. Seems you were struggling with sleep, also." |

| Sasha twined her arms around his neck and returned his kiss, then eased away from him to climb from the bed. "I've never been so miserable," she said, eager to get her perspiration-dampened nightgown off. She slipped it over her head and draped it over the back of a chair to dry, then hurried into her underthings and cotton dress. |

| Once dressed she strolled listlessly to the door and looked heavenward. There still were no clouds; the sky was azure from horizon to horizon. |

| "No, no rain today," Ashton said, pouring coffee grounds into the coffee pot. "Perhaps in the distant mountains, but not here." |

| "We came to the outback for pure, fresh air and what do we get from dusk to dawn but the harsh smell of parched earth and dust," Sasha said, watching some of the men riding toward the pasture, their horses' hooves stirring up clouds of dust. As far as she could see, there was nothing but flat, brown land, with a horizon of sunburned grass. |

| Then she sniffed the air more closely. There was something peculiarly different about the air todaysomething carried in by the wind from far out in the outback? |

| "Ashton, come here," she said, waving him to her side with a hand. "Take a whiff. What is that I am smelling?" |

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