Mid November in Louisiana can charm the pants off you. The weather's mild, the humidity's a piffle and camellias are in bloom. There's a festival every weekend and over in Cajun country, they're revving hard into sugar cane harvesting.

The leaves on our hardwood trees are only now starting to turn brittle and loosen their holds on the limbs. Up north, you're probably already well past raking up the leaves. I can imagine you're building bonfires before homecoming football games and going on hayrides and enjoying wearing your coats again while there's some part of you that is actually looking forward to the first snowstorm of winter. I cannot relate.

It's obviously not that way down here. We're just real happy that this year's hurricane season left us in peace as it ends this month. This is the time of year you're most happy if you have family who lives somewhere on a working farm deep in Cajun country. It's about the only way you ever get invited to a real boucherie here.

I was leaning up on the wooden post and trying not to look at the work going on behind me. I could hear the men's voices and even though nothing really bad was happening, it was a prelude to the one thing I still couldn't watch.

"Dat man rides a horse like dat body built for it, Ann," my cousin Marie told me.

"Like I don't know that?" I said as I just couldn't keep from turning around to look at the man in question.

The man.

Egan.

About twenty men were out there in and around the biggest pen, some on horses, some on foot ... and yet it was Egan who seemed to be in quiet control. There was an ease to his camaraderie with my uncle, cousins and their neighbors. Nothing overt, nothing flashy ... just quiet and contained. And so manly. I heard him say something low and serious to one of my cousins and in a flash, they'd whisked one of the cows into a side chute.

There was something about watching the way he handled livestock and horses. I remember Heather mentioning to me once that there was a difference between him and East in the way they related to their horses. I could picture East; his horses were like pets in some ways and he liked being part of the herd. Egan on the other hand seemed to have easy ways with animals but always it was him who was the absolute master. His horses were his possessions; he was a benevolent dictator but he was in charge and his horses had work to do.

Well, at least that's how I saw it.

His eyes flicked up to mine and he didn't seem to change expression. But there was something about the way he was always aware of where I was. Like I was someone he was keeping track of and he might have let me have a long lead, but he'd expect that if I was his for this week, then I would respect his need to keep me near.

I remembered when I met him during a group visit. He said he'd known I wouldn't play games with him.

There are times in this Game when all I am capable of is playing games. It is rare in this Game that I do not fight for my independence. It is in the playing of games that I keep my independence ... and my distance. It's a shame, really.

But Egan was catching me on a very mellow week.

This was a time of enforced peace. I had no inclination to challenge or fight or question. I just wanted to exist for awhile. I believed I was on the cusp of a new understanding. I was not sure what was going on but I felt ... different. Stronger and more confident than when I'd first come into this world. I mentioned to Lachlan in an email recently that I was tired of all my navel-gazing myopic concentration on my past and that I thought some soul-searching with an eye toward making changes was better for me.

At the same time, I felt way out of step with most other members of this family. Even with the women, I had this feeling of being on another path; I was watching them all bounce along on the main route forward while I poked along on this rambling stroll that was probably leading nowhere except away. I am not sure I would have had the wish to stop before but I did then.

Perhaps that's why I felt so at peace with Egan this week. He just had a way about him that said he'd give me all the space I needed because he respected the need to pursue the things that were most elusive. On the other hand, he wasn't really much into esoteric 'what if' conversations. He was proving to be a hard man to engage.

As I watched, he came down off his horse, straddled the rungs of the holding corral and helped control the cow until the inoculation was given. I watched as the men turned back to the main pen to select the next cow. They all moved away except Egan. His big hand stroked the cow's side and I watched his mouth move as he said something to her and then he let her move away into the next pen. A moment later, he was back in the saddle and at work.

So it went for the next two hours. While the men toiled to separate the herd and to select the two that would be delivered for the boucherie, I helped the women of the group prepare the casings and vegetables and implements that would be needed.

Normally, I would have been at some other task. I didn't do well with what was ascribed to be 'women's work.' It wasn't that I couldn't do it, it was that I hated the presumption that I should do it by virtue of the second-class nature of my sex. But that's how it is down on the farm and the only reason I was never held to the same standards was because my family was used to me. We'd had these battles way back when I was in high school.

No one asked me why I was docile and abstracted this day. They just raised their eyebrows at each other and let me join their circle. I'm not sure I'd said more than ten words that morning. I think they liked me better the old way or maybe they just were like most people -- they were suspicious of change they didn't understand.

At lunch, I fixed Egan a plate heaped with jambalaya, boudin, corn on the cob and such. Took it to him as he was standing with my uncle, beating his hat against his pants leg and wiping the sweat from his brow. Went back and got him a beer at his request for something to drink.

People notice things like that. My uncle teased me; said he thought he'd never see the day any man tamed me.

"You don't tame women," Egan said quietly.

Our eyes met and I smiled at him. We sat together under a tree away from the others and I picked at my food and he ate his quick. He had this spare style; no real extraneous gestures or wasted movement.

"You gonna stick around for the butchering?" he asked me.

"I never can," I said. "I'm a real wimp. I'll stay inside and help prepare some of the dishes."

"You never did tell me why you like coming for this since you can't stand watching that part," he said. He had this quiet voice; it seemed to me that his way of speaking was more tightly controlled than the other men. Everything about him seemed to be about what was needed rather than what was expected.

"It's the connection to my blood," I told him. "Used to be, when I was a kid, we'd come to the boucherie and all the people from the neighboring farms would be there, too. It'd take most of the day to do the slaughtering. They'd have done the herd culling for market the day before. From morning til late, there was work going on. The meat was split out, all the traditional stuff was made. Nothing's wasted at one of these. Even the skin makes cracklin. But the thing that made it what it was, was the sense of community. Someone's always playing music and people are laughing and you're just part of something larger."

"Sometimes, those old traditions lose out to modern ways," he noted.

I stretched out next to him and looked up into the oak over us. "Speaking of modern ways changing the old places, I wonder if your old cabin has a satellite dish yet?"

We both chuckled at the absurdity of that image.

"It was a place apart. I liked the way it clearly defined the spaces in my life," he told me. It was the most reflective he'd been with me. I told him that his life fascinated me for its irrelevance to mine. "It wasn't a brutal life. It was just a clear-cut one. When I was there, I had things to do that I just got done."

"Was the horse the only obsession you ever had in your life? I found it quite sexually charged, if you don't mind my saying so. You used the female you dominated to lure in a male with whom you had this obsessive need to prove your mastery."

"That how you saw it?" he asked me, leaning over where I lay and his hand resting confident and mildly aggressively on my waist. "Just trying to capture a brumby that would fetch a good price."

For some reason, I found myself responding to his form of no-nonsense masculinity. Like it was his right to touch me just to remind me he could touch me. "Really? I guess I always assumed that if you caught him, you would have sought to keep him with you."

"I don't think so. Don't think I wanted to break his spirit."

"Interesting answer."

"Besides, he crossed me. You can't let that go."

Laughing easy with him. I liked the way he would say things sometimes that I didn't expect. My hand on his shoulder shoved him off balance and he let me toss him on his back. I reached down and gave him a peck on his mouth as I was in the process of getting up. Time for us both to go back to work.

His hand on my arm checked me. He demanded a deeper kiss. I was enjoying the way he was so easy about just taking what he wanted from me. He never wanted more than I was willing to give. Maybe that's the secret.

From inside the kitchen that afternoon, I heard the noises of the men outside. Other noises invaded. Kids shrieking in the yard. Cars running the highway. Laughter in the air. Music on the wind. A cadence of life here.

An understanding of death's appreciation of the mundane.

That night, we sat on the dock and watched the bayou. He asked me why I'd invited him. I told him the truth in all its most humdrum charisma.

"I'd never seen your film until a few weeks ago when Heather sent it to me. I think she figured I needed to know you better."

"Did you like me when you first met me?" he asked me.

"Yeah. I did. I felt like you were someone who liked what he had in life."

"Did you like me after seeing the film?"

"More so." Our eyes met and I read his question. "It was something about the way you reacted after the mother horse knocked you on your ass."

We shared an easy laugh at his reaction to my apparently-sassy comment.

"You just looked like you respected her being who she was going to be and yet you were also pissed off."

"Don't read too much into it. You have a real knack for doing that with the men," he said. His face was turned from me and I wondered why I'd earned that reputation with him.

"You think I over analyze you men? Funny. I think I don't pay enough attention or satisfy my curiosity about what really makes you tick. I think I tend to just accept what I see. The surface stuff. Lately ..." I stopped on a dime and cleared my throat.

"Go on." When I shook my head at him, he gave me this little rumble of annoyance. "Go. On. I won't ask again."

My hand was on his face. "Lately ... it just seems like lately, I'm realizing that I might not really know any of you because I haven't paid attention like I should have."

"Ask us what you want to know. Sounds simple."

"Okay then. What was going through your mind as you were running from her and then falling over while she threatened you?"

"I was thinking there's nothing worse that a mother protecting her brat and if I didn't get the hell out of the way, she'd kill me."

"That's all?"

"No. I was also thinking that she might think she'd won this, but I was going to get the colt."

"That makes sense."

"What would you have done?"

"Hell, I'd never have been there. I don't have a thing for horses."

"No? You ever ridden?"

"When I was a girl scout, I rode a few times at summer camp. I was odd even then. Every friend I had in scouts loved horses at that age. I never got the attraction."

"You never been riding with East or Cort?"

"Nope. Horses are not my thing."

"You'll understand me and East a lot better if you understand that a horse for us is a part of our lives. I'll take you riding tomorrow."

And that was it. No discussion. No request. No seduction. No nonsense. Just taking me someplace he wanted and figuring I'd do it. I don't think it ever dawned on him I would think to say no. And that was actually a pretty good approach to me that week.

We weren't sharing the same bedroom at my aunt and uncle's place. It's not really done in our family. They turn a blind eye to those of us who choose to have sex without the benefit of marriage, but they don't condone it by letting you do it openly under their roof.

Egan hadn't really made any moves on trying to convince me to break those conventions. I think he felt it was my aunt and uncle's place to set their rules in the home they had. And I was still sated with all things Jack so I wasn't so randy that I was trying to seduce Egan into joining me in the linen closet or anything.

The next morning, he gave two sharp raps on the bedroom door to wake me. Before I could even get my bearings in the dim dawn lighting, he'd opened the door, walked up to the bed and given me a shake. Get a move on, he told me in this soft voice.

I found him in the barn, talking soft to the big chestnut mare he was about to saddle. I stood there in the quiet and just watched him.

He is a beautiful man. I've heard many say he's the most beautiful of the men. I have to agree. There is something about his hair, his beard, the neatness of his clothing. A quiet, rural elegance. He doesn't usually frown but he often just looks absorbed in an internal dialogue.

"Would you like me to fix you some breakfast?" I asked him as I brought him a mug of coffee.

"Had some biscuits already. Fix us some lunch to bring with us. That way we can stay as long as we want."

Handing me his mug back, he started saddling the horse. I had barely returned from the house after depositing our mugs and grabbing myself a biscuit and an apple. He tucked the cooler bag in which I'd stored our lunch into the saddlebag, then slung himself up into the saddle.

An arm down to me and he was yanking me up, putting my body before him in the saddle ... no discussion, no explanation, no instruction. Just doing it.

It was the oddest sensation. And it fed into how I'd been feeling ever since Jack had come to us from the movie portal. I just had this sense that things within me had shifted again. There was something about believing in one man ... Jack ... that was making me examine why it was the other men put up with me. At least Jack got something in return ...after all, it was me this time who was in the position of having to reassure him. The other men? I was never sure. Never had been. What was that like for them? I had never seen this element before. Oddly enough, it was Lachlan in a fit of pique who chastised me for my failures in this arena and made me see just how selfish I have always been. It wasn't like I'd ever really been a giving person to them -- I rarely got involved in any visit with a man just because he wanted me to. And I'd never really stopped focusing on myself to concentrate solely on them -- unlike Heather who simply gave of herself to any man lucky enough to share time and space with her. It seemed to me that every other woman gave to the men while I only took. And I doubt that I ever deserved what the men gave me.

And ever since I'd had to let Jack slip away from my fingers and fly to be with Uma at the beginning of this week, I'd been left with an emptiness that I knew was the reality of being unworthy of being in this Game. I wasn't. Why then was I even in it?

Guess I could take Jack and slip back through my portal and take with me the lessons I'd learned in my year in the Game. Course, Jack wouldn't have been willing to do that, even if that's really what I wanted, which I didn't. Perhaps instead I could start trying to remember that first and foremost, I had an obligation to care for the men?

I had wanted to cancel this visit with Egan but instead, I let him come to me because I thought Egan was the perfect man to help train me. Perhaps I could use this visit as a way of learning to simply become the woman each man needed me to be when I was with them. So I just dove headlong away from me ... the moment Egan came into the airport terminal, I tried to guess what he wanted and give it to him.

Docile. Compliant. Warm. Content.

Faking it 'til I felt it.

It's an old adage for customer service ... fake the smile until you feel it. And it was working.

I leaned back into his chest as his arms came around me, holding the reins with such sureness. Listened and obeyed his instructions on riding with him as we sauntered off at this slow measured pace. Let the rough peace of him invade me. Gave him back the peace I felt he needed me to feel.

"What was your life like when you were not in the high country with the brumbies?" I asked him after we'd been riding about thirty minutes.

He didn't answer me at first. I tried to wait him out but then I turned in his arms to see his expression. He looked irritated. Gave me a frown that made him look hard. "Why do you want to know?"

Puzzling reply. Honesty seemed the best recourse. "Because I'm curious."

Brief nod and his eyes slipped down my body. "Had a place outside of Wodonga. Know where that is?"

"Nope. Not a clue."

He shook his head at me. "South of Albury."

Blank look from me.

Now he gave me this disgusted sigh. "Foothills of the high country. Brumbies ran in the high country. Remember that much from the film?"

"Yeah. I'm sorry that I don't know the geography very well. What did you do in Wodonga?"

"Cattle." When I hid a grin, he gave me a jostle with his shoulder. "Worked cattle. It's why we went to the high country. Grazed our stock there in summers."

"Ah. So you were a cattleman? Owned your own place in Wodonga?"

Nodding at me and then jutting his chin ahead of us. "Sit up straight, Ann. Hold yourself like I showed you. Let's see if this horse can take us faster."

I turned back to the front and braced for the ride. It's harder than it looks. If Egan hadn't wrapped a steadying arm around my waist and held me tight into his chest, I think I'd never have gotten into the feel. But with his help, I felt I became one with him as he rode the horse. It felt exhilarating. Bracing into the wind of November, cutting through flat land along the bayou, then turning to race along a country lane of ruts and oyster shells.

As he slowed the horse and meandered us inside old oaks and stands of pines, I remembered that one crystal moment from the first time I'd been with him. That speck of time in which the only thing I wanted from him was quiet. And he'd given it to me. Like he understood that sometimes, words were just something that made you get lost.

I felt the chill of the loss of sun within the woods and turned my face to his neck and sought his shelter of quiet. Eyes shut, voices in my head turning to slushing sighs, my hands soft on his legs.

No telling how long we rode like that. And no telling if the ride had an intention other than to shut out my questions. Irony flooded me in that moment of realization. The one man I chose to start trying to be there for had no need or wish to unload anything of himself for me, it seemed.

We stopped for lunch near an impossibly large oak a stone's throw from the bayou. I wondered aloud to Egan if any other humans ever came there. I was standing right there at the edge of the water, looking down into its tea-brown depths and seeing reflections that were impossible to understand.

"I had a woman. In Wodonga." His voice came from nowhere. I turned to look at him, resting up against the oak, his long legs stretched before him, one arm used as a pillow against the tree's sturdy trunk. "She was convenient."

"Convenient? Christ, that's not a very nice thing to say." Couldn't help the frown. Wished I hadn't been such a judgmental person. Remembered that this was one thing Lachlan had chided me hardest for -- that judgmental streak in me that I'd never really seen before.

He shrugged his shoulders. "Sometimes the truth isn't nice."

Shook my head at him and looked off at the bayou's calm. "My dad used to say if you can't say anything nice about someone, don't say anything at all."

"That why you're not saying anything about yourself to me?" he asked instantly, his voice so sharp it cut.

I lobbed a pinecone at his head but he caught it easily. "Fuck you, Egan. That wasn't too nice either."

"Nice mouth you got. Come over here."

Considered my options. What would Uma have done? Nope, best not to go there -- I happened to know Egan didn't have a cup on. Let's see. Heather? She wouldn't be in this position because she would have been soft and involved from the beginning with him. Teener would have taken the lead if she'd wanted it.

Me? I play games even when I don't play them. Is that really any way to treat another person?

Truth was, I wanted his warmth. Truth was, I wanted him to want my warmth.

So I went to him. Maybe it was because I was tired of playing it safe all the time.

I settled down atop his body, astride his hips and slowly grinding against the part of him that I was pleased to see was showing real interest in me. He didn't say a word as he shifted his body so he was lying flat atop the blanket. I started unbuttoning his shirt and flitted my eyes up to his as I unfastened his pants. He just lay there, watching me, his hands behind his head. Just taking this from me like it was his right.

"Tell me why she was convenient," I whispered to him as I dipped to kiss his mouth.

"Knew the score. Was there for me when I needed her."

He was focused on something and I didn't think it was me. For this brief, incandescent moment, I got such a view of him. There for him when he needed.

Just like I wanted to be.

I knew what he needed. Looked hard in his eyes. Held my breath. Saw the part of him he had most needed me to see all along. My fingers gentled along his light beard and then over his brow. Finally: "You cried when the horse leapt off the cliff."

"Did I? Don't remember." One of his big hands reached for the nape of my neck; pulled me down to him; trying to get me to kiss him and wanting to see if I'd force him to reveal himself more.

"You did. You hated the waste of the horse's death. You admired him and wished he hadn't felt the sacrifice was necessary."

Now using his strength ... forcing a kiss from me. Forcing me to absorb his need. Kissing me roughly and then putting his mouth next to my ear to rumble out the words: "Better dead than in captivity after you've been free and the king of the brumbies."

"Would you know what that's like? How it would feel to be broken and captive?" Asking it soft.

"No." Harsh voice.

"Is it what you fear?"

"No." Making me work for it.

"The high country ... it was where you were free ... you and your dog. But in town ..."

"Shut up, Ann."

"There was another woman. Wasn't there?"

"Stop."

"She wanted to tame you. You were obsessed with her but you wouldn't be tamed. It would have changed everything about you." Our eyes met. I remembered his words to my uncle. I echoed them to him; even aped his tone of voice. "You don't tame men."

He shook his head slowly and I saw this light in his eyes that was for me. Letting me see that he was unapologetic about the kind of man he was. Determined. Not always noble. Sometimes desperate. Matter of fact about his place in the world. Not above using immoral means to get what he wants. Capable of brutality. Sometimes aggressive. But not a bad man. An affinity with the animals under his care that shows a depth and warmth in him reached only if one is willing to negotiate the good and the bad in him. Constant in his devotion to those who give him loyalty. Willing to trust. Smart about having realistic expectations.

Showing me all this without words; letting me in for as long as I could bear to look. My body trembled at the impact. He reacted instantly and took the rest of what he needed from me. Taking it with a grace I didn't find at all surprising.

Talking me out of my clothes with no preamble. Just saying it soft ... "Let me see you."

And then rolling around with me ... lazily getting me revved up. A quiet intensity that snared me firmly in its trap. For a time, it was like stepping outside my body and just watching as we made love. He was so beautiful. The firmness of his body. The way his hips moved. The thighs that were so powerful and felt so good between my legs. Sweat glistening along his chest inviting me to lick right there in those spots that made him moan. A cock of silky skin over taut steel that responded to my touch with an eager obsessive need to be inside me. A mouth that took what it could induce me to give up.

Eyes that never let me go even when they were shielded from my examination. They stayed with me. Haunting me for their tales.

And with a suddenness I reveled in, he jarred me back into my own body. Unrelenting in his invitation to take me racing toward a coming. Yielding in his willingness to bring my tempo into stasis with his. Saying more with a sigh or growl than seems possible upon reflection. His face going hard as he glared at me and drove me to a coming as he thrust in and in and in. His eyes shutting and his mouth covering mine with a rudely charming kiss of real depth as he came shuddering into me.

I let him cuddle me into him after and at some point he told me an achingly few short sentences describing his place in Wodonga ... and about spending days cleaning everything out when he would return from the high country to find invariably that the clingy dirt from the road had coated his possessions with dreariness ... and, surprisingly, about how he'd claimed his dog from a friend's litter and known from the beginning that this dog was a born companion for him.

All the while he was speaking of himself and even while he was asking me a question about me that made me share with him when I hadn't really thought he'd want that from me, I thought about something Uma has often told me about men. I admit right upfront that I don't 'get' men like Uma and most of the other women do. So when they make comments that help me understand some of the men in a new light, I tuck it away within me and try to learn their lessons. Uma says that many of the men don't voluntarily express their feelings for others through direct words ... that you must look to their actions and their indirect words because those will tell you what a man's really feeling about you.

Egan ... sharing with me. Giving me something of him because he felt he could. Giving me affection just as surely as if he'd plainly said, 'I like you.' Asking me to be involved enough with him to give something of myself.

When he abruptly prodded me to rise so that we could get presentable for the return trip, I hesitated before hugging him in tight. 

And I tell you this: I wasn't faking it when I whispered against his skin that I liked him just as he was. Who wanted a tame man? I'd have certainly been in the wrong world if that's what I wanted, don't you think?