by Amy Sandas
Malcolm regretted her retreat. He liked having her near, having her hands on him, even if it was in the capacity of nurse rather than lover. He didn’t want to think about the other things she made him feel, deep down where he’d buried old expectations for a future home…and family of his own. He shouldn’t associate such thoughts with her. She was a fine Eastern lady—except she wasn’t. She was Alex, and that meant a helluva lot more than he’d ever thought it could.
“Finish that tea,” she said as she moved across the cabin to a cupboard on the far side. “I am going to make up another poultice before replacing your bandage, and then we can talk about heating up some soup.”
Malcolm did as she instructed, the pungent brew getting better as he drank it. And all the while, he silently watched her.
As she selected from a store of fresh herbs and ground them into paste in a small bowl.
As she deftly used her knife to cut more strips of soft cotton from her petticoat to use as bandages.
As she hung another black kettle over the fire to heat the soup.
As she sat beside him on the bed once again and applied the poultice and bandages with efficient skill, giving him a soft nudge or a low-spoken word when she needed him to move this way or that.
When that task was finished and she would have stood to move on to something else that needed doing, he stopped her. Resting his now-empty cup in his lap, he reached out with his good hand, placing it on her forearm before she could move away.
“Thanks.”
Her eyes brightened as her lovely mouth curled with amusement. “Did you think I’d let you die?” she teased. “I need you, remember?”
He sent a swift glance about the cabin before bringing his gaze back to hers. “You seem to have managed just fine without me.” Her glowing smile had his belly tightening. He needed to shift focus before he did something he shouldn’t. “Now, what was that about soup?”
Twenty-Two
He insisted on eating at the table rather than in the bed like an invalid.
Alexandra refused to allow it, but he just started getting up anyway, and she had to rush to his side to add her support in case he wasn’t as up to the task as he thought himself to be.
Gratefully, he made the few steps with minimal assistance. She would have liked to give credit to her teas, but she suspected it was just him.
When she commented on it, he shrugged. “I’ve always been able to bounce back real fast after catching sick. One day I’d be laid out in bed, feeling near death, the next day I’d be running around, climbing trees.”
Alexandra liked imagining him as a rowdy little boy, dirt-covered and unable to sit still.
“Well, don’t overdo it,” she warned. “You may have recovered from the fever in record time, but that gunshot wound is nowhere near to being healed.”
“But it will heal,” he said. “Thanks to you.” He lowered himself into the chair beside the table. “How’d you know what to do with the herbs and all?”
“My father had a passion for knowledge about the land we traveled and how to survive on it. You could say he was a bit of an adventurer. He made a point of learning all he could about a place, its people, the jobs they did. I was always at his side, so I guess I soaked up that knowledge along with him.”
“Is he the one who taught you to shoot?”
She stiffened and met his sharp and steady gaze. Awareness mixed with uncertainty slid through her. Now that he was awake, it was unnerving to be so close to him while he remained dressed only in his pants and bandages made from her underthings. And his voice, quiet and deep, did things to her.
“He is,” she replied before turning away, hoping he wouldn’t ask any more questions along that track. She had very purposely not thought about what she had done when she’d seen that man pointing a gun at Malcolm’s back, or how she’d felt at the sight of the blood spreading across Malcolm’s shoulder.
Stepping away, she busied herself with fetching a bowl of soup, starting with mostly broth for the first helping. If he did well with that, she would get him a more substantial portion. When she set the bowl in front of him, he looked up at her, his expression indicating he was unimpressed by the watery broth.
That morning she’d found a patch of wild carrots and managed to identify several other plants with roots that could be dug up to add more nutritional elements to the stew she planned to make with the rabbits she’d caught. But that would have to wait until later. For now, it was the mushroom and onion soup with steeped greens.
“Just to start,” she said. “You haven’t eaten anything beyond the tea for two days. I don’t want to overwhelm you.”
He gave a grunt in response but picked up his spoon anyway.
He was obviously not adept at using his left hand, and Alexandra had to bite her lips against offering to help.
Leaving him to it, she went about pulling the sheets from the bed. They needed a good washing, and she had found a second set in the small trunk with the clothes. She supposed Malcolm might enjoy a more thorough bath as well, considering she had been limited in what she could do with a wet cloth while he’d slept. Straightening with the load of linens in her arms, she turned to see Malcolm watching her.
Her heart gave a little flip at the predatory nature of his gaze. She was reminded of how she’d once felt like a sheep to his alpha wolf. In that moment, she wished she were more wolf than sheep. An equal to him. In his eyes, at least.
“What?” she asked, needing to break the strange tether he’d tied around her chest with that look.
He just shook his head and went back to his soup.
After dropping the soiled linens in the washtub and remaking the bed, she scooped up the bucket she used to haul water from the creek and headed for the door. “I’ll be right outside if you need me.”
“Leave the door open,” he said. “This place could use a little fresh air.”
She hesitated. The rising sun had burnt away much of the early morning cloud cover, and it looked like it would be a clear day. There was just a slight autumn nip in the air, but it was more invigorating than anything. “I don’t want you to catch a chill.”
“I’ll be fine,” he said before he lifted the bowl to his lips and drank the last of the broth.
“Would you like more soup?” she asked, taking a step back into the cabin.
He rose to his feet with the bowl in hand. “I’ve still got one good arm, and my legs are working just fine. I can manage.”
He was doing better than managing. Aside from a little weakness and being unable to use his right arm, he barely seemed the worse for wear. The strength would return once he got more nourishment in his body. It was a relief to see that he was likely going to be just fine.
More than fine. He’d probably be ready to ride out again in just a few days.
She wasn’t exactly sure why, but that thought gave her a sharp stab of disappointment. She pushed it away quietly and went back to work.
Bringing the horses down to the creek with her, she tied them on long leads so they could graze. Just as she started heading back to the cabin with her bucket of water, Malcolm stepped out. He had slipped on a fresh shirt, though he’d only buttoned it halfway up, leaving the spread of his collarbone, the edge of his bandage, and a good portion of his chest visible. In his good hand, he carried the soup kettle.
Alexandra stopped to watch him stride strong and sure down the little hill toward the creek. Aside from the way he held his right arm bent and tucked in against his side, she never would have known he was injured. He paused beside Deuce to stroke the gelding’s neck and mutter something only the animal could hear.
She felt warmed by the sight of him. It was strange, really, when she’d basically been looking at him nonstop for the last few days. But seeing him as himself again made her feel relieved yet oddly melancholy, proud but in a possessive s
ort of way, and ultimately…awkwardly besotted. Such a strange mixture of emotions. She had no idea where to start to make sense of it all.
While he had been unconscious, she’d been too concerned for his well-being to consider her attraction to him. But now…her awareness of him and the pure pull of his presence seemed to be stronger than ever.
When he looked up and saw her standing halfway up the hill just watching him, he raised a brow in silent question.
“Are you sure you should be moving about so freely?” she asked, saying the first thing that came to mind.
“I’m sure,” he replied. “We can’t stay here long. I don’t have the luxury of acting the invalid.”
She didn’t reply to that and stood silent as he continued down to the edge of the creek. But when he started to wash out the kettle, having apparently eaten all the soup she’d made, she rushed to his side. “I can do that.”
“So can I,” he said stonily.
Alexandra clenched her teeth. She had thought him stubborn and terse before, but apparently, an injured Malcolm could be even more so.
Rather than argue with him, she headed back up to the cabin. Daylight and fresh air filled the little shelter, making it almost cheerful. It was quite a difference from the dark and quiet she’d been living in for the last few days.
After putting some of the water into the second kettle to heat over the fire, she started to fill the large washtub. She didn’t see Malcolm on her second or third trip to the creek and assumed he’d stepped into the trees for privacy. But as she turned after emptying another bucket into the tub, she nearly bumped right into him.
He had come into the cabin so quietly that she hadn’t even heard a floorboard creak.
He was close enough that she had to tip her head back to look into his face. He seemed to fill the little one-room cabin with his height and the breadth of his shoulders. His natural air of command and innate strength hadn’t been diminished by his fever, and in the confining space, he presented an intimidating presence.
But Alexandra wasn’t intimidated.
Rather the opposite. Everything about him drew her in.
Standing there with the bucket in her hand and a gasp of surprise on her lips, she had to fight the urge to sway into him, to become surrounded by that strength and revel in the undeniable maleness of him.
“You don’t have to do everything.” His voice was oddly intimate as he slid his much larger, rough-textured hand over hers to take the handle of the bucket out of her grip.
She kept her fingers curled tight.
“I don’t want you to overdo it,” she replied, wondering at the way the words had to fight their way up through a throat gone suddenly dry. “You’ve been very sick. You are probably still weak. Doing too much could reopen your shoulder.”
He gave her a frown. “Let me decide what’s too much.”
“But—”
“Alexandra, I get it. You’ve proven what you’re capable of.”
Something in his words bothered her, dousing her rising heat with a wash of cold annoyance. She released the bucket to him and crossed her arms over her chest. “You think I took care of you to prove something?”
He lifted his brows. “You’ve been saying from the start that you wouldn’t be a burden. I’ll admit I didn’t believe you. I can see I might’ve been wrong.”
“Might have?” she interjected.
He said nothing to that, but she could see the muscles in his jaw tensing as he clenched his teeth. He was getting frustrated.
Well, good, because she was already there. She had reached her limit with his belittling tone, his skepticism, and his stubborn refusal to see her.
He couldn’t just admit that he’d underestimated her? That maybe he had gotten her wrong?
Of course not. That would be too reasonable.
“You listen to me, Malcolm Kincaid,” she said in a level tone, despite her rising irritation. “For fifteen years, my father and I lived all around the Montana Territory. Just the two of us most of the time. My father grew up in as fine a lifestyle as can be imagined, and when he got out here, he had a lot to learn. It wasn’t easy for him, which is probably why he made sure such things were as natural to me as breathing. From the time I could toddle around on my own two feet, I started learning how to forage, how to fish, snare, and hunt. I didn’t learn those things to prove anything—I learned them because it was necessary.”
Her chest tightened as Malcolm just stared at her with an ever-darkening scowl.
“You want me to be some pampered lady? Well, I’m not. I never have been. I just learned how to wear the clothes, that’s all. Everything I did here was because it needed to be done. And there’re still things that need to be done. You want to do your part, fine. But I’m sure as hell going to do mine.”
She turned away and headed for the door, swiping up an old sack from the cupboard counter as she passed. Before stepping outside, she stopped and looked back at him.
“I’m going to set some fresh snares, then I’m going to gather up some things for tonight’s meal. You want to lug buckets up from the creek, go ahead. When you are done, you can wash yourself up, because frankly, you stink.”
That parting shot was totally unnecessary—the man had been ill for days; was he supposed to smell like flowers?—but she was just angry enough to stoop that low.
As she stomped out into the woods surrounding the cabin, she couldn’t help but realize she had overreacted just a bit.
All right, maybe a lot.
She blamed it on a lack of sleep and the tension she’d been living with over the last couple of days as Malcolm fought through the fever. Surely, it wasn’t because his opinion of her mattered so much.
She’d spent the last five years in Boston, covering up aspects of herself that would have been misunderstood at best, ridiculed and shamed at worst. For the last few days, though she’d been focused on making sure Malcolm made it through the infection, she’d also finally felt like herself again. All of herself. It had felt so right and easy to fall back into the way of life she’d been gone from for so long. So much so, that she hadn’t even had to stop and think about it.
But now she did. Malcolm’s careless words made her feel extremely self-conscious, just like she’d felt when she’d first arrived in Boston. As though she had done something wrong, though she couldn’t understand what it was. Or more to the point, that she—the girl she was, the person she had become—was somehow wrong.
It had been confusing when she’d been fifteen, but it was possibly more so now. She knew what it was to act like the young lady everyone wanted her to be. But now she’d had a chance to relive the freedom and confidence she’d known as a girl, and she liked it.
Yet it still wasn’t acceptable.
Well, too bad.
She stomped on a dry stick lying in the underbrush and snapped it in half, sending one end of the stick flying back at her shin.
“Blast,” she cursed under her breath as she stopped to rub at the smarting injury.
She was done behaving in a manner designed to meet the expectations of other people. If Malcolm couldn’t accept her as she wanted to be, then that was his problem. It was long past time that she stopped trying to please everyone else and finally accepted all of who she was. There would always be someone to find fault, but at least she would be real. She would be free.
Twenty-Three
Alexandra returned to the cabin almost two hours later.
Malcolm stood outside, leaning back against the frame of the open door. He had stepped out with the intention of tracking her down, certain she had gotten lost or injured somewhere.
Luckily, he’d heard her approach a full minute before she’d stepped into view and had enough time to appear more relaxed than he felt. After the earful she’d given him earlier, he had a feeling she wouldn’t appreciate h
is concern.
As it was, as soon as she saw him standing there, her steps slowed a bit, giving him time to take note of her appearance.
She walked with long strides across the little clearing and carried a small sack filled with whatever she’d scrounged up from the forest. She’d bypassed her coat and hat, likely because she’d left in too much of a hurry to grab them. Her long, dark braid rested over her shoulder, and some loose strands brushed against her cheeks and throat. Her eyes were bright blue in the sunshine, and her skin was taking on a golden hue.
She looked damned appealing if he were to be honest with himself. But then, she’d attracted more than a passing notice from him the moment he’d first seen her. And every time after that. It was a force that kept expanding and going deeper. He was afraid that when he had to, he wouldn’t be able to shake it.
Stopping in front of him, she gave him an expectant look. He knew it was probably because he was blocking the doorway, but he decided not to accommodate her just yet.
“I owe you an apology,” he muttered.
She arched a fine, black brow in a skeptical expression he knew he deserved. “I underestimated you and offended you. I’ll do my best not to do that again.”
After a moment, she responded with a short nod and a pretty pinkening in her cheeks.
“I would have dressed the rabbits,” he continued, “but couldn’t quite manage it.”
He wasn’t about to tell her that just getting washed up and dressed had taken nearly an hour of grunting and wincing.
A frown tugged at her brows. “I didn’t expect you to do that. I can dress the rabbits.”
He grimaced. “I don’t like not being able to do things for myself.”
She released a heavy sigh of exasperation. “You are supposed to be recuperating. That’s all you need to worry about.”
“I’m hungry.”
“Then let me pass, and I’ll start our supper,” she said with growing frustration.
He wasn’t sure why he was baiting her like he was—it just felt like something he needed to do. To release some of the tension between them, maybe.