Winter Fire

by Elizabeth Lowell

  The Culpeppers had to be stopped.

  Case had drawn the short straw.

  A slight rush of air and the faint scent of roses told him that Sarah had returned.

  “I hope this doesn’t wake you,” she murmured. “Just a warm wet rag and some soap. Nothing to worry a strong man like you.”

  Slim fingers combed through his hair, moving it back from his forehead. He enjoyed the caresses in a suspended kind of way, like a fever dream.

  Rose-scented and soapy, the rag moved over his face. It reminded him of a big, warm, slightly rough tongue.

  “I’ll wash your hair tomorrow, when you’re less tired,” she crooned. “I could tell from the feel of it the first time I touched your hair that you’re used to keeping it clean. I like that in a man.”

  The murmuring voice washed over Case as gently as the cloth. He floated in a place that was neither sleep nor waking, absorbing the gentle words and touches like desert ground soaking up water after a long drought.

  “Your hair is all black and cool and sleek, like a horse’s mane, only much silkier. It’s as pretty as your eyelashes.”

  Being described as pretty in any way at all amused him, but nothing of his reaction showed. Like youth, laughter had fled from him after the war.

  The delicate, musical sounds of Sarah rinsing and wringing out the washcloth were like her voice. Soothing and arousing. Real and unreal. Close and far beyond reach.

  “Maybe I’ll shave you in a few days, too,” she continued in a low voice. “But not your mustache. It’s longer than the new beard, so you must have it all the time.”

  Warm cloth and gentle words flowed over Case. He drifted closer and closer to real sleep with a trust that would have shocked him if he had noticed.

  But he didn’t. He was as bemused by Sarah’s care as every other wary, wild creature that had fallen into her hands.

  The flannel sheet slid down to his hips, disturbing him. He made an indistinct sound of protest. His right hand moved slightly, as though seeking to pull up the cover again.

  “Hush,” she murmured. “It’s all right, Case. I’m just cleaning the dirt off of you. Then I’ll let you be.”

  His hand relaxed. He let out a long breath.

  “That’s it,” she crooned. “That’s just right. Keep sleeping and heal up until you’re strong enough to fly again. Though you won’t fly, will you? You’ll just get on Cricket and ride out…”

  The murmur of water and Sarah’s voice blended in Case’s mind. He drifted again toward the half-world that was neither sleeping nor waking.

  Warm, wet, sweetly abrasive, the washrag licked over his arms and chest, removing evidence of his painful journey across the cabin’s dirt floor.

  “Culpepper…sneaking up…behind.”

  Case didn’t know he had spoken aloud until Sarah answered him with words and gentling motions of the washrag on his chest.

  “You’re safe at Lost River ranch,” she murmured. “You’re safe with me. Sleep, Case. I won’t let anyone harm you.”

  Distantly he realized that he had heard variations of those words when pain and fever had gripped him in a vise that he thought would end only with his death.

  Safe at Lost River ranch.

  Sleep, Case.

  You’re safe with me.

  His breathing deepened and slowed to match the easy movement of the hands that cared for him so sweetly. Relaxed despite his hungry sexuality, he let the rose-scented dream of peace close around him.

  He made no protest when he sensed the loincloth loosen. All he cared was that sweetness continue. Soothed, aroused, nearly asleep, wholly alive, he knew only that a moist warmth stroked him. He gave himself to it, for it was what he needed more than breath itself.

  Pleasure tingled over him, pulsed like a slowly beating heart, and set him adrift again.

  With a sigh that was almost a groan, Case fell headlong into sleep, leaving a wide-eyed Sarah behind.

  “What in heaven’s name…?” she asked.

  Such a thing had never happened when she nursed Ute back to his feet, and he had been shot up even worse than Case.

  “Infection?” she whispered.

  She bent over his torso and breathed in an indefinable mixture of salt and rain and man and rose soap.

  “Thank God,” she said in a low voice.

  Whatever had happened to him, it hadn’t been the result of infection.

  Then she saw that his arousal was slowly subsiding. Her husband had looked like that when he finally got satisfaction from his silent, rigid wife.

  Realization stained her cheeks in a wave of heat that was both embarrassment and something else, something that made her stomach give that funny little dip again.

  “Well, you’re definitely healing,” she muttered.

  Then she laughed softly, unexpectedly, and continued bathing him.

  “You do learn something new every day,” she murmured. “I never knew a man could get pleasure unless he hurt a woman.”

  Suddenly she remembered the tender, searing kiss that Case had given her. Her stomach quivered. Nerve endings she didn’t know existed shimmered briefly deep inside her, startling her with a tingling rush of pleasure.

  “Where did that come from?” she muttered. “Do you suppose it’s catching?”

  The idea that a man’s pleasure could be contagious was more unsettling to Sarah than her first kiss had been.

  Working quickly, she finished the bath and covered Case up again. To her relief, neither her patient nor her own stomach did anything unexpected during the process.

  7

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Sarah demanded as she stepped into the cabin.

  “What does it look like?” Case asked curtly.

  The door closed hard behind her, shutting out a rectangle of winter-bright sun.

  “From here,” she said, “it looks like a darn fool hopping around on one leg using a rifle for a crutch and a bullet for a brain.”

  “You’re right about the rifle.”

  Despite her irritation, she smiled. Case’s quick mind livened up her days.

  Not that Conner didn’t have a quick mind, too. But that wasn’t the same. She didn’t take much sass from her little brother.

  Case was a different matter entirely.

  Through narrowed eyes, she watched his awkward progress. The first time she had found him fully dressed and hobbling around the cabin, she had hidden his clothes while he slept.

  But if she had thought having only a loincloth to cover him would keep Case in bed, she had been wrong. The proof was in front of her eyes.

  And it was impressive.

  “What’s the hurry?” she asked reasonably, trying a different approach.

  “Ten days lying here on my back have left me weak as a kitten.”

  Sarah looked at the muscular length of his body and laughed out loud.

  “A kitten?” she asked. “Case, even lions don’t have cubs like you.”

  His only answer was a muttered word.

  “Would you care to repeat that?” she asked innocently.

  “I’d care to, but you wouldn’t care to hear it.”

  The rifle butt slipped on the dirt. He lurched and probably would have fallen if she hadn’t leaped forward and offered her shoulder for balance.

  “Easy there,” she murmured, steadying him.

  “Save that sugar and satin voice for your hawk. He’s blind enough to believe it.”

  “He’s wearing a hood at the moment.”

  “Like I said. Blind.”

  She smiled at Case.

  He didn’t smile in return.

  She was neither surprised nor upset. She had learned that he didn’t laugh or smile, though he had a sense of humor that obviously had been honed by living with a loving, mischievous family.

  At first she had assumed that the pain of his wounds kept him from smiling. But as he healed, she realized that nothing as simple as bullet wounds had taken his laughter.


  She didn’t know what had happened to kill all joy in him. She suspected it had something to do with the names he called out in his fever—Emily and Ted, Belinda and Hunter.

  But Emily most of all. Case called her name with a rage and grief and despair that tore at Sarah.

  She knew only too well how it felt to lose everything, to be torn from warmth and love, to be left shivering and stunned and alone but for a child who depended on her for sheer survival.

  “If I hood you, will you stay where you belong?” she asked lightly.

  “You get anywhere near me with a blindfold and Ute better have a gun on me.”

  She looked up at Case’s eyes. Their corners weren’t crinkled even the littlest bit, which told her that he wasn’t teasing.

  She sighed.

  “Conner carved you a crutch,” she said after a moment. “I’ll get it.”

  “Get my clothes, too.”

  “No.”

  Case’s mouth narrowed. He stared down into her determined face. As happened all too often, he was distracted by the mysterious color of her eyes, a gray that could dance with blue lights, shimmer with silver fire, or darken into storm clouds, depending on her mood.

  “You want me running around in front of you naked,” he said evenly, “then so be it.”

  But his voice wasn’t as hard as he wanted it to be. The idea of being naked with the quick-tongued, courageous little widow appealed to him entirely too much.

  “You’re not naked,” she countered.

  “You sure about that?” he drawled. “Maybe you better check below my neck. Never know what might have come undone while I was lurching around.”

  Pink flared on Sarah’s cheekbones, but she kept her eyes above his chin.

  “The point is,” she said gamely, “that you’re still too weak to be hopping around, whether buck naked or dressed like a lord on Easter day.”

  “The point is, pretty widow, that you won’t be safe from Ab Culpepper until I’m gone from here.”

  “I’m not pretty and I won’t be safer with you gone.”

  “I heard what Ab said. He came to Lost River ranch for me, not for you.”

  “You didn’t hear all of it,” she said bluntly. “He threatened to castrate Conner.”

  Case drew a quick breath. “Judas priest. Why?”

  “I don’t know, but I can guess.”

  “I’m listening,” he said.

  “My brother is…impulsive.”

  Case waited.

  “I think Conner tiptoed into the raiders’ Spring Canyon camp,” she said, “mixed up salt with the sugar, stirred fresh cow manure into the breakfast beans, and turned their horses loose to cover his own tracks.”

  “Would have been a damned sight more useful if he had slit some throats while he was at it.”

  Sarah’s breath came in sharply. “No! I don’t want Conner to have to live like that!”

  “Then you’re living in the wrong place.”

  “I’m not. He is. That’s why I’m going to send him East to school.”

  Saying nothing, Case looked around the cabin. Its sparse furnishings and dirt floor told him that money was rare on Lost River ranch.

  “Conner is close to man-sized,” he said neutrally. “He might want a say in where he goes or doesn’t go.”

  “There’s more to the world than a river running through a red stone wilderness,” she said, her voice tight.

  “Is that you talking, or your brother?”

  “Lost River ranch is all I want of the world. Being here suits me all the way to my soul.”

  The intensity in her voice was matched by her eyes. They fairly burned with silver fire.

  “But Conner is different,” she said fiercely. “He could be a doctor or a lawyer or a teacher. He could travel across the sea and meet kings. He could be anything!”

  “Is that what he wants?”

  “How can Conner know what he wants?” she countered in a rising voice. “All he really knows is this narrow canyon. If he takes a look around the world and wants to come back here, fine. But so help me God, my brother will have the chance to look.”

  Because Sarah was still against Case’s side, supporting him, he felt the tension vibrating through her body. She was like a wire much too tightly drawn, humming with strain.

  Wires stretched that tight had a habit of breaking.

  “Easy, little one,” he murmured, turning her toward him. “These last ten days have been a trial for you.”

  “Hang the last ten days! I just want—I just—”

  Her final, fragmented words were spoken against his chest. With a tenderness surprising in a man so powerful, he stroked her hair and back, gentling her rigid body.

  Slowly she became less stiff.

  “How old were you when your parents died?” he asked quietly.

  “Thirteen.”

  His eyes closed. He had seen young girls orphaned during the war. Some, the lucky ones, had kin nearby who took them in. Other orphans survived however they could, fighting with dogs for scraps of food. Too many of the children died.

  Somehow he doubted that Sarah had been one of the lucky orphans who found shelter with kin.

  “How old was Conner?” Case asked.

  “Nine.”

  “Youngest in the family?” he guessed.

  “Yes.”

  “Spoiled in the bargain, too, I’ll bet.”

  “He isn’t spoiled,” she said instantly.

  “Huh. He has a smile that could get around Satan, much less a doting older sister.”

  Sarah looked up, meeting Case’s clear glance. Though she was pale, there were no tears shimmering in her eyes.

  “I was the second oldest of five,” she said. “And the only girl. Mother was a long time healing from Conner’s birth. I rocked him, fed him, sang to him, kissed his hurts…”

  The clarity of Case’s glance became unbearable to her. It was as though he was seeing past her words right into her soul.

  She looked away.

  With great care he nestled her cheek against his chest. After a brief hesitation, she accepted the comfort.

  She couldn’t remember the last time she had felt like she could lean on someone. Since her parents’ death, she always had been the strong one, the one who saw what had to be done and did it, come hell or high water.

  “You were Conner’s mother in all but name,” Case said after a time.

  She nodded.

  “The flood got the others,” she said after a moment, “but when the house started coming apart around us, I grabbed Conner and hung on until I found a tree big enough to hold us above the water.”

  “Your brother is a lucky young man,” Case said. “Spoiled enough to know he’s loved and not so spoiled that he’s worthless.”

  “He’s not spoiled,” she insisted.

  “Uh-huh. That’s why you tore a strip off him yesterday for tracking deer and forgetting to get more firewood.”

  She tried to lean her head back and glare at Case, only to discover that she couldn’t. The hand that was stroking her hair so soothingly was as firm as a rock wall. She could fight the gentleness or she could simply give in and enjoy it the way she enjoyed an unexpected summer rain.

  Drawing in a deep breath, she sighed and relaxed against him. The scent of soap and man filled her nostrils. The heat of him, and the cushion of curly black hair beneath her cheek, reminded her that he was nearly naked.

  The masculine textures intrigued her. She had never been so close to a bare-chested man. When Hal had demanded his rights as a husband, he always wore his long, scratchy underwear and he smelled of alcohol and old sweat.

  “You smell like roses,” she said after a moment. “Only…different.”

  Case’s big hand hesitated, then resumed stroking her hair.

  “Blame your soap,” he said.

  “Blame it?”

  She shook her head vigorously, sending her long braids slapping softly against his skin.


  “I like the way you smell,” she said. “Do you mind?”

  “Cricket might wonder what happened to me, but, no, I don’t mind.”

  “Good. The only other soap we have is lye. It would take the bark off a tree.”

  She sighed again and snuggled against his chest, as trusting as a kitten.

  Heat shot through Case, even though he knew there was nothing flirtatious in her actions. Sarah was simply accepting the comfort he was offering.

  Yet ever since he had first seen the cinnamon glory of her unbound hair, he had wanted to touch it.

  Maybe she won’t mind, he thought. It’s not like I’m trying to seduce her. I just want to stroke that beautiful hair.

  Comfort, that’s all.

  For both of us.

  Bracing himself with one hand on the rifle, Case untied the thongs that kept her braids from unraveling. Using his fingertips he carefully combed the long strands until they were free from any restraint.

  Cool hair spilled over his skin. His fingers clenched in the rose-scented cascade. He brought a fistful of her hair to his face, inhaled deeply, and slowly released the silky mass.

  “I like the way you smell, too, Sarah Kennedy.”

  The huskiness of his voice pleased her. It was as tender and yet as masculine as the hand that had resumed stroking her hair.

  “Now I know how my hawks feel,” she said.

  He made a rumbling, questioning kind of sound in his chest.

  “Cosseted,” she said, sighing. “It’s very nice.”

  Moved without knowing why, Case brushed his lips over her hair so lightly that she didn’t feel it. He couldn’t explain the almost painful tenderness he felt toward her at that moment. He knew only that he had seen too many women and children destroyed by the war.

  He hadn’t been able to do anything about easing their pain, no matter how hard he tried.

  Just as he hadn’t been able to save his niece and nephew.

  “Conner is lucky to have a sister like you,” Case said.

  “I need an older brother like you,” Sarah said, smiling slightly. “Want to adopt me?”

  Something like pain passed over his face, but the gentle stroking of his hand over her hair never hesitated.

  “Kids need love,” he said calmly. “I don’t have any left in me.”