He gave her what was almost a smile and held his hands palms out. “Okay. But maybe a good man might take some of the starch out of your petticoats.”
“I don’t have any starch in my petticoats, and I made up my mind a long time ago that I’d eat sagebrush and prairie dogs before I’d let a man take care of me.”
“Can’t say I’ve eaten sagebrush and prairie dogs,” Callahan said, “but there’ve been times when either one would have been welcome.”
A moment hung between them, a connection that asked for more than either could promise. Finally he looked down at the new bedsheets beneath him.
“I can smell you on the pillow.”
She looked startled.
“You smell like flowers.”
“It’s soap and sunshine,” she said, backing away, her words echoing from one wall to another.
Callahan knew she was thinking about his head on her pillow. Josie did smell like soap and sunshine, and every time he drew in a breath, he was reminded of her.
“For whatever it’s worth, Josie, thank you. Not many people in my life have stood up for me. And I appreciate it.”
“It’s my job.”
“No, it’s your way.”
Josie felt his eyes on her. In spite of the connection between them, she’d tried to keep their relationship on a professional basis, but her patient wasn’t fooled.
She pursed her lips and walked back toward the window overlooking the mountains beyond their valley. It wouldn’t be long before he could move himself. She closed that thought out. “You don’t like my room?”
He took a long look around, studying the whitewashed adobe room with its round white fireplace in the corner and the Indian rugs on the floor. “Saw some adobe houses like this in New Mexico, built out of sand. Not many up here. Folks in Wyoming usually prefer wood.”
“There’s very little wood now. The trees were cut when they were building the Union Pacific Railroad. Then the farmers came in and now the sheep herders. Besides, Dr. Annie and Dan tend to use what’s plentiful and we have plenty of dirt out here.”
Callahan gave her a curious look. “Not many women would furnish a room this simply.”
“I like things simple and free. No restrictions. That’s why I like Wyoming,” Josie said, softly this time.
“Have you always lived here?”
“No, until I was ten, I lived … back east.”
“So did I,” he said. “Why’d you leave?”
“It’s complicated,” she admitted, wondering what he’d say if she told him how much they had in common. They’d accused him of being a thief. She’d been one. “Out here in this open land, I can think clearly.”
“I like Wyoming, too,” he agreed. “And you’re like this land, open and honest.”
“And plain.”
A silence ensued.
“I’ll leave you now. I’m going to make a new poultice, something to take care of your soreness,” Josie said, closing the door behind her.
There was nothing simple or plain about Josie Miller. Though she tried to hide her beauty behind her severe hairstyle and simple clothing, Josie Miller had a lot more to offer. He’d like to know just what that was.
It had been a long time since anyone had intrigued Sims Callahan. Too bad he wouldn’t be able to stick around. If he wanted to find Ben, he’d better concentrate on getting his strength back. He smiled. On the other hand, teaching Miss Josie Miller to be a woman might be just what the doctor ordered.
The lost man stumbled forward.
“Have to keep moving,” he mumbled over and over, his mouth so dry that the words felt like gravel. “Got to get back to—”
To what? To who? He didn’t know.
The sun overhead was as hot as the night before had been cold. The heat clung to his injured body like grasping hands. He fell to one knee, then pulled himself up and glanced around in confusion. His vision was blurred, but by squinting he could see shapes and colors. Nothing looked familiar. Where was he? What had happened to him?
The only thing that stayed with him was the constant ache in his head, a rolling pain that stole his thoughts and filled those spaces with darkness.
He thought that three days had passed since he’d opened his eyes only to look straight into the face of a lean, beaked bird that squawked in protest at his waking.
At one point he’d followed the trail of a small animal to find water, but that was at least a day ago. He’d stopped being hungry, driven by some invisible force that he couldn’t identify. He couldn’t remember what had happened, only that he was running. There was someone he had to find.
Over and over he stumbled, until he finally reached the low flat plains of the prairie. In his confusion he imagined he heard something—a thudding sound and a woman’s voice.
“Damn you! Damn you for dying on me!”
More sounds, then, “Well, this won’t stop me. I’ll get there by myself.”
He moved toward the voice. One painful breath after another. One step after the other. Then his foot came down on uneven ground, a rut. He stumbled and fell.
The next time he opened his eyes a woman was leaning over him. “Jacob?” she said softly. “Welcome back.”
In the clinic, Josie ground up seeds from the packet marked wounds and added it to the vinegar Lubina had supplied, turning the mixture into a dirty brown paste that smelled rotten. She didn’t know what it was. She didn’t even know for certain that it would help, but it was all she could find in her mother’s notebook that might work on Callahan’s injuries.
After she’d changed Callahan’s bandages, she’d find him something to wear. She seemed to remember that Dan’s mother sent him a fancy nightshirt last Christmas. It might be simpler to treat him nude, but she couldn’t do that anymore. There was no point in pretending that he was just another patient.
Josie gathered her other supplies—bandages, sulfur powder, and her wound medication—and headed for her bedroom. She met Lubina on the way out.
“Did he eat?” Josie asked.
“Not much,” Lubina admitted. “He’s asleep now. He’s still not a well man. If it had been up to him, he would have eaten nothing. I told him that if he didn’t open his mouth, I’d stuff them beans somewhere he wouldn’t like.”
“Lubina!”
The housekeeper grinned. “I wouldn’t have, but he didn’t know that. I think you’d better not trust him. He’s a charmer, that devil.”
Josie shook her head and moved past the older woman. Lubina might call Callahan a devil, but it was clear that he was getting to her. Josie had best get done with her doctoring before he won her over completely.
The problem would be keeping him from leaving. He was determined to find his brother. She couldn’t fault him for that, but he wasn’t ready to travel.
Callahan’s eyes were closed when she entered the room. She hoped that he wouldn’t wake up while she was changing the bandage on his groin. Letting go of a deep breath, Josie peeled back the sheet, folding it over to cover that part of him insistent on making itself known. She was glad that he couldn’t see her inflamed face.
With trembling fingers, she lifted the bandage. The skin around the edges of the wound was dry.
“Be gentle, darlin’,” he drawled.
Josie jumped, almost upsetting the basin Lubina had left on the table. “I wish you wouldn’t do that,” she said, pouring hot water from the kettle into the pan.
“Do what?”
“Pretend to be asleep.”
“Why? If you want to fondle me unobserved, I’ll close my eyes.” In the wee hours of the morning he’d come to the conclusion that he wasn’t physically ready to ride. If he was going after Ben, he’d have to make peace with his guardian angel. Besides, he liked talking to her and he liked teasing her. Callahan let out an exaggerated sigh. “I’m all yours.”
Josie took her cloth and, without letting it cool, dropped it on his abdomen.
“Hell,” he swore. “What are you t
rying to do, cook me?”
“Just reminding you that I’m the doctor and I can still hurt you if you don’t stop playing games. Now, be still.”
This time Callahan didn’t argue and he didn’t let her see his smile.
Using sweet-smelling soap from her own washstand and a plain bathing cloth, she washed the wound.
He made no comments during the process. Surprisingly, this disappointed Josie. She missed his flirting. She remembered just this kind of talk between her Aunt Ginny and Uncle Red—before they married. Uncle Red was a lot like Callahan, teasing Ginny constantly. And Ginny had given as good as she got. They’d married and kept on flirting—through five children.
Josie forced her attention back to Callahan’s body and noticed a scar on the calf of his right leg. “What the …?” she whispered aloud.
“Earlier bullet wound,” Callahan said.
“That doesn’t surprise me.”
Callahan squirmed beneath her touch.
“How’d you get shot that time? A fight over a woman?”
“A fight over a woman? Not me. Never met a woman worth getting shot for.”
“Not even your mother?”
He paused for a moment before saying, “My mother was killed during the war, trying to protect my sister from being raped by Yankees. Both of them were killed in the end.”
Josie was touched that Callahan would share something so personal. “I’m sorry,” she said softly. “My real mother died in childbirth. The baby died too.” She didn’t know why she’d told him that. She’d never told a living soul about the pitiful little boy that had taken her mother’s life.
He changed the subject by asking, “How soon am I going to be able to ride? I can’t he here while Ben’s out there, maybe wounded, maybe even dead.”
“I’m sure your brother is all right. If he were dead, they’d have found him. Out here the scavengers direct your path, even when the searcher loses the trail.”
He winced. “You mean the vultures, don’t you?”
She nodded. “Look, if it’ll make you feel any better, I’ll ask Bear Claw to send out a full search party. The Sioux know this territory better than anyone. If Ben is out there, they’ll find him.”
“How can you be sure?” he asked.
“They found you, didn’t they? Now, be still.”
He let her dry his feet, pulling the soft cloth between his toes and working it along the limp muscles of his calves. “You have a special touch,” he said.
“Actually, I’m pretty clumsy. Dr. Annie is the angel with feather fingers.”
“This Dr. Annie, I guess she adopted you.”
“Yes,” she answered. “My real mother was a prostitute.” Out of respect for Dr. Annie, she wouldn’t normally have mentioned her real mother, but this conversation with Callahan seemed right.
He didn’t appear shocked or try to ignore her confession, as most people would have. “She must have had a good reason for doing that kind of work. Can’t imagine a woman willingly choosing that life.”
As a young child, Josie had wondered the same thing. And later, when she’d collected enough courage to ask, her mother had just said that a woman does what she has to.
A silence fell between her and Callahan.
He caught her arm, running his fingers up and down the odd curve between her elbow and her wrist. “What happened here?”
“It … got broken. Didn’t heal right.”
He nodded, waiting.
“When my mama died, one of her ‘friends’ looked after me. He taught me how to pick pockets and open safes. I was better at opening safes.”
“Is that how you got your arm broken?”
She was startled at his perception. “Yes. When I was clumsy, I was punished.”
“And Dr. Annie treated your injury?”
“Oh, no. I met Dr. Annie later. We were working a scam on the platform outside the train depot. Dr. Annie was the target that day. Dan caught me in the middle of the con. But Annie wouldn’t let them arrest me. Instead, she took me in and treated me like I was somebody special.”
Josie rinsed out her cloth, emptied her basin, and refilled it with the remaining hot water.
“So what happened after she took you in?” Callahan asked.
“We came here to Laramie and Dr. Annie opened her medical practice. Later, she and Dan got married and adopted me. I had no place else to go, and this was the best home I’d ever had. I never had a last name so I took theirs. I’m not their blood, but they call me their daughter.”
“I don’t think it was as easy as you make it sound.”
“It wasn’t,” she said, and began absently washing his arm.
After all she’d done to civilize herself, she was confiding details of her past life to a man she knew nothing about. A possible criminal. Was that what made her open up to Callahan? Did they share a link based on their common pasts?
Beneath her fingertips, Callahan’s muscles bunched as she washed. Though he didn’t speak, she had the feeling that this man was as caught up in the moment as she.
In a stem tone, she said, “I’m very lucky to have people who love me, who think I’m better than I am. They’ve given me a lot, and Dan and Dr. Annie have always expected a lot from me in return.”
Callahan was listening intently. “Like what?” he asked.
She dropped the cloth in the pan and sat for a moment. “I was expected to learn, to do something with my life to help others. And”—she let out a sigh of exasperation—“to be a lady. I’m supposed to set a good example for my younger sister, Laura.”
“But you’re no more a lady than I’m a gentleman, are you?”
She cut him a quick glance. He wasn’t insulting her; he was just stating a fact. “You’re right. I’m not. I go around pretending all the time. But everyone can see straight through me, and I’m sure they’re laughing behind their smug smiles.”
“Look at me, Josie. Do I look like I’m laughing?” he asked softly.
Why was he doing this, forcing an intimacy between them that she neither welcomed nor understood? She didn’t like the panicky feeling that swept over her. She felt as if he was the only person who’d ever truly seen her. “No. I don’t think you are. You don’t know how to laugh.”
Josie reached for the dressing on his shoulder wound and jerked it off.
“Ouch!”
“Sorry,” she muttered and washed the healing wound.
He deserved a little pain for forcing her to bare her soul like that. She softened her efforts. At least there was no putrefied flesh. She rinsed her cloth and wiped away the soap, vigorously scrubbing his skin.
Callahan groaned. “I think you were wrong about your past, Miss Josie Miller.”
She looked up.
“You weren’t a pickpocket. From the way you’re going after my skin, I think you were a washerwoman. Stop pretending I’m a scrub board and you’re doing laundry.”
“I’m sorry, Callahan.” She applied her bandage, then slid her arm around his neck and beneath his back. “You’ll have to help me here,” she said, urging him to lift himself.
He gritted his teeth and complied as she tied the bandage around the shoulder with a strip of cloth.
“I’m simply trying to do what my mother would do,” she said, as she let him back down. The weight of his upper body pulled her forward. Her chin was only inches away from his lips. She could feel his breath against her neck and the wicked pulse of his heartbeat through her fingertips.
Slowly, she pulled her arm away and leaned back. They stared at each other, breathing deeply. She dropped her gaze to the bed, trying to break the connection that held them in an intimacy far too strong for her to understand.
But no sooner had her gaze landed on the sheet, that part of him began to rise.
She gasped and turned primly away. “And don’t you start that again, Callahan. It won’t work. I already know you’re a randy devil who can’t control himself when he’s around a woman—even
when she’s only trying to help him.” She jutted her chin forward and left the room.
“Wait,” he called after her. “Please come back and move the basin so I won’t turn it over.”
She reappeared in the doorway. “It won’t tip over if you remain still.”
“I’m trying.”
“Not all of you is succeeding.”
He groaned. “It’s just that you have a way of tempting my body.”
“I do no such thing.”
“Well, maybe not you, maybe it’s your body. All I know is, mine seems to have a mind of its own.”
“Self-control. All you have to do is exert a little self-control. That,” she said sweetly, “will lower the pole. Without it, the flag can’t wave.”
“Flag?” he said in disbelief. “Darlin’, it’s been called a lot of things, but never a flagpole.”
“Well, my apologies for insulting Old Glory.” She gave a mock salute and left the room. This time, the door closed firmly behind her.
Callahan groaned again. How in hell was he supposed to react? She just kept coming back, touching him, her strands of blonde hair skimming his body when she bent over to dress his wounds. His response was intense and unexplainable. Everything about him hurt. Still, this woman reached out to him, her blunt words and honesty overriding his condition, invading his dreams, and teasing his body.
Josie slipped back into the room. “Put this nightshirt on.”
Callahan took one look at the white garment she was holding and scowled. “You want me to wear a lady’s nightgown?”
“This is not a nightgown,” she said patiently. “This is one of Dan’s … nightshirts.”
“He wears this to sleep?” Callahan asked incredulously. “Tell me the truth, Josie. Have you ever seen your father in this garment?”
“Well, no,” she admitted, feeling a flush of embarrassment color her face. “But I’m certain he would wear it if Dr. Annie asked him.”
“The only kind of man who would wear something like this is a man who doesn’t have a woman and isn’t going to get one, angel.”
Josie planted her hands on her hips and pursed her lips. “Well,” she said, “I guess that fits your situation pretty well, doesn’t it? Now, put it on or I’ll do it for you. And don’t call me angel.”
The Outlaw Bride Page 5