“I think that’s about the last thing you need right now,” Kali said.
“Need it,” he whispered hoarsely. “Come on, Kali, be a pal. Leg…hurts like a blue bitch.” He tried to lift the bottle toward her but couldn’t. He was too weak. Damn.
“There’s someone here to see you, Matt.”
Matt squinted at the other figure again. “Still trying to hook me up with one of your girls?” he let out a breathless chuckle. “Give it up, Kali. I told you before, I don’t need a woman.”
Serena took a steadying breath and stepped around until the light was on her face so he could see who she was. “Aren’t you even just a little bit glad to see me?”
It took considerable effort for Matt to lift his head from the bare, sweat-soaked mattress. When he finally recognized Serena, he dropped his head back and threw an arm across his eyes. “Goddamn.”
“Thanks a lot. It’s good to see you, too.”
Matt lowered his arm and glared at her. “What the hell are you doing here? Did Pace send you? I’ll kill him for this. Get out, Rena. Get out and go home. Leave me alone.”
Serena took another deep breath to bolster her resolve. What she wanted to do most was cry, but any show of sympathy was the last thing in the world Matt needed from her. “See there?” she winked at Kali. “You did need me. I’ve been here only a few minutes and you’ve already got the strength to yell.”
Matt bit back another curse and used his sudden burst of energy to uncork his bottle. He took a long pull, then sagged back against the mattress again. He barely got the cork back in the bottle when his hand went limp and his eyes slid shut.
Serena frowned. “Matt?”
“I’ll be damned,” Kali said. “He’s passed out.”
Serena sagged against the rough plank wall and fought back tears. “Dear God. He’s much worse off than I thought.”
“Yeah,” Kali agreed. “This is the worst I’ve ever seen him. You gonna be all right? You handled yourself real well, but can you keep it up? He’ll only feel worse if he sees you cry.”
“I can handle it.” Serena pushed herself from the wall. “But Kali, I’ve got to get him out of this place. Good Lord, how can anyone live like this?”
“I agree, but I don’t know where you’re going to take him. We lost three hotels last night, including the one Matt was staying in. All the others are full to bursting. Even my place is full. And after last night, he probably wouldn’t stay there, anyway.”
Serena shook her head. “I think what I need is someplace private. I don’t think he’s going to want to be around people for a while.”
“What did you have in mind?”
“I don’t know, unless there’s a empty house around. We wouldn’t need much, just one or two rooms.”
“You’re not going to try to take him home right away?”
“No,” Serena said softly. “Not like this. He wouldn’t want that. First I want to get him well and back on his feet. After that, I guess it’ll be up to him.”
Kali studied her thoughtfully for a moment, then said, “I think I know just the place you need, but I’m warning you, it’s not much. Just an abandoned one-room adobe about an hour south of town in the hills. And you know, don’t you, getting him back on his feet isn’t going to be easy?”
“I think I know, but I guess I’ll find out for sure, won’t I? That adobe sounds perfect. Now, how am I going to get him there?”
“That’s not a problem. The saloon’s got a wagon over at the livery. I’ll go get it, along with a couple of men to carry Matt. Did you bring luggage with you?”
Serena nodded and told her about leaving her bag at the stage station.
“I’ll pick it up in the wagon. I’ll have to stop on the way back and get some supplies, too. That place out there is nothing but bare bones. I doubt if there’s even a bucket to piss in.”
Serena couldn’t control her burst of laughter. “We can’t do without that, can we?” Then her laughter faded to a wry grin. “But I don’t think Matt’s even going to be able to handle a bucket. I’m afraid for the next few days what he’s going to need is a bedpan.”
Kali’s gaze narrowed and her lips twitched. “Just where would a girl like you learn about bedpans?”
“My Grandfather Jason was an invalid the last several years of his life. Bedpans are easy.” Serena shrugged and grinned. “Someone else fills them up, and you empty them. Nothing to it.”
Kali threw her head back and laughed. “You’ll do, girl. Yes, ma’am, you’ll do fine. One wagon, two men, and a bedpan, coming up.”
When Kali left, Serena knelt next to Matt’s cot and tenderly smoothed the wet hair from his brow. “Oh, Matt,” she said with a sigh. She wished she knew if he’d passed out from the liquor or his fever, but either way, he was sicker than anyone she’d ever seen.
She chewed on her upper lip and fought tears. Matt had always been her hero, so strong and self-assured, always there whenever anyone needed a shoulder to lean on. To see him reduced to this state tore at her heart.
This wasn’t the Matt Colton she knew. This wasn’t a young girl’s older brother, a young woman’s hero, her knight in shining armor. It wasn’t the son who honored his parents, nor the husband and father who worshipped his family.
This wasn’t Matt Colton the rancher, respected across the territory for his strength, his wisdom, his sense of justice.
Nor was it the white-skinned yellow-haired Apache called Bear Killer. Never mind the bear claw necklace and the scar on his cheek. It wasn’t him.
It wasn’t any of the Matt’s Serena knew.
Matt, Bear Killer, where are you? What are you doing to yourself?
Serena spent an eternity there kneeling on the floor next to that dirty little cot in that dingy little room, looking down at Matt, smoothing his fevered brow. Finally, she thought she heard Kali’s voice accompanied by the rumble and rattle of a wagon from down the alley.
As Serena stood up the heel of her shoe caught on something. Bending down, she carefully felt around and came up with a torn pair of men’s canvas pants. Since they were under Matt’s cot, she decided to take them with her. She felt around some more, and in the far corner found a leather vest wrapped haphazardly around a pistol and holster. She claimed them, too.
Just as she heard traces jingling and horses snorting outside the door, Serena spotted a shirt she assumed was Matt’s hanging on the wall above his head. His boots lay at the foot of the bed, a knife and a pair of dirty socks stuffed down inside. The fumes from the socks were enough to choke a horse.
She heard Kali’s voice and took the clothes outside. “Kali, you’re wonderful!” Serena exclaimed as she squeezed the woman’s hand. One side of the wagon was packed tight with pots, pans, flour, sugar, salt, ham, and dozens of other supplies.
The other side held a spotless, narrow mattress cushioned from the hard floor of the wagon by several inches of clean straw. A saddled horse—a black roan gelding—was tied to the back, where he stood swatting flies with his tail.
“Matt’s horse,” Kali explained. “I won’t be able to leave the wagon with you, so you’ll need him.”
“Thank you. I don’t know what I would have done without you, Kali.”
“Don’t worry about it. Matt’s a friend. I’d like to see him get straightened out. I happen to think you’re just the one to do it.”
Kali introduced her to the two men she’d brought to carry Matt. They were friends of hers, a couple of out-of-work miners named Hank and Josh. They shoved empty cots aside and lifted Matt, while Serena held his broken leg.
Halfway out the door, Matt came to. He didn’t know where he was or who had him, so he began to struggle.
“Be still!”
The sharp command didn’t fit with the soft feminine voice. Matt stopped struggling and squinted against the glare of the late afternoon sun. “Rena?”
“It’s me, Matt. Just take it easy. We’re getting you out of this place so I can take care of
you.”
“Put me down, goddammit. I don’t need anybody taking care of me, least of all, you. What I need is a drink. Where the hell’s my bottle?”
“What you need is a swift kick in the pants.” She gave a sharp nod to Hank and Josh, and they placed Matt none too gently on the mattress in the wagon.
Serena tried to keep his leg from jostling, but she saw the grimace of pain cross Matt’s face. She climbed in the back and tried to keep his fevered body covered with the blanket Kali had brought, while Kali sat up front with Hank and Josh.
The horses pulled the wagon with a slow walk, but the roads were deeply rutted from the recent spring rains. Every few feet, one of the wheels fell sharply into a pothole, wringing a moan from Matt. He passed out again before they even reached the edge of town.
He came to a couple of times on the way to their destination, but was unconscious again when they arrived at the abandoned adobe hut. His fever was raging and the mattress beneath him was already damp.
Kali made the others wait at the wagon while she took a broom inside. Clouds of dirt and debris billowed out the door. When she came back out a few minutes later she was grinning.
“You’re in luck. This place actually has a plank floor.”
This time when the men picked Matt up, they carried him mattress and all. Serena had them put him down in the corner opposite the door, next to the crude fireplace.
The fireplace wasn’t the only thing that was crude. The whole structure was crude, but it would do, Serena thought. With its solid roof and walls, it provided more shelter than a wickiup would have.
The entire house, if it could be called that, consisted of one room with a fireplace, a door, and a window with warped shutters. But it was functional and private. There was a brush corral out back and a water well in front. If the roof didn’t leak when it rained, she and Matt would do quite well.
“Oh, Serena, I didn’t think,” Kali said. “Where will you sleep?”
“Don’t worry about me. I’ll just pile that straw on the floor and I’ll be fine. I can’t thank you enough, Kali, for all your help.”
“Like I said, forget it. I’ll be back out in a day or two to check on you, and I’ll bring more food. There’s a bag of jerky somewhere among this stuff.” She indicated the supplies Hank and Josh were unloading and stashing along one wall. “It’ll make a decent broth for Matt until he can handle something solid.”
The sun was sinking low by the time Kali and the men left for town. Serena was exhausted, but she knew her work had just begun. She heated water over a small fire and tore her oldest petticoat into strips. It was time for her first major chore, and it wasn’t going to be easy.
Matt Colton was going to get a bath.
She used a knife to slice open the seams of his longjohns in order to remove them. They were so ragged and dirty and singed they weren’t worth saving. She pulled them off him and tossed them in the far corner. Tomorrow she’d burn the disgusting things. She didn’t dare throw them into the fireplace inside—the fumes would probably kill her.
She turned back and studied Matt’s long, nude form, surprised to feel an embarrassed flush sting her cheeks. A man’s nakedness was nothing new to her. Having lived part of each year of her life with the Apaches, it would have been impossible for her to be unfamiliar with what whites considered “a man’s privates.” Apache men usually wore only a breechcloth.
The scant garment covered the essentials, most of the time. But when a man sat or squatted, a breechcloth tended to gap open around the legs. When he ran or the wind blew, it flapped and waved in the breeze like a woman’s skirt, leaving not much if anything to the imagination.
It was always a source of amazement and embarrassment to the army when they hired Apache scouts and gave them uniforms to wear. The first thing an Apache did was cut the seat from the pants. He couldn’t imagine why a man would want to be confined like that, and found the white man’s garment much too constricting.
But even though Serena had seen Matt in a breechcloth countless times, she had never before, seen him like this. Still, she shouldn’t be embarrassed by his nakedness.
Actually, she decided, she wasn’t embarrassed so much by his nakedness, but that his nakedness should make her heart race, that she had so much trouble remembering she had been raised as his sister. Yes, her racing heart and failing memory embarrassed her.
As his sister, she shouldn’t notice that despite his current injury and fever, despite the way he’d been living the past year inside a whiskey barrel, his body was still…magnificent.
No. A stepsister shouldn’t notice such a thing. She shouldn’t notice the way those magnificent muscles still bulged and curved, creating smooth hills and valleys down his entire length. Not quite as shapely as she remembered, but still there, and still firm.
His once golden skin, now yellowed from illness, stretched tight across muscle and bone, indicating a loss of flesh. His ribs, cheek bones and hips retained no flesh to separate them from that tight skin, which was now covered with a sheen of perspiration.
Serena let her gaze roam over him carefully. Sweat from his fever plastered his wavy blond hair to his scalp. She studied the thick straight brows above his closed lids and wondered if gold flecks still danced in those deep brown eyes.
The bear claw necklace—the only thing he wore—had yellowed with age over the years.
She barely remembered that night in the stronghold so many years ago, when she and Pace were five and Matt was fifteen, when he had received the necklace—and the scar on his cheek. At the time, she hadn’t understood what had happened, had only known Matt was hurt by a bear and her parents were very worried. Serena had tried her best to be brave and not cry. Apache children didn’t cry, and while she and Pace were in Cochise’s stronghold, they were not half-breeds, they were Apaches.
But when a small child sees fear in her parents’ eyes, bravery comes hard. She had somehow managed, though, because her grandfather, Cochise, had promised her Matt would be all right, and Grandfather always spoke the truth.
Matt had survived the bear attack, but not without scars. The one on his cheek was highly visible, but it was nothing compared to the scars on his chest and back.
Serena drew a finger along the bear claws. The necklace, according to old Dee-O-Det, the shaman, would protect Matt from bears forever.
She trailed her finger down to trace one of the parallel marks that curved from his right collarbone to his left side just below his ribs. When her fingertips came in contact with his heated flesh, something happened to her.
It was like being out in the open desert with a storm approaching. The air around her seemed to crackle and snap. Her skin felt all prickly and her fingertips tingled. Some indefinable heat flashed from his skin, through her fingers, and settled in her breasts and the juncture of her thighs. Her breathing grew labored. Her whole body trembled with unexplained excitement.
Serena gasped audibly and jerked her hand away. She spun around and faced the fireplace, covering her flaming cheeks with both hands, scolding herself for her foolish imagination. Such things did not happen, not from a simple touch.
But a few minutes later, when she was washing his face and neck, she couldn’t explain why she was still trembling.
Gradually she began to calm and concentrated on bathing as much of Matt as she could reach, suffering an unwanted and ridiculous clumsiness over certain parts of his body. She feared hurting his injured leg, so didn’t try turning him over to wash his back. That would have to wait.
When she had washed every place she could reach, she pulled the blanket across his hips and cut the bandages holding his splint in place. Beneath them she found a neat line of ten stitches along Matt’s shin. She wondered if the cut had come from without, or had been created by the broken bone puncturing through from inside.
Dr. Goodfellow, Kali had said. The man did neat stitches, but Serena wasn’t about to trust the welfare of Matt’s leg to a stranger. Any good sea
mstress could sew neat stitches. That didn’t mean the bone was properly set. If it wasn’t, Matt could be left with a permanent limp. As far as Serena was concerned, that would be unacceptable.
She poked and prodded along Matt’s leg as gently as she could. If the bone was not properly aligned, maybe it wasn’t too late to straighten it.
The leg was still swollen around the break, so she had to poke hard to feel the bone. She knew she was hurting him, for he moaned once and his muscles tensed.
“I’m sorry, Matt,” she whispered, not taking her hands or eyes from what she was doing. “I’m hurting you, I know, but I’m almost finished.” With fingers not quite as steady as they should have been, Serena felt carefully along the bone. She breathed a sigh of relief. The bone was aligned straight and true. “There,” she said softly. “I’m through now.”
Without thinking, she bent and placed a kiss just above his stitches. She heard his sharp intake of breath, saw and felt his entire body jerk. Her gaze flew to his face.
His fever-bright eyes were open. For a brief instant, before he could mask his expression, he stared at her with horror plainly visible.
“Did I hurt you?” she cried.
Matt clenched his fists at his sides and glanced down his body to where her cool fingers rested on his burning flesh. He was relieved to find all but his leg covered with a blanket. That helped, but not much. He closed his eyes briefly and swallowed. “No,” he whispered hoarsely. “You didn’t hurt me.”
Serena’s gaze followed his down, then up his body, and she blushed so hard the heat from her cheeks stung her eyes. She’d seen men clad in a lot less than the blanket covering Matt, but she’d never seen one in that condition before! No wonder he was horrified. He’d just been aroused by his stepsister!
He didn’t know she didn’t think of him as a brother.
She remembered Kali’s mutterings about Matt being too long without a woman. The best thing Serena could do right now would be to joke about his body’s reaction, then forget it. But she couldn’t. The tingling heat she’d felt in her breasts and between her legs when she’d touched his chest earlier washed over her again, and she didn’t feel at all like laughing.
Apache-Colton Series Page 76