Spence closed his eyes in resignation. He supposed her agreement had been too much to hope for. He found her hand and gripped it tight. “Then p-promise me something.”
“What?”
“I’ve…been known to babble. You have to…ignore anything I say.”
“White man, I’ve been ignoring everything you say for weeks.” The return squeeze of her fingers on his took the sting out of her words. “Are you feeling any warmer yet?”
“No. Cold.”
She stroked his brow. “Your skin is hot.”
“Do that again.”
“Do what?”
“Touch…my face,” he said, his eyes still closed.
LaRisa swallowed around the sudden lump in her throat. Even in sickness, she hadn’t expected him to ask for anything from her. She smoothed her fingers across his brow again, then down his cheek. “Like this?”
“Feels good.”
She stroked his face again and again, marvelling over the different textures of skin. Smooth across his brow, rougher along his cheeks where a day’s worth of stubble grew. His lips were…She traced one finger along his lower lip. Firm. Smooth. Hot. It parted from the upper lip. She jerked her hand away, chastising herself for remembering his taste and the way his mouth felt against her breasts.
His fingers flexed around hers as he sank into a restless sleep.
LaRisa pulled the room’s only chair next to the bed and watched over him. A dozen questions whirled through her mind. Why hadn’t he told her about his malaria? How bad would it get? How sick would he be? Did his family know he suffered these relapses? Did his illness have anything to do with why he didn’t want a wife?
She shook her head. She was grasping at straws. Why should his malaria have anything to do with his having a family? It made no sense. He was a man with so much caring inside him, so much love for his brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, parents. Why wouldn’t he want his own family?
How can he have a family when he’s saddled with you?
Maybe he did want a wife. Maybe he was just saying he didn’t because he didn’t want to have to come right out and tell her that she wasn’t the wife he wanted. And why should he want her? He’d only married her to get her away from Carlisle. Now he was stuck with her because of some stupid law.
Then why didn’t he leave me in Mexico? Why did he make love to me last night?
The questions echoed on and on. No answers came.
Later, when the light faded, she rose and lit the small lamp on the dusty bedside table.
Spence woke up hot, every bone and muscle screaming with pain, his head pounding, his vision fuzzy. The chair beside his bed was empty. Panic thickened his throat. Had she left him? “Risa?”
“I’m here.” She returned to the hard, straight-backed chair. “I’m right here.”
Spence let out a sigh of relief and closed his eyes. She hadn’t left him. Had he actually thought he didn’t want her there? Some men—himself included—could be such fools.
He kicked the suffocating blankets aside and heard water splashing somewhere close. He craned his neck to see LaRisa wringing out a cloth.
“Here. This will feel good.”
The cool wet cloth on his face felt like heaven, but her fingers felt even better. “Thank you. I hate this.”
“I’m sure you do.”
“I hate being so damn weak.”
“You’re sick, Spence. A fever this high is bound to sap your strength. It’s only temporary. You’ll be good as new in a day or so.”
After downing another dose of quinine, he fumbled at the buttons on his shirt. “I think you had the right idea earlier about my clothes.”
Her soft, cool hands brushed his hands aside. “I’ll do it.”
Spence watched her face as she removed his shirt. He wished the damn hammering in his head would stop so his vision would clear. He wanted to see what she was thinking. Did she despise him for being so weak? God forbid, was there pity in those downcast eyes?
Having his socks removed felt good. He nearly swallowed his tongue when she matter-of-factly reached out and tugged off his drawers. Then she touched the wet cloth to his chest and he closed his eyes in relief. “Feels good.”
“I’m glad. Rest now. Get some sleep. I’ll be right here.”
While he slept, LaRisa bathed him over and over, trying to bring down his fever. Trying not to notice the sheer perfection of his form. Trying not to remember his weight pressing into her, his chest against her breasts, his arms around her, his hips between her legs, his strong legs entwined with hers. Surely it was shameful to lust after a man who was in misery.
Her arms, shoulders, and back ached from leaning to reach his burning skin. Finally she slumped down and rested her head next to his hip. For a minute. Only a minute. Or two.
“No more. God, please, no more.”
The low, tortured moan brought LaRisa awake.
Spence rolled his head from side to side. His eyes were squeezed shut, his face contorted into a fierce grimace of pain. His breath came in heavy pants. Streaks of lamplight and shadow made him look like a picture of hell itself.
“Spence! Spence, what is it?”
“Not another one. God, God, God, not another one!” he cried.
She pressed her hand to his arm and it was like touching a hot stove. His skin was hot and dry, his lips cracked. She dipped her rag into the water again. “Spence? Can you hear me?”
“How many more?” he yelled. “Goddammit! How many more have to die? It’s already too many.”
She pressed the cool cloth to his forehead. He grabbed her wrist and sprang up. His eyes…LaRisa shuddered. She’d never seen such horror in a person’s eyes.
“Why can’t I help them?” he bellowed. “Why?”
He didn’t know her, she realized. He was delirious.
His eyes turned pleading, his voice faint. “There has to be something I can do besides watch them die.”
The raw anguish in his voice sent chills down her spine. “It’s all right, Spence. No one is dying. It’s all right.”
“What the hell do they have to live for?” he demanded angrily. “To spend their lives in this stinking, disease-infested swamp? I can’t cure malaria or yellow fever or tuberculosis, goddammit!” He started thrashing on the bed.
LaRisa threw herself across his chest to hold him down. He was so hot! And strong. He tossed her off as though she weighed nothing. She landed on the floor.
Quickly she scrambled back up, but now he lay still, his gaze on the ceiling, his chest working like a bellows. LaRisa sank to the chair and breathed a short prayer of thanks that he hadn’t gotten out of bed and hurt himself.
She began sponging him again.
He rolled his head and looked at her.
“Spence?”
His eyes filled with pain. “No. Sitting Woman can’t be dead.”
LaRisa felt her stomach knot. Sitting Woman had been Broken Hand’s wife.
“Don’t tell me that,” Spence ranted. “The baby was too big? Goddammit, no woman has to die like that. Where the hell was the post surgeon? What do you mean, she wouldn’t let him? Good God. She waited for me? She died waiting for me?”
“No, no, Spence. It’s all right now. Nobody’s dying.”
“I should have been there. Damn this malaria! It’s killed her. I could have saved her if I hadn’t been sick. She shouldn’t have counted on me. Nobody should count on me. I let them down. All of them. All I do is let people die.”
LaRisa wanted to close her ears. He rambled on and on about people dying. Then…he started naming them, as if reciting a memorized list.
“She Walks Tall…malaria. Huera…pneumonia. Nolge…tuberculosis…Alchise…yellow fever…”
On and on he named them. So many, LaRisa’s heart clenched. Was this why he had given up practicing medicine? Was this what he’d meant when he said he hadn’t been able to help The People? Was he blaming himself because there was no cure for the diseases that
took them? He’d watched so many of her people die. He seemed to carry each death as his own personal responsibility.
“Sitting Woman…childbirth…Natzili Chee…”
“Spence, stop,” she pleaded when he named her father. She could not bear to hear any more of his torment, could not bear to hear him blaming himself. “Oh, Spence.” She wiped the damp cloth across his face. “It wasn’t your fault so many died. It wasn’t your fault.”
She managed to get another dose of quinine down him, but wished there was more she could do. How long would the fever ravage him?
Finally he quieted and seemed to rest easier. She didn’t stop bathing him. Again and again, all through the night, she smoothed the damp cloth over his heated flesh.
“I’m sorry, Maryanne.”
He was looking at LaRisa, but seeing someone else. The pretty blue-eyed Maryanne. The shaft of pain in LaRisa’s chest surprised her.
“You don’t have to stand on the other side of the room. I’m not contagious.”
“Spence, it’s me, LaRisa.”
“You didn’t figure on getting yourself half a man, did you?”
“You’re not half a man. You’re more man than—”
“That’s what I thought. Hold it against you?” He laughed harshly and rolled his head away. “Hell, if you’re going, just get out. Make whatever excuses you want about calling off the wedding. Nobody’ll blame you for not wanting to spend your life with an invalid.”
LaRisa felt outrage boil through her. Had Maryanne refused to marry him because of his malaria? Was that why he kept saying he didn’t want a wife? He expected all women to feel the way Maryanne had? If that—
She made herself stop. She was jumping to conclusions again. She would wait until he recovered, and she would ask him outright all the questions this night had brought forth. And if she was right about any of it—not marrying because of his malaria, blaming himself for the deaths of her people, giving up his practice because of that—she was going to let him know in no uncertain terms just what a stupid jackass she thought he was.
When she caught herself trying to rub a hole in his skin, she forced a calming breath and rinsed out her rag. She trailed it down his broad, muscular chest, over his flat abdomen, across one hip, then the other, unable to stop the memory of those hips thrusting between hers.
“Trying to take advantage of me when I’m not looking?”
LaRisa jerked. “Spence?”
“Last time I checked.”
“Open your eyes and look at me.”
When he complied, she looked at him closely, her heart pounding. “Who am I?”
One corner of his mouth twisted up. “My loving wife, Inga.”
“Does that mean you’re lucid, or are you still delirious?”
“Have I been babbling?”
“Some.”
“Don’t pay any attention to me.”
“How are you feeling?”
He closed his eyes. “Like I’ve been trampled by a rampaging herd of six-legged buffalo.”
“Ah, you’re feeling better then.”
His lips twitched. “I love it when you sass me.”
“Is that part of what I’m not supposed to pay any attention to?”
“Spoilsport. A little to the right with the rag.”
LaRisa narrowed her eyes. A little to the right would place her hand directly on his groin. “You must still be delirious.”
“You’re no fun. Kiss me, then.”
Her heart hammered against her breastbone. “I only kiss men who know who I am.”
“Kiss me, LaRisa Chee Colton.”
LaRisa steadied herself with a hand on the mattress as she leaned over him. “Mary always said I spoiled my patients.” She brushed her lips across his gently. She would have let it go at that, had meant to let it go, but his lips parted and captured hers. Heat melded their mouths together for a moment, then his mouth went slack.
She raised her head and smiled. He’d fallen asleep again.
LaRisa dozed in the uncomfortable chair until dawn, when his fever finally broke. Sweat poured from him in streams. She bathed him again and again as his body finally cooled.
“Stop fussing,” he mumbled. “It’s over now. I’ll be fine in a few hours.” He tugged on her arm and pulled her off balance. She found herself sprawled across his chest. “That’s better.”
LaRisa tried to get up, but he held her tight. “Let me go, Spence. You need to sleep.”
“So do you. Sleep beside me.”
Against her better judgment, LaRisa stretched out next to him. She only had to wait until he fell asleep. Then she could get up.
But LaRisa was more exhausted than she realized. She had no idea how long she’d been asleep when she woke to find her blouse unbuttoned and Spence’s hand cupping her bare breast while he slept. She should remove his hand. She should get up and away from him. Yet she could not bring herself to do either. With a small sigh of pleasure mixed with pain, she closed her eyes and denied the stirring in her heart.
Chapter Seventeen
They slept most of that day. LaRisa slipped from his side late in the afternoon, and he woke shortly after, claiming he was starving. She couldn’t get him to stay in bed, so they went to a café down the street for supper.
“Look at you,” she chastised on their way back to the hotel. “You’re so exhausted you can barely walk. You should have stayed in bed.”
Spence clenched his jaw. He supposed it was too much to hope that she would let the subject of his malaria slide. “I’m fine,” he muttered. “I’ll be ready to ride in the morning.”
LaRisa would have argued, but since waking, he had yet to look her in the eye. He didn’t like her to even mention that he’d been ill. Stubborn, pigheaded white man.
The situation did not change the next day on the trail until LaRisa nudged her mare to ride beside Spence and forced the issue. “Tell me about Sitting Woman.”
Spence flinched as though she’d slapped him.
“She was Broken Hand’s wife, wasn’t she? What happened to her?”
Spence forced breath into his lungs, then out again. “She died.”
“In childbirth?”
He forced another breath, then another. “Drop it, LaRisa.”
“Does she have anything to do with why you’ve given up medicine?”
Spence stared straight ahead and refused to answer.
“Talk to me, white man.”
He flexed his jaw. “Nice day, isn’t it?”
“Damn you.” Frustrated and furious, LaRisa drew her mare to a halt.
Spence was concentrating so hard on not looking at her, he was a dozen yards down the trail before he realized she hadn’t merely fallen back to ride behind him. He looked around and spotted her sitting on a flat rock beside the trail. With his jaw clamped tight, he turned his horse around and trotted back to her.
When he stopped before her, he leaned a forearm on the saddle horn and nudged the brim of his hat up with his thumb. “Mind telling me what you’re doing?”
LaRisa folded her arms across her chest, tucked her tongue against the inside of her cheek, and deliberately looked everywhere but at him.
Spence waited. Her mare browsed on a tuft of grass at the base of a boulder. His horse flipped its tail around to swat a fly. The sun beat down mercilessly, yet LaRisa sat there looking so damn cool, he’d bet butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth.
“You think if you sit there long enough I’ll answer your pointless questions?”
No response.
Okay, he’d call her bluff. “Fine. Sit there. I’m going home. If you’re coming with me, mount up.” He didn’t wait to see what she’d do. He turned the gelding back onto the trail and rode out at a slow trot.
LaRisa refused to watch him leave. He wouldn’t go far. He wouldn’t just leave her there. When she didn’t follow, he’d come back.
She waited patiently, figuring it would take him several minutes to realize she wasn’
t coming. He was probably waiting just on the other side of that outcropping of sandstone about a quarter-mile away.
Several minutes went by, then several more. She chanced a glance toward the west. Nothing. But any minute now, he’d come riding back, disgusted, angry, but he’d come.
He didn’t come.
He was trying to scare her, that was all. He would come soon.
Too hot to sit still, she stood and stretched. For something to do, she loosened the cinch on her saddle. Might as well give the mare a breather. She took a sip from her canteen. She paced. She sat again.
Eventually she had to admit that soon had come and gone. She refused to worry. He wouldn’t leave her alone on the trail. Not respectable, responsible Spencer Colton.
A half hour later, gnawing on the inside of her jaw, she finally realized he had done just that—he had left her alone on the trail. Or he wanted her to think he had. Stubborn white man. He was probably sitting right where she’d first thought, on the other side of those rocks. He’d probably found himself a nice little patch of shade and had settled down to teach her a lesson.
Sighing in defeat, she pushed herself from the rock.
“Going somewhere?”
With a shriek of fright, LaRisa whirled. “Damn you! You nearly scared me to death sneaking up on me like that.”
“You deserve a good scare, pulling a stunt like this.” He marched to her horse and tightened the cinch. “Mount up. We’re wasting time.”
“Are you going to tell me about Sitting Woman?”
Spence shut his eyes and turned his face to the sky. His shoulders slumped. “Dammit, LaRisa, don’t do this.”
“Spence—”
Something inside Spence snapped. “She died! All right? She and her unborn baby died and it was my fault. Is that what you want to hear? She trusted me, had faith in me, and when she needed me, I wasn’t there. She died waiting for me to help her.”
“You were sick, weren’t you? You had a relapse of the malaria and couldn’t go to her.”
Rage and anguish distorted his features. “What difference does it make?” he cried.
“What difference?” she shrieked. “What difference? You’re blaming yourself for her death, when you couldn’t go to her because you were sick, and you ask what difference? Of all the stupid, egotistical, asinine, pigheaded…” She was so mad, words failed her and she sputtered to a halt.
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