His Medicine Woman

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Desire stabbed her so deeply that she actually whimpered out loud. “Johnny.”

His name came out as a soft sigh, a gentle plea echoing from the past and he answered by closing the last bit of distance between their lips.

In the flash of an instant, the kiss became a frenzied give-and-take that had their mouths crashing together, their tongues tangling. The crush of his hard mouth was bruising, almost savage in its possession, yet Bridget’s senses thrilled to the utterly masculine domination.

Years of emptiness and longing fueled her need to get closer and without even knowing it, her arms slid around his neck, her body pressed into his.

But just as passion was beginning to consume her and the heat of his body spread through hers like liquid fire, he tore his mouth free and rapidly stepped back from her.

Pinning her with an accusing glare, he asked hoarsely, “Are you happy now? To know you still wield power over me?”

Completely dazed, her lungs heaving, Bridget stared at him. “Power?” she whispered in disbelief. “Is that what you think this is about?”

“What am I supposed to think? You come here tempting me.”

She gasped. “I didn’t just show up here! You asked me to come to your home! Remember?”

But for a tiny muscle twitching in his jaw, his face was as hard as a piece of granite.

“Yes. And already I regret it.”

His answer was like a punch in the stomach and she was still reeling from the pain when he turned on his heel and left the room.

Moments later, she heard the front door slam and the cold sound reverberated through her trembling body.

Tempt him? Yes, maybe a part of her had wanted to push him into some sort of reaction, she thought dismally. Maybe she’d wanted to see if there was still a spark between them, a vestige of desire leftover from the past.

Dazedly, her fingers lifted to her swollen lips. His wild kiss had given her the answer, she supposed. Five years had changed nothing. He might still want her, but he was determined not to have her.

So what, if anything, could she do about filling the chasm between them? Bridget didn’t know. But she was sure of one thing. She was older, wiser and much, much stronger than the woman he’d pushed out of his life five years ago. This time he was going to find that pushing her away wouldn’t be easy.

Chapter Four

Johnny had hiked halfway up the mountain behind the Chino house before he realized where he was or what he was doing and the only reason he’d noticed was because one of his dogs, a Redbone named Rowdy, had nearly tripped him.

Pausing on the well-trodden trail, he looked over his shoulder to the eastern ridge of mountains, then down below where the house sat nestled in the small clearing.

The sun was still low in the clear sky, while wood smoke drifted from the chimney and spiraled lazily downward in the heavy, dew-drenched air. Clouds of vapors created by his rapid breaths swirled about his head and reminded him how far the temperature had dropped this morning.

When he’d slammed out of the house, he’d not taken the time to grab a jacket. But he hardly needed one, he thought with self-disgust. Even before he’d made the rapid climb, his whole body had been heated and burning from Bridget’s kiss.

Damn it! Why did he have to be such a fool? So weak and willing?

He’d thought the past years would have dimmed his passion for the woman. He’d believed that fire she’d built in his gut so long ago had turned to nothing more than a candle flame, just a warm, flickering memory.

God, how wrong he’d been.

Touching her again had set off an explosion in him and now he could only imagine what she was thinking.

That he still loved her? Wanted her?

Hell, Johnny, she already knew that much. You didn’t have to grab her and kiss her just to point all that out to her again.

With a helpless groan, he scrubbed his face with both hands while wishing there was some way he could wipe Bridget and the whole hopeless situation completely out of his mind. But there was no magic potion to take away his misery. Like a wolf pining for his one and only mate, he was caught as surely as an animal snared in a steel trap.

Wearily, he eased his lanky frame onto a nearby boulder and, resting his forearms across his parted knees, he bent his head and closed his eyes.

Maybe by the time he got to be as old as his grandfather, if he was to be that blessed, he would be over this fascination with Bridget. Maybe by then his body would be too old to burn with longing, his heart too hard to ache.

God only knew that he’d certainly never planned to get involved with her. Even though he’d been a childhood friend of Brady Donovan, he’d never considered him or his family a part of his own social circle. He’d never looked at Bridget with a plan to seduce her. Hell, he’d never even thought to get near enough to have a conversation with her, much less make love to her.

She was the stuff that poor Apaches could only dream about. And Johnny had never been much of a dreamer. He was a realist. Even as a young boy, he’d known what he could or couldn’t expect out of life. And Bridget had come under the heading of couldn’t.

But shortly after he’d come home from his last stint in the army, he’d unexpectedly run into her at an isolated cabin on the lake where he and Brady had often gone to camp and fish. She’d been alone, trying to recuperate from the stress of studying for final exams at medical school and he’d taken one look at her lovely face and fallen like an idiot walking too close to a dangerous ledge.

Before Johnny could stop it, his mind wandered back to a bright spring day. The leaves on the aspens had been pale green and hardly bigger than a squirrel’s ear, while the snowmelt had left the streams flowing and the lake rising. He’d been home from Iraq less than a week and his soul had been craving the peace and quiet he could only find in the wilderness of the Sacramento Mountains near his home. He’d gone to the old cabin with the intentions of enjoying several days of solitude. Never in his wildest imaginings had he expected to find Bridget sitting on the rickety front porch, sipping coffee from an old, chipped granite cup.

In spite of his friendship with Brady, he’d never formally met Bridget or, for that matter, any of his sisters. Mainly because Johnny had always avoided attending anything and everything that involved his friend’s family. As long as the two of them were away from the sprawling Diamond D it was easier to forget that the Donovans had money and class and the Chinos lacked it. Still, there’d been a handful of occasions when he’d seen Bridget from a distance and that day at the old cabin, he’d instantly recognized her bright copper hair and pale face.

She’d greeted him like an old friend, calling him by his first name and inviting him to share her coffee as though their chance meeting was nothing out of the ordinary. Johnny’s first instinct was to get out of there as fast as his legs could carry him. He’d even gone so far as to apologize for intruding and turned on his heel to leave. But with a hand on his arm she’d stopped him and urged him back to the little porch.

Thirty minutes later he’d been enthralled by her warm smile and gentle voice, the sparkle in her green eyes. And by the time the sun had settled behind the mountain and shadows had darkened the woods, she’d persuaded him to stay and share the cabin with her.

Johnny had never meant to make love to her, but she’d seemed to want him as much as he’d wanted her, making it impossible for him to refuse all that she’d offered. After three days they’d left the cabin and gone back to their respective homes, but by then their taste for each other had been whetted and not long afterward, Bridget had driven to the reservation to see him.

What followed was a white-hot affair that had changed Johnny’s life. Loving Bridget had pushed his hopes and dreams beyond a mundane life on the reservation. Her love and compassion had helped him deal with the haunting memories of serving in the military and seeing, in a far too personal way, the brutality of war. Fighting battles for freedom were oftentimes necessary, but those battles also tore at a man’s soul. After his stints in Iraq, Johnny had needed healing in the worst kind of way, and without Bridget he wasn’t sure he would’ve ever been able to come to terms with the demons that, at times, were still hard for him to face.

But five years ago he’d been a weary soldier just back from a war zone, and meeting Bridget had been almost like an escape to a gentler world. He’d started believing in himself and the idea that the two of them could actually make a life together. He’d been on the verge of proposing and giving Bridget the go-ahead to tell her family about their love, when the ground had suddenly opened up and hell had spewed out in the form of a so-called friend.

Johnny had never considered George Barefoot as anything more than an acquaintance, even though he lived on the reservation and had gone to high school with Johnny’s mother, Scarlett, and professed to be one of her closest friends. He was considered by most to be lazy and always looking for an easy angle to make money. Johnny usually did his best to avoid the man, but one day in Mescalero, he’d inadvertently passed the man on the sidewalk and before he could protest, George had pulled him into a nearby bar.

Over a beer, George had begun to tell Johnny that there was something about his rich girlfriend’s family that he ought to know. Johnny hadn’t been in any mood to hear tales about the Donovans. Most of them were far-fetched and based on unfounded gossip anyway, but when George had suddenly brought up Scarlett’s name, he’d forced himself to listen to the man.

Thirty minutes later, Johnny had left the bar feeling sick and the nausea hadn’t been a result of the cheap beer. Not wanting to believe George’s outrageous tale, he’d gone straight home and confronted his grandparents. That’s when he’d been forced to accept it as the truth. Reluctantly, his grandparents had revealed to him that his mother had been working for the Donovans, mucking stalls and doing other chores around the barns, when she’d gotten pregnant with Johnny. As the pregnancy had advanced, she’d offered the child to Doyle and Fiona. She’d wanted the Donovans to adopt Johnny and raise them as their son! His grandparents had been humiliated by her behavior and ordered Scarlett to put such a thought out of her head. But their opposition to her plans had set off a firestorm of retaliation in their daughter and she’d chosen to take her misery out on the Donovans, a family who seemingly had everything that she didn’t. She’d quit her job, then for further revenge she’d snuck back onto the ranch a short time later and attempted to burn down one of the brood mare barns. Thankfully, Doyle had caught her in the act and managed to prevent much damage from happening to their property, but to Johnny the Chino name had already been damaged beyond repair, especially with the Donovans. Moreover, the whole matter had pointed out the obvious. In spite of Charlie and Naomi’s protest, his mother had been of age and legally held the right to hand her son over to the Donovans’ care. She’d given the Donovans the opportunity to adopt him. But for some reason they’d not accepted the needy little Apache baby. Who could say they would accept him as a part of the family now?

Trying to control the violence he felt welling up in him, Johnny was torn between his realization that he wasn’t healed enough to trust himself and his anger with his mother and the pain she was still causing him. Forcing himself to face facts, Johnny had put an abrupt end to his relationship with Bridget. Of course, she’d not understood his sudden change of heart and he’d made a mess of giving her a logical reason. Clearly, she and her siblings hadn’t known anything about the incident that had happened with his mother and their parents so many years ago and Johnny was too humiliated and dejected to repeat the story. In fact, Johnny had made a point to search out George and threaten him with bodily harm if he ever repeated the story to anyone again. As for Bridget, he’d simply tried to explain that the two of them were from different worlds and to try to meld them would end up being painful for both of them.

Bridget had refused to accept Johnny’s excuse. She’d argued that he’d known all along that there were differences between them. So what had really changed with him? He’d not been able to give her the answer. He couldn’t explain that her parents had already turned him away from their home, or about the anger that still welled up inside him. Telling her would’ve only caused more hurt and, in the end, accomplished nothing. So he’d forced himself to push her out of his life, even while she was swearing that she would always love him.

Now, after five long years without her, nothing had ever really ended for Johnny. He’d simply gone on loving and wanting Bridget and doing his best to convince himself that he’d done the right thing. For both of them.

The nudge of a cold wet nose against his hand forced his thoughts to return to the present and he opened his eyes to see Daisy, the black collie, pushing herself between his knees.

“I’m not going to the top this morning, girl,” he told the dog as he gently stroked her shiny head. “I have to go back to the house. Go fetch Rowdy.”

The dog seemed to understand his order and she raced on up the mountainside in search of the Redbone. By the time Johnny got to his feet, he heard Daisy bark. The sound told him that she’d found her buddy and the two dogs would be back at his side in a matter of moments to join him on the trek back to the house.

He and the dogs were halfway home when the cell phone in his pocket rang. Frowning at the disturbance, he fished out the instrument and glanced at the illuminated number.

Seeing it was from the Brown Bear Cantina in Mescalero, he flipped the phone open and jammed it to his ear.

“Yeah, I’m here,” he answered bluntly.

A woman’s familiar voice came back at him. “Johnny, it’s me, Rosalinda. A couple of guys are here in the cantina right now looking to hire a hunting guide. I told them about you, but I didn’t give them your number. What with your grandmother sick and all, I thought I should call you myself first.”

“Thanks, Rosalinda. You’d better put them on to someone else. I can’t leave my grandparents right now. Not for any length of time.”

“Gotcha on that. She doing any better?”

“Holding her own.”

“Let me know if I can do anything to help,” she said, then after a quick goodbye cut their connection.

Johnny thoughtfully slipped the phone back into his jeans’ pocket and headed on down the path. Any other time he would have been more than glad for the work. Not that he especially liked being a guide for men who traveled out of the cities to hunt or fish in a rough wilderness that, more often than not, came as a rude awakening to them. He’d never been much of a people person. And he especially didn’t care for dealing with men, and sometimes women, who were so obviously out of their element. But other than the small fixed income his grandfather received for his retirement from the forestry service, his grandparents had no nest egg for their golden years. Being a fishing and hunting outfitter was a way for Johnny to make a fairly decent living and still be around to see after his grandparents and help with their living expenses.

You don’t have to cater to the whining demands of those people, Johnny. Ethan would jump at the chance to hire you to the force. You’d make a damned good deputy. Hell, all you’d have to do is give someone who was thinking about committing a crime one of those stares of yours and it would scare them into going straight.

Johnny’s lips twisted to a cynical slant. He didn’t know what made his friend, Brady, believe he’d make a good deputy. Sure, he’d served as a soldier in the army and completed two grueling stints in Iraq. And as a tracker, he’d worked with law enforcement agencies spanning several Western states. But that didn’t give him the right stuff to deal with thieves and drunks, domestic violence, vehicle crashes and all the other tragic situations that people got themselves into. A man needed patience for that kind of work and an innate understanding of human nature. He had neither. He’d learned that the hard way when he’d made a tragic mistake in the California desert. A child had died because of Johnny. Because he’d not been able to foresee or understand what had been guiding his little footsteps. Until it had been too late.

No, he thought grimly. Brady and Sheriff Hamilton might think he had the makings of a law officer, but they were wrong. Dead wrong.

Blowing out a heavy breath, he did his best to shake his mind of the past and quickly descend the last of the trail.

* * *

Bridget was sitting in the Chino living room, talking on her cell phone to her receptionist when the front door opened and Johnny entered the house.

Her heart lurched, then sped into a heavy thud as he gave her a cursory glance before walking on past her and out of the room.

“That’s fine, Janna. I’ll make my rounds at the hospital after I see my last patient at the clinic. Six-thirty, seven. We’ll see how it goes. Yes—probably in an hour. Thanks—bye.”

Rising from the couch, she clicked the phone shut and after dropping it into the pocket of her gray slacks, headed to Naomi’s room.

As soon as she rounded the open doorway, she spotted Johnny standing next to the head of his grandmother’s bed. The gentle expression on his features was a vast contrast to the hard glare he’d given Bridget after that kiss they’d shared earlier in the kitchen. But that hardly surprised her. She’d always gotten the impression that Johnny hated himself for wanting her, loving her.

Trying to ignore the wincing pain in her chest, she moved forward until she was standing on the opposite side of the bed from him, which was thankfully on the side where she’d erected the IV.

“Good news, Naomi,” she told her patient, as she shut off the flow of liquid medications. “It looks like I can unhook your IV now.”

“That’s all of it?” Naomi asked weakly.

Bridget carefully lifted the woman’s hand to clamp off the shunt. “We’re finished with this for today. But you’re going to need another one tomorrow. I’m going to leave all of this stuff in your hand so I won’t have to stick you again,” she explained. “But it’s all taped down securely so nothing should move or hurt. If it does, tell Johnny, okay?”

Nodding faintly, Naomi turned her milky gaze on her grandson. His only response was to touch a hand to his grandmother’s hair.

With tears stinging the back of her eyes, Bridget hurriedly gathered up her medical instruments and organized the prescriptions she was leaving for the woman to take later tonight.

“When are you coming back?” Naomi asked as Bridget hastily scratched instructions on a small piece of notepaper.

“Tomorrow. Unless you need me before then.” Turning back to the bed, she folded her hand around Naomi’s shoulder and gently squeezed. “I’m leaving my number on the nightstand. If you need me for anything—day or night—have Johnny call me. Okay?”

To Bridget’s delight, the old woman attempted to smile.

“Yes. I will. Thank you.”

Ignoring the usual doctor/patient protocol she normally practiced, Bridget leaned down and kissed Naomi’s cheek.

“You’re going to get better soon,” Bridget promised her.

After telling the woman goodbye, she gathered up her medical bag, then motioned for Johnny to follow her out of the room.

Once they were in the hallway, she purposely kept her words and her voice professional. “You’ll find her medications and the schedule for taking them on the nightstand. Keep offering her fluids throughout the day. If she needs to get up for any reason, like a trip to the bathroom, you or Charlie need to be by her side to assist her. She’s so weak she might fall and hurt herself. If you see any change for the worse don’t hesitate to call me. I’ve left my cell number with the medicine schedule.”

Except for his gaze traveling over her face, his expression was unmoving and she could only guess as to what he was thinking, feeling. To say he was a man who kept his emotions hidden was an understatement, but Bridget knew better than to pry or prod. She had always understood it was hard for him to share that private part of himself with anyone, even her.

He said, “I’m sorry this is causing problems with your schedule.”

His gaze followed her hand as it smoothed back her hair. “Don’t worry about it. I’m used to having my days and nights interrupted. It’s just a part of the job. Now I’d better be going. I have to be back at the clinic in less than an hour.”

Not waiting for a reply, she ducked her head and started to step around him, but his unexpected words stopped her.

“I—was wrong to say those things to you in the kitchen,” he said in a low, strained voice.

“Yes. You were,” she agreed.

He closed his eyes and it was all Bridget could do to keep from dropping her bag to the floor and flinging her arms around him. To be close to him, to love him was all that she’d ever wanted, needed.

“These past two days have been very hard for me,” he admitted.

“I understand. You love your grandmother very much. You don’t want to lose her.”

His eyes opened to stare straight into hers. The contact jolted her, filled her chest with an ache so all-consuming it very nearly took her breath.

“I’m talking about you,” he said flatly. “You being here again. Touching you again.”