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She picked up her fork, then set it down. She had to eat, had to keep up her strength. But suddenly the thought of beans and biscuits lost its appeal.
He cocked his head at her. “Something the matter?”
“Not hungry.”
“Scared, you mean.”
“Don’t put words in my mouth, Mr. Lawson.”
“Better put some beans in it, then. Long day tomorrow. You don’t eat, you won’t be much good.”
She sat back and digested his words, watching his hand move methodically from the plate in his lap to his mouth and back. She could deal with this, couldn’t she? Deal with him? A man she’d known a mere twelve hours? Scramble after him on a barely visible trail into the wilderness to treat Lord only knew who?
She set her plate of food on the ground beside her and tipped sideways until her shoulder met the bedroll, then drew her knees up, wrapped her arms over her stomach and shut her eyes.
His voice came from across the fire pit. “I know it’s tough. Hard riding when you haven’t sat a horse in some years. Steep trail. The river yet to cross.”
Her heart leaped. Cross the river? Would she have to swim?
“Maybe you’re afraid you’re not going to measure up?”
“I’ll measure up, Mr. Lawson.” She licked her lips. “But…would it be all right if I measured up tomorrow?”
The last thing she heard was the clink of tinware and his low chuckle.
Chapter Four
The next morning, Cord lay in his blanket, purposely not moving any part of his body, especially his head. How much had he drunk last night—a third of his stash? Half? He’d lay off when he’d got the doc up the mountain. In the meantime, he’d kill the thing that weighed on him any way he could.
He heard noises around the camp, but his eyes wouldn’t open. “What time is it?”
“Morning,” a female voice said. “Almost.”
He cracked one eyelid. “What are you doing up so damn early?”
“I am ‘measuring up,’ Mr. Lawson.” She waved a pan of fluffy-looking mounds under his nose. “Now these,” she announced with a note of satisfaction, “are biscuits.”
He inhaled and had to agree; they sure smelled like biscuits.
“Get up, and you can have some.”
He drew in another breath and smelled bacon. And coffee. Oh, yes, Lord. Coffee. Measuring up? Hell’s bells, she was saving his life!
He watched her move back to the campfire.
She seemed stiff. He noticed she didn’t bend over, just flexed her knees to reach down. He wondered how she’d managed to poke the coals into a cookfire.
She dipped, straight-backed, and turned over the sizzling bacon strips with a fork. The coffee simmered in the bean tin from last night’s supper.
“I see you found the supplies.”
“And your revolver,” she said in a neutral tone. “And your whiskey. Quite a lot of whiskey, in fact.”
Cord’s breath hissed in. “Didn’t pour it out, did you?” That’s all he needed, a temperance advocate on a cross-country ride.
“Certainly not. Whiskey is an excellent disinfectant.”
He rolled out from under the scratchy, army-issue blanket and stood up. Mistake. He shut his eyes against the pounding in his temples and dropped to his knees. Lord God, he’d done it again.
“Here.” Her voice came from somewhere close by, and the next thing he knew she was folding his fingers around a tin mug. “Drink it,” she ordered. “And don’t vomit.”
His stomach flipped at the word. I won’t. I can’t. Not with her watching. He brought the mug to his nose and inhaled. She might be a prim and proper lady, but she sure could make coffee. He slurped in a mouthful. She measured up just fine.
“Ready for breakfast?”
“No,” he growled.
“Your boots are warming by the fire.”
“Thanks.”
“Your shirt’s airing out on that tree limb.”
“Airing out?”
“It’s filthy,” she said, her voice crisp.
“I’m filthy. Haven’t had a bath since—”
She tsk-tsked. “Inadequate hygiene. We’ll bathe tonight. Assuming we camp near a stream.”
Cord let a long minute pass while he sipped hot coffee and tested his equilibrium.
“And another thing,” she began. “I do not think—”
“Hold it,” he snapped. He lifted his free hand toward her, fingers up. “Hold it right there. You sure as hell are measuring up. Any more and I’ll have to hand over my pants and let you wear ’em.”
“Well, that won’t be necessary I’m sure, Mr. Lawson.” She sounded pleased. “But now that you mention it, since you are wearing your pants, would you mind putting on the rest of your clothes before we eat? I am not used to sharing my meals with a half-dressed gentleman.”
“I don’t much care what you’re used to, Doc. And as for the gentleman part—”
“You needn’t explain,” she said, her voice matter-of-fact. “I am aware.”
Cord stalked over to the fire and stuffed his right foot into his boot. “Ouch! Goldarnit, it’s hot!”
Her eyes widened. “Don’t you wear socks?”
“Did you find any socks when you rustled through my things?” he growled.
“No. But I sleep with mine on, so I naturally thought…”
Cord glared at her. “Well, I sleep with mine off. In fact, I never wear socks. Or drawers, so don’t yank my pants off cuz you think they need ‘airing.’”
“Which they do,” she offered. There was a hint of laughter in her voice, but he was too mad—and too hungry, he realized—to care.
“My pants,” he said with as much dignity as he could muster, “don’t get washed until they need it, and that’s not until they can stand up by themselves.”
“Well, then. If the knees will still bend, perhaps you would like to sit down and eat some breakfast.”
It wasn’t a question, more like a softly spoken order, but the grumbling of his stomach made a response irrelevant. Jupiter, could she get under his skin! He noticed that she ate standing up.
The crisp bacon broke up in his mouth like little shards of sweet-flavored cookies, and the biscuits! Fluffy white tumbleweeds that melted on his tongue. He swallowed and nearly groaned with pleasure. “Who taught you to cook?”
“Billy West. He’s my father.”
Cord stopped chewing. “I don’t know who my father is. Could have been any one of four men, all of ’em outlaws.”
“Outlaws?”
“Only family I ever knew. My mother died having me. They fed me and clothed me until I was fifteen.”
“And then?”
His face changed. “And then I turned them in. They’d killed a Chinese woman and her baby.”
Sage opened her mouth to speak, then thought better of it. What brutes men could be. Some men, anyway. Her father and Uncle John were both wonderful men, strong and smart and gentle inside, where it counted.
She glanced at the man seated on the other side of the fire. What about him? A brute? Or a gentle man?
A dark whisker shadow lay over the lower half of his face. His skin was tanned the color of her leather saddle, his chest and back, as well. And he wore no drawers.
An irrational thought flicked through her mind. Could a man’s backside get suntanned right through his jeans?
He was a brute, she decided. A man who chased other men for money. A bounty hunter who would turn in his own father for a price. Hardheaded and hard-hearted.
Then why did he want to save his prisoner’s life?
She could feel him staring at her, asking a silent question. It took all her courage to meet his gaze. His eyes were hard. Calculating. And unusual. The gray-green irises were ringed with brown, as if they had started to be one color in utero and then changed to another before birth.
There was something undisciplined about him. Primitive, like a wild animal. A wolf—that was it. A hungry wolf. One who hunted alone.
She dropped her gaze to the tin plate in her hand. That fact didn’t exactly make him unacceptable. It made him dangerous.
* * *
Three switchbacks down Frog Jump Butte it started to rain. The cold, stinging droplets dampened the trail, then turned it into mud. The horses twitched their tails and stepped daintily along the precipitous cliff edge while Sage’s heart thumped.
She’d packed into the woods before with her father and Uncle John, but if it rained, the three of them would hole up in a cave or a tree hollow and wait it out. Camping trips when she was a girl had been for fun.
Now she was “all growed up” as her father put it, and it wasn’t fun. Not with rainwater sluicing off her hat and a sopping wet riding skirt clinging to her legs. The brown denim material made a swish-slap sound with every step the horse took.
As the morning wore on, the sky grew darker. Rain dribbled in rivulets off the toes of her boots, splashed onto the ground and made the already sodden trail even more slippery. She reached one gloved hand to pat the mare’s neck. “Good girl,” she murmured. “We will soldier on.”
Sage had picked up the phrase from her father, had used it at medical college when things had seemed insurmountable—dissecting her first cadaver under the eagle eye of three professors ready to pounce on a false move; fending off the rude, hurtful jests by her male colleagues when a patient happened to be female; even forcing herself to eat when she was so tired just opening her mouth took more energy than she could muster.
She had soldiered on. Hour by hour, day by day. More than her examinations and flawless oral presentations, her medical degree had come through dogged perseverance.
A little thing like rain might be cold and wet and uncomfortable, but it wouldn’t stop her.
But the river, when they reached it, did. It rippled deep green and turquoise around a cluster of water-smoothed gray boulders and a half-sub-merged fir stump.
“Why,” she said to the man who drew rein at her side, “did we climb up that butte yesterday only to unclimb it today? Why not just go around it?”
He studied the riverbank, the waterlogged tree, then the opposite bank. “Because you can see the whole valley from up there.”
“And be seen, as well.”
He hesitated. “True.”
He dismounted and shucked off his poncho. “River won’t be this smooth for long. It’ll rise with the creek runoff.” He began to unbutton his shirt.
“What are you doing?”
“Going swimming.” He pulled off his boots, rolled them up inside his shirt and poncho and tied them behind the saddle. Raindrops rolled down his bare chest and back.
“Now? In the rain?”
He flashed her a grin. “If you’ve never gone swimming in the rain, you ought to try it. Rain makes the water seem warm, feels good against your skin. Like silk.”
He slapped the mare’s rump. “Come on, Sugar.” When the horse jolted forward, he splashed into the river alongside her.
Sage watched his half-clothed body slice through the water. Halfway across he rolled onto his back, stretched both arms wide and opened his mouth wide to the rain. “Goddamn, this feels good,” he called. “Care to join me?”
She sat frozen on her horse. “What on earth for?” she shouted.
“For pleasure, pure and simple.” She thought she heard a low laugh, but she wasn’t sure.
“It’s one good way to get across the river,” he added in a lazy voice. “Besides, my trousers are getting washed at the same time.”
Oh, God, the river. She had to cross it, too.
She couldn’t swim fully clothed. She’d have to take off her rain gear, then her shirt, her riding skirt. Her boots. She could strip down to her camisole and underdrawers, but he would be watching and…
Does it really feel like silk?
In her entire life, she had never done anything just for pleasure alone. She’d gone camping to learn about medicinal herbs and roots. She’d even kissed a boy once, but only because someone dared her to, and she never backed away from a challenge.
But just to feel…silky? It seemed indecent, somehow. Decadent.
