“Too hot?”
“No, no. Perfect.”
“Maybe the heat will ease some of your stiffness. Let me get your hair washed and I'll leave you to soak a little while.”
“Oh, you do not needâ”
“Alejandro.”
It was the first time she had said his name, and in her softly husky voice, it was beautiful. He raised his eyes. She looked down at him, a patient expression on her mouth. “You can't wash your hair. You can't lift your arms.”
“No,” he admitted.
“Do me a favor.” She knelt beside the tub, putting her face on the same level as his own. “I'm a nurse. I do these things all the time. Stop being humiliated every time you run into something you can't do, okay?”
A wave of gratitude overtook him. Gripping his knees with his hands, he met her gaze. “When this is done, you must promise you will let me repay you for your great kindness, Saint Molly. Okay?”
“Okay.” She grinned. “Now let me wash your hair.”
She dippered water into a cup and poured it over his head. “Close your eyes.”
He did. And finally, he took her advice, too. He gave himself up to letting her take care of him. He let the tension and grief and worry drain from his neck as her fingers worked over his scalp. As if the water washed away his negative emotions along with the grime of two days from his skin, he felt peace invade him. Her fingers were strong, working in the shampoo, then conditioner that smelled of musk. She rinsed it out, pushing his long hair back from his face, and he heard a soft sound come from her. He opened his eyes.
She ducked her head, hiding her expression, and reached for the soap. “I'm going to do your back, then leave you to the rest.”
Was that breathlessness for him? He turned to look at her, suddenly feeling the intimacy of the moment, of himself wet and nearly naked, with a woman he had never seen forty-eight hours ago. Steam came off his limbs and the water, making her skin damp and flushed. The T-shirt clung to her breasts and waist, outlining a very female figure that Alejandro suddenly wanted to touch. He was suddenly aware of his body, not the pain in it, but the shape of his shoulders and chest, of his legs sticking out of the water, of his back. He wondered if she found him pleasing, and looked for that knowledge on her face.
But she did not allow it. She ducked behind him, rubbing his back in circles with the soapy cloth, then efficiently rinsing it off. Then, abruptly, she stood. “Finish up,” she said, pushing a tendril of hair off her face with a wet hand. “I'll be back in a few minutes.”
Perplexed, he nodded, and stared after her as she bolted.
Then he leaned back in the water, gently so as not to jar the faraway state of his assorted aches, and let the heat seep into him, all the way to his bones.
Â
In the hallway, Molly halted and fell against the wall. Air cooled her sweaty, humid skin, but her heart still raced and her hands were definitely trembling. She took a breath, blew it out slowly, feeling a tingle in her ears, all the way around the edge, making them hot. She lifted her hands to them, and found her hands were still wet. She hadn't even bothered to dry them.
In her years as a nurse, she had bathed hundredsâprobably thousandsâof patients. Old and young, male and female. There was a trick to keeping the mind distant, apart, not only for the nurse, but to preserve the privacy and dignity of the patient.
And she'd been in control with Alejandro until he raised his head, and all at once she'd seen the entirety of his revealed, wet skin, with rivulets of water pooling in the hollow of his collarbone, coursing along the geography of his arm muscles. She'd seen his perfectly shaped ear and the blade of his nose and the high forehead and his wet hair, slicked away from his face by her own hands. In one turn of a second she was not a nurse bathing a patient, but a woman bewitched by an utterly stunning man.
She moved her hands from her ears to her face. Her breasts felt thick and heavy, and her hips were soft. All too clearly, she could see herself returning to that room and putting her mouth to the round place where his arm and shoulder met. She could see her hand spreading open on that chest, scattered with dark hair.
Stop. For the second time in one day, she told herself to just quit it. Get ahold of herself.
This time, she tried a more realistic approach. Taking her hands away from her face, she marched to her bedroom and the bureau, yanking open a drawer with more force than necessary, and delivered a lecture to herself as she tossed through the clothes.
One: she was overstimulated. This interlude had been more exciting than anything that had happened to her in years. A mysterious stranger with a heartbreaking quest had landed in her lap and required care. Needed her.
Two: he was absolutely, drop-dead gorgeous. Any woman who didn't respond to that much virile heat in one package was comatose or dead. She was neither; in fact, she was a widow, a healthy woman in her prime.
Three: she had not had sex in four years. Four years. It was a long time. A really long time. A really, really long time.
She caught her wry, amused expression in the mirror over the dresser and it made her grin. The reflection smiled back. Molly noticed that her hair was springing out of its braid and the front of her shirt was wetâhad he noticed? He certainly had not seemed to. He was, in fact, singularly unmoved by his nurse. Often men in his situation would think they were attracted to a woman, simply because she'd saved his life. Alejandro appeared to have no such illusions.
She chuckled and stripped off the wet T-shirt, thinking it was probably better if he wasn't attracted to her. Less dangerous all the way around.
From the drawer she took a fresh blouse. Again she caught sight of herself in the mirror, and stopped. Ordinary was a good word. Slim shoulders, a good stomach that showed no signs yet of pooching out. Good thing, she thought, touching the expanse of belly over her jeans. Wouldn't take much pooch to overshadow her breasts. She touched them, too, and remembered, for one blinding second, what it had felt like to have her husband's hands on her. How much he'd liked coming up behind her at moments like this. She would lean back, into his broad, strong chest, and lift her hands to his neck, letting him admire the look of his hands on her breasts in the mirror.
The memory was vividâand in seconds, sharply painful. She dropped her hands, half ashamed, half yearning. With a sigh, she pulled on her shirt. Tim was gone. Gone. Someday maybe she'd get that through her head.
Taking a fresh shirt and sweats, she returned to the bathroom and knocked. “Are you finished?”
No answer.
“Alejandro?” Still nothing. Worried, she knocked once more for the sake of warning and opened the door.
Inside, she stopped and smiled. He had fallen asleep. His hands draped over the edges of the tub and his head was cradled on the little pillow she'd glued to the back, and his knees were akimbo. A glaze of moisture covered the beautiful face, and she felt a prick of something besides desire. He pushed so hard, this man, pushed out of pride and honor. The least she could do was serve that honor as well as she could. Get him well and send him on his way.
She bent over him. Reached out to touch his face. “Come on,
viejo,”
she said gently. “Let's get you back to bed.”
Chapter 5
J
osh stopped by the pharmacy at Judson's to pick up some medicine for the kids. “Hey, George,” he said to the thin, graying man behind the counter. “Lynette told me you had some cough syrup for my rug-rats. Is it ready?”
“Sure is.” He looked over his reading glasses to measure something. “Damn near everybody's down with this crud, you notice?”
“It's been pretty hairy, all right.” Josh leaned on the counter and glanced toward the toy section, eyeing a baby doll with red skirts. Both kids had been miserable for daysâmaybe he could pick up a toy for each of them. Raise their spirits.
He counted the money from his front pocket. A five, three ones and a twenty. Maybe. “How much is that medicine gonna run?” he asked.
“Well, let's see. Your co-payment is ten, isn't it?” He punched something into the computer. “Yep. Just ten.”
Josh paid for the cough syrup. “I guess I should count my blessings. At least my job has benefits.”
“That's right.” George opened the register. “How's your sister doing, by the way? Saw her last night, and she had to refill her prescription for antibiotics. Nasty sore throat.”
“Last night?” Josh frowned. Last night, she'd bought him a steak and chattered his ear off. If she'd been sick, she sure hadn't looked it. “I don't know. I'll have to give her a call.”
The man gave Josh his change, a crisp ten-dollar bill, and he tucked it in his pocket, frowning as he wandered over to check the price on the doll. Molly sick? He didn't think so. Why had she lied?
He picked up the doll and looked for the price. Thirty-two dollars. He put it back, and wandered down another aisle of pink stuff. In the end, he picked out a doctor kit for Rochelle and a sticker book for Dannyâboth together didn't burn the whole ten-dollar bill he used to pay, and it made him feel better.
Until, on his way out, he saw a Mexican nationalâyou could always tell; they were so much smaller, so much darker than the Hispanic population hereâbuying that thirty-two-dollar doll.
He tried. On the way to the parking lot, he combated the rising burn in his gut by telling himself the guy probably just got paid and was sending a special treat back home. Maybe it was his daughter's birthday.
But it didn't help. The fact remained: the other guy's kid got the doll. Rochelle got a lousy doctor kit. It wasn't fair.
As he started the truck, he wondered again what was going on with his sister. She was acting weird. Maybe he'd stop by the hospital on the way home and see what he could find out.
Â
Late in the day, Alejandro stirred again. And this time, he did not feel as if he were swimming through a murky density of pain and confusion. He was aware immediately of the cautionary band of pain around his chest, but it was subdued.
His head was clear. He blinked, testing it, and realized that the latest nap had restored something he'd barely noticed was missingâhis sense of himself and his place in the world. He felt as if he'd really slept, instead of simply sliding into unconsciousness.
Carefully, he stood up and found new strength in his limbs, found he could limp gently on his gun-shot leg without too much agony, and his ribs did not jolt unless he moved too quickly.
Progress.
The long glass door in the kitchen stood open, the drapes pulled aside to reveal the small plots of land carefully planted with flowers and what he thought might be herbs. Twilight leaked into the edges of the sky.
And sitting on the steps of the wide porch was his Saint Molly. He leaned against the wall for a moment, startled by his reaction to the simple act she indulged.
She was brushing her hair.
It was beautiful. Very long, draping over her shoulders and falling down her back. She brushed it idly, slowly, as if it pleased her to feel the bristles on her scalp, then she rolled her head and the hair slid and swished over her arms and back, and he could tell she was enjoying the feel of it on her body.
A pulse beat softly just below his ribs, and he found himself remembering the shape of her breasts when she'd tied up her hair this morning. A sudden acute and vivid imagining appeared in his head, a detailed vision of that gilt and sunlight and earthen hair draped over her naked breasts.
He discovered he was not beyond arousal any longer. He was likely beyond
acting
on it, but his body seemed to have no trouble expressing its approval. Taking a breath, he looked away and counted silently, until the edge of it eased.
Then he limped through the kitchen to the door.
“Buenas tardes,
” he said quietly. “Is it safe for me to join you outside,
señora?”
She turned, and her hair shifted, some of it spilling down her front, bringing back that erotic vision.
“Si
,”
she replied, smiling gently.
“Por favor.”
He eyed the steps dubiously, and she leaped up, extended her hand. Alejandro took it. In his big, dark one, hers was slim and held the illusion of fragility. Illusion only, for he'd experienced that strength, experienced it now as she braced him, helped him ease down one step so he could sit with her.
She settled one step below him. He looked out at the gloaming, feeling something quiet in him. And Molly did not speak, either, seemingly content with the soft chatter of birds in a tree and the distant whisper of an awakening cricket.
Suddenly, the cicadas clicked on, a thousand score of them, roaring to life on the same note, all at the same instant, their music a sonnet in the graying world. Alejandro looked at the trees, knowing the insects would be invisible, but looking anyway, as he always did. They whirred in their rhythmic way for a few minutes, then as suddenly as they'd begun, cut off with the finality of a conductor's baton. He grinned and spread his hands, palm down. “Finished!”
“Don't you always wonder how they know to start and stop like that? So many of them, all at once.”
Once he had known, but he couldn't remember now. “I do.”
Just beyond his knee, the extravagance of her hair spilled down her back, and he inched his fingers along his thigh, aching to brush his fingertips over it. “You look very young with your hair down.”
Self-consciously, she gathered a handful of it. “Think so? I keep thinking lately it's time to cut it. My mother always said a woman should cut her hair when she was thirty.”
“Ah, no. You should not cut such hair.” He reached out, paused. “May I touch it?”
“Oh. Sure.” She leaned a little closer and he took a thick hank into his grip, then let it spill through his fingers, admiring the glitter of it against his dark fingers. It was almost weightless, and very soft, and he liked it very much.
When it nearly fell away, he caught it again, with the other hand, and spread a handful over his open palm. “It makes me think of honeycomb, all these different colors in it.” He raised his eyes. “I like it.”
A guarded expression warned him away. “Thank you,” she said, almost stiffly.
Alejandro, vaguely disappointed, let her hair fall, and shifted his gaze to the fields stretching beyond the gardens. Empty fields, overgrown with gray-green sage and walking stick cactus with hard knots of dark red fruit at the tips. “Is this your land?”
“Some of it.” She pointed. “From the bluff over there, to the cottonwood. Then some more in front of the house.”
He narrowed his eyes, nodding. “How much land?”
“Close to a hundred acres.”
So much! If he owned land, he would not leave it fallow this way. “It is good land here,” he said. “You do not plant it?”
“My husband had made plans to,” she said slowly. “I wouldn't have the faintest idea where to start.”
“Ah.” He nodded. Still, “You should do something with it.”
She looked over her shoulder. “Like what?”
Alejandro inclined his head. “A henhouse, over there, for eggs. And a rooster to make more chick-ensâ” he grinned “âand to wake up the morning. Some goats, for their milk, and some sheep, for the wool.” He pursed his lips. “And then the fields...chiles and beans and maybe some pimentos, no? Enough for you, and some to take to market.”
She had a faint smile on her face. “Anything else?”
He raised an eyebrow, aware she was teasing him. “Yes. Bees.” He gestured to the bluff. “They would feed on the peach trees, and the honey would be very good.”
“I'm afraid of bees.”
“You would learn,” he replied confidently. “And with those things, you would not have to work. You would have everything here.”
This time she chuckled. “But I like working. I'm a much better nurse than I am a farmer.”
The sound of a car engine made them both turn toward the road. Dust kicked up behind a truck, still quite distant but unmistakably headed their way.
“Damn.” Molly leaped to her feet. “That's my brother. We have to get you inside. Fast.” Worry made her eyes dark gray. “He's a deputy sheriff, and he won't be happy when he finds out I've done this.”
He started to rise at the same instant she did, and their foreheads cracked together painfully. Molly made a soft noise, and reeled backward, put off balance. Ale-jandro, blinking against the sharp rap himself, reached out to keep her from falling. He snared her upper arm and yanked, and she tilted forward, a hand coming down on his shoulder. “Sorry,” she said. “Are you okay?”
She was close. But for once, she was not beneath him or beside him: She was not washing him or tending him or feeding him. She faced him, her mouth only inches from his own, her breasts at a level with his hands, and he wanted very much to kiss her, to lift his hands to that inviting weight and gauge her fit to his palms. The wish swelled through him, quick and hot.
As if his thoughts showed on his face, she... softened. It was the only word. The slope of her shoulders eased, and her hand opened wider on his shoulder, as if she'd like to slide her fingers beneath his collar. Her eyelids flickered, sweeping down to hide the direction of her gaze, which he felt on his mouth.
He saw her catch her breath, and for a long second, Alejandro thought she would sway closer and press her mouth to his. He found himself ready, lifting his head, ready to touch her if she gave leave.
Instead, her hand clenched and she gripped him, looking over her shoulder. “Now, Alejandro. I'm not kidding. He'll arrest you.”
Â
Molly heard her brother's truck on the gravel outside just as she closed her back bedroom door. Alejandro put his fingers to his lips to show her he understood, and she rushed down the hallway, smoothing her hair, trying to breathe normally.
Going out on the front porch, she crossed her arms. “Hey there,” she said jauntily as Josh climbed out. Still dressed in his uniform, he looked weary and rumpled and impossibly young. “What brings you out here?”
“Just checking on you. They said you called in sick this morning. You sick?”
Molly had almost forgotten. “I'm feeling better tonight.”
He climbed up to the porch, hat in his hands. “How about pouring me a glass of tea, then?”
As she led him into the house, for an odd, scared moment, she thought there was something in his manner that was a little off kilter. His mouth was tight as he looked aroundâcarefully, she thoughtâat the living room. But she looked again and only saw her brother. Paranoia.
She did not particularly want to lead him into the kitchenâif Alejandro so much as sneezed, Josh would hear it. She directed him to a living-room chair, but he gave her a weird look and followed her into the kitchen, tossing his hat down on the table. “Damn, I'm tired.” He flung his lean body into a chair. “You hear anything more about that little girl you were asking about?”
Molly shook her head. “You, neither, huh?”
“Sorry.” He accepted the glass of tea she offered him and took a long swallow. “Lynette wants to know if you can have dinner with us Saturday night.” He lifted an eyebrow. “If you're feeling all right by then.”
He knew something. What? She made a show of looking at her work schedule on the wall. “I'd love to, especially if she makes her green chile. I could live on her chile.”
“She knows. She bought a bushel from Wiley this morning. Said she thought she saw your car up there, but she didn't see you anywhere.”
Uh-oh. Molly decided to stick with the truth as much as possible. “I was checking to see if he might have seen that little girl.”
“For somebody who had to miss work and get some heavy-duty antibiotics, you sure were busy today.”
The pharmacist. Of course. She could just imagine how it had gone, too. “Is there a point to all this, Josh? I feel like a suspect or something.”