Authors: Debra Cowan
He didn't understand the ferocity of the emotion. What difference did it make what had happened to her? Losing so much blood had tangled up his reason. He was here to find the McDougal gang, not muse over the arousal triggered by his nurse. Something Jericho wouldn't act on because of her link to the outlaws.
Even though the image of her in bed with him came too easily, he needed to stay away from her. But for now all he could do was lie in her bed and hope his leg didn't rot off. He levered himself to a sitting position and leaned against the headboard.
Through the door he caught the sounds of her and Andrew moving around, the low murmur of their voices. His window was open and he heard the pair step onto the porch.
“Have a good day, Andrew.”
The boy grunted, then darted past. After a few seconds, the front door shut and Catherine's light footsteps sounded on the wooden floor.
After seeing Andrew with that gun last night, Jericho was certain he'd spotted the boy at the ambush that had killed his friend and fellow Ranger, Hays Gentry. Andrew had been right up front with Angus McDougal. Either Catherine was a mighty good liar or she really didn't suspect her brother of being involved with the gang.
She walked in, interrupting his thoughts. She was a sight today. His gaze hungrily took in the silky fall of black hair over her shoulder. Her pale blue dress with its white apron made the blue of her eyes startlingly bright. She smelled clean, with a hint of verbena; he was so sick of his own smell.
“Good morning.” Her voice was subdued and she didn't meet his eyes. “How did you sleep?”
Like hell. “Fine.”
Moving to the right side of the bed, she aimed a smile in his direction but still didn't look at him. Beneath her cool competence, she was embarrassed, he realized. And his damn body responded to her even now.
“I trust you changed your bandage?”
“Yes.” He wanted to set her mind at ease, but keeping his distance was probably best.
She frowned at the sight of the bloodied sheet. She drew it away from his hips and made a strangled sound in her throat. “Lieutenant!”
His leg muscle went into spasm and he winced, cursing.
“How long has this been bleeding?”
“Not sure.”
Her gaze cut sharply to him as she carefully peeled the blood-soaked sheet from his drawers.
She looked so alarmed that he felt a jolt of concern himself. “It probably just needs a new bandage. I'm not too good at that kind of stuff.”
“It's been bleeding all night, hasn't it?” She didn't wait for an answer, just breezed out of the room and returned in a few minutes with a bowl of water, a rag and a tin of soap.
“I knew these stitches were torn. I should've tended to you last night,” she muttered under her breath.
Jericho didn't like to see her blaming herself. They both knew why she hadn't gotten close enough to him to see the damage. “It's not your fault. If it weren't for you, I wouldn't have made it this far.”
“You're not going to die now, either.” Determination firmed her lips. “I was afraid of this. I had Andrew go to the fort early this morning, but Dr. Butler was off tending a man who was crushed by a horse on his ranch. I'll have to restitch you, but it should be bearable, since I have laudanum for the pain.”
“No laudanum.” Jericho didn't fancy being knocked out when he had so many suspicions about her and her brother.
“I don't have anything else. I'm so sorry.”
“You do what you have to and I'll be grateful. Got any whiskey?” he asked hopefully.
“No, but I can get some in town.”
“I've got some in my saddlebag.”
By pressing a warm cloth to his leg she eventually loosened his stiff, bloodied drawers. She stared uncertainly down at his leg, her neck growing pink.
“What?” Jericho's gaze shifted there, too, as he tried to figure out why she was blushing. His manhood was behaving, so he wasn't sure why Catherine seemed so embarrassed all of a sudden.
“I'll get that whiskey.” She wiped her hands down the front
of her clean white apron. “Do you think you can get out of your drawers by yourself?”
So that was it. She didn't want to undress him. Why did he find that amusing? “Yeah.”
His blood started humming and he could feel himself grow hard. Thanks to the pain that would come when she started to restitch his wound, that wouldn't last long. Still, he didn't want to scare the lady off again.
She walked to the corner and bent to rummage through his saddlebags, looking for the whiskey. Using his left hand, he pushed his drawers to his knees, then managed to tug them off with his foot. He was naked by the time she returned to the bed.
She passed the bottle to him without meeting his eyes.
“If you want to wait for the doctor, you can,” he offered.
Distress drew her features tight. “No, I don't think we should wait. I'll do this as quickly as I can.”
He nodded, uncorking the whiskey and swallowing a hefty amount. Maybe if he got drunk he wouldn't
rise
to the occasion the way he seemed to every time she got within a foot of him.
She crossed herself, then pulled a chair up to the bed. Gingerly she folded the sheet away from his injury, careful to keep his manhood and vital parts covered.
The first cool touch of her scissors between his skin and the bandage caused him to twitch.
Her gaze flew to his and she grimaced. “Sorry.”
“It's okay. I'm okay. Just do it.” He took another gulp of whiskey.
She quickly cut the bandage; it took her a few minutes to pry it away from his skin. Her touch was firm and capable as her fingers moved over his flesh.
His arousal grew, mounding the sheet. And there wasn't a damn thing he could do about it.
A flush rose on her neck, up her cheeks, and still she worked. That same flush heated his body. His jaw working, he closed his eyes until she removed the bandage.
He noticed her hands were shaking, and he set the whiskey bottle inside the vee of his thighs so she couldn't go poking that needle into any vital areas if she slipped.
She cleaned the wound carefully, frowning as she leaned over him.
“What do you think?”
She looked up, her gaze sober and earnest. “I'll do the best I can, Lieutenant.”
He wanted to relax her a tad. It wouldn't help either of them if she stabbed too deep with that needle. Or too far to the north. “Maybe now would be a good time for you to call me Jericho, seeing as how we're getting pretty familiar here.”
“All right.” Her hands trembled.
“You're steady, aren't you?” he asked. “I won't have to worry about you sewing that sheet to my leg?”
“IâI'm fine.”
He was nearing the end of the whiskey and still feeling more than he liked, pain and otherwise.
She picked up a bottle marked Carbolic Acid and poured a small amount of the liquid on the needle. “Ready?”
“Ready.” He gritted his teeth, hoping he would pass out once she got started.
It didn't reassure him that she flinched before she even began.
He looked away, guzzled down another burning swallow of liquor. He felt a sharp prick, then a red-hot sting slicing through his flesh. “Damn!” he roared.
She bit her lip as she pressed his flesh together to take her first stitch.
Sweat trickled down his temple and his vision hazed. With
a shaking hand, he lifted the bottle and downed the rest of the liquor. Pain throbbed through his body, razor sharp.
“Try to breathe. It will help.” Catherine didn't look up from her task. Even though her voice shook, she was reassuring.
She took another stitch and another. The hurt layered upon itself until Jericho grabbed the edge of the bed with his good hand. His knuckles burned. His arm quivered.
Her skirts brushed his hand, her warmth reaching out to him. He tried to focus on the fresh clean scent of her, and wished again he could pass out.
“Last night, I noticed you walked without your hip dipping. That's a good sign there's no nerve damage.”
He grunted.
“Where are you from, Jericho?”
Her voice seemed thick and heavy, as if coming through a wall. “Southeast Texas. Outside of Houston.”
“How far is it from here?”
“Far.” A lifetime away.
“How long have you been a Ranger?”
How the hell was he supposed to remember? “Since I was nineteen. Thirteen years now.”
“And before that?”
“I apprenticed with a gunsmith in Uvalde. Took me two years to get a commission.”
“What made you want to be a Ranger?”
He appreciated that she was trying to distract him, and he struggled to force his mind on to something other than the pain. “My pa was one.”
“Is he tracking the McDougals, too?”
Jericho watched her through slitted eyes. “He's dead.”
“I'm sorry.”
She kept stitching with a single-mindedness he envied. “He died when I was twelve. My ma raised me and my sisters.”
“You have sisters?” She didn't glance up. “How many?”
“Four.”
“Bless the saints!” She kept stitching. When would she finish? “Older or younger than you?”
“All younger.” Agony made his voice crack. “How's it coming down there?”
“Just a few more stitches. Luckily, you didn't tear the wound all the way down.”
He didn't feel so lucky right now, but if he lived through this, he probably would.
“What are your sisters' names?”
“Deborah, Jordan, Michal and Marah.”
“All Bible names?”
“Yes, like mine. My pa was Noah, and he wanted us to all have a name from the Bible like he did.”
“I know Jericho is a city and Jordan is a river, but Michal was a person, wasn't she? King David's daughter?”
“Yeah.” He squeezed his eyes shut, using his flagging energy to focus on Catherine's voice.
“What about Marah? I'm not familiar with that name.”
“My ma says it's the first camp of the Israelites after they crossed the Red Sea.”
“And your other sister?”
“Deborah was named after a judge in the Old Testament. She's the oldest of my sisters.”
“Do they all live outside of Houston?”
“Yes.” He struggled to focus past the pain. “They're all still in school except for Deborah. She's a teacher.”
Catherine tied a knot in the thread and snipped it with her scissors. “Do you miss them?”
Jericho's leg throbbed like blue blazes. He did miss his ma and Deborah. The other girls had been small when he'd left, and half afraid of him. “Yeah.”
If his ma were here she would make him a pecan pie and spoil him lazy.
“I grew up wanting a sister or a brother,” Catherine said.
“You've got Andrew.”
“I heard about him after he was born, but didn't meet him until about a month ago. My mother talked about him in her letters.”
The whiskey finally took hold, just enough to blunt the fierce discomfort in Jericho's leg. “Why weren't you with your family?”
“My parents came to America from Ireland. They were to meet my uncle in Texas, but not knowing what was in store down here, they left me with the Sisters of Mercy in New York City.”
“How long?”
“Fourteen years.”
Jericho frowned, resting his head against the wooden headboard as he struggled to draw in deep breaths. “That's a long time.”
“My mother lost her parents in the potato famine in Ireland in the late forties, and she nearly starved to death when they did. She didn't want to bring me to Texas until she knew if she and my father could survive here.”
Jericho certainly understood a mother's concern over raising her children. His own mother had grown old years before her time because of it. “And did they survive?”
“Until recently. They're both gone now.”
“So there's only you and Andrew?”
“Yes.”
“Did you leave someone special behind in New York?”
“Special?”
“A beau.”
Horror chased across her delicate features. “No.”
Did that mean she didn't have a beau? Or just not one who was back East?
“There, I think I'm finished.”
He wanted to know more. Told himself he needed to learn as much as he could because of her possible connection to the McDougal gang. But in truth he was curious about
her.
He gingerly poked at his leg. “What do you think?”
“I did the best I could.”
“I'm grateful for that.” He touched her hand, which rested near his knee. “I meant do you think I'll keep my leg?”
“Yes.” She smiled into his eyes for the first time since coming into the room. “I didn't see any signs of infection.”
He found himself smiling back. Her hands were small, but there was nothing weak about them as she rebandaged the wound. The throbbing ache in his leg was fierce, but she had most likely saved his limb. “Thank you.”
“You're welcome. I hope I didn't scar you.”
“It's fine if you did.” He touched the scar on his cheek. “You can see it won't be the first.”
“How did you come by that?”
“Bullet creased me.”
“While you were chasing the McDougals?”
“No.” He smiled weakly. “I was in a shoot-out about five years ago with another gang, down in Round Rock.”
“I have a feeling they ended up worse off than you.”
She smiled, and he thought this much pain might be worth it if she would do that more often. “I appreciate you putting me back together.”
She deftly folded a bandage and tied it around his thigh, somehow managing not to touch anything but his leg. “I should've tended you last night. I'm sorry.”
There were other ways Jericho would like her to tend him, but he knew there was no future in that. He was glad to see the sheet now lay flat in his lap.