“I’m not gonna die,” Colin had said through gritted teeth.
She remembered she had stroked his cheek. “Everyone dies, Colin. It’s part of life.”
“Then if we’re all dying, why would you waste your time heading off to school when we could be together, starting a family, and living whatever time we’ve got?”
She’d tried reasoning with him but knew they both had quick tempers. He’d triggered hers with those three words: waste your time. “I’m going,” she’d said, snatching back the letter and waving it in his face.
He’d hesitated a moment and then said softly, “Then I guess I am, too.” He’d left, and she hadn’t seen him since.
Until now.
“Evie?” His voice was raw and husky. He licked his dry lips. “So cold,” he mumbled as he clutched the covers closer.
“It’s the fever,” she told him, feeling helpless in the face of his suffering in spite of her training. She stuffed rags around the window to block the draft and put another log on the fire. She’d need to restock the woodpile.
She felt his forehead. It was hot against the back of her hand. His temperature was rising. She went to the front door and filled a pan with fresh snow. By the time she returned to his bedside, he had thrown aside the covers and was thrashing about on the bed, mumbling gibberish.
Scooping some snow into her palm, she kneaded it into a small ball and pressed it against his lips. He licked at it hungrily. When it had all melted and the last drops dribbled down his chin, Evie soaked a cloth in the melting snow remaining in the pan and placed it across his forehead. His face relaxed, but his breathing was still shallow. She covered him again and then went into her office to prepare a poultice that she hoped would help break up the congestion in his chest. Beyond that, she was at a loss.
Some doctor you are, Evie Prescott. Treating patients had been so much easier when she was in medical school. She had trained in a hospital where she had access to the latest equipment and drugs. Here in Sagebrush, she had to rely on her own concoctions and the herbal treatments she’d picked up from the native tribes in the area. Right now, bringing down Colin’s fever and alleviating the fluid in his chest were her main priorities.
Think, she commanded herself as she studied a row of powders and herbs lining one shelf. She chose several containers, took down her mortar and pestle, and carefully measured out the ingredients for the poultice. From the bedroom she could hear Colin moan.
“I’m coming, Colin,” she called. She also needed to wrap his chest to support what she believed could be a cracked rib. And none of that did anything to address the fever.
When she hurried back to his bedside, he was delirious, his eyes closed, muttering incoherently and sometimes crying out. She opened the buttons on his long johns and applied the poultice, slapping his hands away when he tried to cover himself. “Stop that,” she muttered as she concentrated on her work. Sweat dotted her forehead, and her hands shook. She was being ridiculous. Colin was a patient, just like anyone else she might treat.
Of course, since hanging her shingle three months earlier, the fact was she’d seen only three patients—a girl with a cut foot, a woman suffering from morning sickness, and a surly boy with a broken wrist. Doc had left in September to take his wife for treatment at a tuberculosis sanitarium, and a recent letter had informed her he would not be returning until spring—if then.
Mentally, she pictured the words and diagrams in her medical texts. Cool the body to bring down fever. Of course, she had acted instinctively, wanting to relieve Colin’s discomfort by covering him and blocking the windows, trying to warm him. She opened the window as wide as it would go and shivered as snow stung her face. She pulled the covers off him and out of his reach. She let the fire burn down without adding logs.
Over time as the temperature in the room dropped several degrees, she wrapped her shawl around her shoulders and tied it in front so her hands were free. She continued wiping the sweat from Colin’s face with cloths soaked in melted snow. Then she remembered Doc had left her a small container of the so-called miracle drug—aspirin. While in medical school, Evie had learned of the discovery by a German chemist of this compound. She had seen it work on many patients. Now, it had become available even out here in New Mexico.
“Nothing like it for bringing down a fever, but use it sparingly,” Doc had advised. “Not as easy to come by way out here as it might be in the city.” She hurried to her office to retrieve the precious supply.
“Open,” she instructed Colin when she returned to his bedside. She forced the powder she’d mixed in water between his chapped lips and held his mouth closed until he swallowed. “One more spoon,” she murmured, repeating the process. He choked and coughed, and she watched to be sure he didn’t spit up the medicine. When he collapsed back onto the pillows, she set the glass and spoon aside and gently wiped his face.
From outside, she heard the church bells at the same time the clock Doc Williams had given her chimed in the office. She heard the jingle of harnesses as sleighs passed on the street, and the occasional call of one neighbor to another. Early services letting out—laughter and squeals from the children excited to head home and wait for Santa.
Christmas Eve. Her first Christmas back in Sagebrush. Her first Christmas as a doctor. And here was Colin—her first real adult male patient.
She pulled the only chair in the room closer and sat. It was going to be a long night.
Two
A carousel of colors and images filled Colin’s mind. He saw Evie, all dressed in yellow, her hair the color of sunshine, falling down her back as she ran to him. She was laughing and so beautiful, and he reached for her, but she wasn’t there. He tried to call out to her, but no words came. He felt a weight on his chest, then hands pressing something foul-smelling and sticky onto his skin. He swatted at the offending touch, and finally it stopped. He wanted to complain about the heat—the heaviness of the air—but no words came. Then he felt a blast of cool air and had an image of Evie and him on a summer day, lying on the tall, soft grass next to the river, in the shade of a cottonwood tree.
He unbuttoned her dress and traced the rise of her breasts above the lace on her undergarment, all the time watching her face. If she had shown fear or anger, he would have stopped, but what he saw in those deep-blue eyes was something he could only describe as wonder. She reached for him, her mouth an inch from his. But then someone was grabbing his jaw—hard, forcing his lips open and shoving something metal inside before withdrawing it and holding his mouth closed until he had no choice but to swallow.
Her father had found them that day. He’d called Evie a whore and quoted Scripture to her as he dragged her back to the shanty they called home. Later he’d warned Colin that if he ever caught him anywhere near his girl again, he would kill him. Neither he nor Evie had heeded the warning. Two nights later, she’d slipped away, walked the three miles to the ranch where he was working that season, and waited for him outside the bunkhouse. When he stumbled out before dawn to splash water on his face before heading to the high country to start his shift, she told him she’d come for that kiss.
He’d been more than happy to oblige.
* * *
Colin was smiling, his eyelids fluttering with whatever dream he was seeing. Evie hoped that was a good sign. She was so tired and would like nothing better than to stretch out next to him and get some sleep. But she wasn’t fooled by this seeming reprieve in his condition. She needed to stay alert.
An hour passed, and he slept while Evie gave in to the need to close her eyes—just for a minute. Then she would take care of restocking the woodpile. She dozed, dreamed, and was vaguely aware of people arriving for eleven o’clock services at the small adobe church across the street.
The next thing she knew, church bells rang out with the news that Christmas Day had just arrived. How was that possible? She hurried to the front wind
ow, saw people leaving the church, and then everything outside her office was quiet—snow falling on a deserted street. It was almost as if she and Colin were the only two people around. There had been a time when that had been all she wanted.
As she returned to the bedroom, stirred the fire, and added the last of the logs, she thought of the day her father had caught them by the river. That was the day she had realized all she would ever want or need was Colin. She’d just turned eighteen years old. But her father had dragged her away, had called her unspeakable names, had hit her repeatedly as he continued to shout Scripture at her.
Knowing that fighting back would only prolong the agony, she’d blocked out the pain of his blows and planned her escape. Ever since her mother’s death, her father had deteriorated into this monster who thought of her as nothing more than property—someone he expected to cook and scrub and clean him up when he stumbled back from town drunk and bloodied from some fight she knew he’d started.
That was the day she’d decided depending on a man—any man, no matter how good he was or how much she loved him—would not be enough. The very next night, she’d packed her belongings in a carpetbag and slipped away. She’d walked to the ranch where Colin worked and waited for him. The first thing she needed to do was erase the nightmare of her father’s abuse, and she figured Colin could do that.
“What are you doing here, Evie?” Colin had been half-asleep when he came out of the bunkhouse to splash water on his face and saddle his horse.
“I came for that kiss,” she told him.
They’d kissed before, but that day by the river she’d had the sense their kisses were about to move to another level, and she wanted to know what that meant.
“Teach me,” she’d pleaded, and he’d been more than happy to oblige.
Taking her hand, he’d led her into the barn and up the ladder to the loft. There he’d helped her recline on a bed of fresh straw—she could still smell the sweet aroma of hay and leather and horses.
“I can’t stay long,” he’d told her, stretching out next to her.
“I know.” She touched his face.
“He hurt you,” he whispered, running his fingers over her swollen cheek.
“Yes, but that’s the past.”
Frowning, Colin stroked her hair. “What are we going to do?”
“I’m doing it. Are you going to kiss me or not?”
He grinned. “Yes, ma’am.”
The kiss was everything she had hoped and more. He was gentle and tender. He tested her willingness by pressing the tip of his tongue to her teeth. Opening to him was another way of saying yes. And suddenly it had been as if she couldn’t be close enough to him. She huddled her body to his, wanting him to take her in, to protect her against any pain or harm that might come. He pulled back, and she tugged him closer. She tried to speak, and he swallowed her words with his mouth and tongue.
All too soon he pulled away, his breath coming in heaves. “I have to go, but…”
“I’m never going back there,” she told him.
“Evie, think. Where can you go?”
He was right. For a man, coming and going was different. He could just leave, find work, bed down in a barn or field or bunkhouse. For her—for a woman—there were no such options.
“Maybe Doc and Mrs. Williams will take me in,” she said. “I could earn my keep cleaning and cooking and…”
A sliver of the first light of day cut through the shadows. In the stalls beneath them, a horse whinnied. Colin glanced toward the ladder, then back at her.
“Come on,” he whispered, standing and holding his hand out to her. They climbed down from the loft. He saddled a horse, tied her carpetbag to the back and mounted, stretching out his hand to pull her up to ride sidesaddle in front of him.
Now as she sponged the sweat from his face and neck, she remembered how she had nestled against him that morning, her face resting in the curve of his neck, his pulse beating steadily against her cheek, their bodies fitting together like pieces of a puzzle.
She was tempted to see if they still fit, or if time and distance and the different paths they’d traveled had changed all that. She’d missed him every day…every night…but she could not regret her decision to follow her dream of becoming a doctor. Still, her journey had been such a lonely one. Surely there was no harm. He would never know. No one would ever know.
Stretching out next to him, she rested her head lightly against his back. When he didn’t move or make any protest, she inched closer and rested one hand on his neck. Beneath her fingertips, she felt the rapid beat of his pulse and closed her eyes. Instinctively, he reached up and covered her hand with his. She smiled and relaxed.
They still fit.
His shivering woke her. He had shifted and was clutching her closer, seeking any warmth he could, mumbling incoherently. She sprang into action, shutting the window, feeding the fire, and covering him with every quilt within reach. This would be the pattern—fever that felt as if he were on fire, alternating with chills so severe they made his body writhe and twitch. The cycle could go on for hours or perhaps days—if it didn’t kill him first.
She wished Doc was still in town, but he had his own problems. She sat by Colin’s bedside, trying to decide what else she might do to relieve his suffering. His clothing was twisted and soaked with sweat. The least she could do was make him as comfortable as possible. He appeared to be resting a bit easier—probably exhaustion—so she slid the straps of his suspenders over his shoulders and down his arms. Then she studied his trousers. They should come off as well.
It wasn’t as if she hadn’t had to undress a male patient. During her training there had been any number of emergencies where some poor man was brought in bleeding or with a broken leg in need of setting or…
“You’re a doctor,” she muttered and set about opening the buttons on the front of Colin’s trousers. She lifted his hips as she eased the trousers down and off and hurriedly covered him with the blankets, and still he thrashed about, kicking the blankets off with his feet before reaching for them again. She didn’t want to remember another night under very different circumstances when they’d clung to each other in the loft of that barn. He’d covered her with his coat, and she had covered him with her body.
The fire! Need more wood.
She started for the door, but Colin cried out, clearly delirious with fever. She was afraid to leave him even for a moment. Instead, she grabbed his wrists and fell back with him onto the bed. For a second, neither of them moved, and then his arms came around her, pinning her to him.
* * *
Colin fought to hang on to the dream. Evie and him down by the river, her hair spilling over his bare chest, her mouth an inch from his. He reached for her. She wasn’t there. He was so cold, as if winter had come in an instant. Somewhere a window slammed shut, rattling the glass. He had no strength—weak as a newborn calf, Evie would say. He had no choice but to surrender to whatever was there to overpower him. And then she was back. He smelled the pine soap she used, remembering how she was always washing up, scrubbing her hands and telling him cleanliness—hygiene, she called it—was important for a doctor, even before she was one. He felt her nearness, and when she slipped one suspender strap off his shoulder, he relaxed. The dream was back.
Him, Evie—in the loft where they’d taken to meeting once she’d settled in with Doc in town.
It was not their first time. They’d spent many an hour kissing…touching…but today was the day they’d both decided would go beyond kissing and touching. Today they would become lovers in every sense of that word. As the late-afternoon sun played over them between the gaps in the slats of the barn, he’d opened the buttons on her shirtwaist to give him access to her perfect skin, the swell of her small breasts pressing against the lace border of her camisole. He’d bent to kiss her there.
She’d nipped his ea
r and whispered, “My turn,” as she wriggled from beneath him and straddled him to tug at his suspenders. They had continued the game until both were naked from the waist up. “Your turn,” he’d challenged, knowing all that was left of his clothing were his trousers and underwear.
“Not fair,” she’d muttered. “Women have all these layers you have to get through.”
He’d laughed at that. “Tell me about it,” he’d said and immediately realized his mistake. “Not that I’m all that experienced. I mean, Evie, you’re…”
“Do not lie, Colin Foster,” she’d said, then given him a devilish grin. “Truth is, it’s probably best if one of us knows what to do.” Then she placed her hand on the swell of his fly. “For instance, does this help?”
“Evie,” he’d moaned as she opened the buttons, one by one, exposing his thin cotton drawers that could barely contain his erection.
“Oh my,” she’d whispered.
He’d kicked himself free of the rest of his clothes and run his hands up and under her skirt and petticoat until he touched her pantaloons. He cupped her, and she bucked. “Does this help, Evie?” he whispered, repeating her challenge.
“Get them off,” she’d growled, and he’d been more than happy to oblige. Once she was naked under her skirt and petticoat, he rolled with her in the warm, sweet hay until she straddled him, her clothing puddled around them. Once his erection touched her, it was all he could do to hold on.
“Evie, love,” he’d whispered as she bent over him, her hair falling like a curtain around them, her hands pressing into his bare chest as she…
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