by Carol Finch
Alarm pulsated through her veins. She had been traveling with Doc’s medicine-show wagon—performing and appearing in costume to entertain the gathering crowds—thinking she was safe from discovery. Knowing those ruffians were scouting the area assured her that she needed to exercise even more caution than she was now.
When Doc strode over to untie the stranger’s wrists, Rachel found herself admiring his long muscled legs, sinewy arms and broad chest. No question that his masculine physique appealed to even the most leery of women—Rachel being at the head of the list. She couldn’t tell much about his facial features because they were swollen, discolored and covered with a dark beard and mustache, but she was definitely sidetracked by his body.
“Rachel, go fetch my bag from the wagon and bring a set of clothes while I examine our patient,” Doc Grant requested.
She lurched around and dashed off to grab one of the sets of clothing she had swiped from Adolph’s storeroom. Then she reached into the wagon to retrieve the black leather bag that contained authentic compounds and ingredients for Doc’s medical concoctions.
When she returned to the creek bank, the nude stranger was sitting upright. Her clean garments were still clamped modestly over his bare hips. He was gingerly holding his arm against his ribs while Doc pried open his left eye to check the dilation of his pupil.
“Yep. Concussion. Hard to tell if your rib is cracked, bruised or strained, but I suspect it hurts all the same.” Doc reached for the leather bag Rachel extended to him. “First, we’ll get you into some clothes, then I’ll mix up a sedative so you can rest comfortably.”
“I don’t need some patented elixir—”
“Listen, friend,” Doc cut in sternly. “I travel around this state in a medicine-show wagon because that’s what draws public interest. Nevertheless, I’m a certified physician who treats people’s ailments. I am not a charlatan. It is my intention to undo the damage to patients on the outposts of civilization who turn to fraudulent quacks with their so-called patented medicine.”
The stranger tried to smile at Doc’s emotional outburst, but his puffy lips must have pained him because he grimaced.
“Fine. Sedate me,” he said belatedly.
“What’s your name?” Rachel questioned.
“Nathan Montgomery. I go by Nate.”
“I’m Joseph Grant and this is Rachel,” Doc introduced.
When Nate brushed aside the garments covering his hips, Rachel whirled around and waited for Doc to help him dress. Nate’s moans, groans and muffled oaths filled the silence before Doc called her over to hoist Nate to his feet.
With Nate’s arm draped over her shoulder, while Doc steadied his injured ribs, the threesome made slow progress to camp. Hurriedly, Rachel rolled out a pallet so Nate could lie down. He swore under his breath as he tried to shift into a position that didn’t hurt.
Rachel knew Adolph’s rough-edged henchmen were thorough when it came to strong-arm tactics of collecting overdue debts. Nate was lucky the goons hadn’t broken an arm or leg.
“Drink this down and then get some rest,” Doc instructed as he mixed several ingredients in a vial. “After supper I’ll give you a stronger dose so you can sleep through the night.”
Rachel watched Nate make an awful face when he sipped the sedative, but he didn’t complain, just swallowed his medicine and waited anxiously for it to take effect.
“Go on down to the creek for your bath, hon,” Doc encouraged. “I’ll get supper going and you can tend to it while I bathe.”
Rachel ambled off, but the moment she reached the creek her thoughts circled back to the image of Nate staked stark-bone naked. Whether he was an outlaw or ex-lawman, he was incredibly appealing to the feminine eye.
However, she didn’t know Nate Montgomery from the devil. He might be using an assumed name. Whether he was honest and trustworthy was up for debate. Nonetheless, he had broadened her education of men unintentionally and the scintillating memory kept playing over and over in her mind.
“Stop it!” she muttered at herself as she peeled off her blouse and breeches, then loosened the braid of long raven hair that cascaded over her shoulder. “The sooner Nate recovers and goes his own way the better. You might have saved his life by finding him before a panther, wolves, coyotes or wild boars did, but that is the extent of your association with him. If you have any sense you’ll remember that.”
She knew it was best to keep an emotional distance and avoid personal entanglements while she was lying low. That was exactly what she intended to do. However, she missed her friendship with her boss at the boutique in Dodge City. Jennifer Grantham and young Sophie had always brightened mundane days. Unfortunately, Rachel couldn’t contact them without putting them in jeopardy. If Adolph Turner had survived and approached Jen, demanding to know Rachel’s whereabouts, she could honestly say that she knew nothing whatsoever.
Rachel sank into the creek and sighed appreciatively when cool water swirled around her. The past week had been unseasonably hot and dry. The team of horses pulling the wagon constantly kicked up dust, and insects buzzed around them, making travel uncomfortable. Doc had mixed a remedy to repel bugs but the smell was as offensive as the swarming pests.
Rachel felt her tension melt away when she submerged in the water to wash her hair. However, she was dismayed that the vision of Nate’s naked body was there to greet her the instant she closed her eyes.
Nate was eternally grateful when the painkiller took effect. He mumbled a thank-you when Doc Grant dropped a cool cloth over his face to counter the swelling on his eyes, cheeks and mouth. He’d been roughed up, shot at and knifed in the line of duty the past dozen years. However, those three bastards had worked him over with fiendish delight—and he’d love to return the favor.
Obviously, Nate had lost his edge after six months of living in the lap of luxury at his father’s estate—the very same estate Nate had eagerly left at eighteen to join the Army of the West. He had learned to fight and to think like the renegade Indians he’d battled, so there was no excuse for letting those three scalawags get the drop on him.
Now he was at the mercy of Doc Grant and Rachel Whoever-she-was. He couldn’t stand on his own two feet without becoming dizzy and collapsing. Feeling helpless frustrated him, and lying around made him restless, but he resigned himself to making time to recuperate from his painful injuries.
He shifted slightly to take the pressure off his tender ribs, then his thoughts drifted to the woman who had happened on to him. Was she the doctor’s wife? His daughter? His nurse? No one had said and Nate hadn’t asked. Whatever the case, she had seen him naked and she had draped garments over his private parts to stifle her embarrassment.
Fleetingly he wondered why a certified physician would give up a private practice in the convenience of a town to wander the back roads. Had Doc Grant been run out of town on a rail because he botched a surgery? Since Nate had smelled alcohol on Doc’s breath, he wondered if the physician had a problem staying sober while treating patients.
Being a U.S. marshal—not an ex-lawman as he’d told Rachel—Nate had learned to dig deep to find the answers to puzzling questions. The skill had served him well while tracking renegade Indians and ruthless outlaws—much to his father’s exasperation.
“Is the pain fading?” Doc mumbled sluggishly.
“It’s tolerable,” Nate mumbled back, and decided the good doctor had taken a few more drinks since returning to camp.
Nate predicted he and Doc would be out cold before long. That would leave Rachel Whoever-she-was to stand guard and tend to supper. Whatever her connection to the physician, Nate hoped she had learned to handle weapons and defend herself. If those three bastards returned, they wouldn’t have the slightest qualms about molesting a woman.
That was Nate’s final thought before the potion sent him drifting into blessed oblivion.
Rachel emerged from her bath feeling revived and refreshed—until she returned to camp to see that Doc had passed out.
An empty bottle of Stomach Bitters lay at his fingertips. He was propped awkwardly against the trunk of a sprawling shade tree. Resigned, Rachel grabbed his pillow from the wagon and walked over to ease him onto his back so she could stuff the pillow under his tousled blond head.
She pivoted to survey the bubbling pot of beans above the campfire. Then she glanced at Nate, whose breeches only extended within six inches of his ankles. The borrowed shirt—stolen shirt, she corrected—stretched tightly across the broad expanse of his muscled chest. He was barefoot because the boots she had confiscated—stolen—were too small to fit him.
Glancing east, then west, she silently prayed that no one would happen upon them while she was playing nursemaid to an injured stranger and an inebriated doctor.
Rachel had fended for herself for six years, and she had spent another six learning the ways of the Cheyenne so she could become an independent survivor. She glanced at both men, then shook her head in exasperation. Now what was that nonsense about big strapping men being the stronger sex who could protect, provide and care for women? Ha!
“Couldn’t prove it by me,” she mused aloud.
From personal experiences, she had learned that men were more trouble than they were worth. Her opinion wouldn’t change anytime soon, either. Men were the bane of her existence.
Rachel dipped up a cup of beans and ate her evening meal. Then she tended the horses that waited impatiently to be released from the harnesses. While the horses grazed nearby, she tried to feed a cup of beans to Doc. He didn’t respond to her coaxing. She was sorry to say that it wasn’t the first evening that he drank his supper and conked out until his hangover greeted him midmorning.
Later, she sank down cross-legged beside Nate and removed the wet cloth Doc had placed over his swollen face. Nate stirred slightly and his mouth sagged open. Rachel fed him a spoon of broth, then covered his mouth with her hand to ensure he swallowed.
He pried open his eyes slightly and Rachel caught a glimpse of striking blue. With those vivid blue eyes, auburn hair and muscles galore, he was six feet two inches of handsome, virile man. Shave off the beard and mustache, dress him up in properly fitted clothing, and Nate Montgomery was likely every woman’s fantasy come true.
Not hers, of course, but everybody else’s. She did not intend to invest more time in Nate than it took to get him back on his feet and shoo him on his merry way.
“More,” he murmured.
Rachel fed him the rest of the bean soup before he dozed off. Humming softly, she washed the utensils, then repacked them in the wagon. By that time, it was dark and the sliver of moon hung in the sky, providing very little in the way of light. She decided to bed down early.
No sooner had she pulled on her nightgown than she heard Nate moaning and groaning. Grabbing the lantern, she climbed down from the wagon to determine what had disturbed the injured patient.
“Damn that hurts,” he said to no one in particular. “More medicine. I can’t sleep.”
Rachel set the lantern beside him, then padded barefoot to the wagon to retrieve Doc’s black leather bag. She muttered in frustration when she saw the empty vial. She tried to rouse Doc to mix up more of his sedative but he didn’t respond, just lay there like a slug and snored away.
“I should be the one with the medical degree,” she grumbled as she sank down beside the flickering lantern to study the labels on the bottles of authentic medical compounds. She had learned from her Cheyenne grandmother to use curative herbs, and she had watched Doc mix painkillers for patients before. A little of this and that and she could duplicate the nostrum to relieve Nate’s pain.
“More medicine,” Nate groaned as he clamped hold of his injured ribs.
“I’m working on it,” she replied, distracted.
A moment later, she held the vial up to the light. It looked to be the same amber-colored potion she remembered Doc dispensing to patients. She held it to Nate’s puffy lips. He gulped quickly, then gagged.
“Water,” he wheezed.
Rachel scrambled for the canteen.
In between muttered oaths, Nate gulped water. His breathing became irregular and his chest heaved. Rachel studied his reaction with growing alarm. Then to her dismay, he collapsed and lay motionless on the pallet.
“Dear God!” Rachel squawked as she bounded to her feet to rouse Doc. “I’ve poisoned him!”
Rachel darted to the tree and dropped down on both knees to shake Doc awake so he could undo the damage she had unintentionally done to Nate. The poor man had gotten the hell beaten out of him because of her and then she had poisoned him by mixing the wrong amounts of ingredients together.
“Doc!” She shook him again—harder this time.
All she received in response was a wobbly moan. Doc didn’t open his eyes. He lay there, poisoned by rotgut nostrums—while Nate lay on the other side of camp, poisoned. Period.
“I accidentally killed Adolph Turner in self-defense and now I’ve killed Nate Montgomery. I’m only twenty-three and I have two deaths on my conscience already,” she grumbled in dismay. “My life has gone straight to hell!”
Frantic, she bolted up and dashed to Nate. She encouraged him to sip more water, hoping to dilute the strong formula she had concocted erroneously to ease his pain. But he didn’t respond. Nate lay there, looking dead.
Rachel laid her head on his chest to check for a heartbeat. She half collapsed in relief when she felt the weak thud against her cheek. She wasn’t sure how long she remained hunkered over him, monitoring his pulse. Maybe ten minutes, though it felt like an hour.
Suddenly his arm encircled her to hold her close to his chest. Her first reaction was to shove the heels of her hands against him to break his hold on her, just as she had done when Adolph clamped hold of her. But she refused to crack another of Nate’s ribs, especially after she had overmedicated him.
“Hello, darlin’,” he purred seductively.
Rachel blinked, then stared into his shadowed face. What?
She tensed when his hand drifted down her spine to follow the curve of her derriere. Never had she allowed a man familiar privileges, even while she had supported herself as a singer and barmaid in a saloon in Leadville, Colorado. Her impulse was to slap his face, but she granted him leniency because it was her fault those henchmen had beaten him up. He didn’t need to suffer more than he had.
“I’m dying for a taste of you, sweetheart,” he whispered.
“You’re dying all right. I accidentally poisoned you…And keep your hands to yourself.”
Her curt command didn’t faze him in the least. He kept caressing her leisurely, and she hated that she liked his gentle touch, which was so unlike the lusty attention of other men.
“Don’t be so stingy with your kisses.” He opened those vivid blue eyes briefly and she got lost in them. “You can spare a few for me and still have plenty left.”
When he cupped his hand around the back of her head and drew her face to his, she tried to resist without hurting him. In the end, she gave up and kissed him.
It wasn’t an altogether unpleasant experience.
It was nothing like the forceful kiss Adolph Turner planted on her. This kiss was pure seduction and it persuaded her to yield, while his straying hand brushed the tip of her breast, then glided down her belly.
Unbelievable! Her dazed mind scolded her for permitting his familiarity. The truth was that she was enjoying the embrace of a man she didn’t know. Probably because she felt guilty for poisoning him and wanted to grant him his dying wish. If he wanted a kiss, then it behooved her to give him the best she had to offer before he flew off to the pearly gates.
Or straight into hell. Whichever.
Rachel put herself into kissing him, and she didn’t object when his roaming fingers glided beneath the scooped neckline of her nightgown to circle her taut nipples. Pleasure seeped through her as he dragged his lips lightly over hers. Warm tingles that had no business assailing her shimmered through her blood and spread out i
n all directions at once.
“Feel what you do to me, temptress…”
Rachel forgot to breathe when he placed his hand over hers, guiding it to the bulge in his breeches. That set off forbidden memories of seeing him naked and she began to wonder what he’d look like when he was aroused, as he was now.
“You taste like heaven.” He kissed her deeply, thoroughly, and rubbed his erection against her hand.
Sweet mercy! What was in that sedative she had concocted that made Nate respond so dramatically? Evidently, she had mixed a love potion rather than a painkiller. It was her fault he’d been hurt, and her fault that he was rubbing his hands all over her and kissing her as if she was the other half of his lost soul.
Then Nate collapsed suddenly. His head rolled sideways and his hands fell away from her. She snatched her fingers away from him as if she had been burned.
Now he was dead. She was sure of it. He hadn’t moved a muscle and she couldn’t tell if he was still breathing. She couldn’t see the rise and fall of his chest. She hesitated to lay her cheek against his chest again, for fear he might rouse and she would find herself succumbing to what she presumed to be pure lust.
What else could it be? She didn’t know this man well enough to like or dislike him. All she knew was that she was unwillingly attracted to him.
Finally, she worked up the nerve to place her fingertips on his neck. He had a pulse—barely. Thank God.
Rachel cuddled up beside Nate on the pallet, in case he needed assistance during the night. The poor man only thought he had encountered trouble when those three mean-spirited henchmen attacked him. Now he would be lucky if he survived a dose of Rachel’s poisoned love potion.
She fell asleep hoping and praying Nate would survive. In spite of her bungled effort to relieve his pain.
Chapter Three
Nate came awake, then groaned miserably. Yesterday evening he swore he couldn’t have felt worse. He was wrong. Every ache and pain had intensified. Not to mention the throbbing vibration in his skull. He was stiff and sore and he felt as if he had slept under a rock. And what the devil was that awful taste in his mouth? Doc’s painkiller?
