by Jodi Thomas
“I figured that you’d get away.” He smiled at her. “But you’re not much help on descriptions.” Adam worked as he answered, “A lot of vaqueros come up from Mexico to help with the herds. The belts are common. Are you sure they didn’t see you?”
“I waited until they were out of sight, then I ran to the stage and tried to help the men, but it was too late.” She looked at him directly. “They didn’t see me, but from the way they looked, they knew I was on the stage.”
“What about the other passenger?”
Nichole shook her head. “A young man, about Rafe’s build. He didn’t say two words to me. I don’t remember seeing him with the driver when I left, and I couldn’t find his body.”
She fought back any cry of pain as Adam dried her hands. “I changed into my pants and used my dress for bandages. I walked all night, but with the wind and rain, I couldn’t be sure I wasn’t walking in circles. After sunup, I headed west and by luck passed over stage tracks. About midafternoon I wandered into town. I asked about a doc and found you, but I wanted to make sure you were alone before I came in, so I curled up on the porch.”
“Why? No one knows about the trouble you and Wolf are in. No one is looking for you here.” Adam couldn’t believe she’d waited for hours outside and in pain.
“No one knows about me,” she whispered. “But I saw the men riding away from the stage robbery. They were a dirty lot, men raw with meanness. I know their types. They’ll try their hardest to slit my throat if they find out I saw them.”
Her statement was obvious. Adam’s forehead wrinkled in worry as she continued.
“I’ve been thinking it over. The attack was too clean not to have been planned by professionals. Maybe the kid on the stage was one of them. Maybe the driver knew whoever stopped to offer help. Otherwise, why would there have been no shots?”
Nichole’s voice died suddenly as she looked toward the doorway.
Adam glanced over his shoulder, moving closer to her in protection. “Sister.” He relaxed. “Thank you for bringing the coffee.”
The nun moved to his side. She took one look at Nichole’s hands and wrapped a coffee cup with a thick towel so none of the heat would pass to Nichole as she drank.
“Nick, I’d like you to meet Sister. Sister, this is the shipment I’ve been expecting for days. She was on the stage that was attacked.”
Both women nodded a greeting, but the nun didn’t waste time with small talk. “You’re in great danger, child.”
“I know,” Nichole agreed.
Before Adam could ask any questions, the nun spoke again. “I’ll put a bed in the storage room upstairs with boxes all around. No one must know you’re here.”
“Including the deputy,” Adam added. “We must keep her safe and I don’t trust the man not to talk.”
“Thank you.” Nichole let the exhaustion reflect in her voice for the first time. “I knew I’d be all right if I could just find you.”
The nun smiled, turning her face into tiny ripples of skin. “When Dr. McLain gets you bandaged, move upstairs and I’ll bring food. Men mean enough to kill and burn the two stagecoach hands won’t hesitate to kill you.”
Adam gently wrapped Nichole’s fingers as he studied both women’s faces. “I don’t know how, but the two of you seem to share a secret. Want to let me in on it?”
She bit back the pain the thin cotton caused. “I’m not sure I understand, but Sister is right. If anyone finds out I’m here, we may all be in great danger. I can’t explain. I just sense it. I think she does, also.”
Curling his arm beneath her knees, he lifted her off the table. “Then we’d better get you upstairs. I promised your brother I’d guard you with my life, and that is exactly what I plan to do.”
An hour later, he helped Nichole eat both her supper and his. She’d told him every detail that she saw of the robbery. If there was a loaded strongbox traveling with her, the men who killed for it wouldn’t hesitate to kill again. Something didn’t make sense. If they were only after the money, they could have just robbed and taken it at gunpoint, not killed and burned the two men.
Adam took the tray of empty plates downstairs. A low lamp still burned in the kitchen, though it was long past time all were usually in bed. Mrs. Jamison liked a late dinner. She said it reminded her of her youth in Georgia when her family would have huge dinner parties served after nine. But most nights they ate at seven or Nance would fall asleep at the table.
Tonight, the nun sat alone by the window, her rosary circling her hands. When he entered, she looked at him with tear-wet cheeks.
“How is the girl?” she asked in a whisper.
“Better,” Adam answered. “I gave her something to help the pain so she can sleep. She was sent here because her brother thought she’d be safe.” He laughed, without humor.
“She’s in great danger. The men who took the stage would have her dead along with the others. I’ve heard of these men. They kill for fun and think to become legends.”
Adam watched the nun closely. She knew more than she was saying, but he’d learned it was a waste of time to inquire. “You’ve told Nance to be quiet about our guest?”
The nun nodded.
Adam waited a minute for her to add more. When she didn’t, he moved to the stairway. “I’ll check on Nichole, then call it a night.” He knew that once he turned on his study light, the night people would tap on his door if they needed him. Maybe one of them would have news of the robbers.
“I’ll help your friend all I can.” The nun went back to her prayers. “And another will watch over her, too.”
Adam wondered what more she could do as he climbed the stairs. When he opened Nichole’s door, he found her sitting on the edge of her bed still fully dressed.
“I thought you’d be asleep by now.” He stepped inside her room and closed the door.
“I couldn’t work the buttons with these bandages.” She looked up to him once more for help.
Adam knelt on one knee in front of her and began unbuttoning her shirt in what he hoped was a professional manner. “I’m sorry,” he said without looking at her face. If he looked in those green eyes, he’d have trouble remembering how buttons worked.
“I didn’t want to come,” Nichole whispered. “I wanted to stay with Wolf and fight for our land.”
“I understand.” He guessed she was trying to tell him that she hadn’t traveled all this way to see him.
“Wolf said to find any of the McLains. If you want, I could go to Daniel or Wes.”
He pulled her sleeves gently over her bandages as he removed her shirt. “Wes is somewhere on the range rounding up cattle. Daniel is in a settlement near Dallas. You’d probably be safest with him, if we could get you there in one piece.”
Standing, she held her arms away from her sides as he worked the buttons on her trousers. “You want me to go?”
Adam stopped with both hands on her waist ready to push her pants down. “No,” he answered, feeling her nearness as he always did. “I just want you safe.”
Nichole laughed. “I’ve never been safe.”
Pushing the trousers to the floor, he helped her out of them. She wore plain cotton leggings and a cotton chemise with lace at the shoulder. The undergarments were store-bought and plain but far more feminine than anything he’d seen on her.
As he stared, she smiled and touched her leg, pulling the material with a bandaged hand. “They’re called pantalettes. Funny name. Wolf bought them for me. I never had any woman clothes, but I like the feel of them next to me, even underneath my trousers.”
If he’d expected her to be embarrassed or modest, he was greatly disappointed. She turned around as if showing him a new outfit and not her undergarments. The line of her tall, lean body showed clearly. Her breasts were full, her waist small, her legs long and slender.
“I
wasn’t sure I was wearing them right until one night at the stage station when I saw other women with them. We all took off our dresses and slept in these. It was almost like a party where everyone came in their underwear.”
Adam tried not to notice the way the cotton molded around her breasts or how the lace showed one shoulder almost bare through the fine material.
“You ever see such clothes?”
“No,” he lied. “They look quite serviceable to sleep in.”
Sweat dripped off his forehead, but he wasn’t about to tell her that he’d seen women dressed in chemises made of all lace and no cotton. They’d had big breasts and painted cheeks and offered their services by the hour . . . but they hadn’t been half as alluring as Nichole.
“You’d better get to bed. With the salve, your hands will feel much better in the morning.” He tried to sound like a stern father, or a worried doctor, anyone except a lover, which is exactly what he’d like to be.
“All right.” She climbed into the tiny cot of a bed and let him pull up the covers.
“Good night.” He leaned and planted a brotherly kiss on her forehead.
“Good night, Doc,” she answered, already half-asleep.
TWELVE
ADAM SPENT HALF the night thinking of reasons not to go up to Nichole’s room. She’d told him she hadn’t wanted to come to Texas. The burns on her hands must be hurting. She needed sleep. Wolf had sent her to him for protection.
So he paced his study, then went across to the two rooms he used as his doctor’s office. After cleaning and restocking everything he could think of, he wandered into the little room by the kitchen that he’d made his bedroom.
His room was stark, plain, and colorless, but it had two advantages. The one curtainless window faced the east and caught the morning sun and the room was always warm from the kitchen fire. But tonight the very walls were closing in around him.
He’d spent six months having conversations with an absent Nichole and now she was only a floor away. They had nothing in common, she wasn’t the kind of woman he should be attracted to, yet the need to see her was an ache in his gut the size of a cannonball.
He wanted to tell her what he’d done and how he helped people, all kinds of people. He wanted to remind her of that morning when he’d almost given up being a doctor. She’d verbally slapped him hard with her cutting words and lack of sympathy. She’d woken him up to the fact that he had to be satisfied with the best he could do sometimes. The effort counted, not just the outcome.
Adam finally convinced himself he would only check on her, and stepped into the darkened foyer in the center of the house. In the corner of his vision, where the last touch of moonlight lit the back of the stairs, he saw something move.
A chill slid down his spine like a crawling glacier. His first thought was that somehow Nichole had been followed and someone was trying to kill her.
But the figure moved past the stairs and into the kitchen at a slow, almost painful pace.
Adam pulled down his rifle he kept hidden over the foyer cabinet and followed. The people of the night knew he would help them without asking questions. They always came to the side door off his office. This was no patient creeping through his house. Even in shadow, this unknown guest was crippled and twisted with age, or pain.
The kitchen was dark with only a low glow from the banked fire to dust any light across the room. Before Adam’s eyes could adjust to the blackness, the back door opened slightly with a low creek, then closed just as quietly.
In long strides, Adam reached the door and stepped onto the porch. Nothing. The porch and the alley beyond was silent, deserted except for old Terry who raised his head in greeting.
Adam knelt and patted the dog. Terry was a good watchdog. He always barked when strangers stepped on the porch. Whoever passed through the house tonight was no stranger to the animal. Somehow the knowledge disturbed Adam far more than the possibility that someone might have tried to break in.
Silently, he moved inside and up the back stairs. When he opened the door to a storage room where they’d hidden Nichole, he was surprised to see the nun sitting by her bed. The room was cluttered with boxes and old furniture, but he noticed she had covered the boxes beside Nichole with a cotton tablecloth.
Adam straightened to his most professional manner. “How is she?”
“She’s restless.” The nun closed her prayer book. “I’m afraid she’ll wake herself by hitting her hands against something. She keeps moving, fighting in her sleep.”
He leaned over the bed. Nichole was sleeping, her hair tossed wildly, her face slightly sunburned. She’d never looked more beautiful. What was it about this woman that made him feel like a thunderstorm was going on inside him? She was as far from a lady as she could get with her short hair and men’s clothing. Yet she touched him in a way no one ever had, and he found the idea disturbing. Seeing her was like coming down with the croup and waking up to Christmas morning at the same time.
“The young woman is almost starved.” Sister broke into his thoughts. “I plan on making it my calling to get at least three meals a day into her.”
He looked more closely. She did seem thinner and her hair was a few inches longer than he remembered. The months since they’d seen one another must have been hard on her. She was a free spirit who would have to learn to settle down now that the war was over.
“Do you think we can protect her here?” he wondered aloud to himself.
“We can try. I’ll do what I can. You give her the medicine that helps her sleep without the pain and I’ll keep watch.”
“Her brother sent her here to safety. Now that she’s witnessed a murder and robbery she could be in great danger if anyone found out she was on the stage. I wouldn’t want to depend on the deputy for help.”
“She’s safer here with us.” The nun nodded in agreement. “The only one we have to be careful about is Mrs. Jamison, and she only comes out of her room in the afternoon. The rest of the time she likes to sit by the window and pretend she’s in better times.”
Nichole moved in her sleep, reaching across the covers for something that wasn’t there. The movement made her cry out softly in pain.
Kneeling to her coat Adam pulled out the handgun she’d wrapped so carefully out of sight. Gently, he emptied the shells and placed the weapon at her side. A bandaged hand passed over the metal, and she relaxed in sleep.
He looked up expecting the nun to be frowning, but she showed no judgment in her face.
The nun finally whispered a statement that awaited no answer as she pulled the covers over Nichole. “Our poor Nichole, she lives by the gun, doesn’t she? I’ll keep watch on her tonight, Doctor.”
Adam nodded, realizing the foolish notion he’d had of kissing Nichole good night was just that, foolish. He’d better get a handle on this unreasonable attraction for Wolf’s sister before he made an idiot of himself. They had nothing in common. Nothing. Except that every time he saw her he had to fight himself to keep from holding her, and he knew deep down she felt the same.
Walking slowly back to his room, he thought that just as Nichole needed the comfort of her weapon, Adam knew he needed her at his side. It didn’t matter that they’d only slept in one another’s arms twice. His need to hold her was basic, primal. He needed to feel her heart beat next to his once in a while. But she respected only strength and would think him weak for ever saying such a thing.
His job was to guard her until Wolf came, nothing more. All he had to do was keep her out of harm’s way. Then they both could get on with their lives and never cross paths again. Nichole loved adventure, excitement. She needed to be free. All he wanted was to settle down and live a quiet life as a doctor. Bergette had taught him that to dream for more was only that, a dream.
But by midmorning the next day, it seemed dreams turned quickly into nightmares. Trouble arrived wrapp
ed in lace and any hope of a quiet life seemed shattered.
Troops from Fort Griffin rode in with the stage. Half the town turned out to see them and Adam joined the crowd, watching from across the street. Adam was relieved there had been no trouble and turned to go back home when a tiny woman stepped from the stage.
She was dressed in a wine red traveling suit and wore a hat to match with long enough feathers to have bothered everyone who rode the stagecoach. Her blond curls were tied with ribbons and decorated one side of the front of her jacket from shoulder to waist. She was stunning.
Everyone in the street stopped to watch her. But only Adam’s face turned pale.
Bergette looked slowly around until her gaze met his.
From across the street he could see she’d lost none of her beauty.
She walked directly toward him, smiling as if she hadn’t threatened to have him sliced to bits the last time she’d spoken to him.
“You must be Dr. McLain,” a cavalry officer voiced from just behind Adam as Bergette crossed the street toward them.
“Yes,” Adam answered without smiling. He wouldn’t have been surprised if the officer pulled his gun and arrested him. There was no telling what Bergette had said about him. Maybe she hadn’t been happy ruining his name in Indiana, maybe she planned to spread his mistreatment of her through the West.
“You’re a lucky man. The little lady hasn’t stopped talking about you since Dallas.” The lieutenant slapped Adam on the shoulder as Bergette grew closer. “ ’Morning, Miss Dupont. I was just telling your fiancé how lucky he is to have you willing to come all this way to be his little wife.”
Bergette’s smile could have melted a Gatling gun from a hundred yards. “Thank you, Lieutenant.” She placed a gloved hand on the officer’s sleeve. “But I’m afraid I have given my dear Adam quite a shock. You see, he wasn’t expecting me.”
Adam knew the small crowd around him was listening. Harry was bobbing up and down to see over the heads of those in front of him. In a town where most women considered dressing up putting on a starched apron, Bergette was quite a sight.
