“Sit down.”
“And what if I don’t?”
“You walked in here. You can walk out again.”
“Ma’am, you sure do drive a hard bargain. It just ain’t ladylike to put a man over a barrel and then order him to take off his boots.”
Much to her surprise, Pamela felt the urge to smile. Why this man should make her feel like that when he hid his thoughts behind a beard she didn’t know. She forced herself to keep a somber expression on her face. “I have a strange feeling no one has even been able to get you over a barrel….”
“Boy are you ever wrong,” Slade mumbled.
“… but I’m ordering you to take your boots off.”
“You won’t like it.”
“Take them off!”
Slade sighed. “Some people just can’t help taking advantage of folks when they’re helpless. I come in here half starved, dying of thirst, and plumb worn to a nub and what do you do? Order me to take off my boots.” Slade looked up at her like a sudden thought had come to him. “You ain’t going to take my boots away and then make me walk out of here, are you, ma’am? Cause if that’s what you got in mind, I can tell you I’d take that as downright unfriendly.”
“Sit down and take them off,” Pamela ordered. The devilish twinkle in his eye robbed her of any feeling of amusement. She suspected him of making fun of her. She could feel Belva’s silent laughter without looking around.
Slade sat down and tugged ineffectively at his boot. “I can’t seem to budge it, ma’am. I guess I’ll just have to keep them on for a spell.”
“Try again.”
“I cant. I’m plumb wore out.”
“The only thing that’s plumb wore out is my patience,” she snapped. “Pull.”
God, how she hated beards. She couldn’t tell what he was thinking with hair all over his face. She began to feel uneasy, but she wouldn’t back down. This had turned into a battle of wills. If she couldn’t handle a wandering cowboy when she had him in her own kitchen, how could she handle the ranch? Abruptly a vision popped into her mind of him standing in the yard stripped to the waist—his chest and shoulders dripping with water, sunlight turning each drop into a sparkling crystal—and she almost lost control. In desperation she concentrated her thoughts on his beard until she could steady herself again.
“I’m waiting,” she said quickly, before her mind could conjure up any more dangerous images.
All the laconic mockery had gone from his voice when Slade spoke. “I expect you’ll wish you hadn’t.” He pulled the boot off with a single tug.
Belva gasped.
Pamela felt sick to her stomach.
Blood and dirt discolored Slack’s sock, some of it dried and black, some of it moist and red. The recollection of his swaggering walk as he strode up to the ranch house rose before her eyes. How could he stand on those feet, much less walk like they didn’t hurt? What kind of man could walk miles across the desert with his feet in that condition and then sit at the table eating a piece of pie and light-heartedly mocking her? The pain must have been excruciating.
She forced herself to speak despite the gorge rising in her throat. “Now the other boot.” The second foot looked just as bad. “Belva, pour some warm water into a pan. I’m going to have to soak his socks off.”
She knew he hadn’t wanted her to see his feet, but now that she had, his expression dared her to offer him sympathy. But there was no danger of that. Any man crazy enough to cross the desert without food and water and pretend nothing was wrong didn’t deserve any sympathy. His entire nervous system had to be dead.
Belva placed a basin on the floor at Slade’s feet. He didn’t utter a sound when he lowered his right foot into the warm water. But Pamela saw the skin tighten around his eyes and his fingers grip involuntarily as the pain wrenched his body. She seemed to feel his pain, too, and that confused her. Why did she care about this saddle tramp’s feet?
“Now the other one.”
She waited until he put the second foot in the water. Then, after assuring herself he wouldn’t take his feet out of the basin, she left the room. She returned a few minutes later with salve, cotton, bandages, a bottle of whiskey, and a pair of worn moccasins.
She knelt at his feet. She wasn’t aware of what she had done until Slade attempted to protest.
“Save your heroics. You’ll need every bit of your stubborn pride when I take off your socks.”
Slade focused his gaze on Pamela hoping to forget the pain tearing at his body like pincers. There was no expanse of milk-white shoulder or bare arch of neck to tantalize him, but he was fascinated nonetheless. Inside, away from the brilliance of the sun, the streaks of gold in her hair turned to burnished copper giving her hair a wondrously warm, soft appearance. Several individual strands had escaped from her pins, clustering about the softness of her neck like champagne-colored gauze.
Slade felt a tightening in his groin and immediately refocused his mind on his feet. He didn’t want to have to explain to Pamela why his body was stiffening with desire. If he didn’t think of something else quickly, it would be impossible for her not to notice.
For a moment Slade wondered if all his pride would be enough to keep him from crying out. The pain cut deeper than anything he had ever experienced, even worse than the walk in from the desert. But he forced himself to sit still, forced himself to watch Pamela as she cut off first one sock and then the other to reveal his ravaged feet. He forced himself to remain silent because he could see Pamela struggling just as hard to prove the appalling sight didn’t affect her.
He couldn’t understand why this girl should worry about his feet. Why should she care if he insisted upon wandering about the world on bloody stumps? She could barely contain her revulsion. When she left the kitchen, he was sure she wouldn’t come back. He felt like a cynical fool when she returned with an armload of supplies. Shocked and revolted she might be, but Pamela White had courage.
With incredible gentleness she dabbed his feet with cotton, soaked off the dried blood, and cleansed the broken blisters.
“Hold still,” she said, her fingers gently but firmly grasping his foot. Then, with quick, decisive movements, she cut away the dead skin.
A stab of pain caused Slade to flinch.
“I’m sorry,” Pamela said. “I’m almost finished.”
He didn’t flinch again.
Pamela had never looked at a man’s foot. Not really looked at it. Slade’s feet did nothing to cause her to regret the omission, but there was something strangely appealing about the ravaged member. She remembered Frederick once saying something about a nicely turned ankle. Of course he was talking about a girl, but why couldn’t men have ankles fashioned just as attractively? He made her think of the picture of a statue they once studied in school, one by Michelangelo she thought.
She felt like she blushed. She fixed her mind on her task. What would her mother think of her daydreaming about statues of naked men and blushing because she held the foot of a very live one in her hands?
When Slade’s feet had been carefully patted dry, Pamela paused and looked up. He couldn’t say exactly what he saw in her eyes, in the expression on her face, but it affected him so powerfully he almost forgot the pain. He didn’t think it was her beauty, though God knew she had enough of that to startle any man. It appeared to be something more subtle, something he had never encountered.
But how could he guess what lay at the heart of a woman like Pamela White? He had never gotten along well with women, not the decent ones anyway. His mother and Trish had pretty well convinced him no lady could find anything of interest in him. And except for the occasional visit to a small room up a narrow stairway, he’d given up on females.
Now this woman threatened his resolve. Not that her eyes contained any kind of invitation. He might be rusty when it came to reading female signs, but it wasn’t invitation he read in her face.
It was something even more rare. It was interest, maybe even a kind of admirat
ion. Hell, he couldn’t remember when his presence had elicited anything except momentary curiosity. He had more than enough manly attributes to draw a woman’s attention, but it never endured. If they were “nice” women, it didn’t go beyond learning of his reputation. If they weren’t nice, their interest lasted exactly as long as the money he spent on them.
But he could sense something more this time. Her eyes seem to ask, what kind of man are you? They held no condemnation, no calculation, just a searching for the things that made him Slade Morgan.
Involuntarily, his eyes drew a veil between them. He resisted the impulse to share even the smallest part of himself. His safety depended upon divulging as little as possible.
A frown of understanding clouded Pamela’s eyes. Her gaze said she recognized his withdrawal and accepted it.
“I’m afraid this is going to hurt even worse,” Pamela said as she reached for the bottle of whiskey, “but if I don’t clean the wounds, they’ll become infected. Then I can’t give you that job. You’ll be no use to me laid up.”
Slade stared at Pamela. She understood. She knew he could accept almost anything in the world except sympathy.
“Do what you have to,” he said.
Belva set down a basin of clean water, and Pamela poured the whole bottle of whiskey into it. “Put both your feet in at the same time.”
Nothing in his whole life had prepared Slade for the pain that racked his body when he put his feet in the whiskey water. It felt like the fangs of a thousand snakes were buried in his flesh. Every muscle in his body jumped in an involuntary spasm and then clamped down, hard. For a moment he couldn’t breath. It took all his strength to keep his feet in the water. Gradually the shock receded and his muscles relaxed sufficiently for his mind to be able to think of something besides the pain. Gathering his wits he looked up. Pamela’s eyes were on him, her face purposely expressionless.
“On the whole, I think I prefer to drink my whiskey,” he managed to say.
A slow smile relieved the rigidity of Pamela’s features. “Dad always said the same thing, only this isn’t the good whiskey.” Her smile grew. “It would be even harder on your insides than your feet. Is the stinging all gone?”
“Good Lord, Miss White,” exclaimed Belva, “the stinging has just started. It’s that awful pain that’s finally let go of the poor man.”
“I’ve got to dry your feet and put some salve on the blisters,” Pamela said, ignoring Belva’s outburst. “If they don’t swell too much, you’ll be able to wear your boots in a couple of days.”
“And what am I supposed to do until then?” Slade asked. “You can’t be in the habit of hiring cowhands and then having them lie up in the bunk.”
“Miss White won’t let anybody work who isn’t fit,” Belva stated. “She’s very firm about that.”
Slade gave her an inquiring look which virtually demanded a response.
“It’s really quite practical,” Pamela explained as she carefully patted his feet. “Men work better when they’re healthy. Besides, there’s always something they can do to keep busy while they recuperate.”
She gently rubbed an herbal salve into the raw flesh of his blisters. She was careful to keep her mind off Italian statues and her eyes away from Slade’s ankles.
“That stings right smart, too,” he said. “You got something against a man feeling better?” Slade made sure the twinkle in his eyes took the sting out of the words. The burning faded quickly and left a cooling, soothing sensation. After the misery of the last two days, it was a blessed relief.
Pamela relaxed at his words. She hadn’t realized how tense her fear of hurting him had made her. “I won’t pay you until you can work,” she continued as she wrapped his feet in strips of thin gauze. “Tomorrow or the next day you can start on the bunkhouse and tack room. They need to be cleaned before Dad brings the new hands from Santa Fe. By then you ought to be back in the saddle.” Pamela finished the bandages and stood up. “I want you to stay off your feet until supper. Don’t get up!” Pamela exclaimed when Slade started to stand.
“I have to, ma’am. I can’t float over to that bunkhouse.”
“You can use one of the bedrooms here. You’ll have those blisters caked with dust if you set foot outside.”
“But the moccasins …”
“They’re for later. You wait right here. I’ll get Gaddy to give me a hand. We’ll carry you to the bedroom.”
Slade immediately got to his feet, despite the arrows of pain which nearly blinded him.
“No one has ever done anything like this for me, ma’am. I’m mighty grateful, but I’ll have to be dead before anybody carries me to a bed. Now you just show me where you want me to go.”
“Are you always this stubborn?”
“No, ma’am. I’m being awfully polite just now.”
“You probably are,” Pamela said. A reluctant smile banished the seriousness of her expression. “Well, if you must walk, follow me, but if you get blood on the floor, you’ll have to clean it up yourself.”
“Yes, ma’am. That seems only fair.”
She was kidding. It was the kind of thing she would have said to Gaddy—men never seemed to be aware of the mess they made—but he sounded sincere. Or was he making fun of her again? Pamela whipped around and directed a challenging glare at him, but with that beard covering his face, she couldn’t tell what his thoughts might be. His eyes looked so blandly innocent she decided it would be wiser to ignore his remark. Regardless of how much this man acted like a dumb cowboy, she now knew he was no such thing. She didn’t know what he was, but she was becoming curious about him. Nothing in her experience had prepared her to understand him, and she felt excited at the prospect of the challenge.
“At least lean on me.”
“Ma’am
“Don’t say it,” Pamela warned. “If you’re rude. I’ll throw you out. If you refuse. I’ll have Gaddy knock you out. Either way you’ll do what I want.”
“I don’t know what they taught you in Baltimore, ma’am, but it certainly wasn’t how to play fair.”
Pamela laughed, easily now, naturally, as with a friend. “Stop complaining and put your hand on my shoulder. After being in the desert for so long, I would have thought you’d jump at the chance to exchange your horse and saddle for a nice soft bed.”
Slade didn’t respond. His fingertips could feel the softness of her body underneath the fabric of her dress, and all desire for conversation left him. Memory flooded back reminding him of all the women he had known, of the ones he had turned his back on, of the ones who had turned their backs on him, but none of them had ever affected him like this. Pamela might think his body trembled from pain, but he knew he trembled from a yearning to forget the ingrained feeling of unworthiness, of inferiority which came from being rejected by the two most important women in his life, and start anew.
He could feel it through his fingertips. Hope. And the certainty that if he could make a new beginning, the results would be different. Don’t be a fool he cursed himself. Nothing’s changed. She only cleaned up your feet because she pities you. No sensible man builds a dream on such as that.
But his heart wouldn’t listen, and he had to make himself concentrate on the rooms he was passing through to keep from dreaming dreams which could easily turn into nightmares. He knew it was a large house, but because of the pain in his body and the shock of meeting such a woman, it had made little more than a vague impression on him until now.
However, after he had passed through a dining room large enough to seat twenty people and a parlor which looked like it belonged in a San Francisco hotel, he realized this was not just a large ranch house. Nor was there anything ordinary about it.
The walls were plastered or paneled in carved oak, the ceilings decorated, and the polished stone floors covered with oriental rugs. But it was the furnishings that made the biggest impression. Slade had never seen anything like it.
Velvet curtains hung at the windows. Pictures in
massive gold and silver frames graced the wall. Chairs, sofas, and tables filled every room, all made of carved mahogany and rare marble and upholstered in silk damask or heavy brocade. There were several lace-covered tables bearing small figures in rare stone, crystal, or gold and silver gilt. Josh White had to be a very wealthy man. It must have cost a fortune to fill his home with such beautiful things.
It was a long way from the kitchen to the bedrooms. Slade wasn’t sure he would have made it without Pamela. The effort to keep from giving in to the pain, or the lure of her tempting body, he wasn’t sure which, completely exhausted him.
“If I’d known I’d have to walk through a dining room large enough to seat the entire population of Arizona,” he said pausing to catch his breath, “or an even larger commons room,” he continued, leaning heavily on her now, “I’d have let you and that boy carry me.” They reached a long hallway with four doors on each side. “Good God! How much farther do I have to go?”
“You can use this bedroom,” Pamela said. She opened the first door and stepped into a room such as Slade had only dreamed of. Only a tiny fraction of sunlight penetrated the heavy curtains at the window, but enough entered for Slade to see the room was dominated by a large, four-poster bed piled high with thick mattresses and pillows and covered by a thick comforter heavily embroidered with silk thread. The filmy, crocheted canopy looked unutterably feminine. The furniture, unlike the pieces he had already seen, was solidly built and covered in plain, sturdy, cheerful fabrics. A large mirror over a marble-top chest dominated one wall; a huge antique chifforobe covered most of the second. A pitcher and basin stood on the chest. A cedar chest at the foot of the bed gave promise of thick blankets for cold winter nights, but on this hot spring day, the room felt deliciously cool and comfortable.
Slade thought of the distance they had traveled from the kitchen. “If I had gone to the bunkhouse, I could have been asleep by now.” Much to his surprise, Pamela seemed embarrassed by his comment.
“It is a rather big house, but mother had hoped to have a lot of guests. It’s rather lonely out here for a woman.”
Scarlet Sunset, Silver Nights Page 3
