“The fibula,” Spence said, distracted by having to once again run his hands up beneath LaRisa’s skirt. This wasn’t supposed to happen. He wasn’t supposed to wish she wasn’t wearing stockings, wasn’t supposed to crave the feel of her flesh beneath his hands. He wasn’t supposed to want her like this, dammit. She sure as hell wasn’t supposed to want him back.
By the time they said good-bye to Enrique and Maria, and Spence dropped LaRisa and Joanna off at the Ladies Fine Emporium, Spence had managed to regain his equilibrium. It was only a kiss, after all. It wouldn’t happen again. It couldn’t. Because it hadn’t been only a kiss. It had been too strong, too elemental. He didn’t have room for feelings like that, couldn’t afford them. Most especially not for Chee’s daughter.
Spence left the surrey at the livery and made his way to the bank. He was surprised to see Lawrence Hoddinger there and to learn he was the president. Maryanne had certainly come up in the world. It was quite a leap from shopkeeper’s daughter and fiancée to a washed-up doctor, to wife of a bank president.
Hoddinger greeted him with a polite smile and an outstretched hand. “Colton, what can I do for you?”
Spence took the offered hand and shook it. “Hoddinger, good to see you again. I need to do a little shuffling of my funds. The clerk said to talk to you about it.”
“Certainly. Come on into my office.”
When Spence told him what he wanted to do, Hoddinger looked nonplused. “Five hundred dollars? In your wife’s name? Are you sure?”
Spence nodded. “I’m sure. I want her to be able to use it for whatever she wants, whenever she wants, no matter what happens. And any time the balance dips below two hundred, I want you to automatically transfer enough from my account to bring hers back up to five.”
“Good God, man, she’ll break you!”
Spence chuckled. “Many women would, I’ll grant you that.” Maryanne, for one, unless she had changed. From the look of horror on Hoddinger’s face, she hadn’t. Spence was certain of that. Hell, the reason she’d come after Spence in the first place had been his money. She’d been honest about that from the start.
A far cry from the wife he’d ended up with. “I’m not worried about LaRisa. The biggest problem will be getting her to use any of it. One thing, Hoddinger.”
“Yes?”
Spence paused, then forged ahead. “I want all this in writing. If you’d rather I have my attorney draw up the papers, fine. But should anything…happen to mine and LaRisa’s marriage, the money is still hers.”
“Good God, man.”
“And if anything happens to me…I’ll want ten thousand dollars transferred to her account. The rest of my assets will probably revert back to the Triple C. I’ll work that out with my attorney.”
“I know you haven’t asked for my opinion, but…there are circumstances that could arise that would change your mind.”
“Granted. But then, I can always come in and change my instructions if I so choose.” He wouldn’t, but perhaps the idea would make Hoddinger more comfortable. Spence was determined that once LaRisa was on her own, she would have enough money to allow her to make her own decisions without having to worry about how to put food in her mouth and a roof over her head.
The two men talked a while longer, and Spence realized Hoddinger was so uneasy with what Spence proposed that Spence finally agreed to have his attorney draw up the papers. But he was adamant that the account for LaRisa be opened immediately. Personally, he didn’t much care for a banker trying to tell him how to handle his money or his wife, but then Spence figured the whole thing probably sounded like he was a besotted fool whose wife was about to rob him blind.
“Oh, the yellow,” Joanna proclaimed. “You have to have this yellow one.”
LaRisa pulled her mind from the remembered taste of Spence’s lips and realized what Joanna was saying. She moaned. “I don’t need another dress.”
“Of course you do. Didn’t they teach you anything at that school?” Joanna fluffed out the ruffle along the hem of the dress in question while Mrs. Conner, the owner of Ladies Fine Emporium, mentally added the price of the day dress to the running tally in her head and started planning the expansion of her shop. “It’s a rule, I think,” Joanna said. “It is mathematically impossible for a lady to have too many dresses.”
“But Joanna,” LaRisa whispered so the shop owner wouldn’t hear. “It’s too much. All of it. I need to put some of it back.” As if what had happened with Spence at the bootmaker’s weren’t unsettling enough, now she had Joanna’s enthusiasm for clothes to contend with.
“Nonsense. Spence can afford whatever you want.” Then in a normal voice, “Yes. Definitely the yellow. And the mint green, I think. It will go beautifully with your coloring.”
The bell over the shop door announced another customer. “Excuse me, ladies,” Mrs. Conner told them. “Just take your time. I’ll be right back.”
Joanna looked over her shoulder at the new customer, and tensed. “Uh oh,” she said under her breath.
“What?” LaRisa glanced toward the door and saw an overweight woman perhaps in her fifties, with graying hair, deep-set eyes, and a pinched mouth. At her side was a darling dark-haired girl of around five who grinned at LaRisa and Joanna.
Mrs. Conner greeted the woman. “Good afternoon, Mrs. Masters. Hello, Janey. I have your dress ready,” she told the older woman. “Would you care to try it on and check the fit one more time?”
“Why ye—” The woman spotted Joanna, then her gaze locked on LaRisa and turned icy. “No. I don’t believe I care to linger.” She turned her glare on Mrs. Conner. “Something in the air in here disagrees with me. I’ll just take the gown home now, if I don’t have to wait.”
No one had to tell LaRisa that the abrupt change in the woman’s attitude was because of her. It was plain as day in the woman’s eyes. One look at LaRisa was all it had taken to have her glaring.
“The old biddy,” Joanna whispered.
LaRisa turned away from the woman’s glare and wanted to leave. The look on the woman’s face was the same look LaRisa had faced daily at Carlisle when confronting Miss Latimer. The two women could have been cut from the same bolt of cloth. The pleasure in selecting new clothes dimmed.
Joanna used LaRisa’s distraction to good advantage by slipping some items into her pile of selections that LaRisa had rejected as too fancy or too expensive or just plain unnecessary. To Joanna, they were essential, particularly the sheer silk and lace nightgown and matching robe that had made LaRisa’s eyes bug out.
Temporary marriage, indeed. Not if Jo could help it. Spence needed a wife, and LaRisa seemed perfect. She was beautiful and kind and smart and oh, the way she looked at Spence with longing in her eyes when she thought no one was watching. And the way he looked at her! It was a wonder poor Enrique’s shop hadn’t gone up in flames earlier. Jo didn’t know what had gone on, but when she’d returned to the front of the shop, Spence had practically been stripping his in-name-only wife with his gaze.
Yes. Definitely the nightgown. And perfume. A woman needed perfume, didn’t she? And those plain cotton undergarments simply would not do. Now, where was that cute lacy chemise?
At the front door, Mrs. Masters took her new dress from Mrs. Conner and left the shop with young Janey in tow. When Mrs. Conner turned back to LaRisa and Joanna, a blush stained her cheeks. “Now, how are you two doing?”
“We’re finished,” LaRisa said. The pile of clothing somehow appeared larger than it had the last time she’d looked. “I don’t really need all th—”
“Of course you do,” Joanna claimed. “Gloves. You need a nice pair of kid gloves for driving, and a sturdier pair for riding. Oh, good grief, we didn’t pick out any riding clothes. You have to have something to go with those new boots you ordered. They make the most marvelous divided skirts these days so you don’t have to dress like a man just to avoid a stupid sidesaddle.”
Before going to see his lawyer about the annulment,
Spence decided it was high time he paid a visit to Mac. He dreaded it. He loved Mac like a favorite uncle, but this visit was going to be a hard one on both of them.
It had been with Doctor Ira McIntosh that Spence had done his “reading,” or apprenticeship that had allowed him to enter medical school. He’d spent more than a year tagging along with Mac on calls, doing his filing, cleaning his office and instruments, ordering his supplies. During the process Spence had managed to learn an incredible amount about being a doctor. Plus, he’d been forced under the old man’s tutelage to memorize Gray’s Anatomy from cover to cover. He’d learned that damn book so well he could still give the page numbers for any one of several dozen specific body parts, even after all these years.
The memory had him smiling as he opened the door to Mac’s office and stepped inside. The old man didn’t look like he’d aged a day in the past ten years. Tall and thin, he still wore a black suit coat, which still hung from his bony shoulders and washed out his pale complexion. His lank gray hair was still too long, still needed combing. His smile was still big enough to make an ailing man feel better.
“Well, Great Caesar’s Ghost, look what the cat dragged in.”
It was like stepping back in time, and Spence fought the feeling. Back then when he’d come through this door so many, many times, he’d been filled with optimism and self-confidence. Enough enthusiasm for ten men. A deep idealism and an unshakable belief that he could make a difference. Seeing Mac again was just one more reminder of the nasty little surprises life liked to throw in a man’s path. “Hello, Mac.”
The old man pushed himself up from his chair behind the desk. “Don’t stand over there by the door and give me a ‘hello Mac.’“ They met at the corner of the desk and gave each other a hearty hug. “It’s been a long time, boy. Too long.”
Mac was the only person who still called him a boy.
“Heard you were in town. Thought maybe you’d forgotten I was here.”
“Not a chance.” Spence stepped back and gave him a smile.
“So.” Mac led him to the small settee beside the door. “Tell me what the hell this is I hear about a wife. An Apache wife, I believe I heard.”
Mac was a man Spence knew he could trust. Spence told him the truth. Well, most of it. He didn’t tell him about this damnable attraction that was keeping him awake nights and had him kissing her practically in public.
Mac shook his head. “Hell of a note, I say. How does she feel about all this?”
How did she feel? She felt like heaven, tasted like sin. But she was too innocent to know what she wanted. Way too young and alive to waste her life on a man like him.
Spence shook his head. “She wants the annulment as badly as I do. You ought to hear the way she calls me ‘white man’ when she’s angry. She can make it sound more insulting than any dirty name you can think of.”
Mac chuckled. “Sounds like you might just be a little fond of her, though.”
Spence shrugged. He wasn’t ready to be quite that open with anyone. He damn sure wasn’t going to admit to the erotic images that had flashed through his mind as he’d knelt before her that morning and cupped her legs in his hands. Wasn’t about to admit that kissing a woman could make his hands shake.
“So, are you ready to settle down here in Tucson and open up your own practice? This town desperately needs another doctor.”
Here it was, then. The part Spence had been dreading. He didn’t want to let this man down, but he knew he was going to. “I won’t be setting up a practice here or anywhere, Mac. I’m finished.”
Mac tucked his chin in. “What are you saying, boy? What do you mean, finished?”
“Have you ever dealt with an epidemic, Mac?”
“Of course I have. More than once. Typhoid was the latest. Lost five patients.” The old man shook his head sadly.
“How long did the epidemic last?”
“Has this got anything to do with anything?”
“How long, Mac?”
“A few weeks.”
Spence laid his head against the back of the settee and stared at the ceiling. “I was with the Chiricahua more than five years. Malaria, yellow fever, typhoid, tuberculosis, dysentery, pneumonia. You name it, they died from it. Hundreds of them, Mac. Hundreds. From babies to young mothers, to lonely old warriors who never understood how a way of life could disappear. No one was spared. I can’t do it anymore, Mac. I’ve lost it.”
“Lost what, boy?”
Spence rolled his head and saw the pain in Mac’s eyes. “All if it,” he said. “The enthusiasm, the self-confidence it takes to be good. The feeling of usefulness. The belief that I might actually be able to help someone. I’ve lost it all.”
Mac carefully lowered his gaze to his own gnarled hands. “Where did you lose it?”
“It’s buried back in Alabama with dozens and dozens of my patients.”
Mac looked at him again, studying him closely. “I’ve seen doctors with the same look in their eyes that I see right now in yours, doctors who served during the War. Same thing happens to some soldiers. Get where they can’t stand the killing anymore. You’ve just seen too much dying, boy. You need a rest. That’ll put things right in your mind.”
Spence slowly shook his head. “It’s more than that, Mac. I don’t think I could practice medicine again if I wanted to. I don’t think I should treat patients again.”
“Why the hell not?”
“I’ve got the same thing that killed many of my patients. The same thing that killed LaRisa’s father.”
“Don’t give me that. You don’t have pneumonia.”
“No, but I probably will some day. I’ve got malaria. The kind that keeps coming back.”
Mac sat back in his chair. “You don’t say.”
“Nobody knows, so I’d appreciate it of you wouldn’t say anything.”
“Nobody knows? How the hell…never mind. What I want to know is why you think having recurring malaria means you shouldn’t practice medicine. If that’s not the biggest bunch of bull I’ve ever heard, I don’t know what is.”
A shiver raced down Spence’s spine. “It’s not bull. My malaria is directly responsible for at least one death.”
“How’s that?”
Spence studied the knees of his pants. “An expectant mother. She trusted me. While I was off hiding my latest relapse, she went into early labor. There were complications. She wouldn’t let anyone go for the post surgeon. She’s dead because she trusted me.”
“You could have saved her?”
Spence opened his mouth, then shut it a moment. “Hell, I don’t know. I should have been able to. The baby’s head was too big. She needed a Cesarean section. I could have handled that.” Another shiver raced down his spine. “Unless the shakes had hit when I’d had a scalpel in my hand. Then it wouldn’t have been a matter of my not being there when she needed me. It would have been murder.”
“It would have been an unavoidable accident,” Mac said harshly. “Does it really catch you that unawares? The malaria?”
Spence sighed in frustration. “Hell yes. One minute I think I’m fine, the next I’m shaking like I’ve got the palsy.”
“No warnings at all? Headache, fatigue?”
“Oh, they’re there, all right,” Spence said with disgust. “But when I’m busy I don’t notice them. Only after the chills hit do I realize what’s been happening to me.”
“So, what’s the problem?” Mac demanded. “You just learn to pay attention to your own body, and it won’t catch you by surprise. At least not so much that you’d be caught cutting somebody open when it hits. Worrying about it hitting during surgery makes about as much sense as walking around waiting for lightning to strike between your eyes.”
Spence rolled his head against the back of the settee. “You don’t understand, Mac.”
“The hell I don’t. I understand plenty. I understand that you’ve been up against an impossible situation with the Apaches for years. I know how muc
h you wanted to be able to help them, and I’m sure you were of more help than you’ve admitted. I understand how an illness like malaria can shake your confidence in yourself as a doctor, even in yourself as a man. But I know you, boy, better than you think I do. I know how damn good you are when it comes to medicine. I know what a crying shame it would be for this town if you turned your back on the people here who need you.”
“Trying to make me feel guilty?”
Mac let out a tired sigh. “No, I just want you to think about it awhile. Give yourself time to get over that five-year epidemic you dealt with. Give yourself a chance. Hell, you know better than I do that if you can’t practice medicine, you’ll burst a seam. It’s your God-given gift, boy. I don’t think you’ll want to waste it for long.”
It was two hours after Joanna mentioned riding clothes before she declared LaRisa adequately outfitted. By then LaRisa thought seriously about crawling under a rock to hide. Joanna had thoroughly and good-naturedly browbeaten her into buying three times more clothes than she needed. Spence was going to be absolutely livid at the cost. That ought to teach him to say “Whatever you need,” as he’d done when he’d helped them down out of the surrey that morning. According to Joanna, LaRisa absolutely needed every single item they’d purchased.
But Joanna refused to let her fret over the cost. “Don’t worry about a thing. You’ve married a rich man. Take advantage of it,” she’d added with a twinkle in her eye.
There had been another reason for Joanna’s good humor. Abigail Conner was well thought of in Tucson. The profit she made in outfitting LaRisa would keep a smile on her face and kind thoughts in her mind of the newest Mrs. Colton. She would undoubtedly tell her friends what a lovely young woman LaRisa was and help ease LaRisa’s way for the future. All this might help offset the poison that old bat Lettie Masters would spew when she learned LaRisa was Spence’s wife.
Apache-Colton Series Page 162
