The Touch of Fire Read online

  At last she got her clothing arranged so she could relieve herself, and she tried to do so quietly, but was forced to accept the indelicacy of nature. What did it matter anyway, when he was as likely to kill her as not? Logic made her admit that he wouldn’t be going to such lengths unless he had some reason for not wanting to be seen, which meant that he was an outlaw. He’d have to be a fool to take her back to Silver Mesa as he’d promised.

  And she’d have to be a fool to save his life. To save herself, she should let his condition deteriorate, or maybe even use her medical knowledge to hasten it.

  Her mind reeled under the enormity of her own thoughts. She had been trained her entire life to save people, not to kill them, but killing this man was exactly what she was contemplating.

  “How long are you going to squat there with your skirts hiked up?”

  She stood up so suddenly that she stumbled, hampered by both the drawers twisted around her knees and her stiff muscles. The harsh intrusion of his voice had been like a dash of cold water in the face, wresting her away from her thoughts and back to reality. Her face was paper white as she turned and stared at him across the big rock.

  Heavy eyelids shielded the expression in his pale eyes as he studied her, wondering what had made her turn so white and given those soft brown eyes such a stark look. Hell, she was a doctor; she shouldn’t be that shocked or embarrassed by something everybody did. He could remember a time when he never would have said such a thing to a woman, but the last ten bloody years had so completely altered him from the man he had once been that the memory was a mere wisp, an echo, and he couldn’t even feel regret for the change. He was what he was.

  After a frozen moment she bent down to adjust her underwear, but when she straightened from the task her face still had that strangely shattered look. She came back around the rock toward him, and he held out his gloved hand to her, palm up, his fingers open.

  For a moment Annie stared without recognition at the small objects in his hand, then her own hands flew to her hair and found it completely unanchored, tumbling around her shoulders and down her back.

  He must have found the bone hairpins scattered on the ground.

  Hastily she gathered her hair and twisted it into an untidy knot, picking the hairpins from his hand one at a time to secure the heavy mass. He was silent, watching her slender, feminine hands perform their chore, her fingers lifting each hairpin in turn from his leather-gloved palm with all the delicacy of a small bird selecting seeds. The movements were so essentially female that they made him ache deep inside. It had been too damn long since he’d had a woman, since he’d been able to luxuriate in soft flesh and sweet smell, to just look at a woman and enjoy the gracefulness of small motions that they all had, even the coarsest slattern. A woman should never let a man watch her at her toilette, he thought with sudden savagery, unless she was willing to take him into her body and let him ease the sexual hunger the sight of her at her private rituals aroused.

  Then the lust seemed to drain out of him with a return of that bone-deep weariness. “Let’s go,” he said abruptly. If he stood there much longer, he wouldn’t have the energy to find the old trapper’s hut.

  “Can’t we eat?” Despite her best effort, there was a pleading note in her voice. She was weak with hunger and knew he had to be in much worse shape, though she couldn’t tell it from his hard, expressionless face.

  “When we get to the hut. It won’t take long.”

  It took him an hour to find it, and it took her a moment longer than that to realize he had, for the mean little structure was so overgrown it was barely recognizable as being man-made. She could have cried with disappointment. She had expected a cabin, or even a rough shack, but not this! From what she could see through the bushes and vines growing around and over it, the “hut” was nothing more than some crudely stacked rocks and a few half-rotten timbers.

  “Get down.”

  Annie flashed him an angry glance. She was getting tired of those tersely worded commands. She was hungry and frightened, and she ached in every muscle of her body. But she obeyed him, and then automatically started forward to help him when he painfully dismounted. She checked the movement, and knotted her hands into fists as she watched.

  “There’s a lean-to for the horses.”

  She looked around in disbelief. She didn’t see anything that remotely resembled a lean-to.

  “Over here,” he said, correctly reading her face. He led the bay off to the left and Annie followed with her mount, to find that he was right. There was a lean-to, constructed using the trees and slant of the earth as part of the structure; there was room for both horses, but just barely. Both ends of the lean-to were open, though the far end was partially blocked by a crudely made water trough and more bushes. A wooden pail hung from a broken tree limb that had been driven into the earthen wall. He took it down and examined it, and for a moment satisfaction registered on his drawn face.

  “There’s a stream running just on the other side of the hut. Unsaddle the horses, then take this bucket and fetch water for them.”

  Annie stared at him in disbelief. She was weak with hunger and so tired she could barely walk. “But what about us?”

  “The horses get taken care of first. Our lives depend on them.” His voice was implacable. “I’d do it, but other than standing here, the only thing I’m capable of right now is shooting you if you try to run.”

  Without another word Annie set about the work, though her muscles trembled with strain. She dumped her medical bag, the sack containing the food, both saddles, and his saddlebags on the ground. Then she grabbed up the bucket and he directed her to the stream, which was only about twenty yards from the hut on the other side but running diagonally away from the structure rather than beside it. It was only about a foot deep, less in some places and more in others. He followed her to the stream and back to the lean-to, silent and not quite steady on his feet but grimly watchful. She made two more trips to the stream, with him behind her every step of the way, before he deemed the water trough to be full enough. Both horses drank greedily.

  “There’s a bag of grain in my left saddlebag. Give them both a double handful. They’ll have to be on short rations for a while.”

  That chore accomplished, he instructed her to haul their belongings into the hut. The door was a primitive affair of thin saplings tied together with a mixture of twine and vine, with two leather hinges. Cautiously she pulled it open, and had to bite back a cry of dismay. There didn’t seem to be any windows, but the light spilling through the open door revealed an interior draped in cobwebs, coated with dirt, and inhabited by a variety of insects and small animals.

  “There are rats,” she said in horror. “And spiders, and probably snakes.” She whirled and faced him. “I’m not going in there.”

  Just for a moment, amusement played around his mouth and softened its hard lines. “If there are rats, you can bet there aren’t any snakes. Snakes eat rats.”

  “This place is filthy.”

  “It has a fireplace,” he said wearily. “And four walls to keep out the cold. If you don’t like the way it looks, then clean it up.”

  She started to tell him that he could clean it up himself, but one look at his pale, drawn face stopped the words. Guilt gnawed at her insides. How could she have let herself even think about letting him die? She was a doctor, and even though he was likely to kill her when her usefulness was at an end, she would do her best to heal him. Appalled at her earlier thoughts, which were such a betrayal of both her father and herself, of her entire life, she swore that she wouldn’t let him die.

  But when she looked around the filthy little hut, the magnitude of the chore that faced her was so great that she let her head drop in sheer hopelessness. She took a deep breath, then gathered her strength and straightened her shoulders. First things first. She picked up a sturdy stick from the ground and gingerly stepped inside the hut. The stick did double duty in tearing down the cobwebs and in raking out