The Touch of Fire Read online

  “Shhh,” he murmured against her hair. “Don’t be afraid. Go to sleep.”

  “How—how can I?” she choked.

  “Just close your eyes and relax. You’ve worked hard today; you need to sleep.”

  Even closing her eyes was out of the question. She was too aware of his partial nudity, too aware of her own bareness. She had always slept swathed in voluminous nightgowns, feeling the comforting, protective folds wrapped around her legs.

  “Just so you’ll know,” he said softly, still so close that his lips moved her hair, “The pistol is in my right hand. Don’t try to take it away from me, or I might kill you before I’m awake enough to know who you are. And the rifle isn’t loaded; I took the shells out of it while you were taking care of the horses.” He hadn’t, because he never deliberately left himself unarmed, but she wouldn’t know that. Poor little thing, she hardly knew anything at all about surviving outside a town, or even inside one. When he had looked through her cabin, he had noticed that there weren’t any weapons at all, unless he considered her scalpels weapons. Silver Mesa was a boomtown, filled with rough, money-hungry, whiskey-soaked men, yet she hadn’t owned the most basic means of protection. It was a thousand wonders that she hadn’t been attacked and raped her first week in town.

  She felt so sweet and soft in his arms. Automatically he pulled her closer and tucked his sock-clad feet under her much smaller bare ones to share his heat with her. She was trying to hold herself still, probably to keep from stirring him up even more than he was; since she was a doctor, he wryly figured that she knew what it was she was feeling pressed against her butt. But she couldn’t stop the little tremors that kept shaking her, and it wasn’t the cold that was making her shake. Right now, they were plenty warm. She was still terrified, and he was at a loss to know how to calm her down.

  He didn’t figure he’d be able to stay awake much longer, and he wanted her settled before he drifted off. She had to be tired too; if he could just get her mind off the situation, her body would take over and she’d go to sleep.

  “Where’re you from?” he murmured, keeping his voice low and calm. Just about everybody out West was from somewhere else.

  Another shiver ran through her, but she answered, “Philadelphia.”

  “I’ve never been to Philadelphia. New York and Boston, but never Philadelphia. How long have you been out here?”

  “I—I’ve been in Silver Mesa for eight months.”

  “And before that?”

  “Denver. I spent a year in Denver.”

  “Why in hell did you leave Denver for Silver Mesa? At least Denver’s a proper town.”

  “Denver didn’t need any more doctors,” she replied. “Silver Mesa did.” She didn’t feel like going into the particulars, because people’s attitude had hurt, cutting her deeper than she would have thought possible.

  Good. Her voice sounded calmer now. Rafe stifled a yawn. Gently he pushed her hair away from her ear and nestled closer, then tucked the blanket more securely over her shoulder. “No telling how long Silver Mesa will last,” he said, letting his voice drop to nothing more than a rustle of sound. “Boomtowns die out as fast as they grow up. When the silver plays out, the miners will pull up stakes and move on, and so will everyone else.”

  The thought of starting all over again was depressing, even though her existence in Silver Mesa lacked any sort of luxury or even comforts. At least she was doing what she wanted to do more than anything else, which was practice medicine. Sometimes she was so frustrated that she wanted to scream. She knew so much, could do so much, if people would only come to her in time. So often they elected not to come at all, because she was a woman, and so they died.

  But she would face the question of her future when—and if—the ore in Silver Mesa played out. She had no guarantees that she would ever even see Silver Mesa again. She should worry about that instead, but it was so difficult to form a coherent thought For the first time in this long day, she was able to let her tired body rest. She knew she shouldn’t. A tiny frisson of alarm ran through her, but it quickly faded and she didn’t move. She knew she should open her eyes—when had they closed? She was warm, so warm, and her limbs felt heavy and lax. She might as well have been wrapped in a cocoon, so encompassed was she by his heat. Cocoon .. . yes, one consisting of the blanket and his arms, his legs, his very body. She could barely move, but she didn’t have the energy to, anyway. For a brief lucid moment she was aware that she was going to sleep, and then she had.

  Rafe felt the complete relaxation of her body and indulged in self-satisfaction. She had been so tired that she had dropped off as soon as he’d made her forget about being afraid. Now she could get some much-needed rest, and so could he, though he perversely wanted to stay awake as long as he could so he could enjoy the feel of her in his arms. A woman’s body was a pure miracle of nature, the closest a man could get to heaven on earth, and it had been too damn long since he’d had the luxury of holding a woman all snuggled up to him, toasty warm, comfortable, and fairly safe. He curved his hand over her belly, and drifted to sleep with a strange sense of contentment.

  He was already up when Annie woke the next morning; it was the sound he made rebuilding the fire that roused her. She scrambled to her feet in a surge of panic, then hastily grabbed the blanket to cover herself. He turned, his enigmatic eyes measuring her, and she tensed without knowing why.

  “You can get dressed,” he finally said. “So will I. I’ll try to help you with the chores today.”

  She paused, but the instinct to heal was too strong. Carefully holding the blanket with one hand, she reached out the other to lay it on his unshaven cheek, a slight frown furrowing her brow as she considered his condition. He still felt too warm to her. She picked up his hand and pressed her fingers to his thick wrist, feeling his pulse, which was a little too fast and a little too shallow. “No, not today,” she replied. “You need at least one more day of rest and medication before you try to do even light chores.”

  “Just lying around will make me even weaker.”

  The dismissive note in his voice made her bristle. She straightened her shoulders and gave him a stern look. “Why did you bring me here? I’m the doctor, not you. Dress if you like, it won’t hurt anything, but—”

  “I’ll have to find some graze for the horses today,” he interrupted. “And I need to set some traps, unless you want to live on potatoes and beans.”

  “We can do without more food for a while yet,” she said stubbornly.

  “Maybe we can, but the horses can’t.” While he was speaking, he eased down to a bending position and got his clothes from under the blanket they’d been lying on. Just as carefully he stepped into his pants and pulled them up over his hips.

  Annie bit her lip, but came to the conclusion she would have to dress in front of him, just as she had undressed. Quickly, she grabbed her skirt, and after some frustrated wrestling with the blanket let it drop and jerked the garment on in exactly the same motion he had used to don his pants. She felt better once her legs were covered, but the cold air washing over her arms and shoulders was a sharp reminder that she was still far from decently clad. For the sake of modesty she put on her blouse and buttoned it before picking up her petticoat and drawers. Her clothes were sadly wrinkled, but she was so glad to have them back that she could have cried.

  He pulled on his shirt but didn’t attempt putting his boots on by himself; instead he walked to the door and opened it, letting in the bright, crisp early-morning sun. Annie blinked at the sudden brightness, turning away until her eyes became accustomed to it. Cold air rushed in, making her shiver. “It’s supposed to be spring,” she said plaintively.

  “It’ll probably snow up here a couple more times before the weather takes any notice of the calendar,” he said, looking at the sky through the trees. It was utterly clear, meaning the weather wasn’t likely to get very warm anytime soon. The temperature was comfortable enough during the day, but the nights were freezing.