“OK,” he said, “bandage it up.”
Muttering, “I hope you know what you’re doing,” she wrapped the last strip of clean cloth around his waist.
Sitting at the head of the bed, Macie nibbled on the beef jerky. It didn’t taste anything like what she was used to back home.
“I don’t know about you,” Bowdry said when he finished eating, “but I’m tuckered out.”
“If that means tired, you’re not the only one,” Macie admitted. She glanced at the narrow bed, then up at Bowdry. Her stomach quivered when he smiled at her.
With every nerve on edge, she stretched out on the bed, as close to the edge of the mattress as she could get without falling off.
Bowdry chuckled as he stretched out beside her, then covered the two of them with the blanket. “Relax, pretty lady,” he murmured as he closed his eyes. “I’m too sore, and too tired, to bother you tonight.”
He was snoring before she could come up with a good retort.
Macie doubted she’d get much sleep, lying beside a strange man in a strange bed, but the next thing she knew, it was morning. When she opened her eyes, Bowdry was watching her.
Macie frowned as a rush of colour warmed her cheeks. “What are you staring at?”
He shrugged. “Nothing much else to look at.”
At a loss for words, her gaze slid away from his.
“I guess I owe you my thanks,” Bowdry mused.
“You’re welcome.”
“You never told me where you were from.”
“Yes, I did.”
“Right. California.” He grunted softly. “I’ve been to California a time or two, but I never saw anyone quite like you.”
“You just weren’t there at the right time,” Macie retorted with a grin, and then frowned, wondering how she could make Relámpago take her back to her own time.
“You got a fi rst name?” Bowdry asked.
“Macie.”
“That’s an odd name for a pretty girl.”
“Ace Bowdry is an odd name for an Indian.”
“My mother named me after my old man.”
“My mother named me after her mother.”
Macie’s cheeks grew hotter under Bowdry’s regard, even as wings of excitement fluttered in the pit of her stomach. There was no denying he was an incredibly handsome man, just as there was no denying that he looked exactly the way she had always pictured the man she would marry, from his long black hair and dark eyes to his tawny skin and six-pack abs. The fact that he was an Indian intrigued her, which prompted her to ask, “What kind of Native Amer– Indian are you?”
“Cheyenne, on my mother’s side. White on the other.”
“Oh. Are your parents still alive?”
“No.”
“I’m sorry.”
A muscle throbbed in his jaw.
