Page 48 of At Love’s Command

The muscles in his leg twitched at the coolness of her fingers against his bath-heated skin. His heart hammered in his chest. Not even the sting of the fabric scraping across his wound offered sufficient distraction as she folded back the hem of his drawers to expose the injury on the outer edge of his thigh. She took hold of his knee and arranged his leg to maximize her view of the torn flesh. His pulse didn’t seem to recognize the complete absence of amorous intent on her part. Her touching his bare leg in any capacity was enough to set his heart thumping. The fact that she was doing so in a medical, probing-until-it-hurt type of way only dulled his ardor a smidgen.

“Looks like you cleaned the exposed tissue fairly well,” she said as she leaned sideways to collect a blue jar from her bag. She unscrewed the lid, and a sickly sweet smell escaped, making his nose twitch. “I’m going to treat it with this carbolated gauze,” she explained as she pulled a short length of white material from the jar, “then I’ll stitch you up. Two or three sutures should do the trick.”

She rubbed the moist gauze across his wound, and he fought the urge to hiss in reaction. Charlie, having finished his wash, was hovering close enough for Matt to hear his breathing. Matt might not mind letting his guard down around Josie and Wallace, but his pride refused to allow any weakness to show around a man he didn’t trust.

Josie raised a brow as if she’d read his thoughts, but she made no comment. She replaced the jar of medicated gauze in her bag and pulled out a disc-shaped canister with the word Catgut printed in blue around the red cross at the center. She unspooled a length of thread and snipped off the end. After pushing it through a needle’s eye, she inhaled, then set the sharp end against his flesh.

For the first time since she’d entered the chamber, she met his eyes. “Ready?”

He held her gaze and gave a slow nod.

Her face softened in apology for the briefest moment before she turned back to her task and poked the needle through his flesh.

A tiny grunt escaped him, but Wallace was doing his best to engage Charlie in conversation, so Matt didn’t think either of them heard it. As the tug of the suture pulled through his skin, he fought the urge to wince.

“You don’t have to prove anything to me, you know,” Josie whispered. “You can groan and contort your face as much as you want.” She knotted the thread, then glanced up at him, a tiny smile bending the corner of her mouth. “As long as you don’t move your leg, of course. Wouldn’t want you to throw off my suturing. I have a reputation to uphold.”

He grinned as she cut off the end of the thread. “I’ll be still as a post,” he vowed in an equally low voice. “Can’t have my woman’s reputation marred.” An ironic statement, considering their current location, but true nonetheless.

Her eyes met his again, her needle poised at the edge of his thigh for a second stitch. “Is that what I am?” Her breath seemed to catch at the edge of her throat. “Your woman?”

Matt swallowed, his heart pounding like Phineas’s galloping hooves. Was that what he’d said? Something must’ve gotten tangled up in his head between my doctor and a woman and emerged as my woman. Yet as he peered into Josie’s face, he could no longer downplay his interest as mere attraction or friendly respect. His feelings ran deeper.

Matt’s chest squeezed, and before he could call a halt, the truth popped out of his mouth. “I’d like you to be.”

She said nothing, but a light came into her green eyes that suggested she might not be completely opposed to the idea.

Then she looked down and stabbed him with her needle.

Matt allowed a small groan to escape him this time. Not so much from the pain, but more as a release. Proving his toughness no longer seemed so vital. Josie had no need for it, and her brother . . . Matt looked over to where Charlie leaned against the edge of the tub, arms crossed, a glowering stare aimed at Matt’s head. Matt still couldn’t say he liked him, but Charlie might be family someday, and alienating him probably wouldn’t win Matt any points with the woman he hoped to make his wife. Perhaps letting his guard down would.

His wife. Was he really contemplating marriage? After losing his family, he’d vowed to be a solitary man, like his uncle. Shielded from the searing pain of losing people he loved. The army had offered the perfect escape. A man with no family was actually an asset. An unattached soldier could protect the families of others with fearless abandon because his own death, should it come, carried no consequences. No wife or children depended on him for their livelihood. It had been the perfect path. Until Wounded Knee.

And until a bossy doctor with ten-dollar words and gemstones for eyes elbowed her way past his fortified walls to set up shop in his heart. For the first time in his life, his desire to charge forward and lay claim to a woman outranked his instinct to defend and retreat. The strategic shift terrified as much as it exhilarated him.

A muffled whistle from outside filtered through the bathhouse walls.

“Train must be here,” Wallace said, dropping his foot from where it had been propped on the tub’s edge next to Charlie.

“I’m nearly finished.” Josie tied off the second suture, then quickly added a third stitch to Matt’s hide. She blew a piece of hair off her forehead, then sat back. “Stand up, please. Legs apart. I need to apply a bandage.”

Matt felt his neck warm, but he did as she instructed, catching the saddlebag as it tumbled from his lap. Like an experienced field surgeon, she had a dressing in place and a gauze bandage wrapped around his leg before he could count to twenty. Had he been counting. In truth, he’d been trying to figure out how to hold the saddlebag without looking like an idiot. Not that it mattered. She didn’t give the bag so much as a second glance. Once she had the ends of the bandage tucked away, she pushed to her feet and asked to see his arm.

Matt complied, rolling up his right sleeve to expose the crease left from an outlaw’s bullet.

She cupped his elbow in her hand and lifted his arm close to her face. “No stitches for this one,” she declared. “I’ll just dab on some salve, and we’ll be ready to go.”

The sound of the outside door opening stole Matt’s attention from the feel of Josie’s fingers on his arm. Before he could voice his concern over being found half-dressed in a bathing chamber with a woman, Wallace and Charlie placed themselves between Josie and the door, blocking the view of whoever might have purchased a bath.

“Passengers have disembarked, Captain.” Preach’s voice bounced off the rafters, cutting past the tension in the room. “They’ll be calling the all aboard soon.”

“Be there in two,” Matt called. He pulled his arm from Josie’s light hold, causing her to smear some of her salve down his wrist. “Time for you to skedaddle, darlin’.” He placed his hands on her shoulders and twisted her around so that her back was to him. “I’ll meet you outside.”

Wallace bent to retrieve her doctor’s bag and handed it to her. Josie frowned at being rushed, but she accepted the bag and moved toward the exit, her attention diverting to Charlie’s hands as she came abreast of him. Giving her brother a little shove, she herded him toward the door with her.

“While I’ve got the salve out, I might as well see to those sore spots on your hands. Come on.”

Charlie grumbled but let her shoo him out of the bathhouse. Wallace followed, leaving Matt a blessed moment of privacy to pull on his trousers, socks, and boots. He tucked in his shirttails, stretched his suspenders over his shoulders, draped his saddlebag over his left arm, and rejoined his men.