Sandra Steffen - The Bounty Hunter's Bride

A long time after midnight, his speech became less slurred and his gibberish began making more sense. Wringing out a washcloth over a pan of water she’d heated on the stove, she sat on the edge of the bed and leaned close to him. Placing one hand beside his pillow for balance, she smoothed the warm cloth over his face with long, gentle strokes.

“Warm breezes,” he murmured. “Big skies. It’s Montana, Ma. Good to be home.”

“Montana,” Josie whispered. “Home. Sleep now, Kane. Shh. Sleep.”

He pressed his face into her hand, sighing as if her touch was all he needed. Josie swore her heart climbed higher in her chest and slowly turned over.

Dazedly she found her feet. She lifted the cloth away from his cheek but she couldn’t seem to pull her gaze away from his face. His eyelashes were long—men had all the luck—his eyebrows were thick and straight and sandy brown in color. His nose was straight and broad, like the rest of his features. Sleeping, he looked less formidable, but not less complex. She tried to blame the changing rhythm of her beating heart on the wistfulness she’d heard in his voice. It might have worked if those butterfly wings hadn’t started fluttering stronger than ever.

She took one step away from the bed and then another. Still, she didn’t take her eyes off him. Placing one hand over her heart and the other low on her stomach, understanding dawned.

“So this is how it feels to be falling in love.”

Funny, she’d given up on the whole prospect of love, telling herself she would settle for honest to goodness attraction. She’d had no idea the two sensations were so closely related.

“Mister,” she said. “I mean, Kane, honey, it looks like this is our destiny. You’re probably gonna want to repay me for saving your life. It turns out this is your lucky day, because I know exactly what you can do to make us even.”

Catching sight of her grin in her reflection in the dark window, she set about getting ready for bed. She heated more water, donned a warm nightgown and thick wool socks. Finally, after tending the fire and checking on Kane one last time, she curled up on a wooden bench she’d padded with layers of blankets, and closed her eyes.

The wind was still blowing, but it had lost its roar. She could hear the crackle of the fire and the steady sound of Kane Slater’s breathing. Kane Slater. She liked the way his name curled through her mind, but she wondered what kind of a man she’d fallen in love with. After all, most men didn’t traipse through a blizzard with a hole in one shoulder. Kane had said he was no gentleman. What did that make him?

She pursed her lips, remembering how wistful his voice had sounded when he’d mentioned Montana and warm breezes and his mama. Surely a man who loved big sky country and his mother couldn’t be all bad, although she’d read somewhere that even men on death row had a soft spot in their hearts for their mothers. Her instincts told her she would never fall in love with someone who was evil. Those instincts had always been trustworthy before. But she just didn’t know. How could she? She’d never been in love before.

As far as she knew, he didn’t realize he was here. It was highly likely that he didn’t even know where here was. They hadn’t exactly met under normal circumstances. What did she really know of him? He’d staggered into the cabin, hurt and bleeding, only to fight against the very hands that were helping him. He’d insulted her lack of curves and admitted that he was no gentleman.

Okay, she knew he was strong and gruff and wounded. Pulling the scratchy blanket up around her neck, she sighed. Closing her eyes, she hoped Kane Slater had a gentle side.

“Where in the hell are my clothes?”

Kane’s bellow brought Josie awake so quickly her vision blurred. Groggy, she sat up and glanced out the window. No wonder she was a little addle minded. The sky was just beginning to turn gray, which meant she’d been sleeping on the hard bench for less than three hours.

“I asked you a question, dammit.”

The room was chilly in the dawn’s early light, the fire awfully low. A firm believer in first things first, she swung her feet onto the cold floor and saw to the fire, thinking that Kane Slater’s gentle side—if he had one—was going to need a little work.

His rough side, on the other hand, was blatantly apparent. He was sitting up in bed, glaring at her, fresh blood soaking the bandage she’d changed hours earlier. Wrapping a woolen blanket around her shoulders like a shawl, she planted her hands on her hips and glared back. “The clothes I could salvage are over there soaking in a bucket of water. If you hold still, we might be able to get that bleeding stopped again. Or you can sit there and holler and move around until you pass out again. It’s up to you.”

Kane cradled his right arm and held very still. It took a lot to make him bite back a scathing retort. The little scrap of a woman studying her thumbnail a few feet away had done it without batting an eye. Keeping her in his line of vision, he sank into the pillows at his back and gritted his teeth against the pain shooting through him.

Doing everything in his power to focus on something other than the pain, he studied the woman. Or was she still a girl? A woman, he decided, although it was hard to tell with that blanket wrapped around her. She had straggly blond hair and plain gray eyes that were too big for her narrow face. He wondered what she would look like dressed. While he was at it, he wondered what she would look like undressed. A vague memory hovered at the edge of his mind. He glanced at the back of his hand, and then at the slight slope of her breast. The skin on his hand prickled with a message that short-circuited before it reached his brain.

“You live up here?” he asked.

With a shake of her head that sent her hair tumbling into her eyes, she said, “I live halfway down the mountain in a little town called Hawk Hollow. I came up here to be by myself. It’s lucky for you my father and brothers are such narrow-minded fools.”

Kane didn’t come close to following her logic. He didn’t see what her father and brothers had to do with him, but he supposed she was right about one thing: He was lucky he’d stumbled upon this cabin when he did. He was lucky the place had been warm, and he was lucky somebody had been here to get him into bed and make him as comfortable as possible. Although he hated to admit it, he supposed he had to admit that he was lucky to be alive.

Studying the narrowness of her shoulders and the thin body underneath the blanket and thick flannel gown, he said, “You must be stronger than you look if you managed to strip a man my size.”

“You are a big one, Kane, that’s for sure. And you’re right. I’m stronger than I look.”

Her smile hit him right between the eyes. He hadn’t realized he’d closed them until he tried to wrestle them open again.

“It’s okay, Kane,” she whispered, placing a hand on his good shoulder. “Relax. That’s it. Just rest and think about the things you like.”

Her hand was warm and narrow and surprisingly soft where it rested on his bare skin. He liked the touch of her hand, and the sound of her voice, and the way she said his name. “I’m afraid I’m at a disadvantage,” he murmured through the darkness swirling toward him from every direction.

“What disadvantage is that?” she whispered.

“You’ve seen me naked and I don’t even know your name.”

“I guess we’re just going to have to even things up a little now, aren’t we?”

His eyes popped open all by themselves. Something that had no business stirring in a dying man stirred low in Kane’s body. His eyes delved hers as she tucked the quilt under his chin.

Holding his gaze, she said, “My name’s Josie McCoy. You didn’t really think I’d strip down right here and now; did you?”

Kane closed his eyes, wondering when his thoughts had become so transparent. “Can’t blame a man for being disappointed.”

“Mister. I mean Kane, I’d be disappointed if you weren’t disappointed.”

His mind was fogging up, making it difficult to concentrate. Just in case he didn’t wake up again, he said, “I don’t know if you saved my life or made dying easier. I owe you either way.”

Moments before the darkness claimed him, her voice came one more time, far, far away. “I’m not going to let you die, Kane, and don’t worry. I have every intention of allowing you to repay me. We might have to do a little bartering. We’ll talk more when you’re stronger.”

Bartering? he thought, slipping into that warm, dark place where there was no pain. Images, erotic, hazy and fanciful, shimmered through his mind. Maybe he was dreaming. No, Kane Slater never dreamed.

Something told him he wasn’t dying, either. And he had Josie McCoy to thank for it. There was obviously more to her than met the eye.

“You’re really a modern-day bounty hunter?”

Kane did his best to keep the growl deep in his throat from escaping. He didn’t nod his head for fear that the razor in Josie’s hands would do serious damage to his face. Not that he would have minded a scar. It was more pain he was trying to avoid.

“Yes,” he grumbled when she lifted the razor from his flesh. “That’s what I said.”

“Why?”

“What do you mean why?” Teeth clenched, he held perfectly still as the razor made a clean pass along the edge of his jaw.

Swishing the razor in a pan of warm water, Josie said, “Why would a man who claims to have an undying devotion to the great plains and majestic mountains of Montana traipse off in the middle of the night to places unknown? Pistol drawn, you kick doors down and get lost in mountains you say aren’t really mountains during blizzards and God only knows what else. My daddy always says everybody’s got a reason for doing what they do. Believe me, he knows what he’s talkin’ about. Why?”

The razor had made four more passes down Kane’s face before he’d figured out what her “why?” pertained to. This time there was no stopping the growl from erupting from his throat.

Two nights ago he’d fleetingly wondered if there might be more to Josie McCoy than met the eye. There was more to her, all right, and every last bit of it was driving him crazy. When she wasn’t singing, she was talking, and when she was talking, she was usually asking questions. She asked them while she was putting wood on the fire, while she stirred something in a big pot on the stove, while she fed him warm broth and sweetened tea. Kane hated sweet tea. He hated talking and singing. He hated answering questions most of all.

He knew better than to bite the hand that fed him. His shoulder still hurt like a son of a gun, but the wound was starting to heal. It was too soon to tell if there’d been any nerve damage, but at least the bullet hadn’t hit a major artery. Still, he’d lost a lot of blood, and it was going to take a while to regain his strength. God help him, he needed his strength to keep from telling Josie what she could do with her tea and her songs and her never-ending string of questions.

“Do you have people frantic with worry over you?” she asked.

“People?”

“You know. A wife, kids, parents.”

The razor landed in the metal pan of water with a loud plop. Leaning back, Kane closed his eyes, listening to the scrape of the pan as she slid it away from her across the wood floor.

“No,” he said. “No wife, no kids, no parents. Karl Kennedy, the head of the bail enforcement agency in Butte is probably wondering whether I’m dead or alive, but he’s wondered that before and won’t get real concerned for another week or two.”