Elizabeth Lowell (6 page)

“Not all men are built like a side of beef,” she retorted, hurt because he had refused her touch. She reached into the herb pouch, brought out a twist of paper and sprinkled the white powder into another cup of the herbal tea. “Here. Drink this.”

“What is it?”

“Poison.”

“Fresh as paint, aren’t you, boy?”

“You’re half-right,” she muttered, but she said it so softly that Ty couldn’t hear. She silently vowed that she would make him see which half of the truth he knew—and that he would be crazy with desire before he figured it out.

He drank the contents of the cup, grimaced and gave his companion a green-eyed glare. “Tastes like horse piss.”

“I’ll take your word for it, having never tasted that particular liquid.”

He laughed, grabbed his left side and groaned. “Damn. Feels like a mule kicked me.”

“It won’t be so bad in a few minutes,” she said, standing up. “Then I’ll unwrap the bandages and take another look.”

“Where are you going?”

“To check on the soup.”

The thought of food made his salivary glands contract in anticipation.

“Hungry?” she asked wryly, recognizing the look.

“I could eat a horse.”

“Then I’d better warn Zebra to stay away from you.”

“That old pony would be too tough to eat,” he drawled, smiling slowly as he relaxed against the folded blankets beneath him.

Janna watched from a distance while Ty’s eyelids closed and the taut lines around his eyes relaxed as he drifted into sleep. Only then did she return to his side, kneel, and pull up the blanket so that his shoulders were covered once more.

Even with the overhang of red rock to reflect back the sun’s heat, she was afraid of his catching another chill. She didn’t know what she would do if he became ill again. She was exhausted from broken sleep or no sleep at all, and from worrying that she had helped Ty to escape from renegades only to kill him by dragging him through a cold rain into the secret valley.

These had been the longest days of Janna’s life since her father had died five years before, leaving his fourteen-year-old daughter orphaned and alone at a muddy water hole in southern Arizona. Watching Ty battle injury and fever had drained Janna’s very soul. He had been so hot, then drenched in cold sweat, then hot and restless once more, calling out names of people she didn’t know, fighting battles she had never heard of, crying out in anguish over dead comrades. She had tried to soothe and comfort him, had held him close in the cold hours before dawn, had bathed his big body in cool water when he was too hot and had warmed him with her own heat when he was too cold.

And now he flinched from her touch.

Don
’
t be foolish,
she told herself as she watched him sleep for a few moments longer.
He
doesn
’
t remember anything. He thinks you
’
re a skinny boy. No wonder he didn
’
t want you petting him.
And then,
How
can he be so blasted blind as not to see past these clothes?

As she went to the small campfire to check on the soup, she couldn’t help wondering if Ty would have responded differently if he had known she was a girl.

Her intense desire that he see her as a woman caught her on the raw. She knew she was becoming too attached to the stranger whom chance had dropped into her life. As soon as Ty was healed he would leave with as little warning as he had come, going off to pursue his own dreams. He was just one more man hungry for gold or for the glory of being the person to tame the spirit horse known as Lucifer.

And he was too damned thickheaded to see past the skinny boy to the lonely woman.

Lonely?

her hand froze in the act of stirring the soup. She had been alone for years but had never thought of herself as lonely. The horses had been her companions, the wind her music, the land her mentor, and her father’s books had opened a hundred worlds of the mind to her. If she found herself yearning for another human voice, she had gone into Sweetwater or Hat Rock or Indian Springs. Each time she went into any of the outposts of civilization, she had left after only a
few
hours, driven out by the greedy eyes of the men who watched her pay for her purchases with tiny pieces of raw gold—men who, unlike Ty, had sometimes seen past Janna’s boyish appearance.

Gloomily she studied the soup as it bubbled and announced its readiness in the blended fragrances of meat, herbs, and vegetables. She poured some soup into her steep-sided tin plate and waited until it cooled somewhat. When she was sure the soup wouldn’t burn Ty’s mouth, she picked up her spoon and went to the overhang.

He was still asleep, yet there was an indefinable change in his body that told her he was healing even as she watched. He was much stronger than her consumptive father had been. Though Ty’s bruises were spectacular, they were already smaller than they had been a few days before. The flesh covering his ribs was no longer swollen. Nor was his head where a club had struck.

Thick muscles and an even thicker skull,
she told herself sarcastically.

As though he knew he was being watched, Ty opened his eyes. Their jeweled green clarity both reassured and disturbed Janna. She was glad that he was no longer dazed by fever, yet being the focus of those eyes was a bit unnerving. He might have been just one more gold- and horse-hungry man, but he had the strength, intelligence, and determination to succeed where other men never got past the point of daydreaming.

“Are you still hungry?” she asked, her voice low and husky.

“Did you cook up poor old Zebra for me?”

The slow smile that followed his words made Janna’s nerve endings shimmer. Even covered with beard stubble and lying flat on his back, Ty was one of the most handsome men she had ever seen.

“No,” she said, smiling in return. “Zebra was too big for my pot.” With unconscious grace, Janna sank to her knees next to Ty, balancing the tin plate in her hands without spilling a drop. “A few weeks back I traded a packet of dried herbs, three letters, and a reading of
A Midsummer Night
’
s Dream
for thirty pounds of jerked beef.”

He blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

She laughed softly. “I’ll tell you while I feed you soup. Can you sit up?”

Cautiously, then with greater assurance, he sat up. He started to say that he could feed himself before he realized that he was light-headed. He propped his back against the gently sloping stone cliff that was both wall and, eventually, ceiling to the natural shelter. The blanket covering him slid from his shoulders, down his chest, and finally rumpled across his lap.

Her pulse gave an odd little skip at the sight of the dark, masculine patterns of hair curling out from beneath his bandages and down his muscular body. The temptation to trace those patterns with her fingertips was almost overwhelming.

Don
’
t be a goose
,
she told herself firmly.
I
’
ve been washing, feeding and caring for Ty like a baby for four days. I
’
ve seen him wearing nothing but sunlight and soapy water, so why on earth am I getting all foolish and shivery now?

Because he
’
s awake now, that
’
s why.

Ty looked down at his own body, wondering why he was being stared at. What he saw made him wince. Spreading out from beneath his rib bandage were bruises every color of the rainbow, but the predominant hues were black and blue with garish flourishes of green.

“I’m a sight, aren’t I?” he asked wryly. “Looks worse than it feels, though. Whatever medicine you’ve been using works real well.”

She closed her eyes for an instant, then looked only at the plate of soup in her hands. The surface of the liquid was disturbed by delicate rings, the result of the almost invisible trembling of her hands while she had looked at him.

“Don’t go all pale on me now, boy. You must have seen worse than me.”

Boy.

And thank God for it,
she reminded herself instantly.
I have no more sense than a handful of sand when he looks at me and smiles that slow, devil-take-it smile.

But, God, I do wish he knew I was a woman!

She took a deep, secret breath and brought her scattering emotions under control.

“Ready?” she asked, dipping the spoon into the soup.

“I was born ready.”

She put the spoon into his mouth, felt the gentle resistance of lips and tongue cleaning the spoon, and nearly dropped the plate of soup. He didn’t notice, for the taste of the soup had surprised him.

“That’s good.”

“You needn’t sound so shocked,” she muttered.

“After that horse piss you’ve been feeding me, I didn’t know what to expect.”

“That was medicine. This is food.”

“Food’s the best medicine save one for what ails a man.”

“Oh? What’s the best?”

Ty smiled slowly. “When you’re a man you won’t have to ask.”

The spoon clicked rather forcefully against his teeth.

“Sorry,” Janna said with transparent insincerity.

“Don’t look so surly, boy. I felt the same way you did when I was your age. You’ll grow into manhood with time.”

“How old do you think I am?”

“Oh...thirteen?”

“Don’t try to be kind,” she said between her teeth.

“Hell, boy, you look closer to twelve with those soft cheeks and fine bones, and you know it. But that will begin to change about the time your voice cracks. It just takes time.”

Janna knew that there would never be enough time in the whole world for her to grow into a man, but she had just enough common sense and self-control to keep that revealing bit of truth to herself. With steady motions she shoveled soup into Ty’s mouth.

“You trying to drown me?” he asked, taking the soup from her. “I’ll feed myself, thanks.” He crunched through a pale root of some kind, started to ask what it was, then decided not to. The first thing a man on the trail learned was that if it tastes good, don’t ask what it is. Just be grateful and eat fast. “What’s this about herbs and Shakespeare and letters?” he asked between mouthfuls of soup.

“My father and I used to divide up a play and read parts to each other. It helped to pass the time on the trail. I still have a trunk of his books,” she said, helplessly watching the tip of Ty’s tongue lick up stray drops of broth. “When I need supplies, I’ll go to the Lazy A or the Circle G and write letters for the cowhands. Most of them can’t read anything but brands, so I’ll also read whatever letters they’ve saved up until someone like me happens by.”

Ty looked at the thick, dark lashes, crystalline eyes and delicately structured face of the youth who was much too pretty for the man’s comfort. “Where did you go to school?” he asked roughly.

“On the front seat of a buckboard. Papa had a university degree and a case of wanderlust.”

“What about your mother?”

“She died when I was three. Papa told me her body just wasn’t up to the demands of her spirit.”

The spoon hesitated on the way to Ty’s mouth. He pinned Janna with an intense glance. “When did your Daddy die?”

She paused for an instant, thinking quickly. If she told Ty her father had died five years before, he would ask how a kid under ten had survived on his own. If she told Ty that she was nineteen, he would realize that the only way a nineteen-year-old boy could lack a deep voice and a beard shadow and muscles was if said boy was a girl wearing men’s clothing. She wanted Ty to figure that out for himself—the hard way.

“Papa died a few seasons back,” she said casually. “You lose track of time living alone.”

“You’ve lived alone since then?” he asked, startled. “The whole time?”

She nodded.

“Don’t you have any kin?”

“No.”

“Wouldn’t any of the townspeople let you trade room and board for work?”

“I don’t like towns.”

“Surely one of the ranches would take you on as a cook’s helper or fence rider. Hell, if you can tame a mustang, there isn’t a ranch anywhere that wouldn’t take you on as a mustanger,” Ty added, disturbed at the thought of an orphaned child wandering homeless over the land. “You could make a decent living catching and breaking horses for the rough string.”

“I don’t catch mustangs,” she said flatly. “Too many of them refuse to eat once they’re caught. I’ve seen them starve to death looking over a corral fence with glazed eyes.”

“Most mustangs accept men.”

Janna simply shook her head. “I won’t take a mustang’s freedom. I’ve gentled a few ranch-bred horses for women’s mounts or for kids, but that’s all.”

“Sometimes a man has to do things he doesn’t want to in order to survive,” Ty said, his eyes narrowed against painful memories.

“I’ve been lucky so far,” she said quietly. “More soup?”

Slowly, as though called back from a distance, he focused on Janna. “Thanks, I’d like that,” he said, handing over the plate. “While I eat, would you mind reading to me?”

“Not at all. Anything in particular you want to hear?”

“Do you have
Romeo and Juliet?
”

“Yes.”

“Then read to me about a woman more beautiful than the dawn.” He closed his eyes and smiled. “A well-bred lady of silk, softer than a summer breeze, with pale hair and skin whiter than magnolias, and delicate hands that have never done anything more harsh than coax Chopin from a huge grand piano...”

“What’s her name?” Janna asked tightly.

“Who?”

“The silk lady you’re describing.”

“Silver MacKenzie, my brother’s wife.” Ty’s eyes opened, clear and hard. “But there are other women like her in England. I’m going to get one.”

Abruptly Janna came to her feet. She returned a few minutes later with a heavy book tucked under her left arm and carrying a bowl of soup with her right hand. She gave Ty the soup, opened the worn book to
Romeo and Juliet,
Act II, Scene II
,
and began to read:

“‘But, soft! What light through yonder window breaks?