“He sounds dark and mysterious to me,” Katlyn said around a mouthful of biscuit. “My kind of man,” she added, laughing when Isabel shook her head and shot her a disapproving look.
Esme came into the kitchen rubbing at the arthritis knotting her thin hands. “Good morning. I am glad you lit the stove so early, Isabel, there is a chill in the air today.”
Matt moved from Isabel to Esme. “Mornin’, Nana. It’s not cold, you’re just always cold.”
“That I am. It is because I am an old woman.”
“I like you old.”
Nate rolled his eyes at his brother. “That’s ’cause you never knew her any other way,” Nate interjected. “Mama says Nana was a real beauty when she was a girl. Isn’t that right, Mama?”
“Of course it is right,” Esme answered for Isabel. “That’s why your Mama is so beautiful. When she takes time to brush her hair and change her dress, that is.”
Instinctively, Isabel tried to smooth her wayward mass of hair. She realized in her rush to get up and dressed this morning she’d forgotten to braid her hair. Deftly, she twined heavy locks into a long braid and tied it with a bit of ribbon she kept in her apron pocket.
“Better?”
Esme answered with an ambiguous shrug.
Katlyn stifled a giggle, smiling back ruefully at Isabel as she put a hand to her own wayward hair. Though they looked very different—Isabel favoring their father and Katlyn her mother—they both laughed often over their shared inability to ever look neatly polished.
While the boys and Katlyn devoured the biscuits, Isabel organized her thoughts, deciding what medicines to take to the Silver Rose. She glanced outside, looking over the bunches of herbs, withered and faded by the sun, swinging on the long poles outside her windows. A dozen chimes, made from broken glass, bones, and stones, hung from the eaves and sang odd faraway music in cadence with the wind. The air smelled like pine and wood smoke and the scent of the drying herbs.
The chimes sang, a lark called, and Isabel suddenly felt fiercely glad to be here. This was her home, her family, and nothing and no one could take them from her.
Intending to take care of her chore at the Silver Rose before the town was in full swing, she packed up her basket. She then quickly did the dishes, and scurried the boys out the door with her, watching them until they disappeared around the corner on their way to lessons with Katlyn.
At this time of the morning, there was no one about to care whether she came or went or what business she had at the saloon. Isabel walked straight in the front door. Three cowboys and a man she recognized as a fur trader, drinking Elish’s dubious coffee and laughing with Chessie and Anita over the night’s escapades, barely glanced her way. Elish, unpacking a crate of whiskey bottles, looked up and grinned when the slatted wooden doors swung shut behind her.
“Well, if it ain’t our angel of mercy. You must be here to tend to our one-legged guest. I hope he’s still livin’. I hate it when they breathe their last in one of our beds.”
Isabel smiled. “I don’t think you have to worry about this one dying. He seems to me the kind of man who’ll live just to spite everyone.”
“Even you? From the way Chessie tells it, it was even odds whether you was gonna cut out that bullet or his heart.”
“He wasn’t particularly glad to see me, but he doesn’t have a choice.”
Isabel climbed the stairs and, at the top, didn’t hesitate in going to the man’s room. She knocked lightly at his door and, getting no reply, pushed it open and went in.
He lay sprawled out on the narrow bed, half covered by the thin quilt, his clothes in a heap on the floor, one arm flung over his head. He looked asleep but when she moved beside him and laid down her basket, his eyes snapped open and he half rose up. They stared at each other, his wary dark eyes meeting her cool blue ones.
For a moment, Isabel had the uncomfortable feeling of being stripped bare, from skin to soul. His eyes, she noticed, weren’t brown, but a deep gray, and from the look in them she got the impression he was a man who kept secrets, and who guessed them in others. Nana was right. A dangerous man.
Several beats of silence ticked off before he ended the standoff between them, flopping back down against the pillow, not bothering to pull up the quilt bunched around his waist. The morning light gilded his skin, defining the planes and valleys of his bared body, and picking out a scar running diagonally from shoulder to collarbone, and another slashed horizontally, just under his rib cage.
“You again. I thought you were a bad dream.”
“Did you also dream the bullet out of your leg? If so, I wish you would teach me the trick. It would make my work so much easier.”
“What are you doing here?”
“I came to make sure you hadn’t died in Elish’s bed. He hates that.”
“Then you’ve done your duty. You can leave me to suffer in peace.”
Isabel ignored his nasty expression. “I fully intend to, after I take a look at that leg.” She rummaged in her basket for a jar of salve and the ingredients for a new poultice. Without asking his permission, she pulled back the quilt enough to bare his leg to her scrutiny.
“Anything else you’d like to see while you’re down there?” Jake asked, annoyed when she didn’t so much as bat an eyelash.
“Nothing I haven’t seen before. Are you still in pain?”
“It’s nothing a bottle of whiskey won’t cure. Look, lady—” Jake propped up on one elbow and trapped her wrist with his free hand “—I’m sure you do a real nice job soothing stomachaches and curing skinned elbows, and you did get the bullet out of my leg. For that I’m much obliged. But your weeds are more likely to kill me than do any good and I’m not anxious to be knocking on hell’s door any earlier than necessary. I’ll send one of the girls along to pay you for your trouble.”
“Mister, for what I’ve been through trying to help you, you can’t afford my trouble. Now let go of me or I’ll yell loud enough to bring Elish and every cowboy in the saloon up here with guns drawn.”
He held on hard for a moment, his pulse thrumming against her skin. Isabel knew he sized her up with his eyes before releasing her wrist. She resisted the urge to rub at her skin, feeling the impression of his strength long after his physical touch.
“I’ll give you one thing, lady, nothing much seems to rattle you. Remind me to never play poker with you.”
“I’m not interested in playing any game with you. I came here to check your wound and that’s what I’m going to do. Now be still. Is this tender?” Isabel ran her fingers over the wound, probing gently.
Jake started at the touch of her, jolted more by her tenderness than the pain. “It hurts like hell. Did you bring any whiskey?”
“No, Mr.-whatever-your-name-is—I didn’t. I’m not a saloon keeper.” She thrust the jar of salve at him. “Here, put this on it daily for the next few weeks, if you have any desire to keep your leg from
