He leaned over the fire and lit a small stick, holding it up to a cheroot held between his lips. He lit the smoke and rested back against his saddle again, smoking quietly. Dusk was settling into darkness, and it was cool tonight. He studied Miranda’s pale skin in the firelight, the fine lines of her small face. He wondered if she would remember his holding her, bathing her; and he wondered how he was supposed to forget the look of her, the beautiful, firm breasts he had been so careful not to touch with anything but the washrag, the flat stomach and slender thighs, the golden hairs that hid that sweet part of woman he had not enjoyed in a long time. For now it was not so hard to see and touch her without having thoughts of passion and desire; but what about when she got well?
He sighed, knowing what was happening to him and wanting to kick himself for it. These feelings were exactly what he had been afraid of, yet he had let himself go looking for her, fool that he was. Now he would have to fight his emotions all the way to Nevada, for he did not intend to bring the pain and sorrow into her life that any good woman would suffer hooking up with a man like him. No. He would simply get her to Nevada. That was what he had felt obligated to do. After that, he could get rid of the guilt and get on with his life, and she with hers. Maybe her brother had a place to live up there and she could have a home again.
Her eyes fluttered open then, and he watched her a moment, trying to determine if she was really alert or still in a daze. “Randy?”
She just stared at him at first, letting the reality set in. “Jake,” she whispered. “It really has…been you,” she added in a somewhat stronger voice. “I thought maybe…these past hours…days…I don’t even know how long it’s been. I thought it was…all in my mind.”
He picked up another blanket and came closer to put it over her, touching her cheek with the back of his hand. “I found you yesterday at that trading post. I took you out of there and I lanced your wound to get the infection out.”
Her eyes teared. “Those men…”
“I don’t want you to think about them. Two of them are dead, and a couple more are wishing they were dead.”
“What did you do…”
“Doesn’t matter.” He took hold of her hand, the cheroot still between his lips. “What matters right now is how that foot feels. I’d like you to try to eat something.”
How good his strong hand felt around her own small one. Jake was here! She could hardly believe her eyes. An outlaw, a wanted man, was looking after her. How odd that she felt safer with him than she had among the Jenningses or the men at the fort. The men at the fort. She shuddered at the vague memories, and Jake squeezed her hand.
“What did those men do to me?”
He rubbed a thumb over the back of her hand. “Nothing, at least not the worst. You’ve got nothing to be ashamed of, Randy. You were sick and they were filthy bastards who are wishing they would have taken better care of you. I think I’m more angry with the sons of bitches who left you behind in the first place. What the hell kind of so-called Christians were you traveling with, anyway?”
She sniffed back more tears at the hurt. “The reverend’s nephew…Clarence. He was eighteen. He kept…bothering me…got mad when I told him to…leave me alone…thought because I was a widow…” She closed her eyes. “He did his best…to make me look bad. The reverend and…his wife thought…I was a bad influence. When I got…the snakebite, it just gave them an excuse…to leave me behind…said I’d slow them down.”
Jake let out a sigh of disgust. “They’d better hope I never catch up with them. Hell, even I wouldn’t do a thing like that!”
Miranda looked at him through tears, thinking how handsome he looked in the firelight, the cheroot between his lips. Some might think he looked dangerous, but she knew better. No, you wouldn’t do that, would you, Jake? “I don’t…understand…how you found me. Or why.”
He sat down cross-legged beside her, wondering if she remembered what she had told him yesterday when he had held her. He hoped she did not, that it wasn’t even true. She shouldn’t love him. She was much too good for the likes of Jake Harkner. “I don’t understand the why myself,” he said aloud, “except that I felt like a bastard for not going with you like you asked. I kept thinking how guilty I’d feel if something happened to you. As it turns out, it’s a damn good thing I did try to find you. As for how, I just went to Independence and started asking around, rode poor Outlaw and my packhorse nearly into the ground trying to catch up. I just happened to stop at that trading post, spotted your trunk. I knew then something was wrong.”