The Bride of Willow Creek(59)

She dipped a laundered rag in the hot water on the back of the stove, wrung it out over the sink, then folded the cloth into a pad. “Put this on your eye. If we’ve caught it soon enough, the heat will prevent further discoloration.”

He drew back. “It’s hot.”

“It’s supposed to be.”

Swearing and grinding his teeth, he let her dab alum on his nose. Stepping back, Angie nodded with satisfaction when the bleeding stopped. Now to clean him up.

“Can you get out of that shirt by yourself or do you need help?” At once she saw that he couldn’t hold the hot pad to his eye and take off his shirt.

Even anxious and feeling squeamish about the blood, stripping off his shirt made her face flame. His bare skin felt firm and warm beneath her fingers, and she was very aware that she was touching bare parts of his body that she’d never touched before. Once she had his shirt off, she wet another rag and bathed blood smears off his throat.

“Stop looking at me,” she said in an odd voice. She stood close beside him and his naked chest. Close enough to feel the warmth of his body, to feel his breath on the back of her hand. Close enough to sense the speculation behind his steady gaze. Flustered, she lowered her eyes.

Silky dark hair covered his chest. That was a surprise. As was her sudden longing to run her palms over the strands. The color in her face intensified, annoying her no end, especially since he watched her. She was no longer a romantic, dreamy maiden. She was a no-nonsense adult who could doctor a grown man without swooning. Surely.

When she realized she was washing the same spot on his throat over and over, she made a sound of disgust and tossed the bloody rag into the sink on her way to the pile of folded laundry awaiting tomorrow’s iron.

Determined not to respond to bare skin and twitching muscle, she helped him into a clean work shirt, rolled up the sleeves for him, then took two beers from the icebox. Despite her conviction that beer was not a lady’s beverage, she was beginning to enjoy the taste. And right now she needed something to calm her thoughts. She kept seeing Sam in her mind, walking out of the gloaming covered in blood. Her heart had stopped and the world had gone black in front of her eyes. As for taut bare skin and muscles so defined she could have traced them with her fingertip—those disturbing images could wait to be considered later.

“All right,” she said, sitting down at the table and drawing a deep breath. “What happened?”

“How long do I have to hold this heat on my eye?”

“At least twenty minutes. What happened?”

“A piece of steak works better.”

“We don’t have a piece of steak. Sam, if you don’t tell me what happened, I’m going to black your other eye!”

He took a deep pull from the beer bottle and exhaled slowly. “It’s a long story.”

Angie threw up her hands and glowered. “I’m not going anywhere. We have all night.” Which was another unnerving thought that didn’t bear close examination.

First he explored his ribs with his fingertips. Then he felt along his jaw. Examined his bruised knuckles. “The trouble started last autumn,” he said finally. “After the court ruled that I had a year to fix Daisy’s foot. That’s when the first fire occurred, at the new union   Hall I was building. The hall was almost complete. My crew and I had it dried in; we were halfway through the finish work. Then one night it burned to the ground. Nothing left standing except the chimney chases.”

Angie started to protest. What did an event last autumn have to do with a bloody fight tonight? But the word fire flashed her mind backward to his burned jacket. Best to let him tell it in his own way.

“The cause of the fire was arson.” Sam placed the beer bottle on the table and turned it between his fingers. “While the police and the union   people sorted it out, my crew and I moved on to the Whittier job. Mick Kelly was the original contractor and he’d gotten the shell of the house up before his horse fell and crushed him. Whittier hired me and my crew to dry it in before the snow and then to return and finish the house this spring.”

“ ‘Dry it in’ means getting the roof on, right?”

He nodded and ran his free hand through his hair. At some point he’d lost the twine that tied his hair back, and waves of dark hair hung over his shoulders. With his hair loose and his collar open, with his nose and eye swollen, he made Angie think of a pirate fresh from battle. Wildly handsome, powerful, and slightly dangerous. A soft breath stuck in her throat.

“We got the roof on, and then Whittier’s place burned down. Nothing was left standing but the stonework around the foundation. The arsonist didn’t try to make it look like an accident.”