Cowboys 08 - Luke (28 page)

"Men like me don't settle down."

"Why not?"

She held out her cup for more stew. It was delicious. She'd have to get used to the coffee, however.

"For the same reason men like Rudolf and your uncle can't stop fighting to keep their thrones. It's in our blood."

"You'll have to settle down when you get married." "I'll never get married."

"Everybody gets married."

"Not me."

"Why? I know," she said when he frowned, "it's not in your blood. My uncle says even the most restless soldiers settle down after a while. You're still young. In a few years you'll-"

"I'm thirty-four. I'm as settled as I'm going to get."

"Do you think Zeke or Hawk would be willing to run my ranch?"

"Why would you want a black man or a half breed?"

She didn't understand his ambivalence toward his adopted brothers. They seemed loyal to him, but he lashed out at them every now and then, almost as though he wanted to keep them from getting too close.

Or from allowing himself to feel close to them.

"That doesn't sound like something Isabelle would have taught you."

She'd said it without thinking, but his reaction was startling.

"You don't know Isabelle," he said, his tone brutally harsh. "You don't know what she would have said. You've been closed up in a palace your whole life. You don't know anything about ordinary people."

"I know enough to know any woman who would adopt ten boys wouldn't want them making slighting comments about each other."

He'd made her angry, and she'd answered him in an angry voice, but he seemed not to notice. For a moment he appeared to have left her, to be revisiting somewhere only he could see. His expression was haunted. For the first time she saw naked wanting. Only she had no idea what he was remembering, what he wanted so badly.

Then it was gone, as quickly as it had come.

"Let's have a look at your wound," he said. "It's been worrying me all day."

Chapter Seventeen

Luke knew better than to let himself remember. It started him wanting what he knew he could never find. There was no woman alive who could love him enough, trust in him with such unwavering faith, that he could actually start to believe he was worth saving. Isabelle and Jake had tried, but no one could make him into something he wasn't. He was irritated that Valeria, the most unsuitable person in the world, should start him remembering and hoping.

He got to his feet. "Does your arm hurt?"

It surprised him that she hadn't complained of it during the day.

"All of me hurts," she said with a failed effort to smile. "I couldn't notice anything as minor as a flesh wound."

"Wounds can become infected. Roll up your sleeve. I'll take a look at it."

He didn't like what he saw. The wound itself didn't look bad, but the flesh surrounding it had turned an angry red. "Are you sure this doesn't hurt?"

"Of course it hurts, but it's not unbearable."

"I didn't ask you that."

"It hurts. There, are you satisfied?" "No. I don't like the way it looks." "What's wrong?" "It looks red and raw."

"I got shot. How's it supposed to look?"

Red and raw. He didn't want to tell himself he wouldn't have been so worried if the wound had be longed to someone else. Still, while it didn't look bad, it didn't look good.

"I'll clean it again," he said. "With whiskey?" "It's all I've got."

"It's going to burn, isn't it?" "Probably."

He didn't ask if she'd faint. She hadn't yet, and he was positive she'd endured more this last week than in her whole life. She looked at him, her gaze open and curious.

Trusting.

"Have you ever been hurt before?" "Bruises and scrapes."

"Gunshot wounds sometimes take a while to heal. It varies from person to person."

"How about you?"

"I heal very quickly." "I thought you would." "Why?„

"You like it out here. You wouldn't if you were for ever trying to recover from some kind of hurt."

"I don't get hurt."

"I guess that would help."

Maybe discomfort made her sharp-tongued. Maybe she would develop enough backbone to survive. Now if he could just convince her not to marry Rudolf.

He took the top off the whiskey bottle and poured a generous amount over the wound. Valeria's sharp intake of breath told him it still hurt.

"You don't have to hold back," he said. "You can scream if you want. There's nobody out here to hear

you.
^,,

"I don't want to scream."

He could see it took a lot of self-control to speak calmly. The whiskey must have burned badly.

"I'd rather not announce my presence to every mountain lion within five miles. If they're going to have me for dinner, I intend to make them work for it."

He felt proud of her determination to keep things from getting too serious. "Don't worry. They're more afraid of you than you are of them."

"I don't see how that's possible. They have claws and teeth. I don't even have a riding crop."

"I'll protect you."

"You'll be asleep."

"The horses will let us know if any lions are around." "I'd prefer not to rely on a horse for my safety." "He'll be thinking more about his safety than yours." "That may be a comfort to you, but it doesn't do much for me."

He finished bandaging her arm. She hadn't cringed, whimpered, or jerked away when he rubbed salve into the wound. If this trip lasted long enough, she'd be more than a match for Rudolf.

"Do you sleep outside often?" Valeria looked around her as she asked the question.

The sun had dropped below the canyon walls long ago. The shadows had assumed a deep blue hue. Orange and purple streaked the sky above the canyon.

"Before this trip," Valeria continued, "I'd never slept anywhere without guards outside the gates, footmen in

the hall, a maid in the adjacent room. My bed was piled high with down mattresses and sheets of perfumed silk."

Again she looked around at the canyon. Shadows of the darkest night lurked under the branches of the willows and cottonwoods that lined the creek. Not a breath of air stirred. The scratching sounds of many tiny animals reached their ears. The rocks radiated heat absorbed during the day.

"Now you expect me to sleep on rocks under an open sky with nothing to protect me from wild animals." She shivered. "I probably won't get a wink of sleep."

"I can take care of that," Luke said.

"What are you doing to do?" she asked- when he got up and came toward her.

"I'm going to rub some of the kinks out of your muscles."

She looked nervous.

"All my muscles are fine," she said.

"I'll be the judge of that. Hand me your bedroll."

"What does it look like?"

"Like a blanket rolled up. You're leaning against it."

"Is this all I'll have between me and the rocks?"

"It's plenty." He spread the bedroll out and opened it up. "Crawl inside."

"I can't get up."

He'd suspected as much. "Give me your hand." He helped her to her feet. Her grimace told him all her muscles had gone stiff again. "Now lie down on your stomach." She knelt on the bedroll and gradually extended her limbs. She turned her head to one side, trying to look up at him. "What are you going to do?"

"Work the kinks out of your muscles. I'll start with your calves." Her muscles were hard as rock. He rubbed them gently until he felt them begin to relax. "Don't look so nervous. I'm not going to hurt you."

"I'm nervous because I can't see you." "Don't you trust me?"

"I don't know."

After what he'd done to her on 'the mountain, he deserved that. "I gave Hans my promise I'd get you safely to your ranch. There isn't much I haven't done at one time or another, but I've never gone back on a promise."

"Everybody breaks a promise at one time or another," she said.

"My word is all I have," he said. "If I break it, I have nothing."

"I don't understand."

He couldn't explain. Even his brother didn't understand.

"I'll massage your thighs now," he said, knowing it was likely to make her extremely uneasy._ "Try to stay relaxed. The looser you are, the sooner I'll be done."

Luke tried to tell himself he was performing an ordinary task of no particular significance. It worked for a short while, but touching Valeria's thighs shattered the illusion. He might fool himself into thinking her calves were no different from anybody else's, but her thighs were a whole different proposition. They were soft, rounded, and uncomfortably close to her buttocks. There was no way Luke could pretend there was anything ordinary about Valeria's bottom. He could pretend she was a useless ornament, but she was a beautifully crafted ornament, every detail of her body having been fashioned with meticulous care.

Luke tried to concentrate on the stiff muscles, to focus his attention on the gradual release of tension in her body, but his gaze kept straying to the rise of her bottom. His body began to swell. The tightness of his jeans, especially in the kneeling position, made that extremely uncomfortable.

"Are your shoulders tight?" he asked. He had to think of something else, or his hands were liable to wander a little too far north.

"I think so."

He shifted position. It was more difficult to loosen the muscles in her shoulders, but it was safer. "You're tight as a water barrel."

"I'm not used to riding so much."

She sounded sleepy. Apparently exhaustion had overcome her fear of sleeping in the open. He gradually reduced the pressure on her muscles until he was , barely touching her. In a few moments he was rewarded with the sound of her soft, regular breathing. He leaned back on his heels.

She was asleep.

He moved away quickly. He poured himself a cup of coffee and faced reality. He was interested in this woman, and it wasn't his usual kind of interest. He felt protective. Not because he'd been paid a very large sum of money to protect her. Not because he'd made a promise. Not because she was a woman and he was a man and men were supposed to protect women. Certainly not because she was a princess in search of a safe place to lay her royal head.

He was interested in her the way every other man was interested in that special woman when-and if-she came into his life. She touched something in him, brought a part of him alive he'd thought dead. She made him care, something he'd thought impossible.

But he didn't want to care, certainly not enough so he could be hurt. His parents hadn't been able to love him. No one else could.

Valeria awoke to the sound of a man speaking her name from a distance. She couldn't figure out why it should be

a man's voice. No man was allowed to enter her suite until she had breakfasted and dressed. She knew that hadn't happened because she was still in bed, though it was the most uncomfortable bed she'd ever slept in. Maybe that accounted for the feeling of stiffness in her body. She felt like she'd been made out of papier-mache.

"Valeria, wake up. Breakfast is ready."

She jerked awake. She remembered. That was Luke's voice. They had left the wagons and gone off by themselves. She tried to move and found her body was so stiff she couldn't sit up.

And she'd slept in her clothes! Nothing like this had ever happened. She changed her clothes from the skin out at least once every day. Everything she wore was washed or cleaned after a single use, even if she'd only worn it for a few hours. The thought of wearing clothes for a second day made her skin crawl.

"Are you awake?" Luke asked.

"Yes."

"You can't get up, can you?"

"No."

"Can you move anything?"

Her fingers and toes worked just fine. So did her feet. She could turn her head to one side, but the muscles in her shoulders, back, thighs, and calves were immobile. "Not enough to get up."

"It won't take me more than a few minutes to work out the stiffness," Luke said.

She remembered how he'd massaged her muscles last night. She'd fallen asleep in the middle of it! She didn't understand how she could have gone to sleep with a man's hands touching her body. Surely there wasn't enough fatigue in the world to justify that, but it must have been fatigue. It certainly wasn't indifference.

She nearly groaned aloud when he began to knead the muscles in her shoulders and neck. She awakened with a cramp one morning as a little girl, but she didn't remember it hurting as much as this.