Holt's Gamble (11 page)

"I'm afraid that's not the worst of it," he told her weakly, suddenly certain his prayers would not be answered. "Get me a bucket—I'm gonna be sick."

Kierin sat frozen for a moment, her lips drawn apart in surprise. She blinked—her huge green eyes finally registering what her mind had been slow to grasp.

"Oh. Oh, dear." She flew into action, searching the barrel behind her for an appropriate container.

Holt groaned and she snatched a pot noisily from beneath a muffin form. She slid it in front of him just as he lurched forward and retched, emptying the contents of his stomach into the receptacle. All the while, he felt the soothing touch of her hand touching the back of his neck. He repeated the process several more times before he slumped back, exhausted, to the bed.

He lay panting, with one arm flung over his eyes, feeling as if the wagon had just rolled over him. He heard her slosh some water into the pot and spill the contents out the back of the wagon.

"The nausea will pass," she told him, wiping a cool damp cloth over his face. "You lost quite a lot of blood last night, you know. That's why you're so weak. Are... are you feeling any better now?"

Holt just groaned in return. He had never felt so god-awful in his life. His shoulder throbbed and he could feel the warmth of his own blood as it trickled down past the bandage toward his armpit.

Without asking his permission this time, Kierin started to work on his shoulder, easing the bandage off and pressing a clean cloth to the jagged, oozing wound. He gritted his teeth until she finished, glad for even that distraction from the wretched feeling in the pit of his stomach.

Kierin sat back on her heels, eyeing her handiwork.

"There," she said. "I've got the bleeding stopped but what you really need is a bed that stays still long enough to give that shoulder a chance to heal. When we stop for the nooning, I'll make you some chamomile tea from Jacob's herb bag to settle your stomach."

"I'm sorry you had to see that," Holt told her. Hell. It laid a man's pride nearly flat to have a woman hold his head while he puked his guts out. He couldn't remember ever having another woman do that for him since his mother, when he was a boy.

"It's nothing," Kierin told him gently, dismissing his apology with a tug on the quilts beneath his arms. "You need to rest now."

As if what had just happened was the most natural thing in the world for a woman like her, he thought. One minute slicing him up with her tongue and the next soothing him with a touch.

"I'll stay with you until you fall asleep," she continued without pause as he watched her, heavy-lidded.

Sleep?
Yes, sleep, he agreed mutely, unable to find cause to argue against it any longer.
Get your mind off her, Holt. It's just the fever making something out of nothing.
But as his eyes slid shut, his last thought was of the feel of her fingers on his neck. Touching him.

* * *

"Clay?"

The familiar male voice broke into that part of Holt's consciousness which hovered somewhere between sleep and wakefulness. The sudden stilling of the wagon's motion had roused him sometime before. Becalmed and adrift, he resisted the voice and lay savoring the quiet with his eyes closed.

There was a woman with him in his half-dream. She hovered over him silhouetted by the halo of sunlight behind her. Her gentle fingers brushed his face, beckoning him to come with her. Her loose, flowing hair glimmered like spun fire in the sun as she backed away from him. He rose to follow still unable to make out her features. Reaching out, he caught her by the waist and drew her to him. She laughed and pressed herself tantalizingly against his taut body. Cupping the siren's breast in the palm of his hand, Clay drew her closer still. She was soft and pliant beneath his touch, offering herself to him wordlessly. Her sweet, familiar scent poured through him, filling his senses.

"Amanda?" he whispered against her silken hair, already knowing—as one does in the certainty of dreams—that it wasn't her.

"Clay, are you awake?"

Wrenched again from his dream by the persistent voice, Clay grudgingly opened his eyes and blinked in the half-light. He bit back the curse he was about to hurl at the source of his irritation when he realized who it was.

"I am
now,"
Clay answered in a voice roughened with sleep.

Jim Kelly smiled crookedly at him in the dim light.

A swatch of blond hair fell across Kelly's brow and he swept it back with his hand.

"Sorry, Clay... Jacob told me you'd be awake. He said you'd had a rough time of it this morning. How are you doing?"

"Better—I think," Clay answered groggily, still disturbed by his dream. "Where are we?"

"Near the junction of the Kansas," Kelly replied. "We've covered about eight miles since this morning. We're pulled up for the nooning, but the train'll be moving out again soon."

"No sign of the posse?"

Kelly shook his head with a laugh. "Hell no. They're probably halfway to the Arkansas border by now."

"Thanks for that, Jim," Clay said. "I owe you one."

"Yeah. Don't worry, I'll collect. You just concentrate on getting better," Kelly told him. "You feel like talking about it now?"

"The truth?" Clay asked. "No."

"All right," Kelly conceded, accepting the delay. "But we
will
talk."

Clay took a deep breath and nodded to his old friend. He'd have a
lot
of explaining to do, but right now he was too tired. He knew his mind was too fuzzy to get all the facts straight. He hadn't even straightened them out for himself yet. Sleep beckoned him again as Kelly rose and stood in the cramped wagon.

"By the way, Clay," Kelly added before turning to leave, "you can tell me it's none of my business, but if she were my wife, I'd be thinking about putting down roots, raising a family. Not dragging her into the middle of some gunfight. She deserves better than that, you lucky son of a bitch."

Kelly swung out of the wagon, leaving Clay staring after him, in slack-jawed bewilderment. What the hell was he talking about?
Wife? Roots?
Had he missed something in that conversation, Clay wondered, or had Jim Kelly lost his marbles?

Clay frowned as his thoughts turned of their own accord to Kierin. Smudged and tired as she had looked earlier, her face still captured his imagination—delicate, wary, but somehow achingly vulnerable. He closed his eyes, trying to shut her out of his heart, to keep her at a safe distance. But in the recesses of his mind as he fell back asleep, her image mingled unsettlingly with the red-headed temptress of his dreams.

Chapter 5

"Darn it all," Kierin muttered when the evening breeze snuffed out the flame of yet another sulphur-tipped match. She tossed the cursed thing into the neatly arranged firewood and pulled a fourth match from the oilcloth pouch. She wet her index finger and stuck it up in the air to test the fickle current of air that seemed to move wherever she did. Angling her body against the breeze once more, she struck another match. The flame flickered threateningly, but caught at last on a bit of dry tinder beneath her carefully stacked cook fire.

She blew on her tiny fire and waved her hand furiously. She knew she must look ridiculous—on her hands and knees, breathing life into an obstinate tongue of flame which seemed to have a contrary mind of its own. She was covered with dirt smudges and her hair had escaped all its confines save a pin or two. But frankly, she was too tired to care.

The train had traveled some fifteen miles before Jim Kelly had called for the wagons to circle up for the night. Except when she had been in the wagon checking on Holt's condition, she had covered most of that distance on foot. In fact, only the small children were allowed to ride in the wagons for any amount of time. To save the ox teams the added strain of unnecessary weight, the rest of the people walked. And walked.

Kierin sat back on her bare heels and winced. Her feet were blistered and sore. She had slipped her shoes off at the river and soaked her feet in the cool water for a few minutes, which had helped some. But now, they were too tender to even consider putting her shoes back on. She tucked her toes under the hem of her dress and decided to ask Jacob for some salve to put on them when he got back from unharnessing the team.

Kierin gathered up a handful of tinder and fed it—one stick at a time—to the growing fire. The breeze worked
for
her now that the flame had caught. She turned in time to see Jacob and Jim Kelly walk into the campsite together. In Jacob's hands were two buckets of fresh water from the river.

An appreciative smile tipped the corners of Jacob's mouth as he set the buckets down. "Ain't as easy as it looks, is it?" He gestured at the fire.

Kierin laughed softly. "I don't think I've ever tackled anything more frustrating in my life."

"Clay awake?" Jim asked.

"He was asleep last time I checked. I don't know how, but he managed to sleep most of the day."

"Best thing for him," Jacob said, setting the black iron tripod over the fire for her. "I got's to go settle the stock in for the night. Be back directly."

"Jim, won't you stay for supper?" Kierin asked before he turned to go. "I can't guarantee how it will turn out, but you're welcome to share it with us."

A smile crossed the wagonmaster's face. "I doubt you could do to a stew what I do to a stew, Mrs. Holt. It's not pretty. I'd be obliged to share supper with you. I've got to see to the wagons before it gets dark, but I'll be back by the time it's ready, ma'am."

Kierin smiled. "See you then."

Jacob and Jim headed out toward the center of the circled wagons while Kierin fixed the supper. She hummed as she set to work hanging the pot over the fire and plopped chunks of carrots and potatoes from their store of fresh vegetables into the soup. She added a hunk of salted beef and some leftover navy beans from their noon dinner and stirred it up with seasonings she had found packed in among the dry goods. After she had mixed the biscuits and settled them in the Dutch oven over the glowing coals, Kierin sat back and savored the bubbling aroma of the meal, her mouth watering in anticipation. The day's walk not only had given her blisters, she thought, touching her tender heels, but had stirred up a growling appetite.

Kierin stoked the fire with more kindling and was lifting the pot lid to stir the stew when she heard the creak of the wagon springs. With her back to the wagon, she assumed that Jacob had returned from tending the animals.

"Dinner will be ready soon, Jacob," she told him without turning.

"Am I invited?" asked a voice that was definitely not Jacob's.

Kierin spun around to see Holt standing—or rather, swaying—beside the wagon, looking very pale and weak, but wearing the lopsided grin she remembered from the night before. He had pulled on a clean pair of Levi's and a light blue denim shirt. Unbuttoned, it only partially concealed his bandaged shoulder and did little to hide the muscular physique she had been trying to put out of her mind all day.

"Mr. Holt. What are you doing up? You should be in—" The scolding died on her lips when she saw him trying to blink back the dizziness that threatened to topple him. He listed perilously to one side, clutching the wagon for support. She jumped to her feet and caught him around the waist before he could fall. Her face pressed unavoidably against his broad chest and she felt the ragged pounding of his heartbeat against her ear. The flush of fever was still on him, but he was considerably cooler than he'd been earlier.

Holt leaned on her, silently cursing his weakness. The fever had claimed more from him than he had imagined. He dragged a hand across his face to clear the black spots from his vision. He felt Kierin push him back against the wagon, and hold him there, bracing both palms firmly against his chest.

"Are you all right?" she asked, searching his eyes.

All right? Hell no,
Holt thought, looking into the depths of her sea green eyes as he tried to sweep the dizziness from his brain. He swallowed hard.
Eyes like that could make a man forget himself
. He was reminded of all the times in the past twenty-four hours she'd saved his neck—all the times he'd wondered if he had merely conjured up what he had glimpsed again in her eyes just now.