“Sit down before you fall down!” Jessie commanded in a no-nonsense voice from behind him. “Honestly, if you were this tired you should have said something.”
He hadn’t known she was watching. “Didn’t want to trouble you,” he offered lamely.
She sighed as she grabbed some grass and finished rubbing down Goldenrod for him, saying,
“There’s food by the fire. White Thunder’s sister prepared it for us. Help yourself.”
“I think I’ll just get some sleep.”
“You’ll eat first,” Jessie said firmly. “You’ll need the energy to withstand tomorrow’s ride.”
Her tone promised that the next day would be another grueling one. “What’s the hurry?” Chase grumbled.
“I told you. I don’t like your company. The sooner we get back the better.”
Chase scowled. “Then by all means I’ll eat. We can’t have you fretting over the few extra hours you might have to spend with me.”
“Thank you.”
How she drove him with that unbending hostility. Whoever would believe they had shared a night of the most incredible loving he had ever experienced?
He sat down and picked through the food laid out on a thin hide wrapping. He had eaten several pieces of meat by the time Jessie sat down. She sat next to him, with the food between them. Her expression was as unfriendly as possible.
“I’m in pain, Jessie,” he ventured.
“From what?” Her tone was a little less frosty.
“From this gash in my side.”
“How bad is it?”
“I didn’t get a good look at it,” he confessed.
He managed to get the left sleeve of his jacket off. When it fell back, the blood soaking his shirt became visible. He felt Jessie’s shock and was pleased. Then he looked down at himself and saw the blood ruining a damn good pair of pants.
Jessie was up instantly, helping him remove his jacket all the way. She went for his shirt next, pulling it out of his pants and over his head. She said nothing until after she had unwrapped the bandage and inspected the wound carefully, making him move closer to the firelight so she could see.
“It’s not so bad,” she murmured. “All that jarring from the ride kept it from clotting is all.”
Chase raised his arm to get a better look while she went to the creek for water. It looked bad to him, a good quarter-inch deep and at least ten inches long. Jessie hadn’t been at all squeamish, he reminded himself.
When she came back, she carefully cleaned the cut. Chase was gazing at her face, the way her brow wrinkled in concentration, the way she chewed at her lower lip. She was too close, and he was beginning to think about things he shouldn’t think about.
Jessie had to use the same bandage for want of another, but offered, “If you have a change of shirt, I’ll wash this one for you.”
“In my saddle bag. How about washing my pants, too?”
“You’ll need your pants for warmth. It’s going to get chilly tonight.”
“All I need is a blanket and a warm woman.” Chase grinned.
“All you’ll get is a blanket,” she retorted.
Chase was grinning when she tossed his clean shirt and a blanket at him before she went back to the creek. She was less hostile, and he was delighted.
He had the blanket wrapped around his waist and was struggling to get the shirt buttoned when Jessie came back. She finished buttoning it for him, then helped him get his jacket back on. He lay down, and she knelt beside him to straighten the blanket. When she leaned over him, his arm came around her and drew her close. She didn’t think to pull back before it was too late. He whispered, “Thanks,” and then his lips brushed hers lightly. His arm fell away, and his eyes closed. Jessie moved away to settle down a few feet from him. She lay facing him, and for a long while she watched him as he slept.
Chapter 20
JESSIE stirred the pot of beans one more time before she brought it to the table. Chase was already helping himself to the hot biscuits and fried rabbit. She’d made a suet pudding for later, just like Jeb’s, with the raisins, nuts, brown sugar, and spices she’d found.
They were making use of the supply shack on the north range. Jessie had pushed hard, trying to get home before the day was out, but it just hadn’t worked out that way. The sky had clouded up, and it had gotten dark early, with the ranch still three hours away.
She had kept her distance since that surprising kiss, and he hadn’t made any other overtures. Still, being so near him was disconcerting. She needed a distraction.
“Where did you learn to handle a knife so well?” Jessie asked tentatively.
Chase didn’t look up. “San Francisco. I met an old sea captain who taught me a few tricks so I could handle myself on the waterfront. That waterfront wasn’t the most sociable of places at night, or even during the day for that matter.”
“Why were you there?” Jessie prompted.
“I worked there for a few years.”
“Doing what?”
Chase looked up at last. “My, but you’re full of questions tonight.” He smiled at her.
“Do you mind?”
“No, I guess not. I was a dealer in a gambling house. It’s where I got my first taste of gambling.”
“You like to gamble?”
“You could say that.”
“San Francisco is a long way from Chicago. Had you always lived in Chicago before San Francisco?”
“I was born in New York, but my mother moved to Chicago when I was a baby. She was hiding, really.
Her first name was Mary, but she changed the last to Summers. She never did tell me what her real last name was.”
There was the bitterness in his tone that had been there before when he spoke of his mother. “Hiding from what?” Jessie asked hesitantly.
“I’m a bastard,” he replied nonchalantly. “She couldn’t bear the shame of it. She never let me forget it, either, or that my father hadn’t wanted her or me. I sometimes wonder, though. When she was drunk, she would let certain things slip that she denied when sober, like the fact that she hadn’t actually seen my father once she knew she was pregnant.”
“You think maybe he never knew about you?”
“It’s possible,” he replied. “I mean to find out, someday. But anyway, she brought us to Chicago and started a seamstress shop that did very well. She met Ewing through the shop. I was ten when he started bringing his mistresses there for fancy outfits. He was looking for a respectable wife, one with a child, and the widow Summers seemed ideal. She didn’t love him, though. And it wasn’t as if we needed his wealth, for we were doing fine. But she claimed to love him. That was her excuse, when all she really wanted were the luxuries his wealth could buy.”
“Was that so wrong? It couldn’t have been easy, raising you alone. Perhaps your bitterness stems from having to share her after all the years when it was only the two of you.”
“Share her?” Chase said. “I hardly ever saw her. She was always at social functions, on shopping sprees. She turned me over to Ewing completely.”
“You resented that?”
“I’ll say! Here’s a perfect stranger treating you like you were born to him, but with an iron hand. Beating you for the slightest wrong, the tiniest assertion of your own will.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. I was only under his rule for six years.”
Jessie knew he was trying to make light of something that held terrible memories. He was frowning at some unbidden memory, and she left him to himself for a while.
“You left home when you were only sixteen?” she ventured a little later. “Weren’t you frightened? How did you manage, so young?”
“You could say I joined another family, the Army.”