“Better,” Adam answered. “I gave her something to help the pain so she can sleep. She was sent here because her brother thought she’d be safe.” He laughed, without humor.
“She’s in great danger. The men who took the stage would have her dead along with the others. I’ve heard of these men. They kill for fun and think to become legends.”
Adam watched the nun closely. She knew more than she was saying, but he’d learned it was a waste of time to inquire. “You’ve told Nance to be quiet about our guest?”
The nun nodded.
Adam waited a minute for her to add more. When she didn’t, he moved to the stairway. “I’ll check on Nichole, then call it a night.” He knew that once he turned on his study light, the night people would tap on his door if they needed him. Maybe one of them would have news of the robbers.
“I’ll help your friend all I can.” The nun went back to her prayers. “And another will watch over her, too.”
Adam wondered what more she could do as he climbed the stairs. When he opened Nichole’s door, he found her sitting on the edge of her bed still fully dressed.
“I thought you’d be asleep by now.” He stepped inside her room and closed the door.
“I couldn’t work the buttons with these bandages.” She looked up to him once more for help.
Adam knelt on one knee in front of her and began unbuttoning her shirt in what he hoped was a professional manner. “I’m sorry,” he said without looking at her face. If he looked in those green eyes, he’d have trouble remembering how buttons worked.
“I didn’t want to come,” Nichole whispered. “I wanted to stay with Wolf and fight for our land.”
“I understand.” He guessed she was trying to tell him that she hadn’t traveled all this way to see him.
“Wolf said to find any of the McLains. If you want, I could go to Daniel or Wes.”
He pulled her sleeves gently over her bandages as he removed her shirt. “Wes is somewhere on the range rounding up cattle. Daniel is in a settlement near Dallas. You’d probably be safest with him, if we could get you there in one piece.”
Standing, she held her arms away from her sides as he worked the buttons on her trousers. “You want me to go?”
Adam stopped with both hands on her waist ready to push her pants down. “No,” he answered, feeling her nearness as he always did. “I just want you safe.”
Nichole laughed. “I’ve never been safe.”
Pushing the trousers to the floor, he helped her out of them. She wore plain cotton leggings and a cotton chemise with lace at the shoulder. The undergarments were store-bought and plain but far more feminine than anything he’d seen on her.
As he stared, she smiled and touched her leg, pulling the material with a bandaged hand. “They’re called pantalettes. Funny name. Wolf bought them for me. I never had any woman clothes, but I like the feel of them next to me, even underneath my trousers.”
If he’d expected her to be embarrassed or modest, he was greatly disappointed. She turned around as if showing him a new outfit and not her undergarments. The line of her tall, lean body showed clearly. Her breasts were full, her waist small, her legs long and slender.
“I wasn’t sure I was wearing them right until one night at the stage station when I saw other women with them. We all took off our dresses and slept in these. It was almost like a party where everyone came in their underwear.”
Adam tried not to notice the way the cotton molded around her breasts or how the lace showed one shoulder almost bare through the fine material.
“You ever see such clothes?”
“No,” he lied. “They look quite serviceable to sleep in.”
Sweat dripped off his forehead, but he wasn’t about to tell her that he’d seen women dressed in chemises made of all lace and no cotton. They’d had big breasts and painted cheeks and offered their services by the hour… but they hadn’t been half as alluring as Nichole.
“You’d better get to bed. With the salve, your hands will feel much better in the morning.” He tried to sound like a stern father, or a worried doctor, anyone except a lover, which is exactly what he’d like to be.
“All right.” She climbed into the tiny cot of a bed and let him pull up the covers.
“Good night.” He leaned and planted a brotherly kiss on her forehead.
“Good night, Doc,” she answered, already half-asleep.
TWELVE
ADAM SPENT HALF the night thinking of reasons not to go up to Nichole’s room. She’d told him she hadn’t wanted to come to Texas. The burns on her hands must be hurting. She needed sleep. Wolf had sent her to him for protection.
So he paced his study, then went across to the two rooms he used as his doctor’s office. After cleaning and restocking everything he could think of, he wandered into the little room by the kitchen that he’d made his bedroom.
His room was stark, plain, and colorless, but it had two advantages. The one curtainless window faced the east and caught the morning sun and the room was always warm from the kitchen fire. But tonight the very walls were closing in around him.
He’d spent six months having conversations with an absent Nichole and now she was only a floor away. They had nothing in common, she wasn’t the kind of woman he should be attracted to, yet the need to see her was an ache in his gut the size of a cannonball.
He wanted to tell her what he’d done and how he helped people, all kinds of people. He wanted to remind her of that morning when he’d almost given up being a doctor. She’d verbally slapped him hard with her cutting words and lack of sympathy. She’d woken him up to the fact that he had to be satisfied with the best he could do sometimes. The effort counted, not just the outcome.
Adam finally convinced himself he would only check on her, and stepped into the darkened foyer in the center of the house. In the corner of his vision, where the last touch of moonlight lit the back of the stairs, he saw something move.
A chill slid down his spine like a crawling glacier. His first thought was that somehow Nichole had been followed and someone was trying to kill her.
But the figure moved past the stairs and into the kitchen at a slow, almost painful pace.
Adam pulled down his rifle he kept hidden over the foyer cabinet and followed. The people of the night knew he would help them without asking questions. They always came to the side door off his office. This was no patient creeping through his house. Even in shadow, this unknown guest was crippled and twisted with age, or pain.
The kitchen was dark with only a low glow from the banked fire to dust any light across the room. Before Adam’s eyes could adjust to the blackness, the back door opened slightly with a low creek, then closed just as quietly.
In long strides, Adam reached the door and stepped onto the porch. Nothing. The porch and the alley beyond was silent, deserted except for old Terry who raised his head in greeting.
Adam knelt and patted the dog. Terry was a good watchdog. He always barked when strangers stepped on the porch. Whoever passed through the house tonight was no stranger to the animal. Somehow the knowledge disturbed Adam far more than the possibility that someone might have tried to break in.
Silently, he moved inside and up the back stairs. When he opened the door to a storage room where they’d hidden Nichole, he was surprised to see the nun sitting by her bed. The room was cluttered with boxes and old furniture, but he noticed she had covered the boxes beside Nichole with a cotton tablecloth.
Adam straightened to his most professional manner. “How is she?”
“She’s restless.” The nun closed her prayer book. “I’m afraid she’ll wake herself by hitting her hands against something. She keeps moving, fighting in her sleep.”
He leaned over the bed. Nichole was sleeping, her hair tossed wildly, her face slightly sunburned. She’d never looked more beautiful. What was it about this woman that made him feel like a thunderstorm was going on inside him? She was as far from a lady as she could get with her short hair and men’s clothing. Yet she touched him in a way no one ever had, and he found the idea disturbing. Seeing her was like coming down with the croup and waking up to Christmas morning at the same time.