Cindy Holby (5 page)

She’d been expecting a boarder, not a patient. She’d hoped Pastor Key would spend his time visiting the ranchers and miners that lived around Angel’s End and his limited time at her house would be used for private prayer and preparation
for his Sunday sermons. Dusty had begrudgingly agreed to feed him his three meals a day. Maybe both of them needed a lesson in giving.
And who better to deliver it than a preacher?

His room was sort of ready. She’d been postponing moving Banks up to the loft, certain the preacher would not show up until spring. Jim was supposed to hang doors to the bedrooms, once he got done making them. She could only hope that it wouldn’t take him too long to finish them.

Banks stood on the porch. Luckily he had enough sense to put his coat on but the door was open, which meant the house was filling up with cold air. Dodger barked joyfully. Obviously proud of his success, he waited on the porch for Leah to congratulate him. All she could do was touch his head as she hustled Banks inside.

“Go get your stuff from your room,” she instructed. “The new preacher is here and he’s hurt.”

Banks watched wide-eyed as Ward and Jake stomped on the porch and into the house with their burden. “What happened to him?”

“He got shot,” Ward said.

“Ward!” Leah hissed.

“Hey, it’s a fact of life. You think he’s going to grow up out here and not know what guns do?” They stood in the hallway as wind brushed by them from the open door.

“Ward, Banks is Leah’s son. She gets to decide how to raise him,” Jake said.

“Where are we putting the not-shot patient?” Ward asked dryly.

“In here.” Leah led them to the second bedroom, behind the parlor and across from hers. She threw back the blanket and quilt. Turned up the lamp that hung from a hook over the bedside table, out of Banks’s reach.

“Banks. Stuff. Dodger. Out.” Everything was happening too fast. There were six bodies in the room, counting
Dodger. Jake, Ward and their burden seemed impossibly big in such a small space. It was all too much. More than she could handle.

“Let’s get these clothes off of him or he’ll wind up soaking the bed when he thaws out,” Ward said. “We’ll hold him and you strip him.” The preacher was propped between the two men with his head lolling forward, oblivious to everything. Even bent over as he was, Leah could see that he was taller than both Ward and Jake.

“I’ll do it.” Jake pulled the coat down over the side he held.

“Geez, Jake, Leah was married. I’m pretty sure she’s seen a naked man before.” Ward seemed to be enjoying himself at both Leah and Jake’s expense. He was usually busy snarling and being the voice of doom and gloom. “Or have you decided to go sweet on the preacher man?”

Jake didn’t dignify Ward’s comments with an answer. “I swear Ward, I’m going to strike you dead unless God does it first.” Leah hissed. “Banks is standing right here.” Indeed he was. His bright blue eyes looked between the three men and Leah with concerned fascination. “Take your stuff to my room sweetie, you can sleep with me tonight.” She knew she wouldn’t be in her bed this night and it was freezing in the loft. “Take Dodger with you.”

Between the two of them Jake and Ward managed to get the heavy coat off, and followed that with a black frock coat. They held him up and looked at Leah. With a sigh she attacked his shirt. “Sit him down on the bed so I can get those clothes off.”

“Woohoo!” Another cold draft of air accompanied Bettina’s arrival. Leah didn’t bother unbuttoning the preacher’s shirt, instead she jerked it, and the thick undershirt beneath, over his head.

“For heaven’s sake Leah, what are you doing to our minister?” Bettina cried out from the hallway.

Leah looked down. Blood gushed from his wound. In her haste to remove his clothing, she’d torn off the bandage frozen to his skin. Dang it all! Leah moved quickly to stop the flow of blood. She refused to let another man die under her care.

“P
lease God…I can’t do this. Not again.” Leah stood in the doorway, looking in on her patient. How long she had stood there she couldn’t say. She needed to move, to do something else for him. But what? Her grandmother’s cuckoo clock, which hung between Banks’s room—
no Pastor Key’s room
—and the parlor, popped out of its tiny door and announced the time with twelve quick repetitions of its song. The door to its house snapped shut and the clock resumed its steady tick-tick-tick. Outside the wind still howled and tiny shards of ice pelted against the windows along the back of the house. Behind her she heard the softly comforting breathing of her son as he slept. Dodger lay at the foot of the bed, gently snoring in time with Banks.

The scene before her was not so peaceful. Pastor Key had been lucky, according to Jake. The bullet had gone straight through, evident when they found the exit wound
in his back. It hadn’t been too difficult to get the bleeding stopped, even though she was as nervous as a cat in a room full of rockers, what with Bettina telling her everything she did was wrong and Gus wringing his hands at the new minister’s unexpected arrival and impending death. Thank goodness they’d both gone home, and Ward soon after them.

She’d done all she could for the wound. The trouble was, she didn’t know what more she could do for the fever. Her patient wrenched his head back and forth on the pillow with jerking motions. She could only imagine that he was lost in dreams of some sort, brought on by the fever.

Jake came through the back door with another load of firewood and Leah ran to push the door shut behind him. “You don’t have to do this, Jake.”

“You’ve got enough on your plate without having to worry about the fire going out.” Jake walked down the hall and into the parlor and dropped his load on the already overflowing wood box. “By the way, I found a rattler curled up in your stack.” He looked over his shoulder at her while he returned a few stray pieces. “He’s not feeling the cold anymore.”

Leah suppressed a shiver. She hated snakes with a passion. And once more she was indebted to Jake. The side of beef in her cellar was courtesy of him. She was shameless where Banks was concerned and Jake well knew her weakness.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to stay here?” he asked.

“I’ll—We’ll be fine,” she assured him. “You’ve got a ranch to take care of.”

“There won’t be much ranching going on while this snow keeps up.” Jake stood, brushed off his hands and looked at her, his clear gray eyes, as always, looking for some sign from her.

Leah gathered her shawl around her shoulders.

“Yeah…well…I guess I’ll be going.” He pulled on his heavy coat, hanging over the back of a chair. “I’ll be at Ward’s if you need anything.”

“Thanks, Jake.” Leah quickly looked away. The constant disappointment that showed in his eyes was more than she could stand at the moment. She leaned her forehead against the door when it closed behind him. No matter how much Jake wanted it, she couldn’t bring herself to love him. She respected him, liked him, enjoyed his company, but the only thing she felt for him was friendship. Was it wrong of her to think he deserved more in a wife? He was a wonderful man, strong, generous and handsome. He should have a woman who was madly in love with him.

I’m just being selfish.
Was it greedy of her to want the same love she’d had with Nate twice in one lifetime? Or had she lost her one chance of a happily-ever-after ending to an outlaw with a gun?

He’d be such a great father for Banks…

“NO!”

Leah ran to Pastor Key’s bedside. He struggled beneath the weight of the sheets and blankets. He pushed them down below his waist and his arms flailed at his hips, searching for something seen only in his feverish state.

“Shhh,” Leah said. She smoothed his damp, dark hair back from his broad forehead. He responded to her touch, turning his face into her hand. He inhaled against her palm as if he were Dodger, tracing a strange scent. He murmured something in an unrecognizable language and fumbled with the blankets.

Leah rinsed out a cloth from the bowl of melted snow on the bedside table and placed it on his forehead. It quieted him somewhat, so she moved the chair closer and sat down to study her patient in peace.

The lamplight cast a small circle of light over his head
and chest. His hair was a rich dark brown, and long, as if he’d missed a few haircuts. It curled in more directions than she could count, wild from his snowy ride and fever. His forehead was broad, his eyes deep set beneath thick dark brows.

I wonder what color his eyes are…Brown?

His nose was long and straight, perfectly proportioned to the shape of his face. She took it all in as she wrung out the cloth once more; his fever was so hot that the cloth dried almost as soon as she put it on his forehead.

“No,” he said again.

Leah stared at his mouth. The flash of teeth when he spoke showed them to be perfectly aligned and surprisingly white. His lower lip was thicker than the top and his mouth mobile, moving in interesting ways as he drifted into his conversation with whatever demons haunted his dreams.

I wonder what he looks like when he smiles…

Leah wrung out the cloth again. His chest was covered with sweat so she wiped across it, amazed at the breadth of it, and the smoothness. Nate’s chest had been sprinkled with crisp blond curls so the absence fascinated her. He was dark too, his chest, back and arms tanned olive, contrasting greatly with the white bandage she’d wrapped around his abdomen and the flash of pale buttocks she’d seen when Jake and Ward finished the job of stripping him before placing him beneath the blankets. The tan had to be from physical labor as he was covered with muscles, each one well defined, even the corded ones on either side of his taut belly that trailed down beneath the sheets. She could well imagine him being the type of minister that held barn raisings, swinging a hammer and easily lifting beams, all with his shirt off.

Leah felt her cheeks flame. “You’re having lustful thoughts…about a preacher.” She put her fingers to her lips, embarrassed that she’d chastised herself out loud. Had
he heard her? Did her words register in his subconscious? Would he look down at her from the pulpit and scold her for being a woman of loose morals?

“No…no…stop…please stop…”

Leah placed the cloth on his forehead once more.

“Is he going to make it?” Pris asked Ward as he entered the Heaven’s Gate Saloon. Ward walked directly to the bar and poured himself a shot of whiskey.

“I reckon that’s up to the good Lord and Leah Findley,” he said after he’d tossed back the shot. He poured another one to chase off the bone-chilling cold that came from standing in the street talking to Gus Swanson about the preacher’s dramatic arrival to town. “Hand me another glass,” he said to Bob. “Jake should be here soon.”

He looked around the empty saloon. “We rent out some rooms?” he asked.

“Two,” Bob replied. “The miners took one and once those cowpokes figured out Pris wasn’t interested they took another.” He wiped a towel down the bar. “I’m turning in.”

Ward tipped his glass toward Bob as he went into his room in the back. Pris yawned and laid her head down on the bar.

“Go on to bed,” Ward said. “Nothing else is going to happen tonight.”

“Are you sure Jake’s coming here?” Pris thought her crush on Jake was a secret and it mostly was. But Ward knew how to read people better than most, and Pris showed the same signs of yearning for Jake that Jake showed for Leah. It was a big old circle of unrequited love that kept Ward well entertained.

“Leah won’t have Jake to stay if that’s what you mean.” Ward poured a shot into Jake’s glass and pushed it toward Pris. “Why should tonight be any different?”

“That good-looking preacher is there.”

“Are you thinking about switching religions Pris?”

Pris grinned. “A girl can dream, can’t she?”

“Go to bed. Jake won’t be in a mood to talk when he gets here.”

Pris drank the shot and climbed the stairs to the second floor. There were eight rooms above, two of which were Ward’s, one belonged to Priscilla and the rest he rented out on nights like tonight. Ward made a decent living with Heaven’s Gate and for the most part he enjoyed it. There was no better place to study your fellow man than a saloon.

The wind grabbed the door and banged it back against the wall. The half doors, used only in summer slapped back and forth as they came loose with the abruptness of Jake’s entrance. Jake wrestled them back into place, jerked off his gloves, threw them on the bar and threw back the shot Ward poured for him.

“That was an interesting turn of events.” Ward poured them both another shot. A cold draft swirled around their legs as both men leaned against the bar.

“He’s a bit younger than I expected,” Jake said.

“He’s a bit more shot than I expected,” Ward replied. He knew Jake was already worried about the competition for Leah’s heart, but he was feeling generous so didn’t say anything about it. “I wonder what happened to him.”

“He ran afoul of someone, that’s for sure.”

“Bad night for it.” Ward studied Jake over his glass. How much longer before he realized that Leah just wasn’t interested in him? “Leah felt like she could handle it on her own?”