Tempted (2 page)

Dr. Madison turned the lamps up as high as they could go, because her eyesight wasn’t very good in dim light.

Radial artery seems intact. Ulnar artery. Not sure about the ulnar nerve.

“Do I need to worry about the flexor tendons? The flexor retinaculum? The median nerve?"

“Worry, sure. But there’s not much you can do about it.”

You could
, she wanted to say.
You could fix this boy’s hand better than me and we both know it.

The pity she felt for him billowed into anger, but she took a few deep breaths, calming herself down as she cleaned Sam’s hand again, and then held the edges of the wound together and pushed her needle through.

“You’ve rented out the back room?” Doc said after a while. “I heard a baby crying.”

“A young mother and her baby girl. Elizabeth is her name. Her husband is a miner.”

“Then she won’t be able to pay you, either.”

“She'll be doing some cooking and a little housekeeping to make up her part of the rent.”

“Then what will our housekeeper Marnie be doing?”

“My house and who I rent rooms to is hardly your business.” It was hers. All hers. Well, that wasn’t quite right. Steven Baywood had given her the money to buy the house, a loan she was repaying bit by bit. But her boardinghouse was the key to her freedom. And like Mama with that set of keys around her waist, that had jangled when she walked through the hallways, Anne didn’t let anyone else interfere with her keys.

“I don’t like babies,” Dr. Madison said—an effort to be provoking, which she ignored.

The new tool she’d been so excited about honestly just made it harder, and she set the Russian Needle Holder down. “Do you think he’ll use his hand properly again?”

“Perhaps,” Doc said. “Perhaps not.”

That the doctor did not care one bit about his patients was a secret she kept for him.

“Most people would hate me,” he said. “Just for these things I say to you. Why do you pretend not to care?”

“I’m not pretending anything.”

“I don’t like your pity.”

“Then don’t be pitiful. You could stop at any time,” she said. It wasn’t just being pitiful, or spiteful, or outrageous that he could stop, but being an addict.

And he knew it.

“I am not interested in stopping.”

She turned Sam’s hand over and stood up straight for a moment, stretching her back. In the bright lamplight, Doc—his name was James, but she didn’t call him that, didn’t even like to think it, because the disappointment would be even more keen—in the lamplight he gleamed like a shiny new penny. Truly he was beautiful to look at. And she feared the chloroform had burned out nearly everything inside of him.

With a deep breath she went back to work on Sam’s palm. In the silence she assumed Dr. Madison had passed out. So when he spoke again she jumped, nearly breaking her thread.

“I am, however, interested in you.”

“In me?”

“I wonder, what do you get out of this arrangement? Our arrangement—this great farce we show the world?”

“I own the house, Doctor. You pay me rent for your quarters and the practice. That isn’t a farce.”

“I pay you with money you earn. I appreciate that you keep my… activities from people in town—you have preserved my practice and my reputation. And the work you do in my stead also keeps us in coffee and flour—”

“And chloroform.”

He smiled, the charming hero. “Yes. That too.”

“I like the work.”

“You are good at the work.”

She smiled at that, but kept the steady pace of her needle moving through Sam’s flesh.

“Truly,” the doctor said. “I had my doubts five months ago, but you have been… unflinching. And, for me personally, a godsend.”

Anne had her misgivings about her role as godsend. If she weren’t as keen on this as she was, he wouldn’t have all his time freed up for his addiction. Perhaps if she weren’t so keen, he might be of more use to himself and this town.

She cut the silk thread and looked down at her work. Not bad, she thought. Not perfect, but she was getting better at it every time.

“You could work for Dr. Whitmore,” he said.

“Cleaning the surgery and emptying bed pans? He wouldn’t let me operate. He wouldn’t let me make house calls. I get more freedom working with you than I would with him. No, our arrangement suits me just fine.”

“This freedom you value might someday hurt you.”

“That is a risk I’ll take. I’ll clean up,” she said. “You can go back to bed.”

“One of our many housekeepers can get it in the morning.” It was true and yes, she understood it was slightly ridiculous to have so many people doing housework. But the housework was hardly the point—Denver was full of widows from the war, and Negroes looking for work as free men and women, and it was the right thing to offer people a chance. But he would never see that.

Because he not only got to take the easy way, he chose it. Time and time again. He chose not to take responsibility. Of course, that exact failure in him was what allowed her such freedom, so she couldn’t get too angry with him.

When she turned to face him, she was surprised to see him standing. And close.

“What if I’m not willing to take the risk anymore?” He murmured. She could see that the drug was leaving him, and he was filled with the remorse and guilt that always came after. Such a cycle, she thought. Such a terrible, life-ruining cycle.

“It’s not your risk to worry about, but if you are to be eaten up with guilt, you can pay me a wage.”

“I was thinking something… more indelible. Something that would protect you in some capacity.”

The issue of protection was a sore spot with her. She’d had her fill of men wanting to put her in a box to be protected. She’d had enough of that in her home before the war. Now, out here in the West, she could be what she wanted. Who she wanted. Protection was the least of her desires.

“I’ve told you before, I have no desire to be protected.”

“Do you wish to be married?”

The word dropped like a stone in her stomach. The silence in the room was thin and tight. She sucked in a careful breath.

“Are you… are you speaking of marriage?” Nervous, she laughed. She sounded like a hen.

“I am not joking, Anne. You walk around this city, doing the work of a man, thinking your role as a widow and your position as my ‘assistant’ will keep you safe.”

“You forget my wealth,” she said.

“No,” he told her, his eyes direct. Honest. “I don’t.”

Ah
, she thought with a painful tightening of belly. This wasn’t just about her “protection” but also her money. Because the good doctor had none.

“But all your wealth will not keep you safe,” he said. “Not forever. You treat the whores at Delilah’s, men alone in their rooms, the opium addicts.”

“I’m not interested in protection. I am happy as the eccentric, wealthy widow.”

“Surely there is something you want,” he said. He stepped closer to her, far too close. She would have stepped back, but Sam and the table were there.

Finally, so close she could touch the gold chain of his watch if she wanted, he stopped. “Children?”

“No. I don’t want children.” That had been a dream for other girls. She’d been raised not to get her hopes up, to settle into her life as the spinster aunt. The caretaker of her brother’s and sister’s children. Perhaps she’d garden or raise prize goats. But now, she was out from under that life. And she had worth far beyond what she’d ever dreamed.

And she liked it.

He stepped closer again, and when she took a breath her unbound breasts touched his chest and she nearly cracked down the middle with the sensation. She nearly stopped breathing.

This. This was a thought she shooed away like stray cats at her kitchen door, because letting this feeling, this mad twitch under her skin, this ache in her bones, into her life would only leave her empty. Sad.

And she was not empty or sad.

“There are other benefits to marriage,” he said.

His lips pressed hers and… it was a kiss. Her very first.

Well
, she thought,
here it is
.

His lips against hers were dry and disconcerting. Never, never had a man stood so close. A conscious man, anyway. She’d never felt a man’s breath against her cheek. A wide chasm opened in her belly. A strange and sudden awareness of her skin. Of the blood that beat in her veins.

Despite its uncomfortable intimacy, it was quite... interesting. Not quite the thrill her sister would have had her believe when they’d gossiped in bed after dances and parties in those years before the war.

But yes, she thought as she smelled his aftershave and his linen shirt, it was
interesting
.

He stepped back and she looked at her shoes, hastily put on a few hours ago. “You forget yourself, Doctor,” she whispered. A weak chastisement over the pounding of her heart.

“I do,” he agreed. His fingers brushed back the wild cloud of her hair, and she wanted to groan and jerk herself away—she did not like that. “But I find… I want to help you. As you have helped me.”

“You delude yourself if you think I have helped you. If anything, I have made it far too easy for you to fail yourself.”

His smile… his smile was painful in its masculine prettiness, and she did not fool herself that if his life had gone the way it was supposed to, he would ever direct that kind of smile in her direction. “Before you reject my proposal, I urge you to think about it.” He touched her neck, a searing, startling touch right where her heart pounded.

He walked out of the room. And she stood there, her hand at her neck, unsure of what to think. How to feel.

And then she gave herself a shake and began to clean up the mess.

T
he next morning Dr. Madison was awake, checking on the patient, when she came downstairs.

“You did a good job,” he said without turning around. He wore one of his impeccable suits, the fine cloth making the most of his height. “Your stitches have gotten better.”

The flush of pleasure she felt over this compliment was stronger than the flush of pleasure she’d felt over his proposal.

She had no intention of accepting that proposal, but the kiss had kept her up late, watching the clouds travel across the moon outside her window. That kiss would not go to bed. And that it was from him, given to her because she was wealthy and he felt guilty and beholden, made it all the more sour.

“Thank you,” she said, shifting the lamp on the table over a few inches for no good reason.

“I'll wake him up in a few minutes," he said. “Send him on his way.”

“Let him sleep.”

“If we do that, every exhausted drunk will be on our doorstep, manufacturing a cough,” he said.

As a girl, her mother had called Anne unnatural. And she’d known it wasn’t just her leg, or her eyesight. It wasn’t even her hair, or her mousy plain looks. It was that she’d wanted to be more than a dutiful daughter. A loving wife. A doting mother. And those were the only things her mother—or even her beloved sister, who’d suffered so much to get those goals—cared about.

When he turned, the milky sunlight coming through the window did the doctor no favors. He was too pale, the circles under his eyes too dark. His eyes too red. But when he smiled, all of those things vanished in the light of that smile.

Oh, James
, she thought,
you are too good for this
.

“About yesterday,” he said. “I—”

“I would rather we forgot all about it,” she said, having come to that decision early this morning. She did not want to be married—not to anyone, but least of all to this man and his addiction. But that kiss… She didn’t know what to do with that kiss. “You were under the influence of chloroform.”

His shrewd dark eyes watched her. Her father always used to say
a liar knows a lie
.

“If that's what you prefer,” he whispered, and she nodded, her tongue in knots.

Another heavy knock on the door made her jump in the doorway. “I’ll… I’ll go get that.”

She walked out of the exam room slowly, her back and neck sore from the surgery yesterday, making the limp worse.

There was another knock. Not a pounding. No yelling, so she didn’t think it was medical emergency behind that door.

“I’m coming,” she muttered, and threw open the door.

A tall man stood there, a black coat over his wide shoulders. A brown hat low over his eyes. Blond hair hung down past his ears. He gave the impression of being braced against a cold wind only he felt. He tilted his hat back, revealing blue eyes that matched the sky.

Steven Baywood.

She could not hide the happy leap of her heart, the smile that jumped across her face. To her great chagrin, she actually clapped.

“Steven!” she cried. “You’re here.”

“Annie.” He smiled as much as he ever did, which meant he really only gave the impression of smiling. “Sorry.” He caught himself. “I forget you prefer Anne now.”

You can call me anything you want
, she thought like the silly debutante she’d never been. Had no interest in ever being… except around him. Around him she lost all decorum. Any other person who made her feel this way, who filled her with surprised delight—she would hug. But he had a solid fence around his big body.

She hadn’t touched him since saving his life seven months ago in a clearing a hundred miles from here.

He’d been gut shot and left to die by her sister’s husband. Anne and her sister Melody saved Steven’s life, at terrible risk to their own. But then Steven’s brother, Cole, showed up and handed Melody the gun she ultimately used to kill her abusive evil husband. An act that tore their lives wide open. Anne had feared her sister would condemn herself for her actions—despite the fact that her husband, quite frankly, needed killing.

Melody’s guilt had been assuaged by Cole, a man with his own demons from the war.

In the spring they had all spent the better part of a month living in Steven’s cabin. Melody and Cole fell in love, and Melody chose to stay there. Anne chose to come to Denver.