Joe's Wife by Cheryl St.john Page A

distressed expression crossed her gentle features. "Oh my," she said softly on a gust of breath.
    Mercifully, the bone had only been nicked, but the muscles had been laid back and the skin shredded. The doctors had told him it was a miracle he'd never contracted gangrene. They wouldn't have been able to save his leg—possibly his life—if he had.
    But pieces of flesh had been missing, and the remaining muscle and skin had been left to rejuvenate on its own. It had taken months for much of the area to fill and scab over, and now, even nearly a year afterward, the tight scar tissue tormented him, and the muscle, when strained, shot anguish throughout his leg.
    "Can't say I didn't warn you," he said, though her reaction hadn't been what he'd expected.
    She eased the oilcloth beneath his leg. "I just feel bad for how painful this must have been," she said, her voice thin and reedy. "Or still is."
    "I'm alive," he replied.
    Her hands stilled.
    "And I've got my leg."
    Joe had stepped into the room as surely as if he were flesh and blood.
    She got to her feet, swept from the room and returned with a basin of steaming water. She placed the basin on the floor and wrung a piece of toweling gingerly. Holding it over his leg, she met his eyes.
    "Go ahead," he said with a curt nod.
    She draped the hot cloth over the scarred tissue, and he clenched his teeth against the searing agony.
    "I'm sorry," she said softly, needlessly. She wouldn't have deliberately caused him anguish.
    After a few minutes, the heat seeped into the muscle, and Tye relaxed, once again sipping the special tea she'd prepared.
    The hot packs did a miraculous job of extracting the pain and easing the muscles. Meg changed them with regularity, going once for a fresh basin of hot water and even bringing a cool cloth to gently wipe the perspiration from his face.
    She stroked the cloth over his forehead, his temples, down his nose and across his cheeks. She ran it over his rough jaw and chin, then over his lips. Her hand stilled and she studied his face for a moment too long, her gaze lingering on his mouth.
    He couldn't help a slow smile.
    Her tender aid moved Tye in a deep and unfamiliar way. No one had ever touched him like this. The doctors and nurses who'd tended his injuries had been perfunctory and terse. The women he'd bedded had been paid to take care of his needs.
    This woman touched him as if she cared.
    That notion didn't go to his head. She was a good woman, a lady, and she would care about any hurting creature. And for some unknown reason, she apparently didn't see the shame of his birth in the same light that everyone else did.
    Tye relaxed his body and closed his eyes, blinking them open when she took the cup from his hand.
    "Go ahead," she said. "Rest."
    He obeyed her gentle command as he did every other, not knowing why he did, only knowing that he didn't have it in him to refuse. Behind his closed lids, he saw her rich hair, shot with golden fire from the lantern. He saw her hands, so small and yet so strong, arranging the steaming towels on his unsightly thigh. He recalled the feel of the cool cloth on his face, soothing and sensual, and remained awed at her graciousness.
    Wafting through the strong tea smell, her violet scent wrapped around him and comforted him as much as the heat penetrating his aching muscle and flesh.
    He saw her as she'd been that day in her saddle, her shoulders straight, her cheeks flushed from the sun and the wind, a pair of men's knickerbockers visible beneath her hiked skirt.
    He'd wanted to kiss her.
    His mind's eye conjured up the slope of her breasts beneath her dress, the curve of her cheek, the way she sipped her coffee and how her tongue darted out to touch her lip.
    "I want you to sleep here tonight."
    He opened his eyes lethargically.
    "Those stairs aren't easy to climb, and that floor up there is too hard. You'll sleep here."
    Her damp fingers touched his lips before he could form a protest. The intimacy startled