Miracle Jones by Nancy Bush Page A

eyes brightened with unshed tears. “How bad?”
    “Too early to tell.”
    In her husband’s cautious voice Lexie heard the death knell. She knew Tremaine too well to misunderstand. Her mother was sick with a disease that wiped out entire families. Children were the most susceptible, but adults could succumb sometimes just as easily.
    Tremaine drew her into his arms, pressing her face against his chest. Lexie squeezed her eyes tightly closed. Tremaine had always been there for her, even when she’d thought she hated him, even when she’d thought he was her blood brother. Then the truth had finally come out: Eliza had been married before and conceived Lexie long before she ever met Joseph Danner and his young son, Tremaine. But Eliza believed she’d murdered her first husband, Ramsey Gainsborough, and the scandal had been hushed up by both Eliza and Joseph to keep Lexie safe from the wrath of Gainsborough’s contemporaries.
    Except that Ramsey Gainsborough had showed up in Rock Springs, very much alive. He’d made life miserable for all the Danners until his death from a fall. Only then could Tremaine and Lexie admit their feelings for each other and finally marry. Now Lexie drew strength from her husband’s love.
    “Where’s Harrison?” she asked in the suffocated voice.
    Tremaine’s expression was grim. “God only knows,” he grated, but since Jace Garrett had been the last one to see him, Tremaine was going to journey over to the Garretts’ this evening and flay the truth out of him if he had to.
    ¤   ¤   ¤
    Miracle’s lashes lifted slowly, as if weights had been applied. Her prediction about the weather change was completely accurate. The heat of yesterday was a memory with fall’s chilly breath flowing down her neck, seeping through her skin and into her bones. The paltry cover of one blanket was no proof against the breeze now gusting steadily from the mountain peaks.
    It was early. Barely five o’clock, by Miracle’s guess. Shivering slightly, she dragged on her boots, rinsed her face in the freezing lake water, then went in search of more firewood.
    An hour later the fire was crackling and throwing off some heat. Setting a pan directly onto the flames, she boiled water and made herbal tea, then poured some of the light brown fluid past Harrison’s unwilling lips. He fought her, as usual, but she won. He was not the easiest patient by a long shot, Miracle thought with a faint smile.
    Throughout the rest of that long day she tried to force more liquids into his system, knowing he would soon be dehydrated. But for all her worries, he seemed as sturdy as an ox, lashing out at her with harsh words and surprisingly strong limbs. Even so, his fever rose alarmingly and his skin grew hot and flushed. Physical strength wasn’t necessarily a shield from the ravages of inflammation.
    So thinking, Miracle made another decoction of willow bark and forced it down his throat. He managed to knock the cup from her hand and send it spinning in the process, but the fluid went down.
    Then she sat down on a broken fir trunk which lay at the corner of her camp, considering Harrison thoughtfully as she waited for him to recover. She knew he was a horse doctor and had a partner named Lexington Danner, but it wasn’t enough information, by far. Why had he been at the barn that night? Had he been alone or with someone? If so, where had that someone gone? And if not, what possible purpose had he had for being at that den of hooligans and criminals?
    She’d been staring at his face intently for some time, memorizing each angle and line, she realized with a start. Annoyed, she dragged her gaze away from his handsome, beard-shadowed countenance – a beard which, from Miracle’s reluctant point of view, only added to his raffish attraction. Instead she concentrated on what she knew of him. He was from Rock Springs, the town where she was headed. Her skin prickling, she wondered for the first time if he might know