From Here to There (28 page)

 When she opened the door to the bunkhouse, she heard the shower running. Still angry, she sat primly on a chair by his desk. She would give him a piece of her mind when he came out. She began composing scathing remarks she would heap on what she expected would be his repentant head.

 She shivered as she realized the room was cold, the woodstove long since had burned up what wood he'd put into it in the early morning. So, on top of having his face ruined, he was probably going to get pneumonia. With winter coming on, the drafty bunkhouse hardly seemed a suitable environment for anyone to live. Somehow that thought only reinforced her anger, and she again concentrated on scathing comments designed to let him see the true nature of his perfidy... if he hadn't already done so.

 By the time Phillip came out of the bathroom, a towel wrapped around his lean hips, she had rebuilt the fire in his stove and gone through a litany of complaints, but somehow the only thing she found herself saying was, "That cut over your eye has been opened up again. It needs stitches."

 "It's closing up already," he disagreed, his voice reflecting a considerably better mood after the hot shower.

 "It will scar."

 "So?"

 "So sit down on the bunk and let me look at it."

 Surprisingly enough, he yielded to her command. She stood over him, examining the fresh cut, the nearly healed barbed wire scar, and the new discolorations and swellings that marred his square jaw line and beautiful mouth.

 "I doubt these cuts are clean," she muttered as she tilted back his head. "I'll need to disinfect them."

 He shrugged. "So?"

 "It's going to hurt."

 She felt his smile before she heard the laugh. "May I say ouch?"

 "I'm just warning you," she said testily. She poured alcohol onto a cotton ball and reluctantly, her own face scrunched into an expression of pain, ran it over the open cut. She felt a clenching in her stomach as she saw him wince. She hated hurting him, but she didn't have any choice. An infection near the eye would be worse. She let his skin dry as she opened a tube of antibiotic ointment and squirted some on her finger.

 "You seem to be making a habit out of banging up your body since you came to Montana," she complained as she applied the ointment, then pressed a butterfly band-aid over the cut. "Have you always been so accident prone?"

 "Only when I was a kid," he mused, his eyes closed, his voice soft and relaxed as though lulled by her touch.

 "Were you a tough little kid?" She continued working ointment into the other hurts on his face, none so deep as that near his eye.

 "In my neighborhood if you weren't tough, you got hurt worse than if you were. It paid to at least look tough."

 She smiled, visualizing how he must have looked as a little boy. It was impossible to see him as a little brute. "You must have looked more like a choirboy than a hellion," she observed. She probed his side at the site of a large bruise, trying to decide if he'd broken a rib in the fight.

 "It was the attitude that counted; plus learning to box." Wrapping his arms around her waist, he drew her between his legs. "Enough playing nurse."

 She ran her fingers soothingly through his hair. "And you developed a tough attitude."

 "Of course. By the time a guy was seven, he learned the ropes or paid the price."

 Helene didn't like thinking what that price had been, thinking about how Phillip might have been hurt as a child. Had his mother soothed his injuries or had he crawled into a corner to suffer them alone? She guessed it had to have been the latter. He pulled her down to sit on one of his legs.

 Feeling the bare skin of his back under her fingers reminded her of other things, of the night they'd spent together. Right now, unsure of his feelings, of what he wanted or of how much the attitude the adult Phillip projected was for self-protection, she couldn't afford to let her mind think the direction her body wanted.

 She pulled away, trying to find something to say that would distract both of them from the physical intimacy that seemed so demanding of fulfillment. She moved over to stand beside the stove. "Why did you attack Wes?"

 He came to stand beside her; his long fingers lightly tilted her chin so he could look directly into her eyes.  "I don't want to talk about Wes."

 "Do you want to talk about us?" she asked with a faint smile.

 He grimaced. "Are those my two options?" He smiled carefully, fully aware of the damage Wes had done to his face. "What I'd really like to do right now is make love to you, but I don't suppose that would be one of my choices."

 "You must be hurting and exhausted."

 "That's not the reason I might have second thoughts about it." His blue eyes glittered as he looked into her eyes. "When I have you back in my bed, I don't want to wake up in the morning and find you gone."

 "I'd have thought that was exactly what you wanted," she said, her own breath coming uneasily as he loosened his towel and let it drop. She ought to look away, not stare at his naked body as he moved away to pull on jeans, but the temptation was irresistible.  His powerfully built torso was near masculine perfection, only surpassed by long, muscular legs and sinewy arms, the biceps clearly defined and beautiful to watch as he flexed them in dressing. If his was not the body of an Adonis, she knew she'd never see one that was closer, even covered in bruises of varying sizes.

 It was only when he reached to snap the jeans that she noticed the abrasions on his wrists.

 "How did this happen?" she asked, grabbing one wrist and looking at the other.

 He looked down at the rope burns. "If I tell you, I will look like a complete idiot."

 "That's ridiculous, Phillip. Tell me what happened?"

 He smiled reluctantly, shook his head, then told her in as few words as possible about Wes's little joke. As he spoke, he had no clue as to her reaction.  When he had finished, he expected her to laugh or ridicule him.

 "He could have hurt you badly, yanking you off the horse that way," she said with a frown.

 "He did bruise my ego," Phillip agreed wryly.

 "Well, he's a heel, and you did right to kick him off the ranch. If you’d told me, I’d have hit him with the frying pan instead of throwing water on him."

 His eyebrows lifted in surprise. "I thought you were interested in Wes Carlson."

 She gave a short laugh. "In the first place, Wes Carlson would be about the last man I'd ever be interested in. He's too much in love with himself for my taste. In the second, he's not interested in me--not in that way. When you were fighting with him, I didn't like it because I was afraid you might be hurt, but otherwise I don't care what happens to Mr. Carlson."

 Phillip looked at her dubiously. "If he's not interested in you, why rope me and leave me up in the hills just to be alone with you?"

 She thought a moment about Wes's strange conversation. "I think he wants to buy the Rocking H or has a buyer who wants a spread like this one. Maybe to develop the hot springs into some kind of resort. He was hoping I'd help him convince Uncle Amos."

 Phillip shrugged into his shirt, wincing as sore muscles let him know the kind of day he'd had. Unfortunately from earlier brawls, he knew the stiffness would get worse before it got better. "He wants Amos to sell?"

 "His conversation was a little strange, but I think that's what it all adds up to."

 "The weasel."

 Helene laughed. "At least we agree on that. Come on up to the house, and I'll fix you a belated lunch."

 Phillip rotated his jaw, feeling of his cut mouth with his tongue. "I'm not sure how much I can chew."

 "How about soup and biscuits?"

 He smiled. "That might."

 Half an hour later, she was serving him hot soup and tender biscuits fresh from the oven.  She sat sipping a cup of herbal tea as he ate. She didn't know what to say to him, how to treat him. What kind of relationship did they have? Was she a soon-to-be divorcee or was there some hope for them as a couple? What did Phillip want? She didn't even know what she wanted.

“Have you been to that hot springs?” he asked.

“Yes. It’s up in pasture five, back against the rock bluff.”

“That’s what Wes said he was going to show me.”

“It’s pretty. I suppose it is worth money as a hot springs. We used to soak in it as kids. I haven’t been up there though in years.”

 Before she had a chance to ask any of her own questions, Amos drove up. When the old rancher came into the kitchen, she insisted the reluctant Phillip tell him the whole story about Wes's idea of games. When Phillip had finished, Helene added her own theory about Wes's ploy.

 Amos listened. Shaking his head, he poured himself a cup of coffee. "I knew he wanted the ranch. I didn't know how much. He's been playing it pretty close to the vest with me."

 "You don't want to sell, though, do you?" Helene asked, filling the sink with detergent and water.

 "Of course not, but I might not have any choice about selling to somebody if not him," Amos admitted. "I am getting old. Wes is right about that."

 "What did Doc say?" Helene asked as she remembered the purpose of his trip to town."

 "About what he always says," Amos griped. "The plumbing's gettin' old. Blood pressure and cholesterol's too high. Ain't hardly worth living with all the things they want a man to give up."

 "It's just so you can live a longer life," Helene said.

 Amos snorted. "What good's living if a man can't have a steak?"  He stared out the window, drawing Phillip's attention to snowflakes beginning to sifter down. "I heard on the radio we might get a mite of snow tonight. I figure we ought to be ready just in case.

 "What do you do to get ready?" Phillip asked, rising and wincing as his sore muscles protested the quick action.

 "You don't do nothing. You been run through the ringer this morning. I can see that for myself. I'll go get Curly, and we'll load up a little extra hay for the cattle, stack it across the fence from their field. Gets cold and snow on the ground, they need more feed."

 "How do you get the hay up there if you get a heavy snowfall?" Phillip asked, staring out at the threatening sky.

 "Jake and Teddy, those fat, old work horses that look to be living the life of Riley over there. We hitch them to the sled. She ain't fast, but she gets the job done."

 "You better show me how that works, just in case," Phillip said, heading for the door.

 "You can watch," Helene ordered, her brusque voice not hiding the concern underlying the words, "but I don't want you doing anything that might send a rib through your lungs. I'm not convinced that big bruise on your side isn't a sign there's been some damage done inside."

 "Yes, ma'am," Phillip said with a faint smile.

 "One other thing," Helene said, placing dishes in the hot, sudsy water.

 Both men, poised to go outside, looked at her expectantly.

 She refused to meet their gazes and looked down at the dishwater instead. "Phillip shouldn't sleep down there in the bunkhouse any longer. It's too cold with winter coming on."

 "And where should I sleep?" Phillip asked, an undertone to his voice she hoped her uncle wouldn't notice.

 When she looked up, she tried to ignore the teasing grin on Phillip's face and the glint in his intense blue eyes. "There are several extra bedrooms upstairs. Any one would be fine," she said primly.