Loving Linsey (19 page)

“Who knows the way a woman's mind works?” Jabbing his finger in Daniel's direction, his dad said, “But mark my words, boy, that gal's husband-hunting, and she's marked you as her victim.”

“Then she can just set her sights in another direction.”

“First sensible thing you've said in years. A woman'll drain the life right out of a man—wear him down till he can't think straight. And you've got more important matters to concentrate on than a marriage-minded spinster, if you're ever gonna make something of yourself.”

Like you?
Daniel was getting sick of being compared to a man whose biggest accomplishment was opening an apothecary in Cowtown, Texas.

No, that wasn't fair, he thought with an inward sigh. For all it's remoteness, Horseshoe did have its own quaint appeal. He was just tired. No sleep, the events of the day, his turmoil over Linsey . . . all were beginning to take their toll. “Go on back to bed, Dad. I'll be up once I've finished in here.”

“Don't be too late. I've got a long day ahead of me and I don't want to be kept awake by a bunch of rattling down here.”

After Daniel, Sr., left the kitchen, Daniel stayed by the stove, waiting for the water to boil. Snatches of the dinner conversation at Louisa's flickered in his memory. Talk of courtship, of marriage, of love. He'd had a feeling then that Linsey had designs on him, but he'd rejected the idea as being too ludicrous to believe. Now he wondered if his dad might be right.

He didn't know why he was having such a hard time believing that Linsey might be scheming to trap him into marriage. In view of all that had been happening over the last few days, it wasn't exactly inconceivable.

The question was, why? Why him?

Daniel scratched the side of his nose. He hated mysteries. They made him feel powerless, out of control. He'd much rather know what he was dealing with so he could plan his next move.

But Linsey was as unpredictable as the weather. One moment as calm and breathtaking as an autumn sunrise, the next moment wicked and stirring up more havoc than a spring storm.

The worst part of it was, Daniel had always been in awe of nature's power. He loved to watch the lightning flash and hear the thunder roar. It set a fire in his bloodstream, a hunger in his soul.

Yet for all that he admired in a thunder-cracking, rain-pelting, lightning-forking performance, he also knew that only a fool stood out in the middle of one.

With a grim turn to his mouth, Daniel emptied the heated water into the tub, added cold, then shucked his clothing and climbed in. As he settled his neck against the rim, he made a vow to himself. Whatever Linsey had planned, he refused to fall for it. She'd exposed his weakness this morning: the crazy attraction he couldn't control. But he knew better than anyone that under that frivolous, flighty exterior he'd been so drawn to, hid the wicked heart of a woman who cared little who she hurt in her pursuit of what she wanted.

And for reasons he couldn't fathom, she suddenly seemed to want him.

“Addie . . .” Linsey snapped her fingers in front of her sister's face to break the trance she seemed to have fallen into. “Aaad-deee . . . are you in there?”

It wasn't the first time Linsey had found her like this. Addie had been acting strangely since the day before yesterday, wandering around the house with a faraway look in her eyes. Linsey might have found it amusing if it wasn't so insulting. One would think that with their remaining time together so uncertain, Addie would spend a little more of it paying attention.

At last she raised her head. “Hmmm?”

“Haven't you heard a word I've said?”

Blank hazel eyes slowly focused. Addie straightened on the sofa and pushed a needle hastily into the fabric stretched across her embroidery hoop, but Linsey could see she was still distracted. Probably pining over Daniel again. Linsey frowned. She hadn't seen him in a couple of days, although Doc Sr. had stopped by to examine her ankle and given her the same warning Daniel had: to keep weight off it. But distance from the junior Dr. Sharpe hadn't lessened the indignation she felt toward him for brushing off the loss of her token, and then forcing her to go off with Bishop.

And to think that she'd come a hair's breadth away from kissing the wretch. The thin air must have dulled her wits. Not only would she never wish to betray her sister like that, but no woman in full command of her
senses would let herself fall prey to a man of such churlish temperament.

If she never went near Daniel again, Linsey would spend the rest of her days in utter bliss. If it weren't for the fact that Addie would wither up from misery without the arrogant, self-absorbed, unforgiving oaf, Linsey would forget the matchmaking plan altogether and concentrate on the other tasks still left undone.

Unfortunately she had to put her own feelings aside for her sister, and that meant keeping any derogatory thoughts regarding Daniel to herself. “I asked you if Mr. Puckett got that letter off to my father.”

“He said he put it on the first stage heading west.”

“Good. I only hope he gets it in time to visit before I turn up my toes.”

“The way you're courting death, that will be sooner than you think.”

Linsey rolled her eyes. “Please, the scolding you and Aunt Louisa gave me is still ringing in my ears.”

“It's no less than you deserve for making us worry like that. However, I suppose I can take some comfort in the fact that you won't be pulling any more dangerous stunts for a while.” She glanced at the clock on the mantel, then set her embroidery in the basket beside her. “I have to run an errand. Do you need anything from town?”

Linsey shook her head, hoping Addie couldn't see how impatient she was to have the house to herself for a little while. Either she or Aunt Louisa or both had been hovering
over her the last couple of days like mother hens.

As soon as Addie left, Linsey set aside the catalog she'd been leafing through and scooted off the sofa. Her ankle was still tender, but at least she could walk on it without horrible pain. And if she didn't get out and get some fresh air, she'd go stark, raving mad.

Besides, she'd promised to visit Caroline for tea this week, and that visit was long overdue. It would be worth suffering through another of Addie's lectures if she could just get out of the house for a while.

Linsey returned to her room to fetch her cloak, gloves, her Lady Liberty coin, and the music box she'd picked up for the baby. She stood for a minute, trying to think if she had everything she might need. She had no desire to chance her luck by returning to the house for a forgotten item. Deciding she had everything, she limped into town to hire a horse and buggy.

Caroline and Axel lived on a farm five miles west of Horseshoe, and the drive gave Linsey too much time to think. Perhaps she was being too harsh with Daniel. After all, she had been the one to lure him into the balloon, not the other way around. She supposed she might have wanted to exact some revenge if he'd cut a similar shine on her.

Upon further reflection, she wondered if perhaps some of the anger she directed at him didn't go a little deeper than the issue with Bishop. Daniel, for all his surly ways, was just too darned tempting for his own good.

Or for hers.

Hard as she tried to forget, she couldn't rid herself of the memory of being crushed against him. Of feeling his chest against her breasts, his hand against her back, his breath against her mouth . . .

Thank goodness the basket bottom had given way, or she feared she would have made the mistake of her life.

Well, once she got him married off to Addie, that temptation would disappear. In the meantime she'd simply steer clear of Daniel and accomplish her matchmaking from a distance.

That thought had her feeling much better by the time she pulled onto the driveway leading to Caroline and Axel Goodwin's homestead. Free-roaming chickens pecking at the ground scattered out of her way. A herd of Angus beef, penned in the pasture behind the barn, lifted their flat faces to study the visitor. Only Frisky, the misnamed, lop-eared hound, lay sprawled in the middle of the yard, unperturbed by her arrival.

Linsey parked the buggy under the shade of an ancient oak tree, and after leaving the horse a bucket of oats to feast on, walked up to the one-room house.

When she heard the muffled keening, like that of an animal in distress, she knew something was wrong. Linsey hastily opened the door. Inside she found Caroline lying abed, her face pale, her hands shaking, her clothes and the bed linens drenched in sweat.

“Caro!”

“Oh, Linsey, thank God . . .”

She dumped her packages onto a chair and hastened to her friend's side. “Caro, what's happened?”

“My water broke.”

“Where's Axel?”

“He left for Houston yesterday morning. He won't be back till Tuesd—” A keening wail cut off further words and grew to a tortured scream.

Linsey grit her teeth as Caroline squeezed her hand hard enough to snap bones. How could a woman want a child if this was what she had to endure, as if she were dying a slow death a thousand times over?

When the pain ended, Caroline lay panting, sweating, sobbing. “Somethin's wrong, Linsey. Its too soon. I'm gonna lose him, I just know I'm gonna lose this baby, too.”

“You are not going to lose this baby.” Linsey searched the cabin and found a pile of folded cloths inside a chest. After filling the basin with tepid water from the pitcher, she soaked one of the cloths and bathed Caroline's clammy brow. “How long have you been having the pains?”

“All morning. They're worse than I've ever felt. Oh, sweet Jesus—” She clutched her belly as another pain ripped through her. The walls echoed with the cry of sheer suffering.

Linsey peeled the blanket off her belly and went pale at the sight of the blood staining the sheets. “I have to get the doc,” she whispered.

“No, Linsey—” Caroline grabbed Linsey's skirt. “Please don't leave me.”

“I have to.” God knew she didn't want to
leave her friend, but she didn't know beans about birthing, and the closest midwife lived halfway across the county. “I won't be gone long, Caro—I swear it on my mother's soul.”

Daniel arranged the bottles on the shelves, grouping those with the skull and crossbones on a high shelf while others sat at eye level or lower in the glass cabinet. The symbols had been on the bottles for as long as he could remember. A closed eye on the chloroform; a broken bone for laudanum; the letter C divided by a squiggly line on the carbolic acid.

He'd learned the purpose of each drug from the labels before knowing the names. Another of his dad's methods in teaching Daniel the trade before he'd been given a chance to decide for himself. Though Daniel didn't regret his decision, and suspected he would have gone into medicine anyway, sometimes he wondered if things wouldn't have turned out differently if his father hadn't driven him so hard.

Even now the old man wouldn't let up. The last couple of nights, while Daniel had been studying reports documenting the advantages of surgery versus herbal treatment in female problems—a subject that had fascinated him for years—he could hear his dad in the background, finding fault with some procedure or another that Daniel had done.

Though it only made Daniel more determined to pass his entrance exams and get the hell out from under his dad's thumb, several
times Daniel had caught himself drifting off in thought, seeking escape from the constant hounding. The closest he came was in remembering the view from Jarvis's balloon—the sense of freedom he'd found with the wind in his hair and laughter in his soul.

Invariably his thoughts would stray to Linsey, the woman who'd torn him from the burdens he bore, and how for a moment she'd looked at him as a woman looked at a man she wanted—not as a doctor to cure all ills, not as son who failed at every turn. Just a man.

And it made him wonder if his dad might be wrong. That maybe a woman didn't always drag a man down to the depths of misery, but sometimes brought him to the heights of contentment.

Daniel abruptly shook his head to dispel the notion. He'd seen with his own eyes what happened, when a man let himself become diverted by a pair of sparkling eyes and winsome smile: he became resentful and unsatisfied; she drew into herself so deep that nothing mattered anymore.

The smartest thing he could do was stay as far from Linsey as possible.

Just as he finished stocking the cabinet, the door flew open, hitting the wall, knocking the cowbells clean off their hook.

And who but Linsey skidded inside.

Clutching the door, she cried, “Daniel! Thank God you're here. Come quickly.”

“Forget it, Linsey,” he said, twisting the key in the lock. “I'm not falling for that trick again.”

She rushed toward the counter and slapped her hands on the tiled surface. “It's no trick. Caroline is hurting something fierce. She says the babe is coming.”

“The babe isn't due for another month.”

“When it's due and when it comes aren't always the same thing. You should know that better than anyone. Daniel, please, there is no time to waste! For the love of Gus, she needs you now!”

The escalating panic in her voice made Daniel waver in indecision. What if she wasn't lying this time? Could he really take that risk? “I'm warning you, if this is another ruse, so help me . . .”

He grabbed his bag from beneath the counter. Linsey pushed out the door and had climbed into the buggy out front before Daniel even got across the boardwalk.

She scarcely gave him a chance to get into the vehicle before she set the horse in motion with a slap of reins and a sharp “Ha!”

The drive to Caroline and Axel's was wrought with an anxious silence. Linsey gripped the reins in pale fists, her features tight with a worry that appeared genuine. Daniel regretted giving her such a rough time. Even Linsey couldn't fake the fear he saw in her eyes.