“Come on inside and meet Una,” Mariah urged as she set her daughter down, cautious until Callie was steady on her braces.
“Who is Una?” he asked.
“My neighbor. And friend. She watches Callie for me when I need her. And if I know Una, she has a pot of her Southwest stew simmering on the stove.”
“No, Mommy—she made chili,” Callie told her. “Do you like chili?” she asked Luke.
“It so happens I love chili,” he answered the little girl.
She smiled.
“First we clean your war wounds,” Mariah announced.
Luke’s leg was beginning to stiffen up on him. And it hurt like the devil. But he didn’t intend to admit that to Mariah. “I’m okay,” he said.
She gave him a look that said she didn’t believe that for a moment, then started toward the house. Callie bounded ahead of them, somehow managing gracefully on her braces.
“She’s a beautiful child,” Luke said.
Mariah smiled. Mother-pride shone in her eyes—but it didn’t quite hide that small shadow of sadness Luke caught in their sea-green depths.
“Callie’s a delight,” she said. “My bright joy. I—I just wish things could be…different for her,” she said softly.
Luke knew she meant the stiff braces Callie wore. His professional guess would be that the child had a form of juvenile rheumatoid arthritis.
He’d seen the disease in its cruel form during his pediatric work in med school. He knew its effects. But he didn’t know how to offer comfort any more than he knew how to find it for himself.
They found Una in the kitchen. Callie had already informed her they were having a guest for supper tonight.
“Help me set another place at the table,” Una told the child, then she turned and gave Luke a once-over. “Father Sky above! You look like you got skinned by a bear.”
Luke grimaced. “I’m afraid it wasn’t anything quite that fierce, ma’am.”
Mariah hid a grin, but she didn’t elaborate on his scrapes and bruises—or how he’d come by them.
“A little sunflower and a sprinkle of ground willow bark—that ought to fix him up.” Una gave her prescriptive advice with a brisk nod to Mariah.
It was exactly what Mariah had in mind for her patient—providing the man would sit still for it.
She wasn’t sure he would.
“Why don’t you boil some water,” she told Una, “while I get this man stripped.”
Luke’s eyes widened in surprise for a quick moment, then a very male frown took its place on his face. “It’s only a few scratches. I can look after them myself.”
“The injury to your thigh needs treatment—and so does your shoulder. If you have a problem with that, you can complain about it later.” She motioned him toward a small room off the kitchen. Finding a large blue towel in the cabinet, she pulled it down and handed it to him. “I’ll go help Una with that hot water. You get out of those jeans,” she told him.
Luke grumbled under his breath as she left the room, but he undid the shirt he’d tied around his leg as a makeshift compress. Beneath it the gash didn’t look too bad, he decided. It wasn’t deep enough to need suturing. Just bothersome enough to make riding out of here uncomfortable. That was, if he could even find someplace to repair his cycle.
Luke knew one armadillo with a price on its head.
He’d just finished sliding off his jeans when he heard Mariah return.
“Are you decent?” she called through the closed door.
Luke frowned. “As decent as I can get wearing damned little,” he answered, dragging the towel around him, and wishing it had a little extra yardage.
Mariah kept her eyes averted as she entered the room, wishing there was some other way to do this. And that her patient wasn’t so overwhelming. Both dressed or in the altogether.
Luke Phillips had more male appeal than the laws of nature should allow, an innate masculinity she was having a difficult time dealing with at the moment.
Her hormones bucked, but she tamped down her reaction to the man and set the bowl of steaming water on the small worktable in front of her, then motioned Luke to a chair.
She would get through this somehow, hopefully with her wanton hormones intact.
“Una sent you a little firewater, in lieu of a bullet to bite on,” she said, drawing a pint-size bottle of whiskey from the back pocket of her jeans.
That produced a wide-eyed glance from Luke, followed by a slow smile—a smile that was as potent as the rest of him beneath that blue towel.
“You expect the surgery to be that bad, Doc?”
He was teasing her. Mariah swallowed hard and tried to remain calm, focusing her gaze on his wounds instead of his broad chest and equally broad shoulders, every muscle firm and sleek and tanned. The man was too good-looking for comfort.
Her comfort.
Awareness clawed at her nerves here in the close confines of the room. She tried to picture him fully clothed instead of in that precarious blue towel.
But it did little for her senses.
His broad shoulders would fill out a shirt to perfection—or a suit. Did he wear a tux back where he came from—perhaps for a special event?
Or a date?
That thought flashed into her mind and she tamped down her reaction, trying to focus on the task at hand.
“I’ll try to be gentle,” she said.
His body heat radiated to her in the small room. He smelled of fresh air and sunshine and forbidden stranger. And it was having a decided effect on her.
Luke watched Mariah work, sprinkling something into the water he supposed was that ground willow bark Una had talked about, then dipped a soft, white washcloth into the mixture. But he hadn’t been ready for her touch as she cleansed the gash on his thigh.
Her hands were gentle, yet sure—and damningly sensual. He struggled with the effect they had on his body, and decided a little of Una’s firewater might be in order after all.
Not to dull the pain in his leg—but to numb his suddenly threatening testosterone.
“Damn,” he cursed, then sucked in a breath and reached for the bottle of whiskey.
“Sorry, does this hurt?”
He was in a world of hurt—and not sure he’d survive. Her touch was driving him wild. “I think that’s good enough,” he ground out. “Why don’t you work on my shoulder for a while?”
“Your shoul—oh!”
The light dawned in her pretty green eyes and a heated blush climbed her neck and spread across her cheeks before she glanced away, unable to meet his gaze.
“I’ll just rinse the cloth and…and…”
He put a hand on her arm, then thought better of it and drew it away. “It’s okay, Mariah. I’m, uh, just on a rather short fuse right now.”
Her reply was a deeper blush, and Luke took a long swallow of whiskey.
“Tell me about Callie,” he said as she immersed her cloth in the hot mixture again. He needed to get his mind off the tempting woman beside him, and conversation was the best way he knew to deal with the situation. Besides, he wanted to know more about her, about Callie, about their life