The Bounty Hunter's Bride

He knew better than to bite the hand that fed him. His shoulder still hurt like a son of a gun, but the wound was starting to heal. It was too soon to tell if there’d been any nerve damage, but at least the bullet hadn’t hit a major artery. Still, he’d lost a lot of blood, and it was going to take a while to regain his strength. God help him, he needed his strength to keep from telling Josie what she could do with her tea and her songs and her never-ending string of questions.

“Do you have people frantic with worry over you?” she asked.

“People?”

“You know. A wife, kids, parents.”

The razor landed in the metal pan of water with a loud plop. Leaning back, Kane closed his eyes, listening to the scrape of the pan as she slid it away from her across the wood floor.

“No,” he said. “No wife, no kids, no parents. Karl Kennedy, the head of the bail enforcement agency in Butte is probably wondering whether I’m dead or alive, but he’s wondered that before and won’t get real concerned for another week or two.”

“Is he going to be upset that your bail jumper got away?” Josie asked.

“Not half as upset as I am. This guy wasn’t just a bail jumper. He tried to kill me. Not that I’d ever be able to prove it.”

“Then you didn’t actually see him shoot you?”

“I got my first inkling about the same time the bullet was kissing my shoulder goodbye.”

“That’s not funny,” she murmured, closer to his ear than he’d realized. “Here. Put this over your face for a few minutes.”

She placed a hot, wet towel in his left hand and slowly lifted it to his face. Moist heat seeped into his skin, his groan turning into a deep, contented moan. “Ah, Josie, if you need something to do when you’re a little older, maybe you could bring back the old-fashioned shave.”

“What do you mean when I’m a little older? I’m already a grown woman. Why, back in Hawk Hollow I’m considered an old maid.”

She lifted the towel from his face. He opened his eyes, fighting an uncustomary urge to grin. Josie was leaning over him, her gray eyes flashing, her lips parted in indignation. She had a personality big enough for ten women, but there wasn’t much to the rest of her. Her light blond hair was tied back in a lopsided ponytail. Her skin was unlined and smooth. Without a stitch of makeup, she looked about thirteen.

Shaking his head, he said, “You’re not old enough to be an old maid.”

“I’m twenty-three.”

“You are?”

“I look younger, I, know. I think it’s because I’m on the thin side. Dripping wet I barely weigh a hundred and ten.”

The lift of his eyebrow must have made her feel guilty, because she said, “Okay, a hundred and five.”

Kane didn’t want to think about what she would look like dripping wet. He didn’t want to think about the fact that she was older than she looked and therefore of legal age. He didn’t want to think about how close she was and how alone they were, and, aw, hell. “Josie,” he said, exasperated, “women lie about weighing too much, not too little.”

“I can lie about anything I want to lie about. But I really am twenty-three. How old are you?”

Questions. Always more questions. “Thirty-four.” His answer was thin and hollow and as worn as his patience.

“So, you’re a thirty-four-year-old bounty hunter from Montana. No wife. No kids. No parents. Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

Leaning his head back, he closed his eyes. Maybe if he went to sleep she would stop talking.

“Well, do you?”

Then again, maybe she wouldn’t. “Two brothers. Trace and Spence.”

“Only two? I have four. Billy, James, Roy and J.D. They’re the main reasons I came up here. That, and I wanted a little time to myself to think. Do you ever need time to yourself to think, Kane? What am I saying? You must have all kinds of time to think when you’re not breaking down doors and collecting bounty money. What else do you like to do? Back in Montana, I mean. Just a minute. I’ll be right back.”

She bustled away to the stove where a kettle of water was beginning to boil. Kane welcomed the reprieve. All these questions were making him feel naked. Of course, he was naked.

He was a grown man, yet he’d slept like a baby most of the past two days. He hated being helpless and he hated being weak, but until his shoulder healed and he regained the use of his right arm and he was strong enough to make it down the mountain, he was at Josie’s mercy. The shave, shampoo and bath had been her idea. He was the first to admit they’d felt good, and the first to admit that he was an ornery cuss most of the time. It was an effective tool in holding people at a distance. Josie didn’t seem to mind. Hell, she didn’t even seem to notice.

He could tell by the soft thud of her shoes that she was nearing. Turning his head, he watched as she stopped at the edge of the ancient bathtub and promptly added the water she’d heated on the stove. Before he’d gotten in, she’d stirred some sort of healing agent into the water, making it milky white and impossible to see through. Breathing in the steam rising from the surface of the water, Kane felt himself relaxing. “Okay, Josie,” he said, drowsy from the blessedly warm water. “I can take it from here.”

The sound of her hand gliding through the water brought him instantly wide-awake. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Forgetting his injury, he reached blindly for her hand, only to wince in pain.

“There. See what happens when you try to do things yourself? And I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t swear. It’s not as if you have anything I haven’t seen before. I’m the one who got you out of your clothes the first night you were here, remember? Besides, you’re not the only male I’ve ever seen naked. Billy’s two-year-old runs around with nothing on half the time. Daddy’s always yellin’ for somebody to put some pants on that boy. You’re gonna like my daddy. Just you wait. His name’s Saxon. I swear to God I’m not making that up. Shoot. I just lost the soap. Hold on, I’ll find it.”

Kane was all set to tell her that in case she hadn’t noticed there were a few differences between him and her two-year-old nephew, but her fingers skimmed something that most definitely was not the soap, and he forgot what he was going to say. Josie, on the other hand, didn’t even miss a beat in her story.

“I have to say I don’t think much of their taste in men. Why, my father and brothers want me to marry Obadiah Olson.”

Deciding that for once it might be best to keep her talking until he could get things under control, he said, “Obadiah?”