Johanna Lindsey - Savage Thunder

"I wonder what's keeping Babette with that extra water?"

"Don't change the subject," Vanessa admonished.

"I wasn't. I never doubted Colt's courage, Vana. His sanity, maybe, but never his courage."

"Then why don't you ask Colt to go after Longnose?"

So there it was finally. Jocelyn had known she wouldn't like it. After their fight that night she had behaved so wretchedly she could never ask Colt for another thing, certainly not to risk his life for her more than he already had.

"So it's 'Colt' now that you've found some use for him?"

Vanessa had the grace to look embarrassed. "I never said he wasn't useful, my dear, only that your particular use for him was ended."

"I don't like that word 'use.' He hates it."

"What?"

"He's been used quite enough, Vana."

"But this is different."

"I doubt he'd feel it is. Besides, the day I met him I asked if I could hire him to find Longnose and bring him in. He refused."

"That was before he took an intimate interest in you," Vanessa pointed out.

Heat stole into Jocelyn's cheeks, chasing away the chill from the cooling water. "I would never use our intimacy as leverage against him!"

"I wasn't suggesting—"

"Weren't you?"

They were both silent a moment, Jocelyn furiously so, Vanessa contrite.

"I'm sorry," Vanessa finally said. "It's just that I worry a great deal about you. Longnose has never been quite as successful before. The man had bungled his attempts so often, I'm afraid I began to think of him as an incompetent blunderhead, that he didn't present a really serious threat, just a nuisance. That has been proven false, however, since we came to this savage land, a place which seems to bring out the worse traits in its inhabitants."

"Or the best."

"Yes, well… if you don't want to impose on Colt any further, I can certainly understand that. Some men get the absurd notion that if you ask something of them, they can then demand anything they want of you in return, and I don't have to tell you what they most often ask for."

"Yes, I know." Jocelyn nodded sagely. "Dinner."

"No, dear," Vanessa began, but caught the teasing light in those green eyes and knew she was forgiven.

"Dinner indeed. actually, for some men that just might be first choice. Have you noticed how many eating establishments in the West carry the advertisement 'Home-cooked meals'? That seems to be of par-ticular importance in this country."

They were both laughing before the countess had finished, and still laughing when Babette burst in without knocking. Vanessa sobered first, remember-ing the last time the maid had come in like that, and looking like that, her blue eyes wide, her hands aflutter. Not again, she groaned inwardly, but Babette's first words proved this was indeed a repeat perfor-mance on her part.

"Monsieur Thunder, he has been shot!"

Vanessa closed her eyes with a sigh — until she heard the splash. Then she recalled what else had happened the last time and shot out of her chair to barricade the door. And indeed, she got there only a moment before the duchess did.

"You are not— "

"Vana!"

The countess refused to budge. "She said he was shot, not dead. He's not dead, is he, Babette?"

"Non, madame."

"There, you see? There is no need to rush out of here in a state of panic, without clothes. or hadn't you noticed you're stark naked, dear?"

Jocelyn had already turned about to find her robe. Babette was bringing it forward. Vanessa knew it was pointless to suggest she clothe herself a bit more appropriately. Jocelyn barely had the robe drawn to-gether before she was out the door.

Vanessa sighed once more and gave the maid an exasperated look. "Babette, I really must speak to you about this penchant you have developed for melo-dramatics."

Jocelyn hadn't known which room was Colt's, but with a half dozen of her men standing in and about the open doorway, it wasn't hard to find. Pushing through the crowd, she found even more inside, Angel, Billy, and Alonzo. Colt was sitting in a chair with his shirt off, blood dripping down his arm from beneath a wet padding of cloth.

Her heart lurched at the sight of the blood, but only for a moment, then quieted down from the frantic pounding it had been doing since she left her room. He was sitting up, he had been talking, he looked just fine, discounting the blood. It wasn't a mortal wound.

Colt became aware that every man in the room was staring at her at about the same time she did. But for a moment, it was almost as if everyone else had van-ished. He saw only her, and her state of dishabille, the white velvet robe molded to damp curves, the glo-rious red hair piled loosely on her head with long wet tendrils clinging to the velvet about her breasts, beads of water still on her neck and cheeks, the bare feet.

He almost got up to reach for her, so powerful and instantaneous was her effect on him. It was like a fist slamming into his gut when he heard someone clear his throat and realized they weren't alone, that he couldn't touch her, couldn't lick that moisture from her neck as he was dying to do, couldn't even get near her. He could only stare at her and watch her pale, pale skin blossom with color as she too became aware that they weren't alone, that she had breached all manners of propriety, that she was damned near naked. And he had a sudden, fierce need to kill every man there just for seeing her like that.

Jocelyn recovered first, which was fortunate, since Colt was about to embarrass the hell out of her by tossing her over his shoulder and taking her back to her room, where she belonged. If she had known that, she wouldn't have been able to bluff her way through the embarrassment she was already experiencing.

But brazenness had its uses, and pretending it was nothing out of the ordinary for her men to see her in such a state, when they never had before, was all she could do. Allowances would have to be made for-the reason she was there. Of course, it would have helped if Colt had looked just a little more injured than he did.

"Has a doctor been summoned yet?" Since she didn't address the question to anyone in particular, she didn't note who replied in the negative. "Then would you be so good as to fetch one, Rob—"

"I don't need a doctor," Colt cut in.

"Perhaps not, but it wouldn't hurt—"

"I don't want a doctor — ma'am. What I want is to be left alone."

He said it quietly, but there was so much sup-pressed anger in his tone, the exodus began immediately.

Only Angel was left, sitting on the end of the bed leaning against the bedpost, and Billy, who went back to wringing out the cloth Colt had been cleaning the wound with — and Jocelyn, still standing in the middle of the room.

Colt chose to ignore her, hoping she would take the hint and go away. "Hurry up with that, kid, before I bleed to death."

It was the worst thing he could have said. Jocelyn had been about to leave. She could find out later how he had gotten shot. She never should have come in the first place to see if he was all right.

"You do need a doctor!" she said now.

"No, dammit, I don't," Colt snarled, realizing his own mistake. "That was just a… what the hell are you doing?"

Jocelyn had already crossed over to him and was reaching for the wet cloth covering the wound. "I wish to ascertain for myself—"

He cut her off again. "Leave it alone, Duchess. It's just a scratch."

"Hell, Colt, when did you get to be such an ornery cuss?" Angel commented, coming up off the bed.

"Why don't you let her patch it up since she's willing? It's a plain fact women got a gentler touch."

"I seem to recall you yelling your head off when Jessie took that bullet out of your side."

"Your sister is the exception." Angel grinned. "Come on, Billy, he's in good hands."

"Billy, get back here!" Colt demanded when he started to follow Angel out the door.

"But Angel's right, Colt. Lady Jocelyn can bandage you up better than I could."

Colt didn't need him for bandaging, he needed him for a buffer. Couldn't either of them see that?

Obvi-ously not, since the door closed behind them, leaving him alone with the duchess.

"I thought I gave you a warning a few weeks back," he said quietly, careful not to look at her standing by his side. "Did you forget it?"

"No, but this is an emergency, wouldn't you say?"

"It's a damned scratch, Duchess—"

"That still needs attention. And since your friends and family have abandoned you to my tender mercies, why don't you let me attend to it and stop being an— an ornery cuss?"

His lips almost twitched. Her arrogance could stand being brought down a peg or two, but he had to admire her tenacity. And he found that as long as he kept his eyes fixed across the room, he could even bear her closeness — for a short while. He also found, to his chagrin, that he liked having her fuss over him. Of course, it was what women did when a man was hurt, but still, she didn't have to do it. She had others she could have sent in her stead. So why hadn't she? And why had she looked almost frantic when she had pushed her way into his room?

"What were you told to bring you straight from your bath, without even drying off first?"

Jocelyn blushed clear to her roots. "You weren't supposed to notice that."

"Shit, who didn't?" he grumbled, then, "Ouch!" when she slapped a new wet cloth on his arm without warning. He would damned well tell Angel that here was another exception to his gentle theory.

"Who did you say taught you English?"

"My sister," he replied testily.

"Then her English leaves much to be desired."

"I picked up a few words on my own."

"I'm delighted to heafit. But someone should have told you the proper place for them, which is not in the presence of a lady."

"You didn't answer my question — lady."

"I was told you were shot."

"Afraid you'd lost your guide?"

"Something like that," she replied dryly.

He frowned then, and sank more deeply into his chair. "Can't you hurry that up?"

"For a scratch, it's rather nasty-looking." The bul-let had ripped a deep groove through the upper layer of flesh and muscle. How he wasn't complaining about it, she didn't know. "It could stand a few stitches so it won't leave such a wide scar after it heals."

Was she kidding? "A man doesn't worry about a few scars."

"So I noticed."

He glanced at her sharply then, but she was looking at the scars on his chest. She couldn't see his back the way he was slouched in the chair.

"Aren't you going to ask?"

"I believe I already know," she replied, directing her attention to his arm again. "It's called the Sun Dance, isn't it?"

He was surprised enough to show it. "Where'd you hear about it?"

"From Miles. He suggested you might bear such marks. I didn't believe him, of course. It sounded so barbaric, the way he described how it was done. that wooden skewers were thrust through the flesh of a man's chest, and he was then hung from a tree by ropes attached to the skewers until the flesh ripped open to release him. Is that really how it's done?"

"Close enough."

"But why would you do something like that to yourself, to deliberately torture yourself?"

"I'm just a dumb Injun, remember? We don't know any better."

Her eyes met his for the first time since she started cleaning his wound. "I thought I'd asked you not to do that," she admonished softly. "I was asking a question out of genuine curiosity, hoping to under-stand something of a culture I'm unfamiliar with. But if you don't care to explain, then please forget that I asked."

How was it he suddenly felt about three feet tall? "It's a religious ceremony," he said after a short si-lence, staring across the room again. "A ceremony of renewal and prayer for blessing. Not every warrior participates, but those who do wear their scars with pride as an assurance of divine blessing."

"Religion," she mused. "I should have realized it would be that simple." She wanted to touch those scars so badly her fingers almost trembled. "It must have been horribly painful. Was it worth it — for you? Did you feel you had received your blessing?"

"Only for a very short time."