The Lawman Meets His Bride by Meagan McKinney Page A

fever and pain,” she told him, shaking two extra-strength caplets into her hand. Her other hand supported the back of his head while he drank from the glass of water she held to his lips.
    He almost coughed up the caplets, but drank greedily. He even tried to tip the glass more when she stopped, but Constance kept pulling it back to slow him down so he wouldn’t choke.
    “Well, Miss Adams,” he said in a weak but clear voice. “Looks like you’ve gone way beyond rendering good-Samaritan aid.”
    “I don’t need a smirking lawyer to tell me that,” she assured him as she wiped a damp sponge over his face.
    “Who’s smirking? I don’t feel that good.”
    “It’s in your voice, not your face.”
    He raised his bemused face enough to glance at her hands, busy at the front of his trousers.
    “You say such things to me while you undo my belt? I’m receiving a mixed signal here,” he muttered weakly.
    “I hate to rain all over your parade, but you’re not getting any signals whatsoever,” she assured him. “Either I ruin your trousers with the scissors, or I take them down. I have to look at your wound.”

    Her practical, lecturing tone coaxed a smile onto his tired face.
    “Look at my…wound,” he repeated, pausing suggestively and letting his tone tease her. “Promise not to peek anywhere else? I’m very bashful.”
    “I’ll try very, very hard to control myself,” she assured him. “Now lift up your hips, I can’t…there.”
    His trousers slid down, bunching around his muscular thighs. She was grateful for the long tails on his dress shirt. They made it easier to maintain some modesty.
    “Roll over on your stomach,” she told him.
    He complied, wincing at the effort.
    Pressing her bottom lip between her teeth, she forced herself to study the angry, blue-black, puckered flesh where the bullet had entered the muscle of his thigh in back.
    She bathed the area in hydrogen peroxide, then soaped it clean.
    “It looks like maybe you got lucky,” she pronounced after a minute of close scrutiny. “I think the bullet went in at an angle and came out near the front.
    “Yes,” she confirmed a second later, studying the muscular bulge of thigh muscle on the front of his leg. There was another wound there. An exit wound. She also held up the expensive fabric of his trousers. “Here’s a second small tear where the bullet must’ve come out.”
    He seemed to ignore all this. Staring at her with those unsettling smoky eyes, he finally asked, “Why are you helping me?” A long pause ensued. “You know you’re harboring a fugitive.”
    “Maybe I’m just a dumb female who hasn’t got aclue. Or maybe I just like to live dangerously, Mr. Loudon. You know—another wholesome, hometown girl who secretly craves life on the edge with a bad boy.”
    He mustered enough energy to give a little snort. “I’d say something sarcastic, but your ironic tone beat me to it.”
    “By now,” she told him as she poured another glass of water from a plastic pitcher, “infection from your wound may have spread to your bloodstream. That might explain your fever. If you’re not allergic to penicillin, take these antibiotics. I’ll give you two now and another two every few hours.”
    “Yes, Doctor,” he quipped. “Or is it R.N.?”
    “My aunt Janet’s the nurse. These are left over from a strep infection last month.”
    He swallowed two along with the entire glass of water.
    “What day is this?” he asked suddenly as he handed the glass back to her. Their hands brushed as she took it, and both of them seemed momentarily startled.
    “Sunday,” she told him. “It’s about 2:00 p.m.”
    “You have got to be kidding.” He groaned as he collapsed back onto the futon. “I don’t believe I wasted more than an entire day driving out in the boonies. Driving in circles, at that.”
    “Why did you come back to the cabin?”
    He ran his hand over his face as if in exasperation. “I figured after I dropped you