Winter Fire by Elizabeth Lowell

muscular body now.
    â€œWhen you can,” she called out, “get some more water from the creek.”
    â€œLordy, gal. What are you going to do with it all, wash them stone cliffs and hang them out on the clouds to dry?”
    Sarah laughed softly. No one approved of all the soap and water she lavished on everything that didn’t run away.
    â€œNo cliffs,” she murmured. “Just a man. A big one.”
    When she thought of Case as a man instead of a wounded creature needing her care, her stomach did a funny little flip. It wasn’t fear or even nervousness, although it felt a bit like both.
    â€œWhat’s wrong with you, Sarah Jane Lawson?” she asked herself softly, mimicking the rhythm and words of her long-dead grandmother. “A person would think you have taken leave of what smidgen of sense God gave you.”
    Unexpectedly, her throat closed around a grief she had never given way to.
    She hadn’t thought of her dead family in a long time. At first she simply hadn’t been able to bear it. Finally it had become a habit.
    â€œThe future, not the past,” she reminded herself. “Conner is the future for me.”
    The only future.
    She would never again allow herself to be put at a man’s mercy through marriage. All her hopes and longings for a family were bound up in her younger brother, the brother Ab had threatened just a few minutes ago.
    Keep him leashed, else he won’t have no fancies to strut in front of the gals .
    Case stirred, then settled deeper into sleep.
    Putting everything else out of her mind, Sarah bent over him and began the familiar ritual of unwrapping his wound, inspecting it, putting on salve, and wrapping the injury again with clean bandages.
    As she worked on him, she talked softly, describing what she was doing. She spoke aloud because experience had taught her that wild creatures were less likely to startle if she let them know exactly where she was by keeping up a constant, gentle flow of words.
    In some ways, Case reminded Sarah of a wild creature—strong, solitary, self-sufficient until man and his guns interrupted the natural order.
    The only change in the normal routine of caring for him came after she moved his leg enough to look at the stitches on the back of his thigh. The skin around them was puckered and pulling against the thread.
    â€œGoodness, you heal quickly,” she said in her soft, crooning voice. “Healthy as a horse, as Uncle William would say.”
    Again, an unexpected grief gripped her. She rarely allowed herself to think of the bachelor doctor whose only legacy to the world was the black bag of his profession.
    â€œI’ve taken good care of it for you,” she whispered. “I’ve kept the instruments clean and bright…Do you know that, wherever you are? Does it make up for all the times I followed you around and pestered you until you taught me what you could before you died?”
    No answer came from the silence.
    She didn’t expect one. She had grown used to asking questions that had no answers.
    With shiny, oddly shaped little scissors, she snipped the stitches on the back of Case’s leg. When she pulled them out with tweezers, he stirred slightly.
    â€œIt’s all right,” she murmured soothingly. “I’m just taking out stitches you don’t need. Nothing to wake up over.”
    She didn’t expect an answer from him any more than she had expected an answer from her dead uncle or the wild creatures she tended. Because Case wasn’t resisting her in any way, she assumed he was still deeply asleep.
    â€œThere,” she murmured. “That’s the last stitch. Now I’ll just bandage you up again. It won’t hurt a bit.”
    His eyelashes lifted for an instant, revealing slivers of pale green. He started to tell Sarah that she wasn’t hurting him, but it was too much effort.
    It was easier just to lie quietly and let her soothe him