The Gunman's Bride. Catherine Palmer

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      Don’t turn me out. If Bart had said anything else, she would have forced him to the window at gunpoint and made him climb right out into the cold. But how could she turn him out? The Bart Kingsley she knew had been turned out far too often in his life.

      Taunted by the farmhands. Beaten, whipped and burned by his stepfather. Neglected by his own mother. He wore ragged clothes and boots that pinched his toes and rubbed blisters on his heels. In the winter he had no coat. In the summer he had no hat. The schoolmarm refused to allow him into her classroom. The preacher made him sit outside on the church steps to hear the sermon.

      No, Rosie knew she couldn’t turn him out. Not tonight. Once the decision had been made, there was nothing left but to treat the awful wound in his side.

      “You’d better take one of these liver pills,” Rosie said, carrying her stash of Dr. Vermillion’s medicines to the bedside. “Only the good Lord knows where that bullet is.”

      Though Dr. Lowell had been her fiancé for three long years, Rosie recalled, she had never gotten past calling the man by his formal title. He kept daytime office hours and never saw patients at home. It was the new way of practicing medicine, he had told her.

      She helped Bart lift his head to swallow the tiny brown pill, followed by a teaspoon of Dr. Hathaway’s Blood Builder.

      “Where did you get this nasty stuff, Rosie?” he asked with a grimace as she poured a spoonful of something black. He swallowed and nearly gagged. “I’ll be horse-whipped if that doesn’t taste like a—”

      “Don’t you swear, Bart. I mean it.” She drew back the edge of his jacket and caught her breath. “You need a doctor!”

      “No, I can’t do that.”

      “It’s a mess, and I don’t know the first thing about nursing. I’ve got to get this jacket off. I’ll fetch my scissors.”

      “Don’t cut it!” He grabbed a handful of nightgown to stop her. “This is all I’ve got, Rosie. I’ll work it off, just give me a minute.” Releasing her gown, he began to shrug his shoulders and arms out of the buckskin jacket.

      His face was beaded with perspiration from the effort, and she bent over him to help pull away the garment. The scent of woodsmoke and leather clung to his skin. She wished it were unpleasant, but the smell stirred something deep inside her. A memory. A trace of pleasure. Although she tried to keep from touching him, the effort was hopeless, and she ended up wrestling his big shoulders and long arms out of the sleeves.

      “There!” she said, letting out a breath as he collapsed. “You don’t even have on a shirt! Oh, good heavens, when was the last time you took this off?”

      With two fingers she carried the bloody jacket across the room and dropped it into a basket in the corner. It would likely fall apart after a good scrubbing with lye soap. At least the hole ought to be mended. There wouldn’t be time for any of that, of course, not with Bart leaving first thing in the morning.

      She glanced over her shoulder to find him breathing deeply, his eyes shut and his huge chest filling her narrow bed from one side to the other. When did he get to be so big?

      She poured water into her basin and carried it to the bed. When she sat down beside him, his green eyes opened—reminding her that even though he didn’t look like her Bart or act like her Bart, he was her Bart.

      “Now bite your tongue,” she told him. “And don’t you dare start cussing at me.”

      She dipped a towel in the water and blotted his skin.

      Dear Lord, she breathed up in prayer as she studied the damage, don’t let him die on me. Much as I’ve wanted to kill this man, please keep him alive.

      “How’s it look?” he grunted.

      “Terrible.”

      “Can you feel the bullet?”

      “Feel it? I’m not sticking my finger in there!”

      “Rosie, it’s not coming out unless someone takes it out. And if you don’t patch up the hole, I’m liable to bleed to death. I reckon if you’d do that for me, I wouldn’t ever ask another thing of you.”

      “Why should I trust a murdering outlaw?” she asked.

      “Especially one who ran off two weeks after he married her,” Bart finished.

      “We never were married,” she said softly as she rummaged through the bag. “You said so yourself.”

      “You found the note?”

      “Of course I did.” Wishing he hadn’t brought up their impetuous wedding, she set the lamp on a table near the bed. If only he hadn’t tracked her down. If only he hadn’t crawled into her bedroom all shot up. Now she was stuck with him. But only until morning.

      Before she could begin, he caught her hand and held it to his chest. “Rosie,” he whispered, his eyes depthless. “Thank you, Rosie-girl.”

      “You won’t be thanking me in a minute.” She focused on the tweezers in her bag. How could it be that his gaze drew her back through time with an ache that wouldn’t go away—in spite of everything she knew about him?

      She had to concentrate. Bart had lost so much blood. As she dipped the tweezers into the wound, she felt his hand slide into her hair. Eyes squeezed shut, he arched back in pain. His hand closed over a hank of her hair and she could feel him working it between his fingers.

      Running a dry tongue over her lips, Rosie centered her attention on the wound again. She moved the tweezers deeper, then wiped the blood with a towel. Nothing. Where could the bullet be? She worked the tool farther in. Suddenly his hand clamped over hers, squeezing hard.

      “Bart!” she gasped, jerking out the tweezers.

      “Rosie, we were married,” he murmured. “We were.”

      “I can’t find the bullet.”

      “You were my Rosie,” he whispered, relaxing his hand. His fingers moved through the hair at her temple. “Once you were my Rosie-girl.”

      She closed her eyes, fighting tears. His fingertips stroked across the down on her cheek, feathering her skin. A finger traced the arch of her eyebrow. Another found her eyelid and rested lightly there a moment before fanning down to her lashes and cheek.

      “Remember how you shinnied down the oak tree by your bedroom window that night?” he was saying, his voice almost inaudible. “We ran through the fields to Reverend Russell’s place? You wore a white dress and lilacs in your hair. The reverend was drunk as usual, but we hardly noticed because we were so scared and excited to get married and—”

      “No!” She pushed his hand away. “It was only a game, Bart. We were children. You said so yourself.”

      Leaving him, she hurried to the wash stand, rinsed the tweezers and fumbled the medicines into the bag. Six years ago she had convinced herself that she had never married Bart Kingsley. No one knew except her pappy—and neither of them had ever mentioned his name again.

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