One Bright Morning (23 page)

Jubal smiled at that. He approved. He liked
unflappable people and the fact that, except when faced with
gunfire or the loss of her home, Maggie Bright was very nearly
unflappable pleased him. It was another first for her, too, in
Jubal’s opinion. Maggie was the first nearly unflappable female
he’d ever met up with.

She held out a piece of her careful store of
magic bark to him. “Here, Mr. Green. You chew on this and drink
this water. That will help your pain.”

“
I don’t want to take your
medicine, Mrs. Bright. You’ll need this stuff a long time after I’m
well again, I reckon.”

Maggie tried to give him a nurse-like and
efficient glare, but she failed completely and dropped her eyes
instead.

“
Just eat it, Mr. Green, and
stop arguing with me. You need it right now and I don’t, so—so just
eat it.”

She looked adorable as she failed so
completely at being stern, and Jubal’s insides grinned in spite of
himself. “Yes, ma’am,” he said softly, and Maggie could hear the
amusement in his voice.

He took the bark from her and watched while
she laid her medicines out in a neat little row.

“
I’m going to check your
shoulder wound, Mr. Green. I want to wash it off and make sure you
haven’t damaged it driving the team.” She couldn’t quite make
herself look at him while she delivered her lecture.

“
Yes, ma’am,” Jubal said
obediently.

“
Mr. Blue Gully gave me this
lineament to rub into the scar. He says there’s plants ground up in
there that will ease the aching. It smells real good, too, Mr.
Green. Then I’ll rebandage the wound again so it won’t get dirty.
If it gets dirty, it might still fester.”

“
yes, ma’am,” Jubal said
again.

Maggie took a deep breath. Now came the
really embarrassing part. “I’ll help you with your shirt, Mr.
Green.” She still couldn’t look at him and tried to appear busy
shuffling her nursing things.

He was eyeing her curiously, aware of her
nervousness. He wondered if she’d be just as nervous around any
other man in the world, or if he held some special power to alarm
her. He hoped it was the latter.

“
What about my leg?” Jubal
figured it was pure wickedness that made him ask that.

Maggie turned her big eyes upon him and he
read the shock in her expression. “Well, really, Mr. Green, I—I
can’t wash your leg.”

Even through the fast-falling dusk, Jubal
could see her face flush a fiery red. He wished he’d had more
experience with good women. He’d like to tease Maggie some more
because she was so cute when she was embarrassed, but he didn’t
know how to go about it. That one suggestive comment about his leg
just about used up his reservoir of repartee. So, rather than tease
her, he got embarrassed instead.

“
I didn’t mean anything,
Mrs. Bright,” he mumbled. He swallowed a big gulp of water and bit
viciously on his medicinal bark after that big lie.

Now Maggie was even more embarrassed. She
was just sure that she had suspected him of intentions of which he
was innocent.

“
Well, anyway,” she
muttered, “Let’s get this shirt off.”

Jubal carefully nudged Annie aside so that
he could sit up, and Maggie unbuttoned his shirt for him, since his
hands were full. That embarrassed him, too, although the feel of
her fingers on his skin was heaven. A flitting, foggy thought that
was almost a memory floated through his brain, about soft, sweet
hands stroking him when he’d been burning with fever. He couldn’t
catch the image and make it stay put long enough for him to examine
it, but he began to burn again with a fever of an entirely
different nature. Damn. His reaction to this woman was getting out
of hand.

Maggie moved to sit herself behind his right
shoulder. She didn’t really have to be in back of him, but she felt
less nervous there, with him naked from the waist up. Lord, he was
a well-built man. His belly was flat, lean, and corded. His
shoulders and arms rippled with muscle, and he had tight, dark
golden curls on his forearms and chest that gleamed in the
late-afternoon sunlight.

Soaping her soft cloth, Maggie began to wash
Jubal’s wound tenderly. Then she decided she would prefer to work
without the cloth, so she lathered her hands and began to massage
him with gentle strokes of her hands. She liked the feel of him.
She also liked the smell of him. As warm tendrils of feeling began
to sneak around and touch embarrassing places within her, she
decided it had been too long since she’d smelled that male smell.
Or felt that pelt of male fur on a man’s chest. Then, since Maggie
was an honest soul, she admitted to herself that she’d never
actually felt this way about a man’s scent or feel before. She
decided that realization was better left unexamined.

Jubal’s wound was still a painful red and
looked terrible, but it had healed over and wasn’t oozing any
longer. She knew it hurt him when she washed him and she was
sorry.

“
I’m trying not to hurt you,
Mr. Green, but if I press too hard, let me know and I’ll ease
up.”

“
You’re not hurting me, Mrs.
Bright,” Jubal mumbled. “It feels good.”

His skin was warm and his muscles were firm
under Maggie’s hands. She was supporting herself with one hand on
his back while she soaped him with the other, and she had the
sudden urge to slide her arms around his shoulders and laid her
cheek against his broad back. She wanted to get right up next to
him and close her eyes and breathe in the masculine essence of him.
Her sigh of regret that she couldn’t do any of those things was
gusty.

“
I’ll rinse off the soap
now, Mr. Green.”

Jubal only grunted.

Her ministrations were driving him crazy. He
was reacting to Maggie the way a man reacts to a woman he wants to
bed. Jubal decided, as he sat there and tried to remain neutral
about her sensuously rubbing soothing balm into his shoulder and
back, that it was coming on toward one of those times in his life
when a man needed the only thing a woman was good for.

He was aghast when he realized that, while
he was trying to talk himself into what a good idea it would be to
visit one of the whore houses in El Paso, his whole being rebelled
at the notion. He didn’t just want a woman; he wanted this woman.
He admitted it to himself with something akin to despair.

If there was one thing on this earth he
didn’t want, it was to care about Maggie Bright. He didn’t want to
want her. The Lord knew, he had a very poor opinion of women in
general. His mother had made his father a miserable man for his
entire life. His sister-in-law Janie had got Jubal’s only brother
killed. And Sara. Jubal had loved little Sara, and now she was dead
because Janie was a fool. Like most women.

He knew what a woman could do to a man if he
let her get under his skin. The problem with Maggie Bright was that
she seemed to be getting under his skin even without Jubal’s
conscious consent. That bothered him a good deal.

Maggie rubbed Jubal’s shoulder and back for
a long time after she knew she didn’t need to anymore. But she
liked the feel of him beneath her hands and didn’t want to quit.
She smoothed Dan Blue Gully’s soothing balm into Jubal’s shoulder
in front and into his shoulder in back. Then she rubbed it into the
rest of his back, just in case. And she decided that while she was
at it, she might as well rub it down his arms. She was surprised at
how very, very hard they felt.

She finally quit rubbing him when she saw
that he was getting goose bumps. Then she was ashamed of herself,
because she thought he was getting cold in the evening air. She had
no idea that his goose bumps were from another cause entirely.

Jubal’s eyes were closed and he couldn’t
decide whether he were in anguish or ecstasy. Maggie’s hands felt
like silk as they spread the minty balm over his body, but his
manhood was in a state fit to make a delicate maiden blush. Every
stroke of Maggie’s fingers tingled through him, and caused much
more than goose bumps to rise in him. He felt like a fool sitting
there being tended by a woman who hadn’t an idea in the world what
she was doing to him while his sex thickened and throbbed in
response to her touch.

He hoped he wouldn’t have to stand up any
time soon because he didn’t think he could tolerate the humiliation
of showing his condition to the world, even the small world of
Maggie, Dan, and Four Toes. Especially to that small world.

When Maggie finally quit torturing him,
Jubal slumped over in relief.

“
I’m sorry, Mr. Green. I
didn’t realize how cold it was getting to be.”

She wanted to wrap her arms around him and
warm him up, and she knew herself to be distinctly disloyal to
Kenny. Maggie sighed in dismay. She was such a weak person. Her
aunt always told her that, and it made her sad sometimes to think
about it. On that bitter thought, she helped Jubal on with his
shirt.

“
Are you feeling better now,
Mr. Green?”

“
Yes. Thank you.” Jubal
could barely speak. When Maggie reached to button his shirt, he
said curtly, “I can do it,” and was sorry when she pulled back as
though she had been stung, and looked abashed.

“
Oh, of course, Mr. Green.
Your hands are free now. I’m sorry.”

Jubal squeezed his eyes shut. Hellfire, he
hated it that she was either thanking him or apologizing all the
blasted time.

Maggie scrambled to her feet. “I’ll get you
another quilt to wrap around your shoulders, Mr. Green. That will
keep you warm while I cook dinner.”

Jubal thought about protesting, but decided
it wasn’t worth the effort. If it made her feel better to pamper
him, that was the least he could let her do.

Maggie had started across the camp to the
wagon when something occurred to her. “Later on, you’ll have to rub
some of that lineament into your leg wound, Mr. Green,” she said.
Then she blushed and fled over to the wagon to fetch the quilt.

Jubal stared after her and thought about how
delightful it would be to have Maggie Bright rub balm into his
thigh. Then he cursed his stupidity. He’d stay hard all night if he
kept playing with those thoughts.

Chapter Ten

Maggie and Annie bedded down in the wagon
that night. It wasn’t a covered wagon, and Maggie took pains to see
that Annie would be warm enough. The worst of the winter chills
were past them now although, so far, April wasn’t proving to be
very springy and the weather was pretty cold. Still, Annie seemed
comfortable. She slept like a baby in fact, which wasn’t
surprising.

Although the day had been filled with new
experiences and it was late, Maggie didn’t feel especially sleepy
when she lay down to rest. Not only had she become excited about
this move to El Paso, but she was still vaguely troubled about the
stirrings she had felt when she’d been nursing Jubal. She’d never
felt those stirrings before, except with Kenny.

And I didn’t feel them very
often then, either
, she admitted to herself
with a guilty sigh as she stared at her sleeping baby. She tried to
make herself feel less guilty about her disloyal admission by
telling herself that she’d loved her husband dearly, that she’d
been a good wife, that it was only because she missed Kenny so much
that she found Jubal Green so attractive, but she was only
marginally successful.

“
Well, Aunt Lucy always did
tell me that I had a faulty character. I guess she was
right.”

Maggie’s glum conclusion depressed her
spirits for a full five minutes, until she looked up and beheld the
sky. Then her senses were so overwhelmed by the starry majesty
revealed that she completely forgot that she had been busy
chastising herself, and she could only stare heavenward.

“
Oh, my goodness,” she
breathed softly, and wished Annie were still awake so that she,
too, could witness this incredible splendor.

She discovered that if she squinted very
hard and pulled the edges of her eyes toward her scalp with her
fingers, she could pick out the individual stars much better. They
still slurred together a little bit, but not nearly as much.

I wonder if I could see
everything better this way
, she
mused.
Of course, I’d look mighty silly
pulling at my eyes all day long
.

Using her new-found aid to sight, Maggie sat
up in the wagon and squinted around the campsite. It was too dark
now to discern anything much except one lone man squatting on a log
beside the campfire, posted guard. Light from the low, flickering
flames licked him up and down erratically, and she couldn’t make
out who it was. She pulled the edges of her eyes so taut that the
lids nearly met over her eyeballs while she tried to determine
which of her three traveling companions was on duty at the moment,
but it was to no avail.

“
Whoever he is, he’s big,”
she whispered to herself. “That means it’s either Mr. Blue Gully or
Mr. Green.”

Maggie sat cross-legged on the wagon bed for
several minutes, trying to decide whether to get down out of the
wagon and chat with the man or not. She couldn’t sleep; it would be
nice to be able to talk to somebody tonight. It was, after all, her
first night away from home since she’d married Kenny four years
earlier, and she’d been alone a lot since Kenny’s death. Adult
company had been mighty thin in Maggie’s life.

She realized that, if she knew for sure it
was Dan Blue Gully there by the fire, she’d hop down in a minute.
She felt really easy around Dan and had no trouble at all in
talking to him.