Reckless Love

Chapter Six

Ty awoke with the sun shining right onto his face and the familiar sound of a horse cropping grass nearby. As he turned to check on Blackbird, pain brought back all the memories-his horse's death and his own capture, Cascabel and the gauntlet, pain and running endlessly, and the gray-eyed waif who had patched up his wounds. Vaguely Ty remembered getting on a zebra dun and riding until he was quite certain he had died and gone to hell.

Except that this wasn't hell. True enough, the overhang he lay beneath was hot red stone, but the canyon floor was lush with the kind of vegetation that only came from water. Definitely not a flaming hell. In fact, with the sun's warmth and the lazy humming of insects and the calling of birds, this could only be a slice of heaven.

Automatically Ty sat up to have a better look around. Pain and dizziness struck, chaining him in place, forcing him to revise his opinion of where he was. Eyes closed, his weight braced on his elbows, he decided that the valley might be in heaven, but his body was indeed in hell.

"Lie down, Ty. You've been sick."

He opened his eyes. Gray eyes watched him with concern. Without thinking, Ty shifted his weight until he could raise his hand to touch the cheek that was so close to his.

The skin was smooth and fine grained, as soft as an angel's wing.

"It's all right," he said fuzzily. "I'm fine now."

"Lie down," Janna said, pressing against his bare shoulders.

It did no good. He remained as he was, propped half-upright on his elbow.

"Please, Ty," Janna said, her voice husky with emotion. "Lie down. The fever's broken and you're much better, but you need to rest."

"Thirsty," he mumbled.

Instantly Janna grabbed a canteen, poured a stream of amber, herbal-smelling tea into a tin cup and helped Ty to drink. The taste of the liquid brought back other memories. He had drunk from this cup many times, with slender hands holding him upright and then easing him back down and stroking him until he fell once more into feverish sleep.

Sighing deeply, Ty allowed Janna to help him to lie down again.

"How long?" he asked.

"How long have we been here?"

He nodded slightly.

"Four days."

His eyes opened.

"You've been sick," Janna explained. "You caught a chill riding through the rain. That, plus your injuries from the gauntlet…" Her voice died. Automatically she reached forward and brushed back the slightly curly lock of black hair that had fallen over Ty's forehead.

Ty flinched from the touch and looked Janna over with narrowed green eyes. "You don't look so good yourself. You're skinnier than ever. If you don't take better care of yourself, you'll never get tall and put on muscle."

"Not all men are built like a side of beef," Janna retorted, hurt because Ty had refused her touch. She reached into the herb pouch, brought out a twist of paper and sprinkled the white powder into another cup of the herbal tea. "Here. Drink this."

"What is it?"

"Poison."

"Fresh as paint, aren't you, boy?"

"You're half-right," Janna muttered, but she said it so softly that Ty couldn't hear. She silently vowed that she would make him see which half of the truth he knew-and that he would be crazy with desire before he figured it out.

Ty drank the contents of the cup, grimaced and gave his companion a green-eyed glare. "Tastes like horse piss."

"I'll take your word for it, having never tasted that particular liquid."

Ty laughed, grabbed his left side and groaned. "Damn. Feels like a mule kicked me."

"It won't be so bad in a few minutes," she said, standing up. "Then I'll unwrap the bandages and take another look."

"Where are you going?"

"To check on the soup."

The thought of food made Ty's salivary glands contract in anticipation.

"Hungry?" she asked wryly, recognizing the look.

"I could eat a horse."

"Then I'd better warn Zebra to stay away from you."

"That old pony would be too tough to eat," Ty drawled, smiling slowly as h£ relaxed against the folded blankets beneath him.

Janna watched from a distance while Ty's eyelids closed and the taut lines around his eyes relaxed as he drifted into sleep. Only then did she return to his side, kneel and pull up the blanket so that his shoulders were covered once more. Even with the overhang of red rock to reflect back the sun's heat, she was afraid of his catching another chill. She didn't know what she would do if he became ill again. She was exhausted from broken sleep or no sleep at all, and from worrying that she had helped Ty to escape from renegades only to kill him by dragging him through a cold rain into the secret valley.

These had been the longest days of Janna's life since her father had died five years before, leaving his fourteen-year-old daughter orphaned and alone at a muddy water hole in southern Arizona. Watching Ty battle injury and fever had drained Janna's very soul. He had been so hot, then drenched in cold sweat, then hot and restless once more, calling out names of people she didn't know, fighting battles she had never heard of, crying out in anguish over dead comrades. She had tried to soothe and comfort him, had held him close in the cold hours before dawn, had bathed his big body in cool water when he was too hot and had wanned him with her own heat when he was too cold.

And now Ty flinched from her touch.

Don't be foolish, Janna told herself as she watched Ty sleep for a few moments longer. He doesn't remember anything. He thinks you're a skinny boy. No wonder he didn't want you petting him. And then, How can he be so blasted blind as not to see past these clothes?

As Janna went to the small campfire to check on the soup, she couldn't help wondering if Ty would have responded differently if he had known she was a girl.

Her intense desire that he see her as a woman caught her on the raw. She knew she was becoming too attached to the stranger whom chance had dropped into her life. As soon as Ty was healed he would leave with as little warning as he had come, going off to pursue his own dreams. He was just one more man hungry for gold or for the glory of being the person to tame the spirit horse known as Lucifer.

And he was too damned thickheaded to see past the skinny boy to the lonely woman.

Lonely?

Janna's hand froze in the act of stirring the soup. She had been alone for years but had never thought of herself as lonely. The horses had been her companions, the wind her music, the land her mentor, and her father's books had opened a hundred worlds of the mind to her. If she found herself yearning for another human voice, she had gone into Sweetwater or Hat Rock or Indian Springs. Each time she went into any of the outposts of civilization, she had left after only a few hours, driven out by the greedy eyes of the men who watched her pay for her purchases with tiny pieces of raw gold-men who, unlike Ty, had sometimes seen past Janna's boyish appearance.

Gloomily Janna studied the soup as it bubbled and announced its readiness in the blended fragrances of meat, herbs and vegetables. She poured some soup into her steep-sided tin plate and waited until it cooled somewhat. When she was sure the soup wouldn't burn Ty's mouth, she picked up her spoon and went to the overhang.

He was still asleep, yet there was an indefinable change in his body that told her Ty was healing even as she watched. He was much stronger than her consumptive father had been. Though Ty's bruises were spectacular, they were already smaller than they had been a few days before. The flesh covering his ribs was no longer swollen. Nor was his head where a club had struck.

Thick muscles and an even thicker skull, Janna told herself sarcastically.

As though he knew he were being watched, Ty opened his eyes. Their jeweled green clarity both reassured and disturbed Janna. She was glad that he was no longer dazed by fever, yet being the focus of those eyes was a bit unnerving. He might have been just one more gold- and horse-hungry man, but he had the strength, intelligence and determination to succeed where other men never got past the point of daydreaming.

"Are you still hungry?" Janna asked, her voice low and husky.

"Did you cook up poor old Zebra for me?"

The slow smile that followed Ty's words made Janna's nerve endings shimmer. Even covered with beard stubble and lying flat on his back, Ty was one of the most handsome men she had ever seen.

"No," Janna said, smiling in return. "She was too big for my pot." With unconscious grace, Janna sank to her knees next to Ty, balancing the tin plate in her hands without spilling a drop. "A few weeks back I traded a packet of dried herbs, three letters and a reading of A Midsummer Night's Dream for thirty pounds of jerked beef."

Ty blinked. "I beg your pardon?"

Janna laughed softly. "I'll tell you while I feed you soup. Can you sit up?"

Cautiously, then with greater assurance, Ty sat up. He started to say that he could feed himself before he realized that he was light-headed. He propped his back against the gently sloping stone cliff that was both wall and, eventually, ceiling to the natural shelter. The blanket covering him slid from his shoulders, down his chest, and finally rumpled across his lap.

Janna's pulse gave an odd little skip at the sight of the dark, masculine patterns of hair curling out from beneath Ty's bandages and down his muscular body. The temptation to trace those patterns with her fingertips was almost overwhelming.

Don't be a goose, she told herself firmly. I've been washing, feeding and caring for Ty like a baby for four days. I've seen him wearing nothing but sunlight and soapy water, so why on earth am I getting all foolish and shivery now?

Because he's awake now, that's why.

Ty looked down at his own body, wondering why he was being stared at. What he saw made him wince. Spreading out from beneath his rib bandage were bruises every color of the rainbow, but the predominant hues were black and blue with garish flourishes of green.

"I'm a sight, aren't I?" Ty asked wryly. "Looks worse than it feels, though. Whatever medicine you've been using works real well."

Janna closed her eyes for an instant, then looked only at the plate of soup in her hands. The surface of the liquid was disturbed by delicate rings, the result of the almost invisible trembling of her hands while she had looked at Ty.

"Don't go all pale on me now, boy. You must have seen worse than me."

Boy.

And thank God for it, Janna reminded herself instantly. I have no more sense than a handful of sand when he looks at me and smiles that slow, devil-take-it smile.

But, God, I do wish he knew I was a woman!

She took a deep, secret breath and brought her scattering emotions under control.

"Ready?" she asked, dipping the spoon into the soup.

"I was born ready."

She put the spoon into Ty's mouth, felt the gentle resistance of lips and tongue cleaning the spoon, and nearly dropped the plate of soup. He didn't notice, for the taste of the soup had surprised him.

"That's good."

"You needn't sound so shocked," she muttered.

"After that horse piss you've been feeding me, I didn't know what to expect."

"That was medicine. This is food."

"Food's the best medicine save one for what ails a man."

"Oh? What's the best?"

Ty smiled slowly. "When you're a man you won't have to ask."

The spoon clicked rather forcefully against Ty's teeth.

"Sorry," Janna said with transparent insincerity.

"Don't look so surly, boy. I felt the same way you did when I was your age. You'll grow into manhood with time."

"How old do you think I am?"

"Oh… thirteen?"

"Don't try to be kind," she said between her teeth.

"Hell, boy, you look closer to twelve with those soft cheeks and fine bones, and you know it. But that will begin to change about the time your voice cracks. It just takes time."

Janna knew that there would never be enough time in the whole world for her to grow into a man, but she had just enough common sense and self-control to keep that revealing bit of truth to herself. With steady motions she shoveled soup into Ty's mouth.

"You trying to drown me?" he asked, taking the soup from her. "I'll feed myself, thanks." He crunched through a pale root of some kind, started to ask what it was, then decided not to. The first thing a man on the trail learned was that if it tastes good, don't ask what it is. Just be grateful and eat fast. "What's this about herbs and Shakespeare and letters?" he asked between mouthfuls of soup.

"My father and I used to divide up a play and read parts to each other. It helped to pass the time on the trail. I still have a trunk of his books," Janna said, helplessly watching the tip of Ty's tongue lick up stray drops of broth. "When I need supplies, I'll go to the Lazy A or the Circle G and write letters for the cowhands. Most of them can't read anything but brands, so I'll also read whatever letters they've saved up until someone like me happens by."

Ty looked at the thick, dark lashes, crystalline eyes and delicately structured face of the youth who was much too pretty for Ty's comfort. "Where did you go to school?" he asked roughly.

"On the front seat of a buckboard. Papa had a university degree and a case of wanderlust."

"What about your mother?"

"She died when I was three. Papa told me her body just wasn't up to the demands of her spirit."

The spoon hesitated on the way to Ty's mouth. He pinned Janna with an intense glance. "When did your Daddy die?"

Janna paused for an instant, thinking quickly. If she told Ty her father had died five years before, he would ask how a kid under ten had survived on his own. If she told Ty that she was nineteen, he would realize that the only way a nineteen-year-old boy could lack a deep voice and a beard shadow and muscles was if said boy were a girl wearing men's clothing. She wanted Ty to figure that out for himself-the hard way.

"Papa died a few seasons back," she said casually. "You lose track of time living alone."

"You've lived alone since then?" Ty asked, startled. "The whole time?"

Janna nodded.

"Don't you have any kin?"

"No."

"Wouldn't any of the townspeople let you trade room and board for work?"

"I don't like towns."

"Surely one of the ranches would take you on as a cook's helper or fence rider. Hell, if you can tame a mustang, there isn't a ranch anywhere that wouldn't take you on as a mustanger," Ty added, disturbed at the thought of an orphaned child wandering homeless over the land. "You could make a decent living catching and breaking horses for the rough string."

"I don't catch mustangs," Janna said flatly. "Too many of them refuse to eat once they're caught. I've seen them starve to death looking over a corral fence with glazed eyes."

"Most mustangs accept men."

Janna simply shook her head. "I won't take a mustang's freedom. I've gentled a few ranch-bred horses for women's mounts or for kids, but that's all."

"Sometimes a man has to do things he doesn't want to in order to survive," Ty said, his eyes narrowed against painful memories.

"I've been lucky so far," Janna said quietly. "More soup?"

Slowly, as though called back from a distance, Ty focused on Janna. "Thanks, I'd like that," he said, handing over the plate. "While I eat, would you mind reading to me?"

"Not at all. Anything in particular you want to hear?"

"Do you have Romeo and Juliet?"

"Yes."

"Then read to me about a woman more beautiful than the dawn." Ty closed his eyes and smiled. "A well-bred lady of silk, softer than a summer breeze, with pale hair and skin whiter than magnolias, and delicate hands that have never done anything more harsh than coax Chopin from a huge grand piano…"

"What's her name?" Janna asked tightly.

"Who?"

"The silk lady you're describing."

"Silver MacKenzie, my brother's wife." Ty's eyes opened, clear and hard. "But there are other women like her in England. I'm going to get one."

Abruptly Janna came to her feet. She returned a few minutes later with a heavy book tucked under her left arm and carrying a bowl of soup with her right hand. She gave Ty the soup, opened the worn book to Romeo and Juliet, Act II, Scene II, and began to read:

"'But, soft! What light through yonder window breaks?

It is the East, and Juliet is the sun…'"