Victoria Thompson: Texas Blonde

She pulled away, her joy suddenly turning to alarm when she took a closer look at his face. Still handsome, his features were now sharpened by the pale gauntness of a long illness. "Dear heaven, what happened?" she demanded.

But Josh did not hear her question. He was glaring over her head at Richard Winthrop. "That was an interesting proposition you were making my wife when I came in," he said, his voice hard with suppressed fury. "Would you like to repeat it now?"

Felicity turned in Joshua's arms to see Richard's reaction. His elegant face was beet-red, as if he were strangling. "Where in the hell have you been?" he demanded, giving Felicity some indication of how upset he was. He had never before used profanity in her presence. "You should have been here a month ago."

"So you said in your letter," Josh replied. Felicity could feel the tension vibrating through his too thin body.

"Joshua, please," she tried, but again he did not seem to hear.

"Do you make a habit of professing your love to married women, or is my wife a special case?" Josh inquired menacingly.

"Your wife is a very special case, as you well know," Richard grated, his slender hands forming into fists.

"Stop it, both of you!" Felicity shouted, giving Joshua a shake to get his attention. "You're acting like two dogs fighting over the same bone, and the bone doesn't like it one bit!"

Josh lowered his gaze to her upturned face, and for an instant his expression softened as he took in her beauty, the glittering gold of her hair, the glimmering azure of her eyes. Even her body, so distorted by his child, was beautiful to him. But then he pictured her in Richard's embrace, as she had been a few seconds ago, and his hands came up and clutched at her shoulders possessively. "Has he been making love to you ever since you've been here?"

"No!" she replied, outraged that he thought she would allow such a thing. "I wouldn't have let him in the same room with me if he had even tried."

"But he was making love to you when I came in," Josh pointed out, his grip tightening until she winced.

"He was comforting me because I was crying."

"And what did he say to make you cry?" Josh challenged.

Felicity did not even consider sparing him. "He said that if you loved me, you wouldn't have sent me away," she reported, and ignoring his profane reaction, she went on relentlessly. "He also said that if you were half a man, you would have been here with me. And he was right and that's why I cried, but you were sick, weren't you Joshua?" she demanded, giving him another shake.

"Not sick exactly," he said, lifting his steel-gray gaze to Richard again. "We had a little trouble with Ortega again, and I… I caught a bullet," he admitted reluctantly.

"Oh, Joshua!" Felicity cried. "Where were you hit?" She stepped back, examining him from head to toe as if she could see the wound right through his clothes.

"In the chest," he explained with equal reluctance.

With an anguished cry, she drew him to her again, as if she could somehow shield him from any further pain, and she felt a tremor go through his body. Whether it was caused by fatigue or fury, she could not tell, but she decided he had been standing long enough in any case. "Come in and sit down by the fire. You must be frozen after that ride from the station," she said, releasing him and leading him over to the settee where she and Richard had been sitting.

Richard stepped away as they approached. His face was still red, but now he looked more embarrassed than angry. Josh sat down with carefully concealed relief. Felicity saw it, but she knew Joshua would rather die than betray any weakness before Richard. She realized that she needed to be alone with her husband as soon as possible. "Richard, thank you for coming by to see me today. I'm so sorry you won't be able to join us for supper," she added, purposely using the wrong word because she knew the interpretation he would place on it.

Richard needed no subtle hints, however. "It has been my pleasure to care for you, but now I see that you no longer need that care, Cousin Felicity," he said stiffly. "I… I'm very happy for you," he added graciously, although his brown eyes were full of pain over his loss.

"Thank you," she replied, and those two words held a wealth of meaning. She gave him her hand. He carried it to his lips briefly, but before Josh could even react, Richard dropped her fingers, turned on his heel, and was gone.

Even before the door slid shut behind him, Felicity turned back to her husband, appalled at his appearance. But before she could speak, he said, "How are you?" He gestured toward her stomach.

"Oh, Joshua," she cried in frustration. "I'm perfectly fine. You're the one we have to worry about!" She took the seat beside him and reached out to stroke the beloved angles of his face. "What happened? Tell me everything."

He captured her hands and kissed each one fervently, not at all the way Richard had kissed her earlier. "Joshua," she whispered lovingly. "I don't think you kissed me hello."

For one second his gray eyes grew dark, and then his mouth came down on hers, scattering the last of her doubts.

Joshua loved her and he had come for her. Everything was going to be all right.

His kiss was long and sweet, a reconfirmation of the vows they had made to each other. When at last he pulled away, she murmured, "I love you," and he echoed her tender pledge.

"Now tell me everything," she insisted, taking his hands.

He frowned, obviously loath to do so, but after another moment of hesitation, he began. "The day I got back from taking you to the train, Ortega and his gang raided the ranch and kidnapped Candace…"

"Oh, dear heaven!"

"She's fine," Josh assured her. "They didn't hurt her. It was… it was you they really wanted."

"Me?"

Josh nodded grimly. "Of course. Ortega had decided that was the only way to really get revenge. But when you weren't there-and they tore the house apart looking for you-they deckled taking Candace was better than nothing. What they hadn't planned on was Jeremiah."

Felicity's eyes grew wide. "Jeremiah! He wasn't in on the kidnapping, was he?" she asked, unwilling to believe he could have agreed to such a thing after the way he had saved Joshua's life.

"No, he tried to warn us, but his horse went lame, and he couldn't get to the ranch in time. But he did help us find the place where they were holding Candace. He and I had this wonderful plan. We sneaked up into the camp. It was hidden way up in some rocks. I stayed in the shadows to cover him and Jeremiah walked right in. He was going to talk the rest of them into letting Candace go. What we hadn't figured on was what he would do if Ortega refused. Lucky for us, Grady got to thinking."

"We'd ordered him and the other men to stay down below and capture anybody who got away from us. After we left,. Grady realized that if the plan didn't work, Ortega would probably kill Candace and Jeremiah and me, so what good would it do if Grady and the others managed to get the rest of the gang? He and the other men followed me and Jeremiah up into the the hideout. I reckon it was the first time Grady ever disobeyed orders, but it's a good thing he did. Ortega wasn't about to listen to reason, so I had to shoot him before he killed Jeremiah and Candace. Unfortunately, he got me, too."

Felicity made a small, anguished sound and laid her palm reverently on her husband's chest. "Where?" she asked as tears threatened to fog her vision.

He moved her hand inside his suit coat to the left side of his chest, just above his heart, and she cried out again as she realized how close death had come. But then another thought intruded. "Why didn't you tell me? Why didn't you send for me?" she asked, and in her mind she asked the unspeakable question, What if you had died and I wasn't there?