The Cowboy She Saw with Her Heart

Chapter One

Cheyenne, Wyoming

The pounding came in the dead of night.

Daisy Whitmore woke with her heart racing, one hand clutching the quilt beneath her chin, the other stretched blindly toward the little table beside her bed.

Three heavy blows struck the front door hard enough to rattle the frame; the sound carried through the hall and up the narrow staircase.

Daisy remained still.

In the darkness that was no different from daylight to her, she listened.

The house had its own language after midnight.

The slow settling of timber. The whisper of spring wind pressing against the eaves.

The ticking clock in the parlor below, steady as a heartbeat.

Nathan’s boots stood by the back door, placed there after he came home late from tending patients.

The faint herbal smell of lavender and lye wafted from her workshop, always clinging to the walls.

This noise jarred against the rest of the house.

Another thud struck the door.

Daisy sat up too quickly, and her breath caught. Her fingers found the table edge, then the matchbox and water glass she always kept within reach. She ignored the lamp.

“Nathan?” she called.

No answer.

Her brother’s room was across the hall. She turned her head, listening past the thunder of her own pulse. There. Bed ropes creaking, feet hitting the floor, the sharp scrape of a chair. Nathan was awake.

The pounding came again.

A man shouted something from outside, but the wind tore the words apart.

Daisy threw back the covers and reached for the robe draped over the foot of her bed. Her hand found soft wool at once. She'd placed it there herself. Everything in her life had its place now. Every chair, every jar, every needle, every cup. Order had become its own kind of sight.

She tied the sash with fingers that trembled despite her annoyance at them.

The floorboards beneath her feet were cold. Seven steps brought her to the door. Her hand found the notch in the plaster Nathan had never repaired because she used it to orient herself, before turning left toward the banister. Her fingers curled around smooth wood worn by years of use.

“Nathan?” she called again, softer this time.

His door opened.

“Stay upstairs, Daisy,” he muttered, already moving.

The words were quiet, but something in them chilled her more than the night air.

“What is it?”

“Stay upstairs.”

Then he was moving past her, fast enough that the hem of his dressing gown stirred the air against her hand. He took the stairs two at a time.

Daisy remained where she was for one breath, then another.

Another blow hit the door.

She flinched.

Whoever stood outside sounded desperate and dangerous.

Daisy gripped the handrail and began descending the steps.

She knew every stair. Twelve to the landing. Four more after the turn. The third from the bottom gave a faint complaint beneath the left edge if one stepped too heavily. Nathan hit it now. The groan came, followed by the scrape of the bolt.

Cold air burst into the house.

Voices rushed in with it.

“Doctor… found him near the alley… didn’t know where else…”

“Bring him in,” Nathan said sharply.

There was a heavy drag across the threshold.

Daisy stopped midway down the stairs.

Boots. More than one pair. One man was breathing hard. Another was making a wet, broken sound that raised the hair along her arms. Cloth scraped against the floor. Nathan swore under his breath, not loudly, but with the clipped violence of a man who'd seen something terrible.

“Parlor,” he ordered. “Quickly.”

The injured man groaned.

Daisy’s stomach turned.

She came down the remaining stairs, one hand sliding along the rail until her bare feet touched the rug at the bottom. The cold from the open door licked around her ankles. She smelled mud, sweat, horse, and blood.

Blood overwhelmed everything else, metallic and thick in the cold air.

“Nathan,” she said.

The room went still for half a second.

Then her brother’s voice cut through the dark. “Daisy, I told you to stay upstairs.”

“You also told me last winter that Mr. Haskell’s cough was nothing to worry over, and he nearly died of pneumonia. I stopped blindly obeying you years ago.”

A strained breath escaped one of the men near the door. Not laughter. Nerves.

Nathan didn't answer.

Daisy moved toward the parlor, counting by memory. Eight steps from the stairs to the archway. She knew she'd reached it when the air changed, when the larger room opened before her and the smell of lamp oil mingled with blood.

Someone set a lamp on the table. A match struck. Daisy heard the faint flare and smelled sulfur.

Light filled the room for everyone but her.

“What happened?” she asked.

A stranger answered. “Found him behind O’Malley’s shed. Thought he was dead ‘til he groaned.”

Nathan’s tone hardened. “You saw no one else?”

“No, sir.” The stranger seemed to be growing impatient.

“Did anyone see you bring him here?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

A pause.

“Then go,” Nathan said. “Use the back lane. Say nothing of this.”

“But, Doctor…” The stranger said.

“Go.”

The man did.

The front door closed. The bolt slid back into place. Daisy stood very still, listening to the stranger’s retreating steps fade beyond the house.

Then the injured man coughed.

The sound was so full of pain that Daisy’s hand flew to her own ribs.

“Nathan,” she whispered.

“Boil water,” he said.

Nathan didn't ask for help unless he needed it.

He didn't involve her in his worst cases unless he had no choice.

Daisy wasn't a child, nor an invalid, no matter how often the world forgot that.

She'd helped him through fevers, burns, broken bones, and even one ugly knife wound after a dispute outside the cattle pens.

But his voice now was different.

Flat. Focused. Afraid.

“Daisy.”

“I’m moving.”

She turned at once.

The kitchen was just down the hall, past the little table with the vase of dried rosemary, left at the narrow runner, right when the floor changed from polished wood to cool stone. She moved quickly, one hand skimming the wall only when necessary.

Her world sharpened as it always did when panic threatened.

The pump handle was cold iron beneath her palm.

The bucket sat where it belonged. The stove still held the banked embers from supper.

She stirred them awake, fed them kindling, then coal.

The kettle was on the second shelf. The clean cloths were in the drawer to the left of the basin.

Bandages in the tin box. Carbolic. Needle. Thread.

Her hands knew what to do.

That was the mercy of work. It didn't ask the heart to be calm.

Behind her, Nathan’s voice carried from the parlor. “Can you hear me?”

No answer.

“Stay with me.”

The injured man muttered something.

Daisy froze with the kettle in her hand.

The voice was too faint. Too ragged. Too broken. And yet something inside her went still.

She set the kettle on the stove.

The voice tugged loose an old memory before she could stop it. Not a picture. Pictures had long ago lost their edges. But a voice remained. Low and warm, teasing her beneath the cottonwoods at the Callahan ranch.

You walk like you’re daring the earth to move out from under you, Daisy Whitmore.

And she'd laughed, young and foolish and whole in ways she hadn't known she could lose.

She gripped the stove rail until the heat bit her knuckles.

No.

There were hundreds of men in Cheyenne. Thousands, perhaps. Men with low voices. Men who worked cattle and drank too much and got themselves beaten half to death in alleys.

Not him.

It couldn’t be. After three years, he couldn’t be in her parlor.

“Daisy, please!” Nathan called.

She jerked into motion.

By the time she returned, carrying the cloths against her chest and the tin box tucked beneath one arm, the parlor smelled worse. Blood, sweat, whiskey, damp wool, and beneath it all, a scent familiar enough to make her throat tighten. Leather. Dust. Cedar smoke.

The Callahan ranch had smelled of cedar smoke in winter.

“Set them on the table,” Nathan said.

She obeyed, fingers finding the edge of the table, then laying everything out by touch. “How badly is he hurt?”

“Badly.”

“That tells me nothing.” Daisy nervously licked her lips.

“Then you’ll have to live with that for now.”

She heard him cutting cloth. The wet peel of fabric from skin followed, and the injured man made a sound that wasn't quite a cry because he didn't seem to have the strength for one.

Daisy’s nails dug into her palms.

“Hold the lamp closer,” Nathan muttered, then swore when he remembered.

“I can hold pressure,” Daisy said.

“No.”

“I have done it before.” Daisy was determined.

“Not this time.”

That stopped her. She turned toward him, though she couldn't find his face. “Why?”

Nathan kept working instead of answering.

The injured man breathed through his teeth.

Daisy heard the shift of Nathan’s coat, the clink of instruments, the soft splash of water in a basin. Each sound painted only pieces. A body on the sofa. Nathan crouched beside him. Blood on the rug. Mud on the floor.

“What are you not telling me?” she asked.

“Daisy, please.”

The plea undid her anger more than any command could have.

She swallowed. “Tell me what you need.”

“More hot water. Then bring the brown bottle from my medical cabinet. Top shelf, left side.” Nathan was a model of efficiency, his movements calculated and practiced.

“Laudanum?”

“Yes.”

Her stomach churned. “Nathan.”

“Now.”

She went.

The hallway suddenly felt unfamiliar despite all the years she'd lived there. At the cabinet, her fingers found the rows of bottles by shape and label notches Nathan had carved for her. Tincture. Spirits. Laudanum. She took the brown bottle.

When she returned, the man on the sofa stirred.

“Don’t,” Nathan said sharply. “You move again, and you’ll bleed through what little blood you have left.”

The man rasped something.

Daisy stopped in the archway. This time, the voice was clearer. Her hand gripped the bottle.

“Who is he?” she asked.

Nathan’s silence was answer enough. Her lips parted, but no sound came.

No.