Chapter Twenty-Three
Daisy knew trouble had followed Nathan home before he spoke a single word.
He never arrived quietly. Every evening, he seemed to carry half of Cheyenne through the front door with him, trailing complaints, amusing disasters, medical mysteries, weather predictions, and whatever fresh nonsense the town had managed to invent while he'd been away.
Most days, she could identify the patient who had annoyed him most before he'd even taken off his hat.
Today, though, the house swallowed him whole.
The front door closed, followed a moment later by the soft thud of his hat landing on the table. The familiar creak of the floorboards traced his path across the kitchen, and then…
Nothing.
The room felt so unusually still that Daisy stopped sorting the candle labels spread before her. "Nathan?"
"Yes?"
The answer came easily enough, but the effort behind it was impossible to miss. She knew him too well. A stumble or a crack in his voice would have been less revealing.
Daisy pushed back her chair. "What's happened?"
"Nothing."
She sighed. "You should've become an actor."
Nathan released a weary breath. "And abandon medicine? Think how disappointed my patients would be."
"They'd survive."
"A few of them might."
The joke fell flatter than usual. Instead of easing her concern, it deepened it.
"I've had a long day."
"You've had longer."
A chair scraped across the floor.
Ordinarily, this would have been the point where Nathan unpacked his medical bag and launched into a detailed account of every irritation he'd endured since sunrise.
Daisy would have heard about stubborn patients, impossible relatives, and whatever calamity had occupied his afternoon.
Instead, he lowered himself into the chair with the slow heaviness of a man carrying news he'd rather have left outside.
Rising, she crossed the room by habit and memory, finding the edge of the table with her fingertips before reaching toward him.
Her hand came to rest against his sleeve.
The rigidity beneath the fabric answered her question before he ever spoke.
Whatever had happened, it wasn't ordinary. "What is it?" Daisy asked.
Nathan drew in a slow breath and let it out again. This time, he didn't bother pretending. "Someone approached me in town."
Daisy's hand slipped from his arm. "Who?"
"I couldn't tell you."
A quiet unease entered the room, settling between them like an unwelcome guest.
Nathan knew everybody. He knew names, families, illnesses, habits, and, more often than not, the secrets people preferred to keep hidden. In his world, a stranger stood out the way a church bell would sound in the middle of the night.
"What do you mean?"
"He stopped me outside Miller's General Store." Nathan rubbed a hand across his jaw. "Then he followed me halfway across town."
Daisy froze. "Followed you?"
"To Mrs. Turner's house." The answer came flatly. "He waited across the street while I treated her grandson."
A cold weight wormed its way into Daisy's stomach. People asked doctors questions every day. They stopped them in the street, cornered them after church, and sought advice whenever a cough lingered too long.
But people didn't usually follow a doctor around and wait for them in that manner.
Without realizing it, Daisy's fingers tightened around his sleeve again.
The certainty she'd carried through the conversation was beginning to erode, leaving behind a growing hollowness that spread through her chest and settled somewhere deep inside her.
"What did he want?"
Nathan gave a short laugh devoid of any real amusement. "What everybody seems interested in these days."
The answer escaped her before she could stop to consider it. "Flint."
Nathan shifted in his chair. The creak of old wood was confirmation enough.
The knot in her stomach tightened. "What exactly did he ask?"
Nathan leaned back, and the chair protested beneath him while he gathered his thoughts. "He started with a harmless conversation when he finally caught up to me."
Daisy drew a slow breath.
Men hunting answers rarely began with threats. They began with smiles.
"He asked how business was. Asked whether I'd been keeping busy.
" Nathan paused, and in the silence she could hear the faint ticking of the clock near the stove.
"Then he asked whether I'd treated any serious injuries.
" He scoffed. "I told him physicians spend most of their lives patching up injuries. "
"What did he say?"
A dry chuckle escaped him. "He seemed delighted I'd confirmed doctors occasionally encounter wounded people."
Daisy pressed her lips together. "Did you have to make it worse?"
"I'm serious. The man practically congratulated me for discovering medicine."
She shook her head. "What happened after that?"
"He asked whether I'd seen any injured cowboys recently."
Her fear took a shape she recognized.
Her worries had revolved around Flint, growing larger with every rumor that drifted through town and every stranger who arrived asking careful questions. Now another concern stepped into view beside it, impossible to ignore.
Nathan.
Her brother.
The man who had carried her through years she wasn't certain she could have survived alone, and taught himself to describe sunsets because she could no longer see them.
The man who still provided a running commentary on Mrs. Parker's increasingly ridiculous church hats because he knew it would make her laugh.
The thought of dangerous men turning their attention toward him tightened something painfully inside her chest.
Daisy tilted her head. "What happened next?"
"He left."
The answer came too quickly. Nathan could deceive strangers when he needed to. He had never possessed the slightest talent for deceiving her.
Slowly, Daisy released his sleeve and folded her hands together on the table. "I’m the reason you kept Flint here."
"Yes," Nathan said. "You are."
The easy agreement caught her by surprise. Nathan rarely surrendered ground during an argument, especially when he suspected he was right.
"You'd like me to feel guilty, wouldn't you?" she asked.
"Very much." The answer came so quickly that despite everything, the corner of her mouth twitched.
Nathan seemed encouraged by that.
"I had an entire speech prepared," he continued. "It was dramatic. Possibly award-winning. There were warnings, predictions, and at least three opportunities for you to admit I was right."
His grip never loosened. "Daisy, if I'd found Flint bleeding beside the road, I'd have dragged him home myself. Then I'd have spent the next several months complaining about it while doing exactly the same thing you've done."
The surge of emotion that followed was so sudden and sharp, she couldn't find an answer.
Nathan's hand settled over hers, warm and familiar, carrying the same quiet reassurance he'd offered throughout most of her life.
The gesture threatened to unravel the composure she'd been fighting to maintain.
Years had passed since the fever stole her sight, yet Nathan remained the person she relied upon when the world shifted beneath her feet.
He'd sat beside her bed through endless nights, guided her through streets she'd once known by sight, described sunsets, storms, and ridiculous church hats with equal dedication, and carried every burden she feared she'd become without ever allowing resentment into his voice.
Now, men tied to Amos Grady had started asking questions about him.
"I never imagined they'd start using you to get to him."
Nathan's hand remained over hers. "Neither did I."
His tone carried a warning. It was the same one he'd used when she was a child, preparing to make a spectacularly poor decision.
She lowered her head toward the tabletop, tracing the grain beneath her fingertips.
"I knew Flint brought danger with him. I understood that from the beginning.
What I failed to understand was how quickly that danger could spread.
" Her throat ached. "I kept telling myself the risk belonged to Flint.
Meanwhile, everyone around him ended up standing in the same storm. "
The kitchen clock ticked steadily near the stove while evening wind brushed against the windows.
Nathan gave her hand a gentle squeeze. "You give yourself far too much credit."
Daisy rubbed her thumb across the tabletop. "That hardly sounds like one of your usual compliments."
"It wasn't meant as one." His chair creaked as he shifted. "Amos Grady's criminal enterprise doesn’t revolve entirely around your decisions. The man's ego is already large enough without competition."
Her thoughts returned to the stranger waiting outside the general store, asking careful questions and fishing for answers.
The man hadn't approached Flint. He'd approached Nathan.
That distinction changed everything.
Fear for Flint had become familiar during recent weeks. Every rumor, every rider passing too slowly along the road, every unfamiliar voice had fed the same worry.
This felt different. Nathan had spent years protecting her. The idea that he could suffer because of a choice she'd made left a hollow ache beneath her ribs.
Before she could answer, the familiar sound of heavy boots carried across the floorboards, and Daisy recognized Flint long before he spoke. She'd spent enough weeks listening for those footsteps to know the rhythm of them by heart.
"Nathan?" he asked. “How long have they been bothering you?”
Daisy gasped. Flint had overheard far too much.
Nathan let out a low breath that sounded older than the one he'd taken only minutes earlier. "Long enough to become irritating."
Flint moved farther into the kitchen. The floorboards announced each step, and she could picture him well enough without sight. Shoulders rigid, jaw set, every instinct focused on a threat he couldn't yet reach.
The silence that followed carried a different weight than before. Nathan sounded tired. Flint sounded angry. Neither man seemed interested in admitting either fact aloud.
Nathan eventually released a weary breath. "We need to talk."
The words seemed to drain the last traces of comfort from the kitchen.
Flint set whatever he was carrying near the door and walked farther into the room, the old floorboards creaking beneath his weight. He asked no questions and offered no protests, choosing instead to wait for Nathan to continue.
Daisy sat quietly at the table and listened, determined to face whatever came next rather than hiding from it.