“You don’t need to say that. I was doing what I’m trained to do.”

She poured him another two fingers of whiskey, offered a toast to his homecoming with her cocoa.

“We have some hard work ahead,” she said. “We have to get you on crutches, then we have to start to strengthen that leg and get you more flexible at the same time. You might never be quite the same as you were, but we’ll get you as close as we can, all right?”

“You’re the boss.”

“No, actually. You’re the boss. Except when it comes to the things we have to do to get you better. Then I am the boss, for a while.”

Eli drained his whiskey and she poured him another. He rarely drank, but when he did, he drank quickly.

“God, I’m just so damned grateful to you, Juanita.”

She held a finger to his lips. Something had shifted between them, or perhaps it was only that they both understood how things were and what would happen next. She turned and straddled him, undid the buttons on the front of her dress, tugged it down over her shoulders, slipped her shift over her head. He brushed his cheek back and forth on her nipples. Her breasts were tiny, her skin smooth and brown. He took one breast into his mouth and then the other, nibbled in circles in a way that made her catch her breath. She bent to kiss him. Once and then again, the tender mercy of kisses.

The blizzard hit in the wee hours of the night. Eli started to reach for his boots, then sank back onto the bed. He was in no shape to be staggering around in a snowstorm. If there was one thing he had learned in forty-odd years working on the range, it was that there is not a blessed thing a man can do about a blizzard. He buried his lips in Juanita’s neck, felt her push her bare flank into his groin. He hoped it would snow pretty much forever.

10.