“This doesn’t concern you.”

She couldn’t say why, but his words hurt. Still, it was no time to give in to such feelings. “Everything that happens here concerns me!”

Without another word, she turned and stomped out the door ahead of him.

* * *

Chase paused at the doorway of the bunkhouse sleeping quarters. Already, Emily was bent over Kansas Pete, her dainty soft hands cupping his pale face.

Chase clenched his jaw. They were the very same hands that had moments earlier pressed against his own bare chest. Somehow, her touch seemed to have left an imprint like a branding iron on his skin.

Irritated by the direction of his thoughts, he moved to the side of the injured man’s cot.

Kansas Pete’s face was twisted in pain. Someone had already cut away the sleeve of his shirt to his shoulder, and a blood-soaked kerchief covered the wound.

“Take off his boots,” Chase ordered, “and bring another blanket.”

While Rusty and Big-Foot Harry rushed to follow his orders, Chase gingerly pulled off the bloody kerchief. The slow-oozing wound told him that no main arteries had been hit.

Beanpole Pete handed him a clean kerchief. “We can’t wait for old sawbones. That bullet’s gotta come out now.”

“We can wait,” Chase said. More damage had been done by botched surgeries than caused by any bullet.

The sudden silence told him that his men didn’t share his opinion, but only Boomer was willing to voice it. “Everyone knows that bullets must come out posthaste,” he said.

“It can wait,” Chase repeated.

Boomer opened his mouth to argue, but Emily stopped him with a hand on his arm. “My husband’s right,” she said. “The best thing we can do right now is make Kansas Pete comfortable until the doctor arrives.”

Chase stared at her, surprised at hearing the word husband fall from her lips. He was even more stunned by how much it had affected him. For perhaps the first time, it seemed they were of a single mind—and bonded by more than just a legal document—and he liked it. He liked it a lot.

Pushing the thought away to be more thoroughly examined later, he turned to Boomer. The show of a united front between husband and wife had ended the discussion, and no further objections were made.

“Give him some whiskey. That should ease the pain.” Lowering his voice for Emily’s ears only, Chase said, “Go back to bed. I’ll stay with him.”

She lifted her chin in a way that had now become all too familiar. “I’m staying.” She turned to Beanpole Tom and issued orders like an army general. “Fetch a basin of water and clean towels.” Leaning over the patient, she removed the blood-soaked kerchief from the injured man’s shoulder. “We need to clean the wound.”

Beanpole Tom returned and set the basin and towels on the bedside table. Emily picked up a towel, dipped a corner into the water, and ever so gently dabbed Kansas Pete’s wound.