"Pa and Rain are coming," Flower said as she hurried into the kitchen and set the wooden bucket in the sink. She released the rope handle and rubbed at the small of her back.

  "Heavens, Flower," Tess said. "How many times do you have to carry water in here every day?"

  "Oh, dozens," Flower admitted. "But I'm used to it."

  "Your back's never going to get used to it. You'll wreck it before you're twenty. Why doesn't your father at least install a hand pump in here for you?"

  "Pa's busy. He said he'll do it someday."

  Tess shook her head as Flower dipped water into the basin and carried it over to her.

  Hesitating, Flower glanced at the door, then back at her. "Maybe you'd better move into my bedroom. Pa and Rain will need the table."

  "Whatever for?" she asked.

  "Well, they'll skin the deer outside, but they'll probably bring it in here to cut it up."

  "They'll what!? Flower, they can just as easily butcher that deer outside and put it in... in your root cellar, or wherever you keep your meat."

  "The smokehouse. But they always..."

  "And who cleans up the mess after they're done?"

  "I do. But..."

  "And how many buckets of water do you have to carry to do that?"

  Flower set the basin on the table and cocked her head to one side. "A bunch," she admitted. "Then the oilcloth has to be washed. And they usually manage to leave bits of tallow and hair all over the floor."

  The girl picked up the basin again and knelt by Tess's foot. "Do you want me to help you take the bandage off?" She slipped Tess a wink. "You can have a good long soak while you sit here."

  They joined each other in a conspiratorial giggle as Stone came through the door.

  "Where's the oilcloth, Flower? Rain will need it in a minute."

  Flower rose to her feet without answering Stone as Tess finished unwrapping the bandage and stuffed it into her back pocket. She sighed deeply and slid her foot into the cool water.

  "Oh," she murmured, "I'm sure this will help the swelling, Flower. And I don't think I'd be able to move an inch right now."

  Stone strode over and knelt on the floor. Frowning, he reached out a hand toward her ankle.

  "Don't!" she said with a gasp, grabbing his hand. "Please don't touch it. The cold water's helping the pain."

  Stone jerked his hand free and rubbed it against his thigh. She looked into his brown eyes a bare six inches from her own. His breath feathered over her face and she dropped her gaze to his temptingly parted lips. They moved, but she couldn't for the life of her understand what he said.

  Michael drew his attention away from the scene below them when Angela clapped her hands and glanced at him.

  "Oh, look, Michael," she said. "Isn't it wonderful? They're falling in love!"

  "In love?" he responded with a snort. "They just met an hour ago!"

  "Haven't you ever heard of love at first sight, Michael? Why, I could tell back on the hill that something was happening between them."

  "Nonsense," he denied stoutly. "Love doesn't happen like that."

  "How would you know? You've never had contact with live humans before. You've never watched them fall in love. I've seen it happen time and time again—sometimes after they've known each other for a while, I'll admit. But at times it happens almost at once, when two people first meet."

  "There you go again," he said testily. "Flaunting the fact that you've been in this end of the business longer than me. Gosh darn it, we're never going to get along if you keep up that act!"

  "I'm only trying to explain things to you," she said with a haughty sniff. "You really should listen to me."

  "Look here, Angie, old girl, I am listening, but I can see, too. There might be something going on between Stone and Tess. Right now, though, it seems to me more like a physical pull of their bodies. You might think you know more about humans than me, but I'm well aware of how humans reproduce. And that urge always starts out with a sexual attraction."

  "O... oh!" she sputtered. "You shouldn't be talking about things like that."

  "What? Sex? It's a fact of life for humans, Angie. Without it we wouldn't have anyone to be guardian angels for, right?"

  He thoroughly enjoyed watching Angela's flustered attempts to come up with a retort, though he admitted to himself that it might be a little un-angel-like to feel that sort of satisfaction. But then, he was determined to get their relationship on a more even keel—more like a partnership than this teacher/pupil plane.

  His companion finally managed to say, "My name is Angela, not Angie. Please try to remember that."

  "Hummmm," he replied. "Prim and proper Miss Angela, huh? You need to lighten up a bit, Angie. How else are you going to pass on to me what I need to know about that end of humans' lives? After all, you've been around it for eons, and all I know about it is what I've heard from already-departed spirits."

  A guardian angel really wasn't supposed to stamp her foot or blush prettily, either, but Angela did both. And he fully enjoyed watching her.

  "Pa, Rain's calling you."

  "Huh?" Stone lurched to his feet. "Uh... go tell him to take care of the deer outside, Flower. I... we... where's your scissors?"

  "In my sewing box, where they always are, Pa."

  Flower headed for the door as Stone stared around the kitchen, frowning.

  "Why do you want scissors?" Tess asked.

  "Your pant leg," Stone murmured in a distracted voice. "It needs to be split up the side. Gotta be hurting you, that swelling."

  "Most women keep their sewing boxes in a closet," Tess said.

  "Closet. Yeah, probably in her bedroom." He hurried out of the kitchen, catching his toe on the doorjamb as he passed.

  She shook her head at the muttered curses she heard echoing back from the bedroom. Good grief, he was awkward in the house. On the hill his movements had held a panther-like grace for such a large man. Of course, the spaciousness of the kitchen had seemed to recede as soon as he walked through the door.

  She heard a loud crash and ducked her head to hide the smile on her face when she heard his clumping footsteps returning to the kitchen.

  "Hurts pretty bad, huh?" he asked as he stopped at her side. "It'll probably ease a little if we can get that tight pant leg split."

  He knelt again and pointed the scissors at her leg. Carefully, he tried to work the scissors point under the taut material, where she had pulled up the denim.

  "Uh..." he said when she gave a little gasp of pain. "Uh... maybe you ought to try to do this yourself."

  "Maybe I should," she said, reaching for the scissors. She lifted her foot from the basin and laid her left calf across her right knee. Water dripped onto the floor, and she quickly shifted to hold her foot over the basin, her knee bumping Stone's chest.

  "Sorry." She carefully worked the scissors point under the material and began cutting beside the seam in her jeans. The scissors were sharp and the material easily fell away beneath the blades. She cut well beyond the swollen flesh, up to her knee.

  "That's far enough, damn it! What if Rain comes in?" Stone grabbed the scissors and threw them on the table, his eyes never leaving her exposed calf.

  She rolled her eyes upward and huffed out an irritated breath. "Maybe you should get me a towel to cover my leg so I don't offend your Victorian sense of propriety!"

  Stone rose and grabbed a linen towel from a hook beside the stove. He tossed it to her, then strode back to her side.

  "Here. Don't cover up the ankle. Let me look at it."

  She rolled the towel back and he bent over her ankle, which was swollen almost as large as her calf and covered with dark bruise splotches. She heard him grunt.

  "You're going to need a doctor for this. It sure looks broken to me."

  "It feels like it, too," she admitted, wincing in pain when she attempted to move her foot. "But you said there wasn't a doctor nearby."

  "Not near, as I told you. But there's one in Clover Valley, the closest town. It'll take me about four hours there and back. What happened? Did your horse throw you?"

  "Uh... no. I... I fell."

  "Fell off your horse?"

  "Mr. Chisum..."

  "Stone. Looks like you're gonna be here awhile. No sense standing on formality."

  "Stone, then. You mentioned medicine for the pain?"

  "Yeah. Let me see what I can find."

  He walked over and opened a cupboard door, rummaging inside. He pulled out a box of medical supplies and held up a bottle to the light from the window.

  "Laudanum's gone," he said. "I'll get some more from the doc." He tossed the bottle back into the box, where it landed with a clink, and reached into the cupboard again. Pulling out a brown jug, he set it on the countertop and picked up a tin cup from the drain board by the sink.

  After pouring the cup half full, Stone gave it to her. She sniffed it tentatively.

  "If you want, I'll have Flower make a pot of coffee to mix with that," he said.

  "No. This is fine." She sipped the whiskey and blinked her eyes at the burning fumes, then coughed at the fiery sensation when the whiskey hit her stomach. Taking a deep breath, she swallowed another large gulp before she set the cup on the table. A drop of liquid dribbled down the side of her mouth, and she flicked out her tongue to catch it, glancing up at Stone when she heard him give another grunt. "Thank you. I..."

  "I'll go get the damned doctor!" Stone left the kitchen in two strides, banging the door loudly behind him.

  She stared after him in astonishment. "Oh, well." She shrugged. "At least he didn't keep after me about how I hurt my ankle."

  Six

  Tess lowered her ankle back into the basin, then stared around the silent kitchen, mentally refuting the evidence before her eyes. It just wasn't true. It couldn't be true.

  Heck, Granny had cooked on a wood stove in West Virginia until the day she died fifteen years ago, turning out crispy fried chicken and flaky blackberry cobblers. But even Granny's log cabin had had pumped-in water. Cold water, and the pipes sometimes froze during an especially hard winter, but the water was clear and pure, bubbling from an artesian well on the mountainside.

  Despite the hardships, spending summers and school breaks with Granny had been the only bright spots in Tess's childhood. Running barefoot through the wildflower-dotted mountain meadows; picking wild strawberries, blackberries, and grapes, which Granny preserved into jams and jellies that were lined up on a shelf in sparkling jars. Even hoeing the garden rows until calluses formed on her palms and pulling weeds until her back ached hadn't seemed like hard work—especially the following winter, when Tess opened a jar of vegetables or jelly that Granny sent to the family each fall.

  Evenings on the porch, rocking in her own chair beside Granny—watching the brilliant mountain sunsets and mists crawling up the hillsides, her hands automatically shelling peas or snapping beans. Those evenings were for dreams and discussions—heartfelt sharing with the elderly woman who seemed to be able to see straight into Tess's heart.

  If not for Granny, Tess would probably still be back in the West Virginia mountains, the only break in a week of drudgery a bottle of beer at the nearest honky-tonk. Granny had given her the strength to stand up to her brothers and father, withstand the pull of her eager young body to succumb to the sexual stirrings of her teens. Escape first to Boston on her scholarship, and then to New York City, the city where it seemed all dreams were possible.

  Snooty. Thinks she's better than us. How many times had Tess heard those words whispered behind her back in school?

  She shifted on the wooden bench and blinked her eyes, bringing the kitchen back into focus and frowning as the picture of the layout of the buildings beyond the cabin replaced the nostalgic vision of her New York apartment in her mind. She'd had no trouble identifying the purpose of the little shack with the half moon on the door between the house and the barn. Granny hadn't had inside facilities, either. And it was definitely becoming necessary for her to get to that outhouse.

  The screen door opened and Flower entered, her arms full of clean sheets.

  "I'm going to change my bed, Miss Foster. It'll be several hours before Pa gets back, and you need to lie down."

  "Thanks, honey, but..."

  Flower sped through the kitchen, leaving Tess's words hanging in the air. Lordy, that child had energy. If she only had enough to help Tess to the outhouse—or maybe there was a chamber pot somewhere, like Granny had kept under her bed.

  A movement on the pine floor caught her attention and her eyes widened in horror. The monster on the floor picked up one hairy leg and waved it in her direction, then continued on its path, directly toward her. Her scream echoed in the kitchen.

  Frantically, she scrambled onto the bench, splashing water from the basin, then levering herself onto the tabletop with her good leg. The monster ignored the spilled water, slowly lifting first one hairy leg and then another as it crawled toward the bench she had vacated.

  She screamed again as Rain burst through the screen door and Flower also pounded back into the kitchen from the bedroom. The next thing she knew, Flower was perched beside her on the tabletop, her own squeak of dismay cut off as she clapped a hand over her mouth.

  Rain stared at her and Flower, then followed her finger pointing to the floor. He set his rifle beside the door and his brown eyes twinkled as he grinned at them, curled up on the table.

  "It's just a tarantula. Must have slipped in the door. It's too slow to bite you if you stay out of its way. Now, if it was a scorpion..."

  "Get it out of here, Rain!" Flower shouted. "I hate those things!"

  "Kill it! Right now," Tess demanded. She couldn't seem to tear her eyes away from the huge, dinner-plate-sized body creeping across the floor. One hairy leg and then another propelled it, almost in slow motion. It skirted the puddle of water and lifted one leg to caress the wooden leg on the bench.

  "Rain!" Flower screamed.

  "Better hush up." Rain laughed. "Those things can jump, you know."

  "I know!" Flower shrieked, scooting closer to Tess. "Get it!"

  Tess flung her arms around Flower, her eyes widening in horror as the tarantula placed yet another leg against the bench. "Can... can they really jump?" she asked through a dry mouth.

  "Yep," Rain admitted. "This one looks like it might even be able to jump ten feet. I gotta be careful, if I want to get close enough to catch it."

  "Rain! Do something!" Flower pleaded.

  The tarantula started up the bench leg. She and Flower screamed in unison and skidded from the tabletop. Flower paused just long enough to grab her arm and pull it over her shoulder before leading her, furiously hopping, into the next room. She kicked the door shut behind her.

  Tess flung herself onto the narrow bed, biting her lips against the pain in her ankle and trying to control her nearly overflowing bladder.

  "Flower!" she gasped. "A chamber pot. Do you have..."

  Flower reached beneath the bed and pulled out a ceramic bucket.

  "You get that darned thing out of my kitchen, Rain!" Flower yelled at the closed door while she fumbled to help Tess unsnap her denims.

  She pushed Flower's fingers away and pulled down her zipper. "Oh, Flower. I don't know if I can make it."

  Bracing herself with her good leg, she lifted her rear and slid the denims down. With Flower's help, she managed to scoot from the bed onto the chamber pot, closing her eyes in relief.

  When she lifted her eyelids again, she saw Flower opening the door a crack to peer through. Suddenly another yell sounded in the kitchen, and then a clatter.

  Flower shut the door and turned back to Tess, a satisfied smirk on her face. "Guess he's not as brave as he thought he was. Serves him right."

  "What happened?"

  "It jumped, like he said it could." The girl giggled. "He was trying to catch it with the basin and it jumped right at him. It landed in the basin and he threw it against the screen door. Now he's trying to figure out how to get the door open with that spider sitting in front of it."

  "Why doesn't he just kill it?"

  "Rain doesn't believe in killing unless it's necessary," Flower explained. "Even when he kills animals for us to eat, he thanks the Cherokee spirits for the gift of their life."

  "But that thing's dangerous, Flower!"

  "Not really. I mean, it would hurt if one bit you, but it's not like a rattlesnake's bite. That could kill you. Rain'll probably go out the other door and prop the screen open, then try to get the spider to leave on its own."

  Tess dropped her head to her chest and shook it. Tarantulas. Rattlesnakes. Scorpions. Where in the world was she?

  Before she questioned Flower, though, she had to get up off this pot.

  "Can you help me onto the bed, Flower?"

  "Sure. Just let me finish with the sheets."

  "Stop it, Michael! It's not funny!"

  Michael grabbed his stomach and rolled back onto the cloud, his wings fluttering against his shaking shoulders, his laughter nearly drowning out her voice.

  "Not... not funny?" he gasped. "Did you see them scoot off that table? I never saw two females move so fast in my life!"

  She lifted a hand to her mouth. Still, a little giggle escaped. "I thought it was funnier when it jumped at Rain. Did you see the look on his face?"

  "Yeah." Michael snorted. "If that thing hadn't hit the basin, it would have landed right in that boy's mouth!"

  "Ugh." She shuddered, then giggled again, this time erupting in full-fledged laughter. Had she been with some of her other angel friends rather than Michael, she would never have broken down into such unrestrained emotion.

  A moment later, she opened her eyes to find herself lying beside Michael on the cloud, her shoulders still shaking with abating laughter. Glancing at him was a mistake. He winked and guffawed, and she broke up again.

  At last she sat up and clutched at her aching sides. "Michael, we have to stop this. We're supposed to be keeping an eye on Tess."