Page 8 of At Love’s Command

“Understood.” Mr. Hanger leaned forward and locked his hands over Mr. Wallace’s wrists. “Proceed.”

As soon as Josephine fit her finger inside the bullet’s hole, Mr. Wallace stiffened and groaned. He eyes opened, though they were glassy and unfocused. His head raised off the table, the tendons in his neck standing at attention. Mr. Hanger instantly moved his grip from Wallace’s left wrist to his left shoulder and pinned him down.

“Easy, soldier.” His tone carried more command than consolation, but it seemed to soothe her patient anyway.

“Captain?”

“I’m here, son. You’re safe. The doc just needs to dig that bullet out of your arm, so lie still, all right?”

When her patient quieted, Josephine eased her finger deeper into the hole, carefully probing the torn tissue and noting damage done along the way. Mr. Wallace grunted softly and turned his head in her direction. His eyes widened slightly.

“Guess you . . . brought me to Paradise . . . instead of Purgatory . . . after all, Captain.”

Josephine raised a brow. Was the rogue actually flirting with her?

“Doctors . . . wouldn’t be this . . . pretty in Purgatory.”

Guess so. She grinned and shook her head as she turned her attention back to his wound. “I assure you, Mr. Wallace, that my idea of Paradise does not include cowboys bleeding all over my fine wood floors.” She probed deeper.

Mr. Wallace grunted. “My . . . apologies . . . ma’am.”

“Quit wasting energy tryin’ to sweet-talk the lady doctor,” Mr. Hanger groused, though no real heat laced his tone. “She’s got more important things to occupy her at the moment.”

True. Josephine nibbled the edge of her tongue as the tip of her finger encountered a hard lump. Her stomach leaped. The bullet. It was close.

Mr. Wallace’s grunts turned into extended guttural groans, but Josephine barely heard them. Her world had shrunk to include only muscle, sinew, and the foreign particle that must be removed.

It took an extra incision, her narrowest set of forceps, and more digging than she would have preferred, but the ting of the metal ball when it finally hit the surgical tray echoed through the examination room like the triumphant final chord of a great symphony. Satisfaction incarnate.

Somewhere along the way, Mr. Wallace had passed out again, but that was to be expected. What wasn’t expected was the fluttering in her belly when Mr. Hanger shared in her symphonic moment by giving her a nod of approval.

It shouldn’t have meant anything special. She’d become a doctor to help the hurting, not to impress those who watched. Yet the gesture of respect flushed her with unexpected pleasure. She doubted Matthew Hanger gave those nods out with any great frequency. He seemed a man of high standards, hardened by war and ungenerous with commendations.

Not that she actually knew him, she reminded herself sternly as she wiped the blood from her hands and took up a suturing needle. For all she knew, he could dole out approving nods like a politician did campaign promises, and with just as much meaning behind them. But when she lifted her gaze from her instrument tray and his brown-green eyes latched on to hers, the frank honesty in his face confirmed her initial impression.

“Thanks, Doc,” he said. Two simple words, but the emotion behind them was palpable.

He cared for this man. Had been afraid for him. Probably even held himself responsible for putting him in harm’s way. He’d taken a chance trusting her with his care—a chance that, thankfully, had paid off.

Unless . . .

“There’s always a risk of infection,” she informed him, returning honesty for honesty. “He’ll need to stay in my infirmary for a few days until I’m sure everything’s healing the way it should.”

Mr. Hanger crooked a grin at her. “Then I suppose you and I will be seeing a lot of each other over the next few days.”

Josephine swallowed. The prospect of having a dictatorial military type underfoot should annoy her. So why did the twisting in her belly feel less like annoyance and more like anticipation?

CHAPTER

THREE

Taking advantage of the muscles hanging about in her waiting room, Josephine instructed Mr. Hanger to move his friend into her infirmary once Mr. Wallace regained consciousness. The two large men dwarfed the tiny closet of a room that served as her recovery area, but they managed to hobble inside, and Mr. Hanger soon had her patient settled on the narrow bed. Bandages covered much of Mr. Wallace’s bare chest, but the captain seemed intent on pulling the sheet up to cover as much exposed flesh as possible.

Josephine bit back a grin. Whose modesty was he trying to protect? Hers, or that of his friend? The teasing rogue who’d flirted with her while she delved for the bullet in his arm didn’t strike her as the bashful type, so the efforts must be for her sake. Which meant Mr. Hanger viewed her more as a woman than a doctor now that they were out of the examination room. Her feminine side appreciated the gesture even though her professional side scoffed at the needlessness of it. Anatomy was just anatomy, after all.

Mr. Wallace’s eyelids drooped. “I’m good here, Captain,” he murmured when Mr. Hanger started folding himself into the small chair next to the bed. “No need to keep vigil. More important things to do.”

A muscle ticked at the corner of the captain’s mouth, twitching the square horseshoe mustache that fed into the well-trimmed beard outlining his jaw. “Nothin’s more important to me than my men. You know that.”