Heart of Gold Read Free Page A

dark before we make it.”
    She was close enough to feel a fine tremor run through him; a shift of her hand on his injured shoulder caused a groan from deep in his chest.
    “Charlie was shot,” she informed the other cowboy. “We’ll join Lee with the herd and make camp. I can take care of Charlie’s wound.”
    Charlie started to protest and she shushed him with a sharp shake of her head. “I don’t need to sleep indoors. Your wound needs tending more than I need the comfort of a roof over my head.”
    Certainly he deserved it after he’d quite possibly saved her life.
    Charlie succumbed to her suggestion with surprising meekness. Within a half hour, they’d settled into a crude camp of bedrolls surrounding a small fire with Lee taking first watch over the horses nearby.
    Perched next to a small stream, Opal wrung out the cleanest rag she’d found among the cowboy’s saddlebags and turned back to find Charlie had shed his shirt. Instantly, heat filled her face at the sight of his muscled back and shoulders; she only hoped the growing dark would hide her reaction. What was it about the cowboy that attracted her so? He was nothing like her intended, Grover. Charlie was uncouth, almost rough compared to the young banker’s son back in Omaha.
    But there was something about him that made her feel safe. Protected.
    Shaking off her distracting thoughts, Opal knelt next to Charlie and began dabbing at the wound. In the flickering light from the campfire she saw the bullet had dug a shallow furrow in his flesh, but it seemed to have passed through without lodging there.
    “It doesn’t look terribly bad,” she said softly, awareness of their intimate setting lowering her voice. “The bleeding is slowing. It’s too bad you don’t carry a disinfectant with you, but Lee had some sugar we can use.”
    “You appropriated Lee’s sugar?” She didn’t have to look at his face to recognize the smile in his voice. “He’ll be cranky in the morning when he tries to swallow Erick’s coffee without it.”
    Opal kept her eyes on her task and tried to ignore the feel of his hot skin under her fingertips.
    “I have to admit I’m surprised you know what to do for a gunshot wound. Is there somethin’ your pa should know about what you’ve been doing back in Omaha? Or maybe the people you’ve been sparking?”
    She stiffened. “If you’re asking whether I have a beau, I do.” Not that she wanted to marry Grover, but she’d resolved to do what she needed to do for the children. “And if you’re insinuating he’d get himself shot, he wouldn’t.”
    In the edge of her vision, Opal saw Charlie’s eyes cut to her, saw the tiny quirk of his lips. Was he laughing at her?
    “I spend some time helping at an orphanage back in Omaha. I’ve had to play doctor a few times when some of the boys have gotten into scrapes.” Opal briefly thought of the last time, when Johnny and Ellery had been in a fistfight. “There aren’t always medical supplies available, unfortunately.”
    He turned his head and looked her full in the face, his brown eyes raking her face. “That’s awfully good-hearted of you.”
    He couldn’t know how she related to the orphanage children, even though her father was alive. She’d been abandoned to her aunt’s care at age six, and felt her father’s absence keenly since then. Like many of the children, she wondered what she’d done to make her father send her away. And not to want her back. This trip was her opportunity to find out if he had any regrets.
    In the beginning, she’d prayed long and fervently for her father to write and ask her to return, but as the years went by, Opal begun to realize God wasn’t listening.
    But she would never share her thoughts with Charlie. He was loyal to her father and besides, he most likely wouldn’t understand. She finished patching his wound in silence and tied it off with a mostly-clean bandana.
    “I’m afraid you’re going to have a scar.”
    “Just