Tempting the Marshal: (A Western Historical Romance) (Dodge City Brides Series Book 2) Read Free Page B

over her wound. Someone had tended to her and put her in a borrowed nightdress. Was she in the doctor’s clinic?
    Her ears suddenly tuned to footsteps and a man’s voice just outside her door. Perhaps someone was coming to arrest her. Perhaps the world now knew that a vengeful heart had lived inside the breast of a desperate widow. What if a lynch mob was forming outside? What would she do?
    Telling herself these fears were irrational at this point, Jo watched nervously as the brass knob turned. The white-painted door squeaked open and Dr. Green walked in. Jo let out a tightly held breath and prepared herself for whatever fate held in store.
    “Mrs. O’Malley, you’re awake,” he said, closing the door with a light click behind him.
    Jo wet her dry lips and tried to bring the approaching doctor into focus. She had to gather her wits, carefully plan her responses. Was it too much to hope that her identity had not been discovered? “Yes, I…what happened?”
    Dr. Green approached the bed, his black sleeve stained with blood. Was it her blood? she wondered, worrying not just about her own wounds, but about whoever else might have been hurt because of what she had done.
    “You were in the wrong place at the wrong time,” the doctor said.
    Jo paused, contemplating before she spoke. “Who brought me here?”
    “You don’t remember?”
    “Not exactly.”
    Dr. Green cupped his fingers around her wrist and took her pulse, which was probably thumping faster than he could count. “You were shot. Deputy Anderson found you in the necessary behind Zimmerman’s.” He glared down at her, and Jo thought she saw suspicion in his brown eyes. “Do you remember?”
    “I…I’m not sure.”
    The doctor looked closely into both her eyes, pulling each of her lower lids down with his thumb. “You were lucky. The bullet went straight through without too much damage. I closed the wound and it should heal just fine. I want to keep you here, though, for at least a day or two to watch for infection.”
    Jo barely heard a word the doctor was saying. All she could think of was how lucky she was to be alive, and what Leo would have done if he’d had to bury another parent.
    “I’ve already sent word out to your ranch. Your son will want to see you, I reckon.”
    Jo smiled weakly at him. “Thank you.”
    How was she going to explain this to Leo? she wondered. She was supposed to have been running errands when all of this happened.
    As the doctor turned to leave, Jo thought again of the lawman she had gunned down in Zeb’s store. A mental picture of him, sprawled out on his back and bleeding onto the plank floor, made her heart wrench. “Wait, please, Doctor. Was anyone else hurt tonight?”
    “Besides you? Why, yes. The new marshal took a bullet.”
    “He’s not dead, is he?”
    At that moment, a knock sounded. Dr. Green crossed the room and opened the door.
    Jo suddenly found herself staring in stunned silence at the man she thought she’d killed. Her heart did a quick pitter-pat, then her mind was struck numb by the strangeness of it all—how she could be so plagued by him one moment, then so happy to see him the next.
    “Why don’t you ask Marshal Collins yourself?” Dr. Green suggested.
    Leaning heavily on a cane, the marshal limped like a Civil War vet into the room. A white, bloodstained bandage was wrapped around his head. He wore black wool trousers and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, a dark brown vest, no hat, and his chestnut-colored hair was neatly trimmed.
    “Ask me what?” he drawled good-naturedly.
    Jo couldn’t find words to reply. She was too busy trying to keep herself from spilling out her relief in a gigantic wave of apologies and confessions and useless reparations, all of which would land her in the county jail.
    The marshal glanced questioningly at the doctor.
    “She wants to know if you’re dead,” Dr. Green answered.
    The marshal’s lips parted with a grin that revealed straight white