“Lizbeth,” he said hoarsely. “Are y’ hurt, gal?”
Her tears continued to flow into his shirt, but she managed to shake her head in answer. Cutter took a deep breath, dismissing the warm female scent of her. “What is it, then?” He glanced over his shoulder, catching sight of their horses a few feet away. Turning back to her, he assured, “There’s nothing to be ashamed of, bright eyes. Everyone takes a fall now and again. Hell, I’ve even done it once or twice.” So what if it wasn’t true? he argued with himself. She didn’t have to know, did she? He stroked the back of her head as he would a child, his fingers sliding down the length of her braid. He’d been disappointed this morning to find her once again withdrawn behind her prudish mask.
She nodded, and he could tell that she’d opened her eyes as well, because he could feel her lashes fluttering through his wet shirt. It was then that he realized she wasn’t wearing her specs any longer, and he immediately searched the ground for them. He grimaced when he found them only a few inches away, one lens cracked and the frames bent beyond repair.
“Next time,” he apprised her, not knowing how to break the news, “don’t keep such a death grip on the reins. If you hadn’t been strangling the damned Cayuse, she wouldn’t have spilled you.”
Still clutching at his shirt, Elizabeth tilted her face up suddenly to look at him with watery eyes. She didn’t know what to say to that. “I wasn’t strangling my horse!” But even as she said it, she wasn’t certain it was the truth. Her fingers still ached from holding the reins. “Good lord! Jo was right!” she snapped. “You are an insensitive oaf!”
Cutter’s brows lifted. “That so?” he asked dispassionately, but he reached out to wipe her damp cheek with his thumb.
At once, Elizabeth recoiled from his touch. Catching his hand, she turned it toward her to see what had chafed the sensitive skin beneath her eye. Confusion first, then horror, accosted her as she examined his severely scarred fingers.
His brows collided violently as he snatched his hand out of her grip. “Don’t ask,” he warned, before she could.
Elizabeth only stared at him.
A peculiar look stole into his eyes, shuttering his emotions. “It ain’t none of your damned business!” he told her. “Chrissakes, you want something to worry over, worry over your specs.” Reaching out, he scooped them up, and without preamble, dropped them into her hand. “They’re broke.”
“Oh noooo!” Elizabeth swiped at the wetness on her face with the tips of her fingers. “Nooooo!” she moaned. “Do you realize how long I’ve had these?” she cried in panic. Forgetting everything else for the moment, including her chagrin, she squinted while she inspected them anxiously.
Eyeing her skeptically as she labored over the frames, Cutter shrugged, giving her a wry twist of his lips. “No,” he said, “but reckon I could take a wild guess and come damned close.”
Desperately Elizabeth tried to straighten the wire framework, but try as she might, they wouldn’t be forced. “They were my father’s before me,” she explained as she worked.
“No kidding?”
Elizabeth gave him a sharp glance—her mistake, because once she looked into his deep, dark eyes, she couldn’t look away. She felt snared. Lord, he was handsome. Too handsome for words. Those lips of his... those eyes... Heaven help her, every time she looked at him, he grew more striking. No man had a right to look that way. Had she hoped for one moment that he would look at her with anything more than pity? Her heart plummeted into her stomach. Her shoulders slumped. She hadn’t realized the pressure she was putting on her spectacles until one slender arm came off into her hand. “No!” she cried. “Oh, no... What am I supposed to do now?”
Cutter snatched them from her. “Frankly, I didn’t think you needed ‘em all that much,” he told her.
Elizabeth’s brow creased with worry as her gaze reverted to the specs in his hand, and Cutter felt a sudden inexplicable urge to smooth her distress away. But recalling the look of revulsion she’d given him when she’d discovered his fingers, he refrained from touching her again. “Seems to me you see well enough without them,” he said curtly.
“Up close I see as well as you,” she conceded, watching his efforts with growing concern. “But not distances... and I can’t read long without getting a headache.”
Elizabeth gasped.
It was as though she suddenly became aware of the impropriety of their position, because she immediately detached herself from him. The fact that she couldn’t seem to get away fast enough burned Cutter’s gut.
He shoved the spectacles back into her hand, meeting her gaze. “I can’t do a blamed thing with them.”
She was sitting on her knees, her skirt caught beneath her, hands on her thighs, her expression ashen. For the longest instant their gazes held. She wet her lips nervously, her pink little tongue darting out to moisten her bottom lip, and desire clawed at Cutter from the inside out. Despite his anger.
“You sure you’re not hurt?” he asked.
Elizabeth nodded quickly.
“Good.”
Her brows drew together at his tone. “You don’t have to sound so displeased over the fact.”
“Son of a bitch!” Cutter shouted suddenly, throwing his hands up. “What the hell do you want me to say?”
Elizabeth flinched at his tone, but didn’t back down. “And you don’t have to curse at me, either!” she shot back, her voice rising.
“Damn me, if you ain’t as contrary as that cow-eyed Cayuse of yours!”
“Well! Then why do you wanna help me if you hate me so much?” she wanted to know.
