SILK AND SECRETS by Mary Jo Putney Read Free Book Online Page A

would disturb him even more. Showing his skin to a doctor would have been one thing; doing the same with his estranged wife, with whom he had had a passionate, obsessive relationship, was quite another. But his injuries did need tending, and under the cirumstances, modesty would be ridiculous. Mastering his disquiet, he pulled off the shirt. “You arrived in the proverbial nick of time today. How did that happen?”
    “I learned that a European with only two servants was in the area, and that a band of Turkomans had also been sighted,” she explained. Moistening a pad of fabric, she started gently cleaning grit and dried blood from his lacerated left wrist, which had sustained the worst damage. “I decided to intervene before the idiots ended up in the Bokhara slave market.”
    The warmth and sweetness of the tea having steadied Ross’s nerves, he leaned back against the velvet cushions and willed himself to relax. This was possibly the strangest day of his life. To be sitting here next to Juliet after so many years, with her patching him up like a coat that needed darning—it was too unreal to believe. Yet her presence was also too vivid to deny. He was intensely, physically aware of the warmth of her fingers, her faint spicy scent. She, on the other hand, seemed quite unaffected by their closeness.
    Needing to break the silence, he said, “Do you often play guardian angel for foolish travelers?”
    “If I hear of potential trouble, I do what I can.”
    Juliet began spreading ointment over his abraded upper arm, but though her fingers were deft and gentle, the effect was not soothing. Ross felt edgy, ready to jump out of his skin.
    She went to sit on his right side and began working on the cuts and grazes there. “Needless to say, it was a considerable shock to find that you were the ferengi in question.”
    “I don’t doubt that, but why didn’t you identify yourself right away? I found your little games unamusing.”
    She hesitated. “I wasn’t going to identify myself. I intended to send you on your way without revealing who I was.”
    “Then you shouldn’t have succumbed to the urge to humiliate me in front of your men.” His voice was edged. “Up until then, I had no suspicion.”
    Color rose in her face again and she became very busy with cleaning a deep, still-oozing scrape on the side of his hand. “I wasn’t trying to humiliate you. Believe it or not, the main reason I asked you to take your shirt off was that I was concerned. When we arrived on the scene, it appeared that you had been seriously injured. In fact, at first I thought you were dead, for I saw that Turkoman shoot you at point-blank range.”
    “It isn’t easy to hit a moving target from horseback.” He chuckled. “Still, I hope that Dil Assa is now berating himself for his bad aim.”
    “He’s probably too busy fleeing my men to have time for that.” Juliet’s tone was light, but her first horrified recognition of the man lying on the ground still burned in her mind. She had never thought to see her husband again; certainly she had not expected to see him killed before her very eyes. “While it was quickly obvious that you weren’t dead, you had been roughed up rather thoroughly and you moved as if you were in pain. When we arrived back here, I wasn’t sure whether you were being stoic or were injured worse than you knew. So I decided to see for myself.”
    “Perhaps concern was your main reason, but that implies other reasons. What were they?”
    Juliet felt herself flushing again and cursed the clear, pale redhead’s complexion that too often signaled her emotions. “You were so… so damned imperturbable, in spite of the circumstances. I succumbed to the unworthy desire to see if I could make you show some reaction.” Finished with her task, she set her medical materials back on the tray.
    “If a reaction is what you wanted, you were certainly successful.” Drawing on his shirt again, Ross said reflectively,