Something Borrowed

Chapter 46

***This one is short, and a bit rushed. I have a MAD case of the Sunday Scaries. I have to put on pants without an elastic waistband tomorrow and go do actual work with my flesh-and-blood coworkers instead of sitting at my kitchen table on the computer with my dog at my feet. My psyche is not adapting well to this looming change.***

Josh

A week had passed since Brent's run-in with the bear, and Josh was feeling no more at peace with the situation than he had that first night. The first few days had been a blur-- any interpersonal drama sidelined by the battle to keep his brother alive. His temperature had risen dangerously high, and he thrashed and moaned, yelling incoherently, tearing his stitches and bringing up damn year every ounce of water they managed to pour down his throat. He, Amelia, Melissa, and his father had taken shifts sitting with him, fighting to cool his blazing skin with cold water and compresses made with packed snow.

After the fever broke, though, everything slowed down and the old bitterness and fear began to resurface. Melissa and his father returned home, leaving him and Amelia to tend to their patient, and it was as agonizing as he'd have guessed. Brent quickly seemed to realize what Josh had noticed that first night-- that Amelia was compassionate to a fault. She wouldn't budge to his wheedling and sly grins, but when he moaned about the pain or struggled to raise the cup to his mouth to drink, there she was to tend him, in all her angelic glory.

Josh tried, really tried, not to resent it. The man truly was sick, after all. What was more, Amelia always looked so guilty afterwards, like she had kissed the man or gone to bed with him instead of just feeding him a drink of water or plumping his pillows. And she always made a point of fetching Josh for the more intimate tasks, although that may have been due as much to her own embarrassment and sensibilities as to consideration of his feelings.

One week after the 'incident,' a rider came from the ranch. There was some issue with a shipment of feed, and the merchant refused to anyone but him. Josh had half a mind to send the man to his father, but thought better of it. The old man was still decent at the books, and certainly had a flare for gaining rapport with potential business partners, but negotiations were a different story. That hair trigger temper of his didn't suit him in professional disagreements.

He didn't want to leave his wife and daughter alone with Brent, but his desire to stay home as a supervisor was silly, frivolous, and disrespectful to his wife. She said she would be loyal to him, and he had to trust her. So he asked, and she assured him she could manage Brent alone for a day. Despite her reassurance, he had ridden off with a ball of lead in his stomach.

The issue with the feed was resolved quickly enough, but just as he was leaving a man got thrown in the north pasture and broke a leg, and the sparse winter crew was already stretched so thin Josh had ridden out with the rescue party. By the time they brought the injured man back and Melissa had tended to him, which Josh couldn't dare let her do without his supervision in the presence of all those cooped up men, it was nearing dark.

His home didn't smell right when he pushed the door open and stepped inside, and it was colder than it ought to have been. The kitchen was dark, the stove unlit, and there was no evidence of supper. The hearth in the sitting room was dark, just a bed of fading embers.

"Amel--" he broke off as he rounded the corner to his room-- Brent's room, really, these days. Amelia sat slumped in the armchair by the bed, her haggard face relaxed in sleep, her entire body sagging against the wings. A delicate snore issued from her parted lips, and she didn't twitch at his approaching footsteps. Brent lay propped against a mountain of pillows, head canted toward his shoulder, his hand resting limp on the book that lay open on his lap.