Half-Dead on a Stagecoach, She Came to Marry a Stranger — Then the Man Who Saved Her Stole Her Heart

Chapter 2

Morning came like a hand laid against her cheek. Elena woke to sunlight streaming through the window and Philip in the chair beside her bed, a cup of coffee cradled in his hands.

“Morning,” he said. “Your fever broke during the night. You’re still warm, but nothing like yesterday.”

She took stock of her body and found he was right. The crushing pain in her head had softened to a dull ache. The bone-deep wrongness had eased. “I feel better,” she said, surprised. “Truly better.”

“Good. That is very good.” The relief in his voice was unmistakable.

He helped her drink water, coaxed her into eating dry toast that her stomach accepted grudgingly but without revolt. Watching him work, she studied him properly for the first time — a man of perhaps thirty, weathered by the sun, with a strong jaw gone a few days unshaven and a nose that looked like it had been broken once. Not classically handsome, perhaps. But there was something solid and reassuring about his features.

“You’re staring,” he said mildly, not looking up from the toast he was buttering.

Heat crept into her cheeks. “I apologize. I was thinking I should know what my potential husband looks like — I’ve seen very little beyond the inside of my own eyelids since I arrived.”

“Fair point.” He looked up and met her eyes directly. “What do you think?”