She pulled her arm away from his. “I don’t want to put a noose around your neck. Marriage is different. It’s for two people who love each other and I stupidly thought that’s what we did that night—made love. I was in love with you or I wouldn’t have done that…I wouldn’t have let you touch me. But it wasn’t love to you. You don’t love me, you never have. You got what you wanted, but I didn’t.”
She turned away to hide her tears.
He pulled her to him, turning her so that her face was buried in his chest. “Chris, I don’t think I’ve ever had a woman in love with me before, and I have no idea what it means to be in love. I’m sorry, I don’t mean to hurt you. Maybe you just think you’re in love with me because I can handle a gun and I’m not like anyone you ever met before and—”
She looked up at him. “I’ve met hundreds of gunslingers and hundreds of outlaw criminals and I resent your telling me that I don’t know my own mind. I can tell you that—”
She stopped because Tynan kissed her, hungrily drinking from her lips, caressing her back, pushing her hips into his, trying to envelop her with his hard, hot body. Chris knew she wouldn’t last long if he continued touching her.
“Please don’t,” she whispered when his lips moved to her neck. “Please don’t touch me. I can’t bear it. I can’t resist you.”
“I don’t want you to,” he said as his teeth took her earlobe.
It was when his lips touched the corner of her eye and he tasted a salty tear that he stopped. Abruptly, he drew away from her. “Go on then,” he said with suppressed anger in his voice. “Go back to your cold bed and stay there alone.”
Chris’s tears began in earnest then and she fled down the steep, dark path to the cabin. Pilar didn’t say a word as Chris fell down onto the pallet beside her.
Chris cried for a long time before she made a decision. She didn’t care whether he married her or not, and she didn’t care if he loved her or not. Right now all she felt for him was desire and she wanted it to be the way it was that night in the logger’s cabin. She wanted to feel his hands on her body, wanted him to make love to her again.
Sniffing, but feeling better now that there was no more indecision, she got up and left the lean-to shelter. She knew that Tynan slept not far from them, a little way into the trees so that, should anyone come to the cabin during the night, he’d not be seen. She went to his sleeping place but he wasn’t there.
Slowly, with deliberation, she removed all her clothing, stretched out on his blankets and waited for him. When he didn’t come, she went to sleep, smiling at the thought of how he’d waken her.
“Chris,” Tynan said, pulling her into his arms. “Oh my beautiful, lovely Chris.”
Sleepily, she opened her eyes. It was daylight, the birds were singing, the smell of the early morning forest was all around them—and Tynan’s hands were on her body, pushing away the covers and caressing her skin. His hands ran over her hips with the eagerness of a boy’s with his first puppy.
“You came to me,” he whispered. “You came to me. I didn’t sleep last night. I just wandered in the forest. Oh Chris, you’re driving me crazy. My beautiful, beautiful Chris, you are making me more miserable than when I was in prison.”
Chris could feel her skin glowing with the joy of his words. She sincerely hoped that she was making him miserable—at least as miserable as he was making her.
He brought her head up to his and kissed her as if he never meant to let her go, his hands in her hair.
Her arms went around his neck to pull him close. This is what she’d wanted for so long, but what she’d been fighting against for what seemed to be forever.
He stretched her out on the blankets and moved to lay beside her, touching her gently, while, at the same time, removing his own shirt.
With his leg between hers, he rubbed his rough clad skin against hers while kissing her.
Abruptly, he pulled away from her and put his head up as if he were listening. “I have to go. Someone’s out there.”
“It’s just Pilar,” she said, trying to pull him back down to her. “She won’t come here.”
Tynan moved away from her and pulled his shirt back on. “Someone’s coming up the trail.” He gave Chris a look of resignation. “It’s my luck that it’s your father here all ready.” Chris thought he looked on the verge of tears. “You’d better get dressed. If it’s not him, we can continue this later and if it is, he might not stop to ask questions if he found his little daughter kissing the hired hand.” When she opened her mouth to speak, he stopped her. “Don’t give me any argument, and don’t make this harder for me, just please get dressed and let me see who this is.”
Tynan moved away from her, standing and watching her with eyes that bore an expression of sadness, desire and pain. When she was dressed, he grabbed her arm and pulled her to him. “I’ve aged twenty years since I met you. I hope with all my might that this is anybody except your father.” After a quick kiss, he released her, took her hand and led her into the cabin clearing.
Chris could see Pilar’s sleeping form under the lean-to.
“Go look in my saddle bags and you’ll find a pair of field glasses. Bring them to me.”
Chris ran to do what he asked. Pilar raised on one elbow to look at her.
“Happy this morning?” Pilar asked.
“I’ve been happier,” Chris said, searching inside the saddle bags. “I would be extremely happy if Tynan’d bothered to return to his sleeping roll last night.”
Pilar groaned, then asked, “What’s going on now?”
“Ty says he hears someone coming up the trail. I haven’t yet heard anything but he’s gone to see. Ah, here they are.”
“I’m coming with you,” Pilar said and was out of her sleeping pallet in a second and was soon running down the hill behind Chris.
Tynan was stretched out on a rock, as flat and as unnoticeable as a lizard and he had to call to the women before they saw him. “It’s them,” he said with great sadness in his voice. “I knew it would be.” He reached out his hand to Chris for the glasses.
Chris and Pilar climbed on the rock beside him. “You’re sure it’s my father?” Chris asked, excited.
“Whoever it is, I hope they’ve brought us some supplies,” Pilar said.
“From the size of the group, I think Mathison’s brought his entire ranch.”
Chris took the glasses from him. Her father was unmistakable, sitting on top of the horse that looked too small for him, riding with his back as straight as a railroad tie—and even at this distance he looked angry. She put the glasses down and saw that Ty was looking at her with a teasing smile on his face.
“Want to borrow my gun to protect yourself?” he asked, one eyebrow raised.
“Who’s the man with him?” Pilar asked, looking through the glasses.
“Never saw him before,” Ty answered.
Chris heaved herself up from the rock. “I guess I better get this over with. If either of you have delicate sensibilities, you’d better leave now. My father’s temper is…” She couldn’t think of anything that would adequately describe it.
She took a deep breath for courage, then started down the hill toward her father and the men who rode with him. She was hesitant at first, but as he came more clearly into view, she began to pick up speed until he saw her.
Del Mathison spurred his horse forward in a burst of speed that left the others standing.
Chris lifted her skirts and took off running as fast as her legs would carry her—and Del’s horse came charging toward her. When he reached her, he didn’t slow, but extended his arm and hauled her up to toss her in the saddle behind him. It was a trick he’d taught her when she was a child, and it’d come in handy in her life, such as the time Tynan had run his horse through the freight office.
As Chris held onto her father, she saw that Ty had followed her down the hillside, gun drawn, protecting her as she’d run away from the shelter of the camp. She turned to see the man wh
o’d been riding beside her father stop and help Tynan mount behind him.
Del didn’t waste any time when he reached the cabin. Before he even dismounted, he began yelling at Chris.
“Of all the damn fool, stupid things you’ve ever done, this is the worst. So help me, I’m never going to let you out of my sight again. You and your mother’s whole family, none of you ever had a lick of sense.”
Chris stood on tiptoe and put her arms around his neck. She was glad to see that he looked as good as he always did: big, handsome, with the head of a lion, thick gray hair spreading out like a mane around his handsome face.
He hugged her back for a moment, then pushed her away. “Do you know what hell you’ve put me through? Do you have any idea the number of people that’ve come to me and told me you were within inches of being killed?”
“How many?” she asked solemnly.
“Don’t you get smart with me, young lady, I’ll do what these men should have done with you. Where is that young pup I sent after you? He was supposed to protect you.”
Tynan stepped forward. The area in front of the cabin was filling with men and their horses. “Are you asking for me?”
Del looked Tynan up and down, took in the dirty bandage on his thigh. “I see she’s about done you in, too.”
Tynan straightened. “I take full responsibility for everything that’s happened. There were several times when I had the opportunity to get her back safely.”
“Hmph!” Del snorted. “You couldn’t very well control her when you were in jail. And what’s this I hear about you two being engaged?”
Chris held her breath as she looked from her father to Tynan. It looked as if Ty weren’t going to say anything, and Chris suddenly realized the seriousness of this moment. If she said they were engaged, her father could send him back to jail. She thought of Ty’s back as it’d been in the rain forest. She thought she could control her father, but she wasn’t positive. What if she were wrong? If she were, then Ty would be returned to prison.
“We’re not engaged,” she said softly. “I just said that to prevent a fight. He’s been a perfect gentleman at all times and he did everything he could to protect me. He even saved me from Dysan.”
Chris watched her father as he continued to study Tynan and after a moment, he grunted, but made no other comment.
“I’m hoping that Chris will accept my proposal,” said someone behind her and she turned to see Asher standing there. There was a bandage across his forehead. With a smile of possession, he put his arm around Chris’s shoulders. Her father looked at her as he had when she was a child, and she knew he was trying to figure out if she was telling the truth or making up one of her highly imaginative stories. Chris couldn’t meet his eyes, so she looked down at her hands clasped in front of her.
Pilar broke the silence. “Let me introduce myself,” she said, moving toward Del, hand outstretched. “I’m Pilar Ellery. We’ve never met, but I’ve certainly heard a great deal about you. You wouldn’t happen to have some food in those saddle bags, would you? We’re all starving.”
Del shook her hand, but he didn’t smile at her, and Chris knew that he was upset, deeply upset, if he didn’t smile at a pretty woman.
She moved away from Asher’s proprietary grasp and slipped her arm through her father’s. “I’m sorry I caused you so much trouble. I didn’t mean to.”
Del looked at her for a long moment and she saw a sadness in his eyes. Was something troubling him besides her being in danger?
“Miss Mathison, may I introduce myself?”
Before her stood the man who’d ridden beside her father. He was about the same age as her father, a tall, slim man with black hair that was graying at the temples. He had the lean, hard look of a man who was used to physical exercise, but at the same time, he had an elegance that could only have come from generations of selective breeding. Even though he looked at home with a gun slung around his hip, she could easily imagine him on a dance floor or holding a wine glass.
“I am Samuel Dysan,” he said in a deep, rich voice.
“Samuel Dysan?” She looked behind him toward Tynan, then back at the older man. “You’re the one Beynard…”
“He is seeking me?” The man looked surprised.
“I heard him saying that he’d searched for years for Samuel Dysan.”
Sam and Del exchanged looks. “Oh yes, I see. And when did he tell you this?”
“I, ah…he didn’t really tell me, he, ah…”
Tynan stepped forward. “She hid in the bushes and listened.”
“It was for a good cause!” she snapped at him. “Lionel was—”
“Lionel?” Del said. “You mean you did something for that brat you sent to me? I turned that kid over my knee three times in one day.”
“You beat Lionel?” she gasped. “He’s just a little boy.”
“I should have taken my hand to you more often, but, no, I had a soft heart and thought that little girls were different. I’ll not make a mistake like that again. I mean to raise this boy right, so he has some sense and doesn’t go off to big cities and write stories that get him shot at. Do you have any idea how many people have said to me in the last few days, ‘Yeah, she was here, left three dead bodies behind her’?” He looked up at Tynan. “Between the two of you, there’re about a hundred fewer people in this world.”
“I don’t think that’s fair,” Chris said. “Tynan did what he had to do. He—”
“Except when I shot Rory Sayers,” Ty said in all seriousness.
She turned on him. “And what were you supposed to do? Stand there and let him shoot you? You saw the way all those people were egging you on, trying to make you do something exciting. There was nothing else you could do. You had to protect yourself.”
Suddenly, she stopped as she realized what she’d said. She’d told him she was wrong to have left him alone in jail but she’d thought that out logically. This time there was passion in her belief in him.
Tynan stood there looking at her for a moment, an angelic smile on his face, then he turned toward Del. “Sir, she only gets into trouble because she wants to right all the world’s wrongs. I think you’ve done a damn fine job of raising her. Now, would anybody like to eat?” He held out his arm. “Miss Mathison, may I escort you in to dinner?”
Chris felt a little weak-kneed as she took Ty’s arm. She’d never been around a man who didn’t cower in the presence of her father. Every other man did just what Asher was doing now: standing back and looking on quietly.
They joined the others—Del had brought about fifty men with him—and ate the first decent meal they’d had in days. Chris kept smiling at her father as he glowered at her as she tried to answer all his questions without telling the truth about the danger she’d been in. She didn’t want to upset him more than she had already. She never really lied but then she didn’t tell him all of it either.
“You went to Hamilton’s knowing that he’d had his cousin killed?”
“I wasn’t sure of that. I mean, it was an awful wagon accident. I’m sure the fall could have killed any number of people and all I wanted to do was help a little boy. Besides, I had the two big, strong men you sent to me to help me. What could possibly have gone wrong?” She didn’t dare meet the eyes of Tynan or Asher or Pilar.
Del leaned toward her. “What went wrong was Dysan. Do you have any idea what that man’s like?”
“Yes, I do,” she said softly. “Papa, do you think you should talk about him like that now?” She gave a pointed look toward Samuel Dysan.
Mr. Dysan put his plate down. “You can’t offend me. I know more than anyone what my grandnephew is like. I have had the misfortune of watching him grow up.”
Chris’s curiosity came to the surface. “Then why did he say he’d been searching for you for years? Didn’t he know where to find you?”
Del began to tell his daughter to mind her own business, but Chris kept her eyes on Samuel. The man was watching Tynan, looking at
him with such interest that Chris began to look from one man to the other. Samuel caught himself.
“I have never understood the workings of the boy’s mind,” Samuel said. “His mother married my nephew because she thought he was the heir to my holdings, and when she found out he wasn’t, she turned her son against me.”
“And who is your heir?”
“Christiana!” Del yelled at her. “I will not stand for your lack of manners.”
“I apologize, Mr. Dysan. It’s just the reporter in me. I thought there might be some doubt about who was your heir if the woman thought her husband was going to be.”
Samuel put his hand on Del’s arm. “It’s all right, I don’t mind the questions. I have a son but he disappeared at sea many years ago. Perhaps I’m a fool but I have always had hopes of finding him again. But, even if I never found him, I would never leave a penny to my grandnephew.”
“He seems to have enough money as it is.”
Samuel’s face turned hard. “Whatever he has, he has obtained by stealing, cheating, lying, killing.”
“Oh,” Chris said and looked down at her plate.
“Mr. Tynan,” Samuel said, “I have had some experience with wounds. May I take a look at your leg?”
Tynan looked surprised. “If you’ll look at Pilar first.”
“Yes, of course,” he said, smiling at Tynan.
“You know…” Chris began, looking from one man to the other.
“And what was that you wrote about Hugh Lanier? You accused that poor man of some of the worst crimes of this century,” Del yelled at her.
Chris gave her attention back to defending herself to her father.
Chapter Twenty-five
Chris couldn’t get away from her father for even a minute all that night. She wanted to talk to Tynan alone, but he seemed to always be busy. And then there was Asher. He obviously wanted to prove to Del that he’d done his duty and Chris was planning to marry him, because he was never two feet from Chris’s side. He kept saying things like, “Have another biscuit, Chris, I know how much you love them.” He made it seem as if they were on intimate terms.