Texas Rose

chapter 7

Evie screamed as a horse flew over her head, landing in the dust of the dry riverbed. Before she could recover her senses, Tyler was jerking her from her feet and throwing her over his knees like a sack of flour. She scrabbled for handholds as the horse took off down the gully without so much as a by-your-leave from its rider.

She had never been inclined to hysteria, but it took a great deal of effort to keep from mindlessly screaming as her fingers dug into Tyler's leg and her position slipped with the jarring gait of the horse. Tyler caught her bodice waist and pulled her more forcefully across his lap, but now her head hung over his knee and she had a terrifying view of the landscape flying by beneath her.

She closed her eyes as shots rang over their heads. The steady stream of curses Tyler had been emitting when he first grabbed her now ceased. He turned his entire attention to forcing his tired horse to outpacing the thieves. Evie clung to his nankeen trousers and attempted prayer. It was a trifle difficult when her corset was bouncing off Tyler's knee.

The shots eventually grew farther away. As the horse stumbled and heaved, Tyler let up the pace, slowing to a walk while listening for any sign of pursuit. Finally, satisfied that their pursuers had given up the chase, Tyler halted and lowered Evie to the ground.

With an air of surrender, she settled into the dust and bent her head to her knees, gasping for air as she tried to quiet her shaken insides.

Tyler climbed down and watched her, but he was already cutting off the pain by closing off his emotions as he'd learned to do in prison. The stagecoach rumbling off without them caused a moment's fury, but he refused to think of Benjamin crumpling to the ground, lying still in the roadway without anyone stopping to help. To the occupants of the stagecoach, Benjamin was only a black man, less than an animal, and possibly one of the thieves to their bigoted minds.

Tyler swore at himself for not going back to see to his friend instead of going after this miserable brat who hadn't the sense God gave a goose. But his damnable sense of Southern chivalry had reared its ugly head, and he had gone to rescue the lady rather than help the friend who had stood beside him since childhood.

It didn't make sense. But life would never make sense. He knew that; he just had to remember it at times like these. Watching Evie gulping back tears and terror, Tyler let his mind travel to the next thing to be done if they were to survive this situation. The sun was sinking toward the horizon. They would have to find shelter and water. His horse couldn't travel much farther, particularly with two riders.

He wanted to go back for Benjamin, but practicality told him he had to get Evie settled and his horse watered before he could do anything. He scanned the horizon in all directions, seeing nothing habitable. But a stand of trees toward the west spoke of water.

He held a hand out to Evie. "Come on, we've got to get going."

She didn't look at him. She didn't take his hand, either. She caught up her skirts and rose, somewhat shakily perhaps, but she hid that well as she dusted herself off.

Without a word of question, she followed as Tyler led the horse toward the trees. She knew he was furious with her. She didn't even need to see the set lines of his jaw to know that. She could see the knots of tension in his shoulders, the way he strode with his back straight and turned to her. She had learned to read other people by watching the way they moved. Tyler was bordering on irrational, and she tried not to be afraid. Heroines were never afraid. The heroes always got them out of these situations. Hadn't Tyler just saved her from the outlaws? Who was going to save her from Tyler?

A dilapidated cabin sat among the skinny trunks of oaks someone had obviously planted to keep the house cool. No smoke came from its one chimney. No reply came after Tyler's yell of greeting.

They found a crude well in the side yard and drew up water for the horse. With no dipper in sight, Tyler cupped his hands and dipped some of the muddy liquid for himself. Evie watched him and attempted to repeat the motion, but she succeeded mostly in splattering her gabardine bodice. Getting enough water to quench her parched lips, she gave up the attempt and walked toward the cabin.

Tyler was ahead of her, holding her back with his hand as he knocked, then threw open the door. The interior smelled musty and unused, and a rustle in the darkness warned the inhabitants weren't human.

Stamping his boots to scare off any other intruders, Tyler entered and glanced around. Whoever had left the cabin had meant to return. In the light of the dying sun through the room's one window, he could discern a crude table and chair, and a bed nailed to the corner walls and supported by one post. A faded quilt covered the thin mattress, and an iron skillet still hung beside the fireplace. Dust covered everything, but dust always did. It was impossible to tell how long the owner had been away.

Evie swept by him and immediately began scanning the cabin's meager supplies. "Can you start a fire? I can cook these beans. It looked like there was a bit of a garden out there. There might be some root vegetables for a stew."

Tyler watched her for a minute, hating her for her cool behavior, wishing she would behave like any hysterical female so he could despise her even more. His best friend was dead or dying in the middle of a road to nowhere, and she was discussing beans and stew. In the room's crude interior her trailing gabardine gown and ruffled ruching were as out of place as a ghost in daylight She ought to be cursing the fates and yelling at him to do something.

Instead, she waited patiently for him to light a fire in the ghastly heat of this day.

Tyler walked out, returning shortly later with an armload of tinder. He set the fire, went back out for some larger limbs, and fed them into the blaze until they caught. Then he stood and stared down into her pale face.

"I'm going back out to look for Ben."

Her blue-black eyes widened into shadowed circles. "Ben? What happened to Ben?"

Of course. She hadn't seen him fall. She was too busy running like a scared goose in the opposite direction. Tyler wanted to ask her what the hell she had thought she was doing, but he was too tired to care anymore.

"One of the passengers shot him," Tyler replied with a hint of scorn, the only emotion he could summon at the moment. When she seemed at a loss for words for once, he turned and walked out. There was still enough daylight left to ride back to the road. He didn't give a damn what happened to Miss Evie Peyton while he was gone.

By the time Tyler returned, without any sign of Ben or his horse, the sun had long since gone down. Tyler was weary clear down to the marrow of his bones, and the contents of the flask of whiskey in his saddlebag was the only thing keeping him going.

He could smell the smoke from the fire as he brushed down his horse and the stray he had found, watered them, and fed them some hay from the ramshackle stall beside the house. He threw the saddle over the gate when he was done, picked up his bags, and headed for the cabin and Evie.

He hadn't come home to a woman since he was seventeen years old. The eight years since then might not have been long in terms of time, but they were decades in terms of experience. Tyler felt nothing now at the thought of the woman waiting for him, supper on the table, her lovely face lined with worry. He wanted to feel nothing.

Evie always caught him by surprise. He walked in and found her hanging her newly washed petticoats beside the fire. In the fire's light, her wet hair gleamed with dull red against chestnut. She looked up at him without surprise or criticism, and his glance dropped to her slim figure silhouetted against the fire. To his disappointment, she had donned a corset and all the other proper accoutrements of a lady after her bath, all except the heavy petticoats.

"There's a vegetable stew in the pot. Help yourself." Evie went back to adjusting her petticoat so the wet side faced the fire.

Tyler watched through hooded eyes as she played the part of homemaker. She was always playing some part or another. He ate his stew while she shook out the bedcovers and inspected the mattress for insects. He sipped his whiskey while she scoured the plates and pot. She was beautiful, efficient, and eerily silent. He liked it that way. They had nothing to say to each other.

But when Evie left the cabin to avail herself of the privy before retiring for the night, other ideas stirred from somewhere in Tyler's insides. He knew he was halfway to being drunk. He didn't often indulge, but the occasion seemed worth the effort. Still, even knowing he was drunk, he couldn't keep the visions from forming in his head.

Evie returned with a length of rope from his saddle, and Tyler watched in bemusement as she looped it around a peg in the wall and carried it across the room to loop it to another. He waited in drunken anticipation for the whole thing to come tumbling down when she proceeded to knot a sheet over the makeshift line, but she evidently had some experience in creating cloth walls. She was now effectively hidden behind the sheet. All he could see of her was her trim ankles when she removed her shoes.

Tyler contemplated Evie's bare toes beneath the sheet when she sat on the bed and pulled off her stockings. Just looking at her toes made his loins ache. They curled against the rough wooden floor while she worked at the rest of her clothing. He wanted to take those toes and cup them in his hands to keep them from the splintery wood floor. He would rub their softness until she sighed with pleasure. In his imagination Tyler slid his hands from those soft feet to slender ankles. The alcohol rushing through his brain pushed his hands farther, up the long curves of shapely legs. From there, he could only close his eyes and imagine the satisfaction to be achieved when his fingers reached the place where her legs came together.

He'd gone too long without a woman. It couldn't be good for a man's health to abstain this long. Tyler took another swig of whiskey as he surmised the movements behind the sheet represented the removing of her corset. He summoned a vision of that willow slim waist free of steel encumbrances, curving into full hips, rising to firm breasts, and his trousers were suddenly too tight. He took another drink and hoped the heated sensation would go away.

* * *

Still wearing chemise, drawers, and her under-petticoat, Evie climbed into bed. Fear tickled at her insides and edged along her skin, but she forced herself to remain calm. Tyler was a gentleman. The heroes in Daniel's dime novels were always gentlemen at heart. She would rely on that. She could do nothing else. She couldn't stay awake all night and watch him drink himself into a stupor. One of them had to have a clear head in the morning.

She lay quietly, listening to any movement from the other side of the sheet. The fire was dying, but they didn't need the warmth. She could hear the crackle of a branch breaking and crumbling into ash. The faint scent of cooked turnips hung in the air. The paper over the window had been torn in several places, letting in a draft of clear air but also letting in a mosquito. She could hear the whine overhead. Evie listened to the drone and tried to talk herself into sleep.

She couldn't relax. The cornhusks in the mattress rustled with her every movement. She heard Tyler get up and go outside, and she held her breath. Maybe he would sleep in the barn. She heard him splashing in the pail from the well. An animal howled in the distance, and she shivered. She had imagined adventures when coming to Texas, but this wasn't the kind she had imagined. Pecos Martin never touched women, but Tyler did.

All she had wanted to do was find her parents. She wanted to know why they never came back for her. The lawyer's letters had explained nothing. She couldn't believe they had abandoned her on purpose. Something had to have happened to them. And she meant to find out what.

She had imagined many things in her pursuit of the truth, but she had never imagined Tyler Monteigne. Even as she heard the door open again, her heart beat faster. There weren't any extra blankets for him to lie on. She knew what he meant to do, but still she lay there, hoping she was wrong.

She had been wrong to run from the stagecoach; she knew that now. But there was no turning back the hands of time. Perhaps she was wrong in coming to Texas, but she couldn't imagine spending the rest of her life wondering. Everyone in St. Louis knew she didn't have parents. She could dress herself in the finest gowns and do all sorts of charitable works, but without family, she was nothing, nobody. So she had to come to Texas. It was inevitable.

Just as Tyler's pulling back the sheet wall now was inevitable. The dying light of the fire illuminated the golden-brown expanse of his bare shoulders as he stood there for a moment, holding the sheet back from his head. Light glimmered in his hair, and Evie could still see water droplets glistening on his skin from his hasty washing. She pushed to the far side of the bed, leaving him plenty of room. This could still work, if he would just be reasonable. It wasn't quite like the prince coming to rescue Rapunzel, but he looked like a prince. She could pretend he was one for just one night. It wasn't at all difficult to do.

Tyler sat down on the bed's edge and began pulling off his boots. Evie could feel the heat emanating from his naked back, and she had the overwhelming urge to stroke that wide expanse of smooth flesh. She could see how his broad chest tapered to slim hips and flat, muscled stomach, but she didn't want to know any more than that. Just the glimpse of his bare front had caused sensations she didn't want to describe.

She attempted to draw the quilt up around her as she sat up, but Tyler was sitting on it. Abandoning this last thread of protection, Evie started for the bottom of the bed. Pretend as she might, she could put only so much trust in Tyler's gentlemanly instincts. His silence lacked the reassurance she needed.

He turned and caught her with one strong arm, hauling her back down to the bed. He leaned over her briefly, pinning her with his unwavering gaze. "Stay," he ordered.

She almost obeyed, until he stood up and began unfastening the buttons of his trousers. She had no desire to become that well acquainted with male anatomy, no matter how curious she was. She grabbed the quilt and tried to escape around him.

Tyler caught her and tossed her back to the bed as if she were no more than a sack of grain. Evie stared as he peeled off his trousers, revealing the white knit of his drawers. Even in this dim light she could see the mysterious male bulge that had so fascinated her peers in school when they talked of men. The bulge seemed to grow even as she looked at it, and she hastily looked away.

"Let me up, Tyler," she said quietly. "I'll take the quilt and sleep by the fire."

She ought to be panicking. She could feel the grief in him, feel the black gulfs of anguish swirling in his soul, and knew he wasn't in his right senses. But Tyler had never hurt her. Even now, when he tossed her back to the bed and came down beside her, he was gentle in his touches. He was abrupt, demanding, sometimes irritable, and often furious with her, but he had never raised a hand to her. The one he raised now merely caressed her cheek.

Evie held herself still as Tyler's lips feathered across hers. Maybe this was all he wanted—a little comfort in his time of sorrow. Her heart went out to him. She knew what it was like to be all alone. Tentatively, she touched his hard jaw. She could feel the stubble of whiskers and the way the muscles tensed beneath her fingers.

And then Tyler's mouth was closing more forcefully against hers, and panic replaced her need to hold and comfort. Evie shoved at his shoulders as he moved over her, but Tyler was bigger and heavier and there was nothing she could do to budge him. Her fingers bit into his biceps as he nipped at her lips and parted them until his tongue could find entrance. She cried out a protest at the invasion, but something warm and wonderful was happening to her insides at the same time.

She wasn't really frightened. She ought to be. This was the last thing in the world that she wanted to happen if she thought about it, but there was a sense of inevitability to it if she didn't think. If she let Tyler's kisses drug her into insensibility, she could almost enjoy the masculine musk surrounding her, the sense of power and security his large body held for her. She liked the way his muscles tensed beneath her touch. She craved the pure sensuality of his tongue exploring the recesses of her mouth, his lips possessing hers with a hunger that matched her own. She wanted to be held and loved, and she wanted to make this man hold and love her. She could feel the power of the forces drawing them together, and she craved the sensation.

But she knew the instant Tyler's hand reached between them to caress her breast that he didn't mean to stop with kisses and hugs. Evie protested as his hand cupped her through the chemise, but Tyler merely covered her mouth with his own again, suffocating her cries with his kiss.

"Tyler, no!" she whispered frantically as his mouth moved to nibble at her throat. But she made no effort to stop his hands when they unfastened the buttons of her chemise.

Her breasts felt like they were swelling upward, ripe and ready to pop as he uncovered them. Taking one in his mouth, Tyler moaned low in his throat, and Evie lost herself in the sensation of his lips and tongue teasing her into a white hot heat that she didn't understand.

She held him to her, ran her hands through the rich thickness of his hair, offered herself to his anxious kiss as she felt the grief and sorrow rush through him. She felt Tyler's back heave as he bent his head and finally gave vent to a drunken sob of sorrow against her breast. Caught up in her compassion and desire, she placed kisses along the harsh plane of his jaw everywhere she could reach.

In return, Tyler jerked her chemise back until her arms were pinned by the material. Evie struggled out of the hampering cloth while he pressed and stroked her breasts into tingling mounds of sensation. His touch created ribbons of desire that crept through her middle and down to her toes. She wanted his kiss on her mouth again, and he gladly obliged, but this time she could taste his tears, and she cried with him.

The light mat of hair on Tyler's chest brushed her breasts, and Evie lifted against him to feel more. She was as terrified of herself as she was of him, but she didn't seem able to stop. It was as if this was meant to be, as if some unseen hand wrote her actions on the page.

* * *

Oblivious to where he was or who he was with, Tyler gave into the comfort of a woman's welcoming body washing away his pain. Another woman had taught him how he could drown his sorrow in this physical joining, and he had never forgotten the lesson.

The momentary closeness, the sense of oblivion, the physical release—all rendered the pain to a distance that he could deal with later. He was very successful at distancing himself once he overcame the immediate shock. That was all he needed now, the brief physical pleasure to separate him from the beast within tearing him apart. He pushed up the flimsy piece of clothing protecting her and untied his drawers.

Tyler knew his error the instant his body thrust into hers. A woman's cry of pain and disappointment echoed in his ear, but it was too late now. Closing his eyes, he lunged forward and took possession of the satin haven that would save him from the beast.

He didn't need to know who she was. He only needed the temporary shelter she offered.

Her newly opened body quivered as he filled her completely, but she was wet and he was ready. He moved out and slid deeper until she was crying and heaving in tandem with his exertions. That was all he needed to know.

He came quickly, immersing himself in multiple explosions that buried him deep within her heat. He accepted with relief the solace of this physical release and her hands braiding through his hair and refused to think of what he had done.

That would come on the morrow, when the beast was back in his cage again.