A Taste of Heaven (27 page)

Rory considered her question, then shook his
head. “Tyler can tell you if he's a mind to, but I doubt he will.
No offense, Miss Libby, but it's been a sore spot with him for a
long time, and we just don't talk about it. None of us.” Then to
the mules, he yelled, “Heyup, you knobheads, keep movin'! Keep
movin'!”

Libby spoke no more of the incident, not to
Rory or anyone else, and simply withdrew to her original role as
camp cook. At night, though, when she lay in her makeshift bed in
the wagon, she missed knowing that if she were to peek out under
the wagon canvas she'd see Tyler staring into the flames of the
campfire, or watching the last minutes of a sunset.

The wound Wesley had left on her heart was
beginning to fade into a scar, and she no longer missed
Chicago.

But she missed Tyler Hollins.

Libby was relieved when they arrived at the
ranch. Except for one night in the hotel in Miles City, she'd slept
in the back of the chuck wagon and bathed from a bucket for almost
a month. She hadn't been able to wash or iron her clothes. To top
it off, she'd grown heartily sick of pork belly and beans.

And she wanted to see Tyler.

They rode in with the same fanfare and
whooping as the day Charlie and Joe had driven the wild horses to
the corral, and she and Rory laughed and made as much noise as any
of them.

When she caught sight of Tyler's tall, slim
form leaning against one of the porch uprights, her heart
flip-flopped. The sun glinted off the rich auburn strands in his
hair, and he stood with his arms folded over his chest. Right now,
she was too glad to see him to tell herself that he was her boss,
and that her shameful daydreams were improper.

After the first rush of greetings, Rory
stopped the wagon in front of the house, and Tyler stepped forward
to help her down. Although he still looked tired, she was reminded
all over again what a handsome man he was, how blue his eyes were,
how lush the curve of his mouth.

“Take the wagon on to the barn, Rory,” he
said. Then he smiled at her and she saw a faint spark in his eyes
before his familiar cool mask dropped into place. “Welcome back,
Libby. The trip went well enough?”

She smiled, too. “Yes, but I'm glad to be
back. It'll be good to sleep in a bed again and cook on a stove. I
just wish we had a copper bathtub like that hotel in Miles City.
And tonight, thank God, well have something besides pork.” Without
thinking, she put her hand on his arm.

He took a step back. “Then you'll want to
settle in.” He started to walk back into the house.

She was stunned by his coldness. “Tyler,
wait. Is that all you—um, I mean are–are you all right?”

The faint frown she knew so well drew his
brows together. “I'm fine, Libby. It's not your job to worry about
me. Your job is to cook.” He left her standing on the porch, and
the screen door slammed behind him. A moment later, she heard his
office door close at the back of the house.

Her face was hot with embarrassment, and she
looked around to see if anyone had witnessed his curt dismissal.
Fortunately, the crew was busy with the horses over by the
corral.

Oh, that man, she stewed. He was every bit as
rude as on the morning she met him. She hoped she wouldn't be sorry
they'd cashed in her train ticket.

*~*~*

One night a week later, Libby woke with a
start. She didn't know what time it was, but the moon had crossed
the sky to lay a slash of light across her bed from the window. It
was a mild night and a soft breeze fluttered the lace curtains. A
noise, she thought, something outside had awakened her.

She pushed back the covers and went to the
open window. The full moon lighted the yard and surrounding
buildings but she saw nothing. The horses in the corral were quiet,
the bunkhouse was dark—

Thwuck!

Thwuck!

Thwuck!

She looked down then, and just beyond the
edge of the porch roof she saw Tyler chopping wood. There was no
mistaking his identity. He'd taken off his shirt and his sweating
torso gleamed in the gray light—she remembered very well the
contour of his shoulders and straight back. The ax blade flashed
silver on its upward arc before it plunged down again to bite into
a log.

Chopping wood! At this hour? She was certain
it must be far past midnight.

Sighing, Libby crept back to her bed. She lay
awake a long time after the noise stopped, cursing the cruel moment
of fate that had allowed Tyler to meet Lattimer Egan on the
sidewalk in Miles City. No matter how she tried not to, her mind
kept returning to the other side of Tyler Hollins that she'd
glimpsed so briefly—Tyler massaging her shoulders, kissing her in
the wagon the night of the storm, searching for her at the railroad
station. She'd liked that man very much.

She didn't know much about him, but she knew
enough to realize one thing. Grieving for his wife was his prison.
It kept him from sleeping, and it crowded everyone else out of his
heart.

For that Libby was resentful. And very sorry,
indeed.

*~*~*

Fresh from a sluicing on the back porch,
Tyler slowly climbed the stairs in the darkness and made his way
down the hall. An inexpressible weariness dragged at him. That was
good—he hoped it meant he'd finally be able to sleep now. It was
nearly two o'clock, and the sun would be up in only another three
hours. When he reached Libby's closed door, he paused. He thought
of her, with her long honey hair and gray eyes. He saw comfort and
redemption in those eyes whenever he looked at them. He'd told
himself often enough that the idea was just so much bushwa, but he
couldn't banish it from his mind. After a long moment, he reached
out and gripped the knob. It was cool and metallic beneath his
touch.

He wished he had the right to open her door
and go to her, to leave the burdens of his heart out here. But he
had no right at all.

He released the doorknob and went to his own
bed.

*~*~*

Early the next afternoon, Libby stood in
front of the ranch house in her oldest clothes, hands on her hips,
and considered the ratty tangle of vegetation that had once been
flower beds. She recognized the prairie roses that Tyler had said
were here, but they were practically consumed with choking weeds
and well-established grass.

“Well, maybe I can't fix anything else around
here, but I can sure fix you,” she muttered to the plants. She
turned back her sleeves and put on her gloves, intent on reclaiming
the beauty of these beds. She knew she was in for a lot of hard
work. But it was a beautiful, cloudless day, and she welcomed a
task to take out her frustration with Tyler, and to distract her
from the vague gray mood that hung over the Lodestar.

Since their return Tyler had been withdrawn
and irritable, reminding her of what he'd been like when she first
came to the ranch. He disappeared for hours at a time while he rode
the range alone. Thank God his horse knew the way back. A couple of
nights she'd heard him stagger up the stairs and knew he was drunk.
Her chief worry was that he'd tumble over the gallery railing
before he got to his own room. She'd even heard the cowboys
grumbling about how much they'd enjoyed the “new” Mr. Hollins, the
one who laughed and joked and drank with them at the Briar Rose.
Too bad it hadn't lasted.

Tyler stopped at the parlor window and
watched as Libby dug at the flower beds in front of the porch. Or
rather, what had once been the flower beds. The land had pretty
much reclaimed them in the seven years since his father died. Tyler
hadn't had the time to keep them up, and Jenna had not cared about
them. His father had planted them for his mother, hoping to make
her feel more at home at the Lodestar. Tyler didn't think they'd
done the trick, not for his mother or for Jenna.

Now a beautiful little cook from a big
metropolitan city, who in many ways was much braver than he was,
apparently planned to give the wild roses new life. Armed with only
a sharp-clawed weeder and a spade, she set to reversing years of
neglect.

Kneeling on a pad of old newspapers, she
yanked out a winter-bleached clump of grass and threw it into a
bushel basket next to her. Long strands of hair had escaped the
loose knot at the back of her head and trailed on her shoulders. A
smudge of dirt marked her forehead, and she was dressed like a
refugee, but once again, the image of an angel crossed his
mind.

He walked out to the porch and considered her
progress as he leaned on the railing. It seemed like a nearly
hopeless enterprise to him—it was impossible to tell where the beds
ended and the scruffy yard began. But she'd erected a substantial
pile of grass and weeds.

“You don't have to do this, Libby,” he
said.

“Oh, but it feels good to be out here with
the sun and digging in the soil. I've never had the chance to do
that before.” She paused and locked her eyes on him. “Are you going
to tell me that this isn't part of my job here?”

“No, of course not,” he mumbled, and
self-consciously slapped his gloves against his thigh. When he'd
heard the wild commotion of the crew coming home from Miles City,
he'd been so anxious to see her he'd had to stop himself from
running out to meet the chuck wagon. He'd wanted to pull her down
off the seat and kiss her soft, pink mouth until she was limp in
his arms, and carry her up to his bed and make love to her. Then,
as if he were a dog on a short rope, the memory of Jenna had pulled
him back, and he remembered the one truth that Lat Egan had spoken:
Tyler was responsible for her death. Because of that, any real
happiness wasn't to be a part of his future. So he'd walked away
from Libby with a curt dismissal. He looked down at her now,
kneeling among the weeds. “But I can't spare anyone to help you
with this, and it'll take weeks.”

Libby sank the weeder's claws into the
two-foot square of dirt that was finally clear after an hour of
work, and churned up rich, dark soil. “That's all right. I'm in no
hurry, and I think it will probably be beautiful when it's
finished.” She rose from her knees and flexed her back. Tyler felt
his gaze drawn to her breasts and tiny waist. “Besides, if I work
hard enough during the day, I might be able to sleep through the
wood-chopping at night.” She gave him an even look.

Tyler felt the blood rise in his face. Damn
it, he thought, no other woman had ever made him do that as often
as she did. He didn't know what to say. To offer the excuse that he
was catching up on chores seemed ridiculous. Telling the truth—that
his thoughts wouldn't let him rest, that he'd wanted nothing more
than to lie down with her and just hold her in his arms—wasn't an
option.

Fortunately, he was saved from offering any
explanation because Joe rode in at that moment. His expression was
as dark as a thundercloud.

“How did it go?” Tyler asked.

Joe climbed down from his horse and threw the
reins over the hitching rail. He tipped his hat and smiled at
Libby, then trudged up the front steps. Tyler waved at the pair of
chairs on the porch, and Joe sank into one.

“That old bastard and his vigilantes tried to
blow my head off, Ty.” Astonishment colored his deep voice. He
crossed his ankle over his knee.

“Vigilantes! When did Lat hire them?”

“I don't know, but that ain't all. He's got
his boys sinkin' posts and stringin' bob wire. They said they'll
shoot anyone who even comes near that damned fence.”

Tyler sighed and shook his head. Barbed
wire—that was bad. A lot of the territory had already seen the end
of open-range grazing, but it went against all of his cattleman's
instincts. He tipped his chair back against the wall. “I wonder
what's gotten into him now. Did you talk to him at all?”

Joe lifted his hat and resettled it. “Yeah,
but hell, it wasn't what you'd call a friendly conversation. I only
got as close as the road that leads to the ranch house. Lat came
out wavin' a rifle, and said he'd put a bullet in my hide if I came
any nearer.”

“Jesus—did you tell him about the fifty head
we want to give him?”

“I told him. It just made him madder. His
face turned nearly purple, he was so damned mad. Said he don't need
our charity.”

Tyler let his chair fall forward with a bang.
“Oh, goddamn it, I was just trying to help him out. Everyone lost
so much this year, not just him.”

Joe lifted a hand. “I know, I know. But he
fired over my head and told me to take our damned cattle and—” With
a glance at Libby, he left the sentence unfinished. “Uh, well, you
can probably guess the rest. I didn't need any more encouragement
to leave, so I met the boys back down the road and we brought those
steers home.”

Silence fell between them for a moment. Only
the rasping sound of Libby's clawed weeder filled the void. From
her secluded place next to the shrubbery, she listened to this
exchange.

Then Joe said, “You might as well give it up,
Tyler. You're wastin' your time trying to please that old man and
ease your conscience.”

She couldn't see Tyler's face, but his words
suddenly exploded with anger. “That wasn't why I did it, Joe. My
conscience has nothing to do with this, and I don't need you to
second-guess my decisions.”

Sounding just as furious, Joe said, “I ain't
second-guessin' nothin'. But I ain't gonna take a bullet between
the eyes from Lattimer Egan, either.” She heard his boots hit the
porch flooring as he stood. “You'd best remember who your friends
are, Tyler, and stop chewing at 'em like they've got nothin' better
to do than take it.”

Joe thundered down the steps, spurs clinking
madly, and snatching up his horse's reins, pulled him none too
gently toward the corral.

With her brows raised and eyes wide, Libby
stood and looked at Tyler. She read the chagrin in his face when he
realized that she was still there, and a witness to the heated
exchange. She threw her garden tool and gloves on top of the grass
pile and climbed the steps. He still sat in the chair where Joe had
left him. Crossing the porch, she sat next to him.