The Temptress (5 page)

“Do you like being a newspaper reporter?” he asked.

“Yes, at least I did, but I think I'm getting tired of it. I'm twenty-eight years old and I started when I was eighteen. That's a long time. I think I want…I don't know what I want but it's something more.”

“A home and kids?”

She laughed. “You've been talking to my father. Did he tell you how he got me back to Washington? How he lied to me? I was working in New York and he sent me a telegram saying he was at death's door. I cried from one end of the country to the other thinking he was dying and when I arrived home, filthy, tired and terrified, there he was atop a bucking bronco having the time of his life.”

“You're lucky to have a father.”

“You don't?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Or mother?”

“She's dead.”

“Ah,” Chris said. “How long have you been alone?”

“Always. Are you going to look at my feet and get this over with? I need to check the trail ahead to see what's happened to it over the years.”

Reluctantly, Chris removed her hands from his skin as he turned and sat up. For a moment their eyes locked and held. Chris never wanted to look away but Ty broke the gaze.

“I was safer in jail,” he mumbled. “Here! Take a look at my feet. That should keep you busy for a while.”

With a sigh, Chris turned away from his face to look at his feet—then gasped. There were blisters, and blisters that had been worn away to bloody patches and what wasn't actually blistered was about to. “New boots and no socks,” she said, taking one foot in her hand. “Did you just put them on and wear them without breaking them in first?”

“I had to. I'd ruined my dancing slippers the night before,” he said solemnly.

She laughed. “I'll bandage these places and then I'll see if Mr. Prescott has an extra pair of socks.”

“No!” Ty said quickly. “I don't take charity.”

Chris looked at him in astonishment. “All right,” she said after a moment. “No charity. But the first town we come to, we buy you socks. My father did pay you for rescuing me, didn't he?”

“Yes,” he said, watching her as she began to bandage his foot. She ran her hands over his ankles which were as raw as his wrists. “Chains?” she asked.

He acted as if she hadn't asked. “What made you go after Lanier anyway?”

“I don't know. Somebody has to. John Anderson will have that story in print by now. People hate the Indians even more than they already do whenever they hear of them killing missionaries. This time they didn't do it, Hugh Lanier did, and I didn't think it was fair for the Indians to get the blame.”

“Even though it meant that a white man, a man you knew, would probably lose everything?”

“The missionaries lost everything,” she said softly.

“I've never seen a woman who handled being shot at as well as you did yesterday. Had some practice?”

“Some,” she answered.

“I thought women like you wanted to stay home and raise babies.”

“What does that mean, women like me? Besides, I've never been in love. Have you?” She held his ankle in her hands and had no idea how her fingers were tightening.

“A few times. Hey! Your little nails are sharp.”

“Sorry,” she mumbled, her head down.

“What does it matter to you if I've ever been in love?”

“It doesn't, of course,” she said stiffly, easing the pressure on his foot. “I ask questions of everyone.”

“Look, Miss Mathison, believe me when I say I'm not your type. I'm a drifter and if there isn't any trouble I seem to make it. You ought to learn something from Elsie. She turned me in because she can't stand me.”

Chris smiled at him. “You probably didn't pay enough attention to her.”

Ty leaned back on his elbows and watched a bird overhead. “A man can't spend two years in jail and then not give something like Elsie every ounce of his attention.”

She yanked on the bandage she was wrapping around his foot. “If you like women like her, that is. I doubt if you've seen a woman like her without her corsets.”

Ty looked back at her, his eyes dancing with laughter. “Fat, are they?”

“Twenty-seven-inch waists at least and maybe they do have a lot on top but by the time they're twenty-two, they'll all be sagging and—” Chris stopped, aghast at what she was saying. “Put your boots on,” she said rigidly. “Maybe you can get a fat woman to change the bandages in a day or two since you obviously like well padded women and I'm sure I'm too skinny for you.”

She started to stand but he caught her arm, grinning at her, but she kept her head down. He was making her so
angry!

He put his finger under her chin. “You don't think you'll be sagging in a year or two? As old as you are?” There was laughter in his voice. “You don't think I like skinny little girls who follow me around and ask me questions?”

“I don't know,” Chris whispered and felt exactly like a little girl. She'd never wanted anything as much as she wanted this man to like her.

“Slim, pretty little blondes are my favorite,” he whispered.

Chris looked up at him with eyes sparkling with tears and, as he moved his head toward her, she knew he was going to kiss her, so she closed her eyes and parted her lips in anticipation.

“What the hell am I doing?” he said and pushed Chris so that she landed on her seat a foot away from him. “Get out of here right now! You hear me? Don't come near me again. You're right that I like a different type woman. Virginal nurses who follow me around are the type I like
least.
Now go back to camp and don't even get near me again!”

Chris, a little frightened by his temper, ran up the trail to the path back to camp.

When Chris reached the camp, out of breath from running, Asher was sitting by a cheery fire, smiling up at her. He began to talk to her about the forest, but Chris was barely listening. She was wondering why Tynan had been sent to jail.

“Chris! Are you listening to me?” Asher asked.

“Yes, of course,” she said, looking at him but not listening.

Later, when she was snuggled inside her blankets, she lay awake for a long time. She could barely see the stars through the trees but she watched the leaves and the blackness above. At night this forest was a frightening place.

She'd been awake for over an hour when she heard a soft sound to her right. She knew it was Tynan come to see that they were all right. She'd never seen a man take his responsibilities more seriously.

Her eyes were fully open as she watched him walk about the camp, checking that Asher was covered, that the horses were properly tethered, that the food was covered and that the fire was out. When he came to Chris he started slightly to see her eyes open.

“You should be asleep,” he said, standing over her. “You have to get up early tomorrow.”

“How is the trail ahead?”

Asher stirred in his bedroll and Ty knelt beside Chris, lowering his voice. She raised on one elbow.

“It's all right, just some brush across it, but I cleared most of it.”

“Did you get anything to eat?”

She saw the whiteness of his teeth as he grinned at her. “You are going to make some man a wonderful mother. Yes, I ate. Now go to sleep and I'll see you in the morning.”

She lay down on the hard bedroll but he didn't leave.

“Miss Mathison, I'm sorry about this afternoon. I shouldn't have lost my temper. It's just that I think we should keep this trip on an employee, employer basis. As I pointed out to you, I haven't been around women for a while and there are things that are difficult for me.”

“Do I make things difficult for you?” she whispered in such a way that there was no doubt of her meaning. She hoped he'd say she was making his life hell.

He rocked back on his heels and grinned at her again. “Not anything that I can't handle. Now, be a good girl and go to sleep.”

“No good-night kisses?” she asked, a little angry at his laughing at her.

“Not from me,” he said and she smiled because there was horror in his voice. As he walked away, she turned over on her stomach and went to sleep.

The first thing that greeted Chris the next morning was the sight of Tynan bending over the fire. His hair was damp and there were fresh fish frying in a skillet.

“Did you go fishing?” she asked, smiling at him.

He mumbled something but she couldn't hear what it was before he stood and walked to the horses.

All morning Tynan stayed away from her and the three of them rode in silence on the trail.

When they stopped at noon to eat, Tynan quickly told Asher to take Chris with him to gather firewood.

Asher took Chris's elbow and half propelled her toward the path they'd just traveled.

“I hear your father is in shipping, too,” Asher said for the second time before Chris heard him.

“Yes, he is,” she said distractedly. “Canning, shipping, cattle, a couple of saw mills, anything he can get his hands on.”

“Yet you left it all to run away to New York to become a newspaper reporter. But now you're back.”

“Not by choice. I plan to return to New York as soon as I get back to my father's house.”

“Ah, I see. Somehow, I thought you had other plans.”

“Such as?” she asked, turning to look at him. “Did my father tell you that I had other plans?”

“Only that you were ready to settle down, that you were still young enough and he had hopes that you—”

“Young enough for what?” she interrupted.

“Why, to start a family I would imagine.”

Chris bit her lower lip to keep from replying hastily. “No, I don't think I'm over the hill yet, even at my advanced age. I assume women can still bear children at my age.”

“I didn't mean to give offense.”

Quickly, Chris looked at him and a wave of guilt ran through her. Here she was walking in the forest with a handsome young man who was trying to be polite and she, because of some imagined infatuation with a man she barely knew, was being almost rude to him. She smiled at Asher. “I'm sure that you didn't, Mr. Prescott. How did you meet my father?”

Asher returned her smile. “He and my father were friends and did some business together. I saw you once when you were a little girl. You were with your mother. I thought she was the prettiest woman I'd ever seen.”

“So did I.”

He began to gather firewood from the ground, making a stack of it at her feet.

“And why did my father choose you to go on this rescue mission?” She also picked up a few pieces of wood and added them to the pile.

“I think he took who he could get. There aren't many men my age who have no business, and, after working for myself for so many years, I can't seem to settle down to just being an employee.”

“I know how you feel. My father continues to tell me what to do and how to do it, even sending men after me when I don't obey him.”

“Yes, but you're a—” Asher took one look at Chris's sparkling eyes and stopped. “I almost put my foot in it that time, didn't I?”

She cocked her head to one side. “Would it matter if you alienated me?”

Asher gave her a big grin. He really was quite pleasant-looking, not anything like Tynan, of course, but very handsome. “I'm alone in the woods with a beautiful woman and you ask if it would make any difference if she's angry with me? Why, Miss Mathison, this time and place is a dream come true and I would as soon die as ruin it.”

She laughed at his pretty speech as he picked a tiny purple flower from a bank of moss and gave it to her with a little bow. Chris stuck the flower behind her ear and smiled at him.

“Well,” he said slowly, “I guess we'd better get back.” He picked up an enormous pile of wood. “Put the rest on top of this.”

“No, I'll carry my share.”

“Miss Mathison, while I am around, no woman shall ever carry firewood. Now do as I say and put the rest of that on this pile.”

“You sound just like my father,” she said with a sigh.

“Thank you very much. I admire and respect your father and I take it as a high compliment that you consider me like him in any respect. Now, lead the way because I can't see a thing.”

Laughing, pleased that he'd said that he liked her father and didn't complain about him as most people did, Chris led him back to camp. Asher said that not only could he not see but he couldn't understand her directions, so Chris “had” to hold two fingers of his left hand to guide him back to camp.

When they entered the camp, Tynan was bending over the fire frying fish dipped in cornmeal. He looked up when a laughing Chris and a laden Asher arrived, but put his head down again quickly.

Chris suddenly felt ridiculously happy. Holding the divided skirt of her habit out, she began to hum.

“I don't guess you'd care to dance, Mr. Prescott,” she said, holding out her arms. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched Tynan but he didn't even look up.

With obvious happiness, Asher took Chris's extended hands and began a quick dance about the little clearing. It was a cross between the Virginia Reel and a square dance that was exuberant and happy. Chris followed his lead and no matter how fast he led her in the dance, even when her feet barely touched the ground, she stayed with him.

“Watch out!” she heard Tynan shout just before she and Asher tumbled into a foot-deep depression filled with ferns.

They lay there together, Asher's arms around her protectively, Chris's skirts around his legs, while Tynan stood looming over them. “Are you two all right?” he asked, his brows drawn together in a scowl.

“Never been better in my life,” Asher said, then planted a hearty kiss on Chris's cheek.

Still grinning, she turned to see Tynan looking at her oddly.

“I think we can eat now,” Tynan said before turning away to return to the campfire. “That is, Miss Mathison, if you are finished with your dancing.”

“For the moment,” Chris said and went to take a place by the fire.