The Temptress (9 page)

Before Tynan could reply, Chris said, “I beg to differ with you, Mr. Sayers. Mr. Tynan has read all
my
articles. Perhaps he was selective in his reading.”

“Not
Mr.
Tynan,” Rory said with a smile. “I don't believe he has another name.”

Chris could take no more. She couldn't stand the man's smugness or his catty remarks. She stood. “I'm afraid you'll have to excuse me as I have a splitting headache. Mr. Tynan, would you please escort me out into the fresh air? I think a walk will help clear my head.”

Rory Sayers rose, presumptuously taking Chris's arm.
“I'll
take you, Miss Mathison.”

With all the haughtiness she could muster, she jerked her arm from his grasp. “Sir, I only met you tonight. I do not entrust my safety to men I do not know. Mr. Tynan, would you mind?”

Rory was aghast. “I'm afraid,” he said with emphasized tolerance for her ignorance, “that you don't know this man. He's—”

Chris hadn't traveled all over the United States on her own and not learned how to handle all types of men. “I have just spent a great deal of time alone with this man and I know all I need to know about him. I am especially aware of the fact that he has the manners of a gentleman.”

She turned away to see Tynan standing beside her, an enormous grin on his face, his arm extended. “The lady has taste,” he said to Rory. “Sit back down and finish your meal. I'll take good care of her.”

With that, he led Chris out of the hotel and into the moonlit street. But as soon as they were outside, he released her arm.

“Why did you do that?”

“Because I can't stand that type of man,” she said with feeling.

“Type? But I thought all women liked that kind of man. Most all of them I've ever known do.”

“But then you've never met a woman who could run away from home at the age of eighteen and become a newspaper reporter either, have you?”

“No,” he said with a grin. “I haven't. Do you really have a headache? Do you want me to take you back inside?”

She stopped and looked at him. “If I promise not to be forward, will you take me for a walk?”

“Forward?”

“Such as pursuing you and asking too many questions and, in general, making a nuisance of myself.”

He gave her a startled look, then grabbed her arm and pulled her into an alleyway. Before Chris could speak, he had her in his arms, holding her head against his chest. “Chris, you don't understand, do you? Thank you for what you did in there tonight. If four men came up to me aiming guns at my head, I'd know how to handle them, but give me one spoiled rich boy and I'm at a loss. But you made me feel…”

“Like a winner?” she supplied and tried to look up at him but he held her head against him. “Deja vu,” she whispered.

“What?”

“I have a feeling that I've been here before, in just this situation. Remember our first meeting?”

“No man could ever forget a meeting like that. Chris, you have to go back inside. I can't go walking with you in the dark.”

Chris wanted to stay with him always and, had he asked, she would have climbed on a horse and ridden away with him—to live in the rain forest for all she cared. But she knew she had to obey him. He didn't know how he felt about her and she wasn't about to pursue him.

“All right,” she whispered with great reluctance in her voice. “Let's go.”

He moved away from her slowly, not looking at her, and allowed her to go first back onto the street. Chris took one step around the corner and saw Rory with Asher coming toward them, and they had the look of a vigilante committee out to rid the world of whatever they considered vermin. She turned back to Tynan. “Kiss me,” she whispered urgently.

Ty looked astonished for a split second then he lost no time obeying her, taking her in his arms and kissing her with a passion Chris had never before known existed. She completely forgot about the reason she'd asked Ty to kiss her but returned his passion, her arms going around his neck and pulling him closer—not that he could get closer as he wedged his thigh between hers.

“Unhand her!” came Rory's voice as he pulled Tynan away from Chris.

For a moment, Chris was too stunned to even open her eyes, much less try to speak.

“I should call you out for this,” Rory was saying.

Chris was leaning against a building wall and was in such a state of euphoria that someone could have told her a bomb was about to explode under her feet and she wouldn't have been able to move.

“I'm ready when you are, Sayers,” she heard Tynan say in a voice deep with threat.

Reluctantly, Chris began to surface because she sensed that this was an argument that she had to stop. But as she moved away from the wall, her eyes opened wide for a moment. The entire back of her dress was unbuttoned.

Standing as straight as she could, not allowing the loose dress to fall forward, she confronted Rory Sayers with his backup of Mr. Prescott.

“Mr. Sayers,” she said angrily. “I do not know you and, after tonight, I don't believe I want to. You have no right to interfere in my life and I kindly wish you'd stay out of it.”

“Chris,” Tynan said. “Stay out of this. This has been coming for a long time.”

“I most certainly will
not
stay out of this,” she said with so much feeling that the front of her dress fell forward, but she caught it and hoped the men hadn't noticed. If she ever got out of this, she was going to give Tynan a piece of her mind. Of all the audacious things any man had ever done to her, this was one of the worst. She was tempted to let Mr. Sayers have him.

“Miss Mathison, I have to take offense at this. I have met your father several times and I cannot believe that he'd want his daughter pawed by a man of this sort in an alleyway.”

Tynan took a step forward, and Chris put herself between the two men. “My father hired this man to protect me and he is doing just that. You, Mr. Sayers, are the unwanted person. As it happens, Mr. Tynan has just asked me to marry him and I have, quite happily, accepted. Now, I do believe that a man has a right to kiss his intended without being molested by the local bully.”

Rory Sayers stepped back at that. “Bully? Pardon me, Miss, I had thought you were a lady of higher ideals than to take up with this…this criminal. I can only think that you know nothing about him.”

“I know that he was put into jail for two years without any evidence.” Holding her dress, her back to Tynan, she advanced on Rory. “I know that he's never known who his parents are and that he's never had the advantages of money that you have had. And even though he's not had a formal education, he speaks like a gentleman, reads Voltaire in his spare time, and he constantly puts his life on the line to help other people. Can you say the same thing, Mr. Sayers?”

Rory straightened his back. “You are not the lady I took you for,” he said and after one look at Tynan, turned, Asher on his heels, and went down the street.

“He can't say those things about you,” Tynan said and started after the men.

Chris planted herself in front of him. “Don't you
dare,”
she said through her teeth. “Don't you dare even think of going after him.” She began backing him into the dark alley. “Especially don't you think of avenging my ‘honor'. What do you know of a ladies' honor?”

“Chris, I—”

“Look at this!” she gasped, turning her back to him and showing him the unbuttoned dress. “How dare you try to remove my clothing!”

“Oh,” he said with a slight grin. “I guess it's just habit. I didn't even think about it.”

“Habit!” she gasped. “Whenever you kiss a girl you unbutton her dress?”

“Well,” he said slowly, still backing up. “Most girls I kiss
want
their dresses off. You seemed to like it well enough.”

“Of all the vain—I should have allowed Mr. Sayers to shoot you. You certainly well deserved it.” She began to fasten her dress, struggling with the many tiny buttons.

“He can't shoot at all. All he can do is push a pencil around and flap his gums. Here, let me do that. I can button them as fast as I can unbutton them.”

“And I guess you've had practice at that often enough,” she said as he turned her around and began to fasten her dress.

“Sometimes you need to get into clothes real fast. There now, all done. I'll pick you up tomorrow.”

“Not on your life. Frankly, Mr. Tynan, this has gone far enough. You don't want to go to jail and I'd like to get home to my father. I think that tomorrow we should start south toward my home.”

“We can wait one more day. Look, Chris, you're not going to make a fool of me in front of this town—and especially not in front of Sayers. You told him we were engaged and I want at least a day of acting like we're engaged. I'd like to show these people that I can…”

“Can get a ‘good' girl like me?” she asked softly. She put her hand on his chest. “Tynan, perhaps I've misled you. Perhaps it was the rain forest, the feeling of being isolated, something that made me lose my sense of proportion, but now that we're back to civilization, I think we should stay away from each other. After all, you would have to go back to prison if you touched me.”

He took her upper arm in his hand and bent his face close to hers. “Right now Sayers is in a saloon telling half the people in this town that Nola Dallas is going to marry the murderer. And
you're
the one who gave him that idea.”

She smiled at him in such a way that he took a step backward. “Tomorrow is Sunday. How about church in the morning and I've been invited to the town picnic later. Shall we appear as an engaged couple? Just for the day, of course, and on Monday we can start the journey home. And then we'll no longer be engaged. Does that suit you?”

“Church?” he asked and even in the darkness, she could see his face turning pale.

“Church,” she said firmly and slipped her arm through his. “We'd better get out of this alleyway or my reputation will be ruined, engaged or not. I'll see you the first thing in the morning.” They were almost back at the hotel. “Cheer up, Mr. Tynan, I'll make sure that you enjoy the day. Goodnight, dear,” she said to him as she smiled at a passerby. “You may kiss my cheek,” she whispered, “and don't unbutton so much as a cuff, if you don't mind.”

Still too stunned to speak, Ty bent and kissed her cheek, then looked up to see three women standing in the hotel lobby looking at him with disapproving eyes. On impulse, he grabbed Chris about the waist and kissed her quite thoroughly.

When he released her, Chris had to catch a chair back to keep from falling.

“See you in the morning, sweetheart,” Ty said with a wink, replaced his hat and left the hotel.

Chris tried to regain her composure. “Oh, my, but he does get carried away,” she said, smoothing her dress front. “Goodnight,” she said to the women who were watching her with their mouths hanging open.

Chris whistled all the way up the stairs.

Asher Prescott was waiting for her outside her room. His face was grim. “I feel I must talk to you.”

“I am rather tired and I…” she began then stopped. When a man got it into his head that a woman needed lecturing, it was just better to let him get it out of his system. Chris had learned years ago that “teaching” a woman seemed to make a man feel much better. “Yes, what is it?” She stood there patiently and waited.

“I don't think you're conducting yourself properly and I believe you're losing your sense of proportion. I know you like to champion the underdog but sometimes the underdog isn't deserving of a champion. I believe, Chris, you should know something about the man whose cause you are fighting.

“When he was sixteen he was already known as a gunslinger. He killed not one but two men in a street shootout. By the time he was twenty, he had more enemies than most people have in a lifetime. Did you know that for a while he rode with the Chanry Gang? Once, he was caught and sentenced to hang but the gang blew up the jail and got him out. He's taken on jobs that were suicidal, walking alone into towns against twenty outlaws.”

Asher began to warm to his subject. “And the women, Chris! Hundreds of women! To somebody like him, a woman isn't someone to love, she's someone to bed, then leave. You talk of love for this man, well, he doesn't even know the meaning of the word. He's a no-good wastrel and he'll never be anything else.”

Chris didn't say a word, just stood there and looked at him.

“You're talking of marrying him but I don't think you understand what marriage is. It's the day in day out of living together. This Tynan can be charming when he wants to but tonight he was morose and sullen. He can't talk, he knows nothing about civilized society, and that woman who everyone says is probably his mother…. Well, Chris, I can't believe you even agreed to eat at the same table with her. I for one—”

He stopped himself then smiled at her fondly. “You know what I think? I think this Tynan is interesting because he's a mystery. You solve the mystery and you'll find he's just another run-of-the-mill, cheap gunslinger. What you need, Chris,” he said softly, taking a step toward her, “is a husband from your own background. A husband and children.”

She gave him a wide-eyed look. “Someone like you, Mr. Prescott?”

“I find you a
very
attractive woman, Chris.”

As he leaned forward, his eyelids closing as if to kiss her, Chris opened the bedroom door and slipped inside, closing it firmly behind her. “Kiss
that,
Mr. Paid-to-Marry-Me Prescott.”

She went to bed thinking of the coming picnic.

The next morning, Tynan was waiting for her in the hotel lobby wearing a clean suit, leaning against a window frame reading a newspaper.

“Good morning,” she said, smiling up at him.

He smiled too when he looked at her, but he looked as if he were smiling through adversity.

Chris pulled on her gloves. “Are you ready to go?”

Ty only nodded, offered his arm to her, and led her out of the hotel onto the street.

There were several other couples also on their way to church and each one of them stopped to stare openly at Tynan and Chris.

In church, Chris pulled Tynan to the third pew, away from the back row where he started to sit. Throughout the service, he was silent, listening to the preacher with attention. During the singing, he seemed familiar with the songs and, as Red had said, he did indeed have an excellent voice.

As they left the church, he seemed relieved that it was over and had gone well. Standing at the door, the minister made an effort to shake his hand and tell him he was welcome.

As they went down the stairs, they saw Red waiting for them in a beautiful big-wheeled carriage, holding the reins to a sleek black gelding.

“I brought you baskets of food for the picnic,” she said. “I didn't want you to go empty-handed. Here, Ty, help me down.”

“You aren't going with us?” Chris asked.

“A church picnic ain't no place for the likes of me. You two go and have a good time. And, Tynan, you start to look happier or I'll take a switch to you.”

That made Ty laugh as he kissed her cheek. “Maybe I need
both
of you to protect me.”

Chris slipped her arm in his. “One can handle you. We shall miss you, Red, but we'll see you tonight. Pray it doesn't rain.”

“Honey, I ain't stopped prayin' since you came to town. Now get out of here.”

Ty lifted Chris into the carriage and soon they were speeding down the dirt road with the other couples. Chris moved close to him on the seat and held his arm. “Who are the Chanrys?”

“Been snooping again?”

“Of course. Who are they?”

“A bunch of two-bit crooks. Most of them are either dead now or locked away.”

“Were you part of them?”

“They wanted me to be. Even told people I was.”

“But I thought they broke you out of jail. Tynan, how many times have you been in jail?”

“Total?” he asked seriously. “Even for being drunk?”

“Never mind, don't answer. How did your name get linked with those criminals?”

“I told you. They wanted me to join and when I wouldn't, they got angry. They didn't break me out of jail, a U.S. marshal did.”

“Explain, please,” she said over the sound of the carriage.

“The Chanrys didn't like the way I told them I wouldn't join their gang no matter what they offered me. You see, they needed a fast gun since their best man had been killed. As revenge, they robbed a bank and kept calling one of the men Tynan. The local sheriff came after me. Only problem was that I was laid up with a broken leg, but he didn't seem to think that was proof that I was innocent. One of the women where I was staying got in touch with a marshal and he came up to investigate. When he couldn't persuade the sheriff not to hang me, the marshal blew up the jail. The sheriff told everybody it was the Chanrys—proof that he should have hanged me.”

“Tynan, you are full of the most awful stories.”

“When a man lives by the gun, he should expect to be faced with other guns. Here we are. Why don't you take the baskets over there and I'll—”

“No, you have to carry the big one and I have to introduce you to everyone.”

“But I already know most of these people. They're the ones—”

“They are the ones who know nothing about you. Now come along.”

“Yes, ma'am,” he said, grinning. “You do tie them apron strings to a man, don't you?”

“Sometimes, apron strings give a man purpose in life. And they're a lot less violent than guns.”

“Hmph! Strangulation is a slow way to die.”

She ignored his remark as they walked toward the others. The men and women were separating, the women spreading food on bleached and ironed tablecloths, the men walking together toward the river.

Chris set down a basket of food. “I believe you've met my fiancé, Mr. Tynan, haven't you?” she said. “I'd introduce you by name but I'm afraid I've been in town so short a time that I haven't met you all.”

Looking as if they'd just been introduced to a coiled rattlesnake, most of the women nodded tentatively in Tynan's direction.

“Ty, dear, would you please put the other basket there? Thank you so much.” She gave him a little signal with her eyes, motioning him toward the men.

He removed his hat. “It's very pleasant to meet you ladies again after all these years.” He picked up a roll from the table, winked at Chris and left.

“Miss Dallas!” the women started as soon as he was out of earshot. “You don't know what you're doing. You couldn't know anything about him or you wouldn't—”

“You should talk to Betty Mitchell, after what he did to her, and poor Mr. Dickerson—”

“Mitchell?” Chris said, unpacking one of the baskets. “Wasn't she the girl who was in love with the boy who was killed?”

“Well, she
had
been,” one woman said. “Thank heaven it was all over when he was killed.”

“Oh, yes,” Chris said. “By then she was visiting Tynan in the saloon and seeking him out wherever she could. Why did she and the Dickerson boy end their involvement?”

The women fell all over themselves answering.

“Betty didn't exactly pursue Tynan…. Maybe she did go to the saloon but I'm sure he enticed her.”

“Billy started seeing a girl who was visiting from Seattle, but I'm sure it would have blown over if that Tynan hadn't interfered.”

“Tynan killed Billy, we know that,” one woman insisted.

Chris put an apple pie in place. “Billy Dickerson started seeing another girl. Betty started pursuing Tynan, then Mr. Dickerson went after Betty's father and—”

“No!” one of the women said, then stopped.

Another woman leaned forward. “Betty was in the family way and Billy wouldn't marry her.”

“Ah,” Chris said. “So Tynan stepped in to help a young girl get the man who was refusing to marry her. And he
killed
this young man? Tynan must have loved Betty to do something like that for her.”

The women began shifting the food on the table.

“Betty only loved Billy and after his death she went back east somewhere.”

“But I thought she and Tynan were so in love that he killed a man for her,” Chris asked, wide-eyed.

The women didn't say anything for a while.

“I do believe my son is pestering your young man,” a woman said, looking toward the river.

Four young boys were encircling Tynan, looking up at him with eager faces.

“He won't…do anything, will he?” a woman asked hesitantly.

“No,” Chris said with confidence. “He is a very good man. Now, shall we call all our good men to the table?”

The men were more tolerant than the women and they didn't seem to care one way or another that Tynan had been in and out of jail. They were more interested in corn on the cob and fried chicken.

Rory Sayers tried his best to make Tynan feel out of place.

“Better than prison food, isn't it, old man?” Rory asked, sitting across from Ty. “But then, over the years you must've gotten used to it.”

As Rory reached for a piece of chicken, a woman, the one whose son had been talking to Ty, smacked Rory's hand sharply with a wooden spoon. Everyone at that end of the table looked up at her as the woman's face turned red.

“I can't teach the children not to reach if the adults do,” she said at last, then looked up at Chris who was smiling broadly at her. The woman also smiled. “More beans, Mr. Tynan?” she asked sweetly.

“Why, yes, please,” Tynan said, looking at the woman in surprise.

“Tell us what it's like to take a man's life,” Rory said as the woman was heaping beans on Tynan's plate.

At that moment, one of the other women overturned a cup of coffee into Rory's lap. As Rory jumped up, one of the men began to laugh.

“Boy, you get married and you'll learn that women have ways of fightin' that cause you to lose the war before you even know it's been declared.”

Another man began to laugh and before long, they'd all joined in. Tynan sat there grinning.

“Sit down, boy,” someone called to Rory. “You'll dry. Martha, give Sayers some of that cherry cake of yours. That'll make him forget everything else, even pretty little blondes.”

Chris became very interested in the inside of a pitcher of milk but she could feel her ears growing warm.

An hour later the food was packed away, the younger children were being put to sleep under shade trees, the adults were gathering in groups and the young ones with the energy were laughing and planning ways to be on their own.

“Will you come with us?” a pretty, dark-eyed girl asked Chris. “We're going canoeing on the river. It'll be a lot of fun.”

“We'd love to,” she said, holding onto Tynan's arm.

“They're kids. I don't want to—” Tynan began but Chris didn't look at him.

“They want to talk to us. Don't you realize we're almost celebrities to them? You, the notorious gunslinger and me…”

“The lady who gets herself into trouble on purpose.” He held her back as the others got into the three canoes. They were out of sight of the picnic area. Just as Chris was about to step into a canoe, Tynan gave her a little push, causing her to stumble back against him.

“Chris,” he said and there was great concern in his voice. “You've hurt your ankle. Is it sprained? Here, don't walk on it, let me help you.”

Before Chris could say a word, he had her in his arms and was carrying her toward the trees.