The Temptress

by Jude Deveraux

  The area off the trail was frightening to her, she was afraid of the covered drop-offs that Ty had shown them, and who knew what lurked beneath the layers of greenery?

  She made it to the base of an enormous tree, parted the hanging moss and looked below. Tynan was standing several feet below in a rocky clearing, his shirt off, rubbing down one of the horses. When he turned and she saw his back, she let out a little gasp. She had been horribly right when she thought he moved as if he were in pain. Even from several feet away, she could see that the gashes that crisscrossed his back were only half healed. And she was sure the wounds had been made by a whip. What he’d done yesterday, tearing about on his horse, hauling her up, her clutching his back, must have caused him untold amounts of pain.

  She waited until he’d turned again, so that he was facing her, and then she moved back into the forest, acting as if she were just coming out of it. She made a lot of noise and called his name.

  When she emerged and could see him, he’d put his shirt on and was just pulling on his boots.

  “Here,” he called up to her.

  “How do I get down there?”

  “You don’t. Go back to the camp.”

  She smiled at him and took a tentative step forward, as if she meant to go straight down the side of the drop off.

  “No!” Tynan yelled, but it was too late.

  Chris had meant to only pretend to go down that way but, what she’d thought was ground wasn’t and she went sliding down the hill on her back.

  Tynan ran across the clearing and leaped on top of her to keep her from sliding any farther.

  Instinctively, Chris’s arms went around him, clutching him close to her. When he lifted his head and looked at her, she was aware of his body on top of hers with every fiber of her being. For a moment, she thought he was going to kiss her—and she welcomed him.

  He was a half inch from her lips before he jumped up, leaving her lying on the steep bank. For just a moment, he turned away from her and she had the distinct impression that he was trying to control his emotions. When he turned back, his eyes were alight, but he seemed calm otherwise. “I told you to go back to the camp. And I thought you were too tired to go anywhere and needed to rest.”

  “I lied,” she said with a smile.

  “And do you often lie, Miss Mathison?”

  “Not nearly as often as the other people in this party,” she said, blinking her eyes innocently. “You tell me the truth and I’ll tell you the truth. I think that’s fair.”

  He seemed to start to say something, but changed his mind because he turned away from her and went back to the horse. “There’s a trail over there. You can use it to get back to the path that takes you to the camp.”

  She stood, straightened her skirt and retrieved the medical kit that had come down with her. “Actually, I was searching for you because I wanted to have a look at your back.”

  “My what?!” he said, turning toward her with a face full of fury. “Look, Miss Mathison, I don’t know what you’re after but I’ve had about all I can take.” He was moving forward, pointing the horse brush at her, and Chris was backing up. “Maybe you think I’m going to be one of those people in one of your stories but you’ve got another think coming. I was hired by your father to take you and Prescott through this forest and to take you home to him. I did not bargain for you following me everywhere I go nor did I expect for you to keep leaping out at me without a stitch of clothes on. Under different circumstances, I’d enjoy your entertainment, but on this trip I got a job to do and I plan to do it no matter what you do to tempt me. You, lady, are Satan in one beautiful package. Now get out of here and leave me alone. I don’t want to see you until I wake you in the morning—and I might even get somebody else to do that.”

  He closed his mouth abruptly, turned his back on her and went back to the horse.

  “All right,” Chris said. “I’ll return to camp and tell Mr. Prescott that your back is a mass of lacerations that look as if they may become infected and also tell him that something is wrong with your feet. I’m sure the mutiny will be over and done with in no time and you will no longer be our leader and you can return to wherever it is that you refuse to tell anyone. Good day, Mr. Tynan,” she said as she started toward the path he’d pointed out.

  She’d gone no more than three feet before she heard a muttered oath behind her and what sounded like the horse brush being thrown down with some force.

  “All right,” he said loudly and Chris turned toward him. “What am I supposed to do?”

  “Remove your shirt and boots and lie down on your stomach there on that patch of moss.”

  “I guess I should be glad you don’t want anything else,” he mumbled sulkily but did as she asked.

  As Chris knelt beside him and looked at his back, she saw that the wounds were worse than she’d thought when she’d seen them from a distance. Most of them were healing well but a few had broken open yesterday. She imagined that they were very, very painful. Taking a deep breath, she opened her case and withdrew some salve.

  “This will help ease the pain,” she said softly and began to soothe it on his skin. His back was broad and he was quite muscular but there was little more than skin covering his muscles, hardly any fat. He looked as if he’d been worked very hard and fed very little.

  When she felt him begin to relax under her fingers, she said, “How long were you in prison?”

  “Two years,” he answered quickly, then whispered, “Damn!”

  “Mr. Tynan, I am a newspaper reporter and I work hard at observing. I don’t know anywhere else that a man can be worked at hard labor, starved and beaten—at least not in America.”

  “And if there was such a place you’d get yourself thrown in there so you could write a story about it, right? Am I going to be your next story? ‘I went through the rain forest with an escaped prisoner.’ Something to that effect?”

  “Did you escape? Somehow, I thought my father had you released.”

  When he didn’t reply, she knew she’d hit close to home. “You see, Mr. Tynan, I know my father quite well. If he wanted someone to take me through an impenetrable forest, he wouldn’t hesitate when people said it couldn’t be done. He’d just find out how to do it. My guess is that he found that you’d been through the forest and it wouldn’t matter to him if you were on your way to the gallows. He has enough money and power to cut any ropes, even if they’re hanging around someone’s neck.”

  “He’d trust his daughter to a murderer?” Tynan asked, turning his head to look at her.

  She was thoughtful for a moment. “No, I don’t think he would. I believe that my mother and I are the only people he’s ever really loved. I wasn’t sure he was going to recover after my mother died, but I think he decided he still had me.”

  “But you’re saying that he put you under the care of a criminal, someone rescued from the hangman’s noose.”

  She paused in rubbing the cream into his wounds. “Mr. Tynan, you must be an innocent man. You’re perfectly right that my father would never entrust my care to a villain. Yes, of course, that’s it. You’re either innocent or you did something that wasn’t violent. Breach of promise perhaps.” Smiling, she resumed smoothing the cream on his back. By now, she was as much massaging his muscles as doctoring him.

  “How close am I to the truth?” she asked and when he didn’t answer, she laughed. “You see, Mr. Tynan, we all give clues to ourselves, no matter how hard we try to conceal them. I’m sure Mr. Prescott has no idea that you are in pain every time you move, but if you watch, you begin to see things about people.”

  She kept rubbing his back, greasing her hands and running them over the curves of muscle in his arms, massaging until she felt him relaxing completely. His breathing was soft and deep, as if he were asleep. All Chris’s motherly instincts rose within her. How she’d like to take this man home and feed him and see that he rested. She wondered if her father’s housekeeper, Mrs. Sunberry, had met him. If she had
, Chris was willing to bet she liked Tynan.

  Smiling, Chris lifted one of Ty’s hands and began to massage it, being careful of his scarred, raw wrist.

  “I’m not hurt there,” he murmured sleepily but made no attempt to move.

  “I was thinking about Mrs. Sunberry.”

  “Blackberry cobbler,” Ty said. “With cinnamon in the crust.”

  Chris laughed. “So you did meet her. I thought she’d like you.”

  “Like adopting a stray dog?”

  “You’re a stray perhaps, but certainly not a dog. Ty, where were you born?”

  He moved as if he meant to get up but she pushed him back down.

  “All right, no more questions, but please don’t get angry again. It’s too nice a day to ruin with anger.” She ran her hands in his hair and began to massage his scalp.

  “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.

  Chapter Five

  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 rai
sed 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.”