A Taste of Heaven

by Alexis Harrington

  Tyler sat down hard on a hay bale with a rag, a cleaning rod, and a tube of Winchester gun grease. When he'd assumed she'd be trouble for the Lodestar, this wasn't the kind of trouble he anticipated.

  “So you decided to let her come with us.”

  Tyler looked up from his task of cleaning the shotgun, and saw Joe's silhouette in the barn doorway.

  Tyler shrugged, a bit uncomfortable. “Yeah, well . . .”

  “I guess hell is gonna have to wait a while longer for you, then.”

  He returned his attention to the twelve-gauge. Jesus, was everyone going to remind him of that vow he'd made?

  The foreman ambled in. “She ain't much of a shot though, is she?” He sat down on the hay bale next to Tyler and crossed his ankle over his knee. Leaning against the wall behind him, he groped around in his shirt pockets for his makin's and began rolling a cigarette.

  “She'll improve.” Tyler reached for the rag.

  “I guess she don't have to be another Annie Oakley,” Joe allowed. “At least she finally hit that can. 'Course, she had a little . . . help.” He closed his tobacco pouch, pulling the drawstring with his teeth.

  Tyler could hear the smile in Joe's voice. He didn't want to discuss Libby Ross, but he knew Joe. If Tyler flat out refused to talk about the woman now, or even tried to sidetrack him, he'd have to put up with joshing that would never end. For a man who'd spent most of his life out on the open plains studying horses, cattle, and weather, Joe could often nail a man's thoughts with surprising skill. He'd had that knack as long as Tyler had known him, since they were just boys, no older than Rory. Maybe that was why Tyler let him get away with it.

  “Yeah, I guess she could improve her aim if you work with her every day.” Joe struck a match on the sole of his boot, and the dim corner where they sat glowed briefly with its flame.

  “It doesn't have to be me working with her,” he said. He pointed the long barrels toward the light from the doorway and peered down them. “Rory can teach her. He's as good with firearms as anyone else on this place.” God, he didn't want to get into a cozy arrangement with her every damned day.

  Joe exhaled a cloud of smoke. “Nope, not Rory. I need him out on the range. In fact, I can't think of anyone I can spare right now.”

  Tyler looked up and lifted a skeptical brow. “No one? What about Darby, or one of the Cooper boys?”

  “Nope. Looks like it'll have to be you, Ty.”

  Suspicious that he'd been maneuvered into this position, Tyler frowned but maintained his silence.

  “I don't suppose she'll stay long after we get back,” Joe continued with a low rumble that passed for a chuckle. He took off his hat and slouched down on the hay bale to get comfortable. “That is unless Charlie asks her to marry him, and she'll have him. And I wouldn't be surprised if he does ask.”

  Tyler frowned at him, and pushed the rod down the shotgun's barrel. “What's Charlie got to do with this? I thought he was used to having women chase him.”

  Joe shook his head as if they were talking about a man with a terminal illness. “Worst case of Cupid's cramp I ever saw. A couple boys are a little calf-eyed over her. But Charlie's got it bad. He's real sweet on old Ben's widow. Says it's a damned shame and disgrace that such a fine young woman should be left on her own in the world with no man to look after her.”

  Tyler had already overheard some of the men talking about Charlie and his infatuation for the cook. Resentment had surged through him, although he couldn't say why, exactly. A cowboy with a crush was nothing unusual, especially out here where women were scarce. With a female as close as the kitchen, he knew something like this would happen.

  “He does, huh? Well, he'd better not start pestering her. Charlie might be our top hand, but he's tried my patience more than once over the years.”

  Joe studied the rowel on his spur where it hung near his knee, and gave it a spin. “I don't know, Ty. A woman could do worse than Charlie, and he sounds likes he's ready to settle down. He don't have much but he's loyal, and he'd be good to a wife.” He cast a sidelong glance at Tyler.

  Tyler stood and leaned the shotgun against his shoulder, his patience with the entire subject at an end. “Well, you'd better tell him to look for one somewhere else. Libby Ross is leaving the drive when we get to Miles City. She wants to go back to Chicago, and I'm going to give her the money to do it.”

  As he walked away, he heard Joe mutter, “Charlie ain't the only one who'll come to be sorry about that.”

  Chapter Seven

  Under a slate-gray sky, Libby gripped the lines to her mule team, and huddled deeper into the boy's saddle coat that Tyler had bought for her. Actually, she'd insisted that he only advance her the cost of the coat and a new pair of gloves. She fully intended that he take it out of her pay when they reached Miles City.

  At the other end of the reins, her four mules shifted and stamped in the cold dawn. Behind her were amassed almost a thousand head of cattle—so Noah had told her. She could hear them bawling, and the clicking of their horns as they bumped into one another sounded like arrhythmic castanets. Above that rose the sound of the cowboys yelling to the stock and to one another, and the nervous whinnying of the horses in the cavvy off to her left. Late yesterday, Joe had switched Rory from the job of riding drag to handling the horses. Even though the position of wrangler wasn't a promotion, Rory was as gravely proud as if he'd been given the job of trail boss. Joe told her that as wrangler, Rory would also be responsible for digging the fire pits, gathering firewood, and hitching her mule team, so at least she'd have some help.

  Tyler had ridden by several times, apparently seeing to last-minute details. All the men were wonderful riders, but he looked especially good on horseback, and she drew a deep breath at the sight of him. Slim-hipped and wide-shouldered, he was tall and moved with an easy grace. The low-hanging mist muted and blended the scene around her, making it hard to tell one distant cowboy from another. But she could pick Tyler out of the group with no difficulty at all. She let her gaze wander over him again, taking in all the details of his face and form, his strong hands encased in gloves, his clean profile, his quick, appealing smile. And he was smiling a lot this morning, as if the prospect of a cattle drive agreed with him. For at least the hundredth time, she wondered if she'd made the right decision in agreeing to come on this trip. It was a means to achieve her goal, but that apprehension she'd felt during her first shooting lesson was strong upon her.

  Over the last three days, her education in frontier survival had been stepped up and she fell into bed at night, too exhausted to dream.

  Joe had given her a condensed lesson in driving the chuck wagon and in building a campfire. Tyler produced another list that told her what provisions to double-sack and load into the chuck box. And she'd endured several hours of shooting practice with Tyler standing next to her, issuing instructions. She'd gained not one shred of confidence that she'd be able to fire the shotgun, much less hit a target, in an emergency. But at least he'd treated her with more courtesy and respect.

  After that first lesson, he'd maintained a careful distance between them most of the time, but once or twice he put a hand to her elbow or her shoulder.

  She was so undone by the feel of him, it was odd to her that those were the only times she hit her targets. And though she knew she shouldn't, she craved the comfort of his light touch, and found herself wishing for it again.

  Then she'd remember the telltale scent of gardenias on his clothes the afternoon she'd first fired the shotgun, and the fear would return, stronger than ever.

  Tyler Hollins was her employer. Had she forgotten the peril of letting herself become attracted to the master of the house? On top of that he was engaged in some kind of carnal association with Heavenly's prosperous madam.

  No, Libby thought, resettling herself on the wagon seat. This was for the best. The sooner she left Montana, the sooner she could begin her life again. Her lonely, misadventurous trip out here to marry Ben had been a fal
se start. She hadn't really run away from her problems, she'd only brought them with her to a new place. But the same hope and determination that had carried her out here would carry her back. Now her trunk was packed and tucked beneath the seat under her. Within the month, she'd be in Chicago where she belonged.

  Libby glanced at the ranch house where it waited in the misty green valley for the day when these men would return to it. The low angle of the dawning sun gave the log building a tranquil hominess that she'd not noticed until now. She felt no particular regret that she wouldn't be coming back after the cattle drive. For all its rugged beauty, Montana could never have been her home. She was nearly certain of that.

  “All right, Miss Libby,” Joe called as he rode by at a trot. “Give those mules a slap and let's get going.” He took a lead position next to Tyler at the head of the procession, then stood in his stirrups and whistled back at the men behind him. Waving his hat in a wide are over his head, he lifted his deep voice. “When we get to Miles City, the first round of beers is on me.”

  Libby took a long, final look at the ranch house. Then she slapped the reins on the mules' backs and the chuck wagon rolled forward toward the sunrise.

  *~*~*

  “Got any hot water going?”

  Libby recognized the voice, but didn't bother to look up. The fog had burned off and the sun was bright in the spring sky, but the firewood Rory had gathered for her was damp. She poked at her sputtering, smoky fire, already feeling beleaguered and drained, and it was only noon.

  With a bit of effort she hoisted a Dutch oven, heavy with water and beans, onto the rack suspended over the fire. The beans probably wouldn't be ready to eat until tomorrow morning. She realized she'd be able to cook them only during the short time they stopped for the lunch. Then she'd have to pack up the iron kettle, and put it on the fire to simmer again at their next stop. If she'd thought the Lodestar was primitive, cooking out of the back of a wagon beat all.

  “Hot water for what?” she muttered. “Afternoon tea and scones?”

  She didn't mean to be abrupt, but Tyler sounded altogether too peppy to suit her. And why shouldn't he? What had he done besides ride ahead of her to scout out this stopping place, and lope alongside the cattle making mooing noises while he waved a coil of rope to urge them along?

  On the other hand, she had struggled with these balky mules. With a seemingly perverse sense of direction, the animals had led the rough chuck wagon over every bone-jarring rut and hole on the prairie. Inside, everything that could make noise clattered—the cast-iron cooking utensils, the tin plates and cups, the shovel, the shotgun, her teeth. And they'd come only six miles. She realized that this job would be much harder than she'd anticipated. But she wasn't about to let Tyler know that. He already thought she was a puny, helpless Easterner.

  And now he wanted hot water.

  “Not for tea, Libby. I want to shave.”

  She lifted her eyes then, and saw him standing there, holding his razor, a mug, and a shaving mirror. He'd slung a towel over one shoulder.

  “Oh,” was the only reply she could make. He'd unbuttoned his blue-striped band-collar shirt, pulled out the tails, and rolled up his sleeves. The sun fell across his lean face and the shadow of his one-day beard that sparkled with blond, red, and dark brown bristles. She let her eyes follow the line of his throat down to his uncovered chest. Something about that display of skin and muscle between the edges of his gaping shirtfront was more intimate than outright nakedness. Her gaze dropped past the waist of his pale buckskin chaps until the glint of his silver belt buckle made her realize what she was looking at.

  Libby felt her cheeks grow hot and she looked away, but not before she saw his expression. It was the same one she'd seen the day she shot the coffee can off the fence—controlled, powerful, territorial. “Th-there is no warm water. I'll put some on to heat.” She turned to get a kettle from the wagon, but she was stopped when his hand closed on her arm.

  “No, that's all right, I'll use water from the barrel. I just thought I'd ask. Um, do you have a basin?”

  “Well, yes . . . ” Basin, Libby thought blankly, basin. Where had she— Suddenly she couldn't think of anything except the way his hand felt on her arm. She glanced up at his eyes, an act that just about completed her discomposure.

  He released her forearm and lifted his brows. “Maybe there's one under the chuck box?”

  She stepped back, feeling silly and tongue-tied. “Yes, of course, yes.” She rummaged around in the compartment beneath the wagon bed, and withdrew a white enamel basin. Taking it, he nodded his thanks, and walked around to the other side of the wagon to fill it at the water barrel. Now that she was so acutely conscious of him, his spurs told her every step he took, reminding her of a cat with a bell on its collar. Libby released a deep, quiet breath, and bent over the beans to give them a stir.

  She pushed a long lock of hair back over her shoulder. Why the devil should he have that effect on her? she wondered impatiently. Just because he was attractive? That wasn't a good enough reason, In fact, it might be the worst reason. Wesley had been handsome. Actually, not as. Tyler was rugged, harder hewn. But the true measure of a man was in his deeds, not his looks. Libby straightened and looked back at the boots on the other side of the wagon box.

  Maybe that was where the biggest difference lay. Wesley Brandauer had felt no sense of responsibility at all.

  Tyler seemed to have taken the whole world onto his shoulders.

  *~*~*

  Tyler turned the spigot on the barrel, and called himself an idiot. He never used anything but cold water to shave, not even at home. He'd only dreamed up that excuse to talk to Libby, to see how she was doing, to see her . . .

  He propped up the mirror on the lid of the barrel and raked his hair back from his forehead. While he lathered his face, he continued to silently berate his reflection. He'd meant to stay away from her on this trip, hadn't he? He lifted the razor and began its downward stroke just below his left sideburn. Sure, circumstances had forced him to bring her along, but Joe, Noah, Charlie—all of them were looking out for her, he argued with himself. Maybe, but ultimately he was responsible for her; she was just a helpless greenhorn. Well, not so helpless, he was beginning to realize. For someone who'd never set foot in the country—and Rory said she'd told him that—she was managing surprisingly well without anyone's help. Just the fact that she'd traveled all the way out here from Chicago, and come through the winter, said a lot about her. She'd make a good wife for some man.

  Then there was the way she lit up when the men complimented her cooking. It was as though no one had ever shown her respect or appreciation before now. And it made him want to protect her. It didn't take much effort on his part to imagine her lying safe in his arms in his big four-poster back at the Lodestar, her soft, full curves limned in a wedge of moonlight while she granted him the pleasure of slow, moist kisses and the solace of her body . . .

  Tyler realized that his shaving had come to a complete stop. Impatiently, he scraped at the rest of his beard, and in his haste, nicked his chin.

  “Damn it all,” he mumbled, and pressed a corner of the towel to the cut. The woman stirred emotions in him that he'd buried long ago with a mahogany coffin on the green bluffs above the ranch house. And he aimed to keep things that way. He wasn't about to get all moony over Libby like some line shack cowboy who hadn't seen a female in four or five months. Not that it could happen, he reassured himself. He had his arrangement with Callie, and it suited him just fine.

  He took a final look at his reflection, then he glanced up at Libby's very feminine shape as she crossed the camp with a coffeepot.

  At least it had suited him until now.

  *~*~*

  No sooner had Libby fed the crew and washed the dishes than she was back on the wagon seat again, driving the mules to the night campsite. The herd was far behind and wouldn't catch up until late afternoon. That would give her time to make enough sourdough biscuits to go around at to
night's supper and tomorrow's noon meal.

  All the men, including Joe and Tyler, were back with the herd. After Tyler selected this spot, only Rory had come along with her to put the cavvy in the rope corral and dig her fire pit. He rode in dragging a dead branch he'd lassoed for fuel.

  Libby was glad for his help. It didn't matter how determined she was to prove her ability and avoid Tyler's displeasure—she couldn't pretend that she wasn’t tired. Her skirt was damp to the knees from dragging it through the wet grass. She wasn't accustomed to hauling water to wash dishes, or cooking food in progressive shifts. By the time they finally got to Miles City, she hoped she'd have enough energy left to step up to the railroad platform.

  Now she stood at the dropleg worktable in back of the wagon. She had to admit that this was a pretty clever arrangement. Tyler had told her that cattle baron Charles Goodnight invented the chuck wagon twenty years earlier, and that its best feature was the chuck box itself. Its hinged door served double duty as a work space. She sprinkled the surface with flour and began rolling out the sourdough. The sound of Rory's shovel digging into the earth gave her a chill, reminding her of the day she'd dug Ben's grave.

  She glanced up from the dough and watched the youngster for a moment. He looked strong and healthy. Working at the Lodestar was obviously good for him, but he seemed so young to be away from his home and family.

  “Rory, have you been at the Lodestar very long?” She dipped her biscuit cutter in the flour.

  He straightened and dragged his arm across his sweating forehead. “'Bout five years, I guess,” he said.

  “Five years! Goodness, you were really young when you came to the ranch.”

  He shrugged and sank the shovel blade into the dirt again. “Joe was fifteen when he went to work for Tyler's pa. Kansas Bob came to the Lodestar when he was fourteen.”