“But you were ten! Did you run away? Lose your family?”
“Naw, my old man knows where I am.” It wasn't longing or regret she heard in his answer, but rather a weary bitterness that momentarily aged the very timbre of his young voice. “Anyway, Tyler says there ain't no such thing as an old cowboy. He says this is a young man's job.”
Libby smiled. She could understand that—ranching was hard work. “No old cowboys? What happens to them?”
“No one's sure, Miss Libby.” He looked at her from under the brim of his hat and gave her a big grin. “Sometimes they become cranky old cooks.”
She laughed and put her biscuits into the bottom of a Dutch oven. “Maybe because they have cranky bosses.”
*~*~*
By the time the crew arrived at the night camp, the sun was low in the sky, and the coffeepot was on the fire. Given her rough working conditions, Libby thought she had put together a reasonable meal.
The men ate in two shifts, and between serving big portions of beans, pork, and biscuits, she watched for Tyler to come in. But he didn't. She spotted him on the western range, just beyond the perimeter of camp, riding against the yellow-orange sunset like a sentinel. What drove Tyler Hollins? she wondered as she slapped a scoop of beans onto a plate. What substitute had he found for friendship that made him such a remote, solitary man?
She was still watching the chestnut-haired rider—and she could well imagine his hair though it was hidden by his hat—when Charlie Ryerson came to her for his supper. He'd lagged behind, waiting until the rest were busy with their own meals to get his plate.
He glanced at the group gathered around the campfire, obviously hoping for a measure of privacy. “Evenin', Miss Libby. Did you fare all right today?” It sounded like polite conversation but he spoke gravely, as if the words hid a greater meaning.
Libby tightened her plaid shawl against the late afternoon coolness. “It's a little harder than I thought it would be,” she admitted, pulling out a dish and coffee mug. Soreness was beginning to settle into her arms and shoulders from her daylong struggle with the reins. “I'd always thought that ‘stubborn as a mule’ was just a saying. But they really are stubborn.”
He laughed, and his big mustache stretched across his face. “Yes, ma'am, they can be. I reckon that's why mule skinners learn to cuss so good.”
Libby laughed, too.
His expression grew serious then. “But drivin' a chuck wagon ain't a job for a lady. It ain't right that you should have to be out here trailin' cattle. I-I s'pose I got no right to say so, but you ought to be livin' on a nice little spread with some young'uns to look after and a man to come home to you at night.”
Libby felt a twinge in her heart. That was what she'd believed waited in Montana when Ben had sent for her. She curbed a sigh, then smiled into Charlie's sincere face. “Things don't always work out the way we hope, I guess. But I'm only driving this wagon to Miles City. Then I'm catching the train for Chicago.”
“I know, Joe told me.” He glanced around again, then leaned forward, suddenly earnest. “Miss Libby—” He swallowed. “Miss Libby . . . I-I've got a little money put by. It ain't much, but it would give us a start. That is, if you—” He left the sentence unfinished and turned a vivid shade of red.
Libby gaped at him. “A start?”
He pulled in a deep breath and went on, his words urgent. “I've got my eye on a piece of land up by Mosby. It's in a real pretty little spot, with a creek and lots of pines. It would be a good place to grow cattle and kids—y'know, make a life.” He shifted and looked down at his boots, then up at her again. “I've had some wild ways in my past . . . uh, I s'pose you probably figured that out. And I know this ain't the courtship you deserve, but our time is short. I want to give you a few days to think about—well, bein' my wife.” He reached out as if to touch her arm, then let his hand fall. Instead, he whipped off his hat and withdrew a blush pink flower. He laid it gently on the worktable. “Miss Libby, ma'am, I'd be honored if you'd think it over.”
“But we don't know each—Montana isn't—I—”
“Hush, now.” He spoke to her in the same soothing tone she'd heard him use on skittish horses. “Just ponder it a spell.” He turned and hurried away with his plate and cup before she could find her voice to say anything.
Her hand at her throat, Libby stood in the gathering dusk and stared at his retreating back, then at the bloom in front of her. Had Charlie Ryerson just asked to marry her? That was what it had sounded like, but she could hardly believe it. After he'd brought her wildflowers that afternoon in the kitchen, she suspected he might be smitten with her. But she'd had no idea that he was truly serious. She picked up the blossom by its slender stem and held it to her nose, then flexed her aching shoulders.
Maybe she shouldn't find it so strange. After all, she was in Montana because she had answered a newspaper advertisement for a wife. Maybe out here a proposal, coming from a man she'd met barely a month earlier, and hardly knew, wasn't unusual at all. The difference was that being a mail-order bride—marrying a total stranger as soon as she'd stepped off the stage—had been mainly a business arrangement.
In Charlie's honest offer, she sensed something much more substantial. Yet only a little more appealing.
“How was your first day?”
Startled out of her thoughts, Libby turned and saw Tyler walking toward her. An electric jolt shot through her, and to her utter dismay, she realized that surprise had very little to do with her reaction.
His height gave him long strides and her eyes were drawn to the chaps covering his jeans. His shirtsleeves were rolled up to his elbows, and his gloves were cuffed at his wrists. The lantern hanging from the side of the wagon picked up blue-green glints in his eyes, and he wore the faint, troubled frown that she'd grown accustomed to seeing at the Lodestar. He smelled of horses and the coming night air, and he brought with hint the same palpable physical intensity that she always felt in his presence.
“Fine! Uh, just fine. I didn't have a bit of trouble,” she lied, and put down the flower. “I've never done this before, but I've always worked. I'm used to it. Where I grew up, if we didn't work, we didn't eat.”
Picking up a tin plate, she put two big spoonfuls of beans on it, but when she stretched for a biscuit she pulled up short with a wince. The muscles in her arms and shoulders were stiffening like leather left in the rain.
Tyler looked at her and lifted one brow knowingly. He took off his gloves and tucked them into the waist of his chaps, then reached for the biscuit himself. He knew she was lying about the way she felt. He could see fatigue in her face, and her hobbled movements weren't lost on him.
Neither had been Charlie's proposal. God, Joe had been right—Charlie was serious. Tyler hadn't meant to eavesdrop. But he'd reached the front end of the wagon in time to hear the last words of the cowboy's plainspoken request for Libby's hand. And he'd lurked there like a thief, waiting for her reply, wondering why his stomach was in knots.
“Where did you grow up that you had to work so hard?” Tyler took a bite of the tender biscuit. The evening breeze carried Libby's faint scent of flowers and vanilla.
A scent that now sometimes made him think of warmth and home.
No matter that he impatiently rejected the idea as soon as it would occur, it kept returning. Wispy tendrils of hair blew across her eyes and she brushed them back, then turned away and busied herself with searching for a fork. She was slow to reply, and then her words were barely audible.
“Erie Foundling Home.”
A foundling home. Tyler clenched his jaw. No, no, damn it, no. He wouldn't ask anything else. Her response created more questions than he wanted answers to. She'd be on her way back to Chicago in a few more days. Then the Lodestar would return to normal, he could go back to his Saturday nights at the Big Dipper, and everyone's thoughts—including his own—would return to the business of work and responsibility.
Libby tensed, wishing she'd kept her mouth shut abo
ut the orphanage. Talking about it brought back painful memories. Of a young, dying mother who, she now realized, had been little more than a child herself when she'd left behind four-year-old Liberty. Of the years of aching loneliness that had followed. Tyler gave her a long, searching look, and she braced herself for the inevitable questions that surely hovered in his mind.
Instead, he took his plate from her outstretched hand and turned to go. But then he stopped and reached for the flower on the worktable. “I've never known these to bloom this early in the year.” His voice had a pensive edge, as though he were remembering another time and place himself.
“Do you know what kind of flower it is?” she asked, grateful for the change of subject.
He looked up at her and a smile pulled at the corners of his mouth. "Yeah. They grow along the porch back at the ranch house." He pressed the bloom back into her hand. His touch was warm, vital. “It's a wild prairie rose.”
Libby watched him upend a keg, away from the rest of the men, to sit and eat his supper. Seeing him like that, with the last of the day's sun streaking his hair with auburn and copper threads, more than anything she wanted to go sit by him. But that was ridiculous, it was out of the question.
As soon as she'd eaten her own supper and washed the dishes, in exhaustion Libby struggled to climb into the wagon. But over the last few hours, her cramping shoulder muscles had almost locked, and pulling herself up to the wagon bed proved to be futile. She stepped on the wheel hub and reached for the side of the wagon box, but had trouble getting any farther. After several unsuccessful attempts, frustrated and weary, she stood by the front wheel and looked up at the seat that seemed as high as a mountain. Gingerly, she moved her shoulders.
“Having a little trouble?” Tyler asked. Carrying an empty cup, he was apparently on his way to the coffeepot. Light from a nearby lantern accented the fine-boned structure of his handsome face and cast shadows on his chest where the collar of his shirt gaped open.
“Trouble? No, no. I was just going to settle in for the night.” Why did she get that funny, restless feeling inside whenever he came near her? “Did you need something?”
He considered her for a few seconds. “No, but I think you do.”
He put down his coffee cup, and with an effortless agility that she admired, he sprang up to the wagon box. “All right, step on the wheel hub.”
With dubious hope for success, she scrabbled for a grip on the side and stepped up. Just as she felt her strength slipping, Tyler reached out and grabbed her by the waist. He lifted her up to the seat as though she weighed no more than a child.
He pushed back his hat. “You're as stiff as an old rawhide rope, aren't you?” he said.
It was hard to deny. “A little, maybe,” she admitted, flexing her shoulders again.
He pointed over his shoulder. “I have something for that. I'll be right back.”
With the same nimble grace, he jumped down and disappeared around the corner of the wagon. She couldn't imagine what he had that would fix her twitching, throbbing muscles, but she was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. Tired though she was, she knew she'd have trouble sleeping with this discomfort, and she had to get some rest. Out here their days would begin even earlier than at the ranch.
Tyler reemerged from the darkness carrying a bottle. He handed it to her and climbed back up and sat down next to her. “Okay, in you go,” he said, indicating the interior of the wagon.
She looked at the bottle label. “Four-H Horse Liniment? You're giving me horse liniment?”
“Sure, why not? Aches are aches. Hell, I knew one old-timer who used it to stretch his whiskey.”
“You mean he drank it?”
A chuckle got away from him. “Yeah, but I wouldn't recommend that. It's mostly for external use, and anyway, I thinned it down a little.”
She looked at the label again. “But don't you have anything for people that I can use?”
“It doesn't matter if it's for a horse or a human. Besides, you're not going to put it on. I am.”
She gaped at him. Either she'd misunderstood him, or he'd lost his mind. She wasn't about to allow him that kind of intimate access. “You certainly will not! I can manage very well, thank you.”
“Liniment only works if it's rubbed in. You can't reach your own shoulders to do that.”
“I can reach them well enough,” she reiterated, her face so hot—and probably so red—she was grateful that the lantern was behind her. She tried to scoot away from him on the seat, but there was no place to go.
Tyler frowned at her. “If you don't let me do something about it now, by morning you won't be able to move at all.”
“I simply don't think this is proper—”
“You're arguing again, Libby,” he said in a louder voice.
She lapsed into indignant silence, gripping the bottle in tight hands.
He continued more quietly. “When problems come up, it's my job either to see that they get fixed, or to fix them myself. That's what I'm doing.” He stared at her. “And that's all I'm doing. Now, please—get into the wagon. Unless you don't care about privacy.”
She stared up into his face, and pressed her mouth into a tight line. She could refuse, but Tyler Hollins wasn't a man who accepted being told no. And worse, she knew he was right. She wouldn't have much luck reaching around to her shoulders. Damn it, she thought, borrowing one of his turns of phrase, he was always right. Furious with both him and his arrogance, she climbed over the seat. He ducked his head and followed, bringing the lantern with him. He set it down and threw his hat onto a flour sack
Looking around, he found two sturdy crates and put one in front of the other, then took the liniment from her. “All right, sit down here, and”—he waved a hand at her—“you know—uncover your shoulders.” He plowed a hand through his hair. For an instant, he looked not quite as autocratic and sure of himself.
She felt her eyes grow as wide as saucers, and she whirled around to face the back of the wagon. With shaking hands she unbuttoned her blouse to her waist and untied the ribbons on her camisole. Then she shrugged them back, gripping the edges together, and pulled her hair around to the front to move it out of the way.
“Come on, Libby. Sit down.”
Keeping her back to him, she reached out a hand and felt behind her for the crate, her face burning with embarrassment. She lowered herself to sit, cursing fate for letting him see her hindered movements in the first place. It made her feel very vulnerable that he was behind her, and that she was blind to whatever he was doing.
Tyler swallowed hard at the picture presented to him. In the lantern light, Libby's hair gleamed where it swept over her right shoulder. The exposed nape of her neck, and the four inches of her back revealed below it, were smooth and pale. She looked beautiful, like an artist's model posing for a painting. He could see the back edge of her plain camisole and was amazed at how arousing he found it to be. Callie's outright nudity didn't kindle that kind of fire in him.
He sat down right behind her, so close that his knees bracketed her hips. The warm scent of her hair and skin reached him, and he felt a sudden, intense urge to wrap an arm around her waist and bury his mouth against her neck. He could imagine her pressed to the length of his torso, with her bottom between his legs, nestled against his crotch. God, maybe this wasn't such a good idea after all. But he'd insisted upon it, in fact, he'd practically bullied her into it, and he had to see it through.
Uncorking the liniment bottle, he set it on the floor. Then he pushed her sleeves a bit farther down her arms. The instant his fingertips touched her soft, bare skin, she gasped and jumped, and he did, too.
“It's all right, Libby, I'm just getting your sleeves out of the way.”
“Sorry,” she said.
She was as skittish as a wild mare, and if she'd been able to see the images in his mind, he supposed she'd have good reason to be.
He probed gently along the muscles that stretched from her neck to the po
ints of her shoulders. She flinched but said nothing. “Pretty tender, huh?”
“Yes,” Libby admitted. “I didn't expect to be so sore.”
“It's okay, we'll take care of it.” He poured a little into his palm, rubbed his hands together, and began massaging her muscles. He could feel her pulling away from him. “Take a couple of deep breaths and try to relax,” he murmured. “This stuff doesn't smell too good, but it works.”
Libby exhaled a long sigh, and let her head tip forward. Tyler was right—the liniment had a strong, pungent odor, and that helped diffuse some of the tension she felt at being partially undressed in front of him. But it also generated heat beneath his deft, gentle touch that was infinitely soothing. He gripped her hips between his knees, as though anchoring her in place, and rubbed her shoulders and arms with deep strokes.
As the spasms in her muscles began to dwindle, he pressed a little harder with his thumbs, kneading and loosening the tightness, bringing back the blood.
Utter relaxation spread through her limbs and she realized dimly that she was listing backward, held upright by his knees and hands. A pleasant lethargy washed over her, crowding out her nervousness.
“Do you do this for your horses, too?” she asked drowsily. Her eyelids were growing heavy.
“Sure, sometimes.”
“Lucky horses,” she said, nearly hypnotized.
He laughed softly. “Like it?”
“Hmm.” She was content to admit that he'd been right. His ministrations were much more effective than any awkward maneuvering she could have managed on her own.
He continued the slow, firm strokes for several minutes. When he finally stopped, she felt a rush of greedy disappointment. Being touched was an uncommon experience for Libby, one that she found she liked very much. She nearly forgot that she'd been afraid to have his hands on her, afraid of the sensations that he would awaken. Now she felt as limp as a rag doll.
“That should take care of it,” Tyler said near her ear. He said it quietly, feeling his blood pounding through him, bringing heat to his groin and his heart. With the feel of her warm, smooth skin under his hands, it was very easy for him to imagine what the rest of her felt like. And if he didn't stop now, his imagination would demand satisfaction.
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