A Taste of Heaven

by Alexis Harrington

  “How's that finger?” Tyler asked, watching her. “It was getting better, but after today with the mule team . . .” She shrugged.

  “Let's see,” he said, and held out his open hand.

  She hesitated just a beat before laying her hand, palm up, in his. His touch was warm as he held it toward the lantern light. “I probably should have put a stitch in this.”

  “Oh, no,” she warned, pulling back a little. There were limits to the amateur, ranch-house medicine she'd allow him to practice on her. But the sensation of her hand in his warm grip made her think it might almost be worth the risk to let him try.

  “Can't now, anyway. It's too late for it to help.” He released her hand. She tucked it into the folds of the blanket, telling herself that it hadn't really been as comforting as she’d imagined. She was just tired and being foolish.

  He gave her an even look. “I know you came out here to marry Ben,” he said, taking a bite of sourdough, “but I've wondered what it was that made you want to leave Chicago to begin with. I don't get the feeling it was a pioneering spirit.”

  Libby heard the same polite, caring interest she'd heard that night in his office. Underlying that was encouragement to talk, and a lulling, assurance that he would listen. She supposed it was only fair—he'd revealed more about himself than she'd expected.

  She pulled the edges of the blanket more tightly around her shoulders and leaned back against a sack of flour. With a little food in her stomach and his warmth next to her, she let herself relax a bit. She began by telling him the story of going to work for the Brandauers when she was fourteen.

  “They had a big, fancy house with deep carpets and a fireplace in every single room. I'd never seen anything like it. And Melvin, Birdie, and Deirdre, we were close. They became my own family.”

  Tyler kept his eyes on the blue enamel cup in his lap. “It sounds as though you were content there. Why did you leave?”

  Why. Libby's memory fell back to a warm evening the previous August, to Wesley's bedroom, and his impatient, groping hands, to the sensation of utter horror when Eliza Brandauer, presumably visiting friends out of town, had flung open her son's door with only a cursory knock, before he took the cook's virginity—

  Absently, she pleated a fold of the blanket. “My life there became . . . impossible,” she replied, and by her tone, asked him to press no further. Wesley Brandauer was her private hurt. “I couldn't stay any longer.”

  Tyler nodded, turning the cup in his hand. “You're not the first person to come west for a new start.”

  Overhead the rain slowed to a steady tapping, now only occasionally driven by buffeting winds.

  She resumed her story. “I saw Ben's advertisement for a wife in a newspaper in Chicago. He said he was looking for a woman to come to Montana and live on his ranch with him. I needed to, well, put some distance between me and what was going on in my life. Do you know what I mean?”

  “Yeah. I know.” A tinge of bitterness colored his answer.

  “So I answered his advertisement. He wrote back and told me he had a successful ranching operation, and that he'd advertised for a wife because there are so few women in this area.” She gave him a little smile, then she looked at her lap. “He also said that he was thirty years old. I told him to send the train ticket. It seemed like a good choice at the time.”

  Tyler stared at her. “Thirty years old! Jesus Christ, Ben Ross was over seventy. Both his health and his ranch were long past their prime. Did he think you wouldn't notice?”

  Libby shrugged. “I can't begin to guess. When I got to Heavenly and learned the truth, I wanted a ticket to get right back on the stage and leave. I'd have gone anywhere. Anywhere. But I didn't have any money and neither did he. I didn't have a choice, either. I was alone and scared. I realized I'd have to make the best of things. So we were married in the sheriff's office, and then we made the trip to his place. It was strange to be in such a vast, open country, and yet have to live in a one-room cabin so cramped I had to turn sideways to squeeze around my cot.” She took a drink of water.

  “Then winter set in. He took sick the first night it snowed, and pretty soon he had pneumonia. The cabin seemed even smaller after that.” She shifted on the hard wagon bed, and tucked her feet inside the blanket. “I think Ben Ross knew he wouldn't live out the winter, and he didn't want to die alone. He wanted someone to keep him company. I can't blame him, I suppose, but I wish he'd chosen a different way to get it.”

  She fell silent, lost in the memory of the night Ben took his last breath.

  Tyler prompted quietly, “So as soon as he was gone, you went to Heavenly?”

  She shook her head. “No, not right away. When he died, there was still a lot of snow on the ground and it was frozen solid underneath. I found that out when I tried to bury him.” Her voice faltered, and she took a breath, waiting to regain control. She felt Tyler's hand on her blanket-covered forearm. “So I sewed him into an old quilt and dragged him to the porch. H-he didn't weigh much by the time he died. Some—sometimes at night, I'd wake up because I thought I heard him wheezing. But it was only the wind . . . God, that wind. He was out there for a month before it warmed up enough for me to dig his grave. I was never really his wife—” She faltered for a moment. “Not in any way that a woman can be a wife, but I guess I owed him that much.”

  His hand on her arm tightened and he sighed, but she was afraid to look at him. Afraid that whatever she saw in his eyes—and she wasn't sure what that might be—would crumble her remaining strength and make her start blubbering again like the day she'd shot the rattlesnake.

  But she felt a sense of relief, too. She hadn't told anyone about Ben. She'd carried the ordeal, locked in her heart and head, while she relived it at night in her dreams. Maybe now it would give her peace.

  She felt his gaze on her while he considered her. She had the odd sensation that he was seeing her for the first time. “You've had a hell of a time, haven't you?” he murmured.

  Finally she gathered enough courage to glance up at him. She saw something very like tenderness written in the lean planes of his face, and in the way his eyes smiled, even though it didn't reach his mouth.

  “Well, it wasn't a picnic in the park, but I have to keep hoping everything will work out. How can any of us survive in this world without hope?”

  Tyler switched his gaze to the opposite canvas wall as if there were something of great fascination to be found there. “Does that mean you're going to marry Charlie?” he mumbled.

  “Charlie! How did you know about that?” She stared at his cleanly defined profile—the slim nose, wide brow, full lips, and sharp jaw.

  “There isn't much that goes on with my ranch or my crew that I don't know about So—are you?”

  She thought about the expression she'd seen on the cowboy's face earlier, when the storm hit. She wished she could care about him. She suspected that he was a good, decent man. “No, I'm not. If I ever marry again, it will be for love. I like Charlie, but that isn't a good enough reason to get married. I'll make it on my own in Chicago, even if the only work I can find is scrubbing floors.”

  Tyler felt two feet tall. He'd thought she was a helpless, city-born woman. He'd thought she'd be a timid burden on this trip, someone who'd have to be watched over and hand-fed every mile of the way. That she wanted to go back to Chicago because it wasn't soft enough here for her, or refined enough. And every mile of the way, she'd proved him wrong.

  What he couldn't understand was why he felt even more protective toward her now that he knew how capable she really was.

  The night he'd bandaged her hand, she'd said with some bitterness that Ben Ross had exaggerated a lot of the things he'd told her. She'd been kind in her understatement. He hadn't realized just how flagrant the old man's lies were.

  “You're a pretty amazing woman, Libby Ross. You're braver than a lot of people I know.”

  She tried to give him a wobbly smile in return, but she couldn't completely suppress
the tears that threatened. Turning away from him, she dashed a hand across her cheeks. It was her brave front more than anything that went straight to Tyler's heart.

  He took the cup out of her hand and put his own down with it, then pulled her into his embrace. Bundled up in his blanket like that, she reminded him of a child. With her forehead resting against his jaw, he couldn't see her face. But her hair, drying on the ends, fell in soft unruly waves over her shoulders, highlighted here and there with lambent light. It smelled like rain and vanilla. He could feel her tension, though, as she leaned against him. She sniffled a couple of times.

  In the last few years, he'd had more practice soothing upset horses than upset women, but in his experience, what worked for one worked for the other.

  “Come on, darlin', hush now. It's all right,” he intoned as he rocked her little and rubbed her back. “You're safe. You're not alone.”

  Libby couldn't ignore the solace in Tyler's embrace. He was warm and strong, a reassuring presence in the cold darkness of the night. She knew she should resist the comfort, but dear God, it was so difficult.

  That was how Wesley had gained her trust—by appearing to care. By making her feel like a duchess instead of a domestic. Until that nightmarish August night when, on top of the raging humiliation of being discovered in his bedroom, she'd learned that “Mr. Wesley” was to be married in a month's time to the daughter of a prominent Chicago family—

  But this man holding her in his arms was not Wesley Brandauer. This was Tyler Hollins, a plainspoken man. A man she sensed might be carrying a heart full of regret, too. Under the gentle strokes of his hand on her back, she felt her tight muscles begin to loosen. His murmured words next to her ear were reassuring. She wasn't sure what to make of this new unsuspected side of him, but she liked it. Very much. So when his hand slid from her back up to her jaw, as though he'd willed her to do so, she tilted her head and received his kiss.

  Instantly a fierce heat sprang up between them. His lips were lush, warm, thrilling. The stubble from his beard rasped softly against her chin. She nestled closer to him, and immediately he deepened the kiss. He tightened his arm around her and she felt a vital, restless urgency throbbing in him and in herself. His breathing grew heavier and her own heart beat like a rabbit's. She told herself to resist, to end this now, but her body refused to obey.

  The instant their lips touched, a fiery jolt zig-zagged through Tyler’s body. His arousal was swift and sharp. Libby's mouth under his was soft, yielding. Her delicate fragrance filled his head and he heard the low, anguished groan that came from his own throat.

  Such a simple thing, a kiss. But it had been so long since he'd tasted one, to him it felt like his first—as if he were a kid again, as if this were the kiss he'd always waited for. Gently, he touched his tongue to her upper lip, then her lower. He was pleased to feel her quick inhale. Her hand emerged from the folds of the blanket to press flat against his chest, just over the place where his heart thundered. He reached up and quickly unbuttoned his shirt halfway down, then tucked her hand inside and held it against his bare skin.

  “Tyler,” she whispered, and another chink opened in his ice-bound spirit.

  He pulled back to look at her, beautiful and fragile in the lantern light, and he knew this was what he'd wanted to do since the first morning he saw her. Greedily he drew her to him and took her lips again. The inside of her mouth was hot and slick, and an intense desire burned in him to lay her down on a pile of blankets. To shelter her with his body and press kisses on her smooth, naked skin, while he pulled her hips to his to surround himself with her warmth. And afterward, to sleep with his head on her breast while the rain poured down around them—

  No. He couldn't do that. He wouldn't be able to share that with her, then put her on a train in Miles City. That one fact brought him crashing back to the present.

  Tyler swiftly kissed her forehead and cheek. “We'd better get some sleep, Libby. Morning will be here sooner than we want.” He shifted slightly, trying to ease the throbbing ache in his groin, and tucked her against his side.

  Although her head told her she shouldn't allow it, Libby's heart was content to let her lie in Tyler's arms. It was dangerous she knew she'd never see him quite the same way again. The edgy desire he'd begun to kindle in her was bound to keep her awake, at least for a while. But his embrace was also too comforting, too secure to refuse. His heart was a steady timekeeper beating under her ear.

  If anyone had told her even twenty-four hours earlier that she would find herself in this situation, she'd have called the person a liar. The distrust fostered by Wesley's betrayal had only been compounded by Ben Ross. But she was here, with her head pressed to Tyler's chest. He hadn't charmed her with pretty words or false promises. In fact, it seemed that he'd gone out of his way to keep her and everyone else away from him.

  But she'd learned tonight that Tyler Hollins was not as angry and aloof as he'd wanted her to believe.

  *~*~*

  When Libby awoke, it was to the sound of voices outside the wagon. She was lying on Tyler's bedroll on the floor of the wagon, with his blanket thrown over her instead of wrapped around her. Apparently, he'd put her down here in this makeshift bed. She glanced down at her underwear, realizing that he must have seen her in this state of undress. The sun was just coming up, and what she could see of the sky was a clear, pale blue.

  The first voice she recognized was Joe Channing's low rumble. She pulled up to her elbow. Once again, she wondered if Tyler ever slept.

  “We came upon him about an hour ago. Hell, there wasn't any way to look for him in the dark last night. And I figured he'd find his way back.”

  Tyler replied, “I know . . . I know. It didn't stop raining until way after midnight.” He breathed a heavy sigh. “I'll finish getting these mules hitched and we'll be along shortly. Tell the boys breakfast is coming.”

  Joe mumbled something, then she heard the sound of creaking leather and horse's hooves pounding across the turf and off into the distance.

  Tyler climbed up and stuck his head in. “Awake yet?” He looked tired and preoccupied, but he gave her a brief smile.

  “Yes, I didn't mean to sleep so late.” Thinking about the night before, and all that had transpired between them, Libby felt self-conscious now. Had she really lain in his arms and kissed him? Had she actually let him put her hand inside his shirt so she could caress him? It brought hot blood to her cheeks just to think about it.

  “I managed to pry this damned trunk open so you'd better get dressed while I hitch the team. Do you think you can drive the wagon back to the herd if I lead you?”

  She nodded and looked at him a bit more closely. Was it just the light that gave his face a slightly gray cast? “Of course. Are we far from them?”

  “About three miles. Are the shovels in there with you, or under the wagon bed?” He looked down for a moment and squeezed his temples.

  “They're back here. Tyler—is something wrong?”

  He ignored her question and once again became the remote, responsible leader. "All right, let’s get going then. We've got a crew to feed. And a cowboy to bury.”

  Chapter Ten

  Libby felt as though a great weight had descended upon her chest that only grew heavier as they neared cow camp. The West, in her opinion, was fraught with such cruel violence, loss, and perpetual mourning, she wasn't sure why anyone would want to come here. It was a hard place that stole men's lives and women's dreams.

  Yet as she considered the span of emerald green plains, covered with a sky so enormous, so breathtakingly beautiful, she almost understood the attraction of this cursed paradise.

  All traces of last night's storm were gone, and the sun began the job of drying out the sodden earth. She looked over the mules' backs to the horizon. Where had she seen that particular shade of blue before? It was clear and flawless, different from any spring sky she'd seen in Illinois. Then she realized it was exactly the color of Tyler's eyes.

 
He rode ahead of her, his shoulders drooping slightly, his back not quite as straight as usual. But when cow camp came into view, he sat up, as though he didn't want anyone to realize that he was susceptible to human frailties.

  Joe came forward to meet them when they arrived.

  A pall of bereavement hung over the camp, but more than ever, she felt a strong sense of family with the Lodestar crew.

  “Where is he?” Tyler asked, climbing down from his horse.

  “Over here,” Joe replied. Tyler handed his reins to Rory, and patted him on the shoulder, then he and Joe began to walk away.

  Libby scrambled down from the wagon and, lifting her skirt a few inches, ran to catch up. “Tyler, wait—please, may I come, too?”

  Joe and Tyler exchanged a look, and Joe nodded. “Yeah. It's not too bad.”

  Tyler waved her forward. “All right. Come on.”

  They crossed the wet grass, and along the way were greeted by several of the men. They saluted Libby and Tyler quietly with tips of their hats, falling back on the respectful formality that disaster sometimes brings out in people.

  Outside the campground against the shelter of a boulder, Libby saw a man's form covered by a slicker. His boots and twelve inches of chaps stuck out, and his hat had been placed over his chest. Tyler stood beside the body for a moment, then crouched to pick up the hat and slicker.

  She approached, then drew a deep breath and stared at Charlie Ryerson as he lay there. She hadn't known what to expect. Tyler told her that Charlie had been struck by a bolt of lightning. It seemed a very brutal way to die—she'd once seen a tree split into two smoldering halves—but he looked as if he were sleeping. His hair and big mustache were wet, and she remembered that he'd lain in the rain, undiscovered, until this morning. The thought of that tore at her heart.

  “Oh, Charlie,” she whispered, and blinked back hot tears that scalded her lids. She would not begin crying again. She couldn't. Weeping left her feeling drained and defenseless.