Texas Rose TH2

by Patricia Rice

  That brought her to a halt. She turned widened eyes up to his, but there were no signs of laughter there now. "You don't want a wife," she murmured, repeating his litany of vows. "You don't want a family. You don't want commitment or responsibility."

  "Nope," he answered cheerfully. "No sane man does. And I'll avoid them all to my dying day. But I want you, and if you come connected to all those things, well then, I guess I'll just have to take what comes with the package."

  Tyler caught her chin between his fingers and forced her to look at him. Her bones were so delicate, he almost felt like a brute, but there was wonder shining back at him from her face and not pain. He dared to go on.

  "I'm not Ivanhoe. I'm not even Don Quixote or whatever other mixed-up hero you have in your head. But you're my sunshine. You're the stars that twinkle in the night sky. You're the puppy under my Christmas tree when I was four years old. You're everything I've ever wanted, Evie. And I don't want to be without you ever again. I'll understand if you don't feel the same. I'm not much in the way of husband material. But I don't want you to think that you're anything less than my wife. I would never treat you that way."

  Tears trickled down Evie's cheeks. Sliding her arms around his back, she pressed fervent kisses into his bare shoulder. "I don't want to be like Bessie or Miss Priss or any of your other women. I don't want to tie you down, Tyler. I want you to be happy. I don't want to do anything that will make you leave."

  Tyler clutched her close and laughter rumbled through his chest. "We're quite a pair, aren't we? You keep sending me away to make me happy, and I keep coming back to keep you happy. Do you think we'll ever get it right?"

  "Maybe with practice?" Evie peeked inquisitively upward to be certain he was truly smiling and not despairing over her inadequacy.

  "Lots of practice," he agreed, tilting her head so he could kiss her on the lips. Then tasting the sweetness, he pressed for more, until they were both gasping for air.

  Leaning her head back against his muscled shoulder, Evie brought her hand up to her chest to control her breathing. Discovering her nakedness, she gasped and looked desperately for a sheet.

  Tyler laughed and cupped her breast in one hand. "Don't go playing modest now, Mrs. Monteigne. This is the way I intend to see you every night for the rest of our lives."

  A soft flush seeped into Evie's cheeks. She had no clothes on, and she was sitting in the lap of a man wearing only his trousers. She should be grateful he wore that much, she supposed, as her gaze daringly took in the wide expanse of Tyler's chest and her fingers played in the light mat of hair there. She knew he was looking at her, and her nipples puckered in response to his gaze. She wanted to turn and rub them against his chest, but she supposed there were other things that needed to be done before she started that again. She was very aware that Tyler was quite ready to continue their lovemaking.

  "We'll have to make certain we have a legal marriage," she warned him, hoping the depressing practicalities would return him to their plight.

  "As far as I've been able to find out, we are legally married, but with Hale being the only lawyer in town and him being the one to say we're not, I guess we can play it safe and have it done in the church. That should satisfy all concerned."

  Evie nodded. "Why do you think Mr. Hale is trying to keep us separated?"

  Tyler set Evie back on her feet and went in search of his coat. "I'm willing to wager the answer to your question is in the file I confiscated from his office."

  Reluctantly, Evie pulled on her chemise and followed him. She had wanted the answer to the mystery, but not right now. Right now she wanted to be in that bed celebrating her marriage with Tyler. But if Hale or the sheriff showed up, Tyler would likely be back in jail, and there wouldn't be any more celebrating. If the answers to some of their problems were in those papers, they needed to know.

  Tyler lit the lantern while Evie struggled with her corset. With her breasts pushed up by the corset and the chemise beneath untied and revealing the valley between, she hadn't accomplished much in the way of removing temptation. And when she sat down in a chair and began drawing on garters and stockings, Tyler nearly crumpled the table he'd grabbed for support.

  "Evie."

  She looked up expectantly.

  Tyler's gaze fixed on the curve of her calf, and his voice was slightly strangled as he spoke. "It might be best if you dressed in the other room. I haven't quite got the hang of this husband business yet, and what I'm thinking right now hasn't got anything to do with responsibility."

  Her smile was absolutely and utterly devastating. Tyler continued to clutch the massive ebony table as she stood up and eyed him through those blasted dark-lashed eyes of hers. When he thought he'd have to pick her up and carry her back to the bed again, she swished her little derriere and glided gracefully out of the room. Tyler heaved a sigh of relief. Life with Evie would never be dull.

  When she returned, properly clad in a high-necked gown with dozens of tiny jet buttons, Tyler was poring over the papers spread across the table. He took in her appearance with a mixture of disappointment and relief. He preferred the naked imp, but the lady was much safer.

  "Would you mind telling me what you were doing taking a bath in this forsaken place if you were just waiting for Hale to return?" The question had finally worked its way to his consciousness and worried at him while she dressed.

  With a proprietary wiggle, she appropriated his lap and looked over the papers he was reading.

  "Mr. Hale kept talking about the nice fire and the food and the bed and how everything was just fine, and I had the nasty impression that he meant for me to be here for a while." She picked up the packet of papers labeled Trust Agreement. "I had a really long, wretched night, and I figured I'd feel a whole lot better if I met the new day with a nice bath. It gives the world a whole new perspective."

  "I'll say it does," Tyler muttered, snatching the paper from her hands. If she hadn't been standing there naked when he came in, this whole thing could have had a completely different ending. But he'd rather make love than fight any day. He kissed the side of her neck, wrapped his arm around her waist to hold her in place, and began reading again.

  When he was done, he sat there silently for a minute. Evie took the papers away and turned back to a page she hadn't quite finished. The dying fire crackled and a spark shot up the chimney while they digested what they had just read.

  "When will you be twenty-one?" Tyler finally asked.

  "September," Evie replied, rereading the beginning paragraphs. Even through the legal verbiage, she could read her mother's despair. The trust agreement had been written when Evie was three years old, upon the death of her Grandfather Howell, shortly after her mother had married Randall Harding. Had her grandfather died just a little sooner, had her mother waited just a little longer, she would have had the money to come and get her daughter.

  The checks to Nanny before that had come out of her grandfather's pocket and only with the promise that Elizabeth would marry Randall. Her mother had been coerced into giving up her daughter, and trapped after that.

  Evie wiped at the moisture in her eyes and finally listened to Tyler's muttering.

  "You'll be a damned wealthy woman in a few months. You could go back to St. Louis and have your choice of husbands. You'd better start reconsidering right fast." Tyler caught her waist in his hands and tried to set her back on the floor.

  Evie sat right back down again. Tyler had pulled on his shirt, but he hadn't fastened it. She ran her hand over the silky fur exposed there. Tyler glared. She smiled.

  "What do you think about babies?" she asked innocently.

  "They happen," he growled.

  "So they do." Without further explanation, Evie picked up the next piece of paper on the table.

  Tyler wrapped his arms around her waist and squeezed until she looked over her shoulder at him. "Are you trying to tell me something?"

  She looked surprised. "Of course not. You already know where bab
ies come from, don't you?"

  "Have we made a baby?" he asked cautiously.

  She gave him an absent smile, patted his chest again, and turned back to her reading. "After this morning, I wouldn't doubt it. What do you think this means about his wife inheriting one-half of everything he owns?" She pointed at the phrase in Randall Harding's will.

  Tyler briefly contemplated strangling her. The crashing realization he had been harboring secret hopes that she might be carrying his child struck him like a backlash from a muzzle-loader. He stared at the slender woman in his lap, circled her waist with his fingers, and wondered how it would feel when she began ripening with his child. His loins instantly responded to the notion. Groaning at his one-track mind in Evie's presence, Tyler grabbed the will from her hand and read the damning phrase. More familiar with the legal niceties than the Harding brothers, his mind instantly grasped the implications.

  "Didn't Harding die first? Your mother lingered some weeks after his death, didn't she?"

  Evie nodded, and her gaze met Tyler's.

  "I think, my wealthy wife, that you just may own one-half of the Double H."

  "What would I do with a ranch?" she asked, quite reasonably. "The trust money is nice. I can buy new clothes for the children and maybe make the house bigger with that." At a sudden thought, she glanced at him hesitantly. "That is, if you're planning on staying here."

  Anxiety lined her brow, and Tyler gave up the battle. She was sitting on a mountain of gold and worrying about whether they could stay in that miserable little shack behind the livery. He nuzzled her neck and resolved to work out the monetary details later. Evie was bright enough to translate the volumes of legalese, but she hadn't quite grasped the concept of what it would mean to them. Everyone else in the world would think he was after her money. Evie worried if he would stay in this wretched little town.

  "It's your money. You can do what you want with it. My concern is Hale's plan for all this. If he knows who you are, why hasn't he told you about your inheritance? Isn't that what an honest lawyer would do?"

  Obviously distracted by this new question, Evie considered what she knew of the lawyer. "Mr. Hale's always been honest with me, except for not telling me he knew who I was, not until last night, anyway. I wonder how he knew?"

  Tyler caught her hands and pressed them together, redirecting her wandering thoughts. "It doesn't matter how he knew. What matters is why he didn't do something about it. You've been living on beans with that teacher's salary of yours. Why wasn't he giving you the money the trust supplies?"

  "He was, until Nanny died. I thought maybe the money was going to Nanny's lawyers, and I didn't want to let them know where I was, so I didn't write to them. But if he knew all along who I was, then he could have just given me the money. It doesn't make sense."

  "Has Hale been courting you, Evie?"

  She shrugged. "He says nice things and wants to take me to dinner all the time. He keeps telling me he will take care of everything for me. I suppose that would be pleasant if I was inclined to lean on others, but I'd rather take care of myself."

  Tyler grinned and settled her more comfortably in his lap. "Then why did you go looking for Pecos Martin?"

  Evie frowned at him. "That was different. That was for Daniel. Now quit looking so smug. Do you think Hale meant to marry me? Was that why he tried to get rid of you? I read something like that in a book once. The villain kept shooting at the hero and missing. It was terribly silly."

  If Hale had been the one responsible for sending those two thugs out into the street with the children as hostage to draw him out, Tyler didn't find his actions very silly. But there were other forces at work here above and beyond Hale. Tyler wanted to rub his forehead and clear away the cobwebs, but Evie was right. It had been a long night.

  What he wanted most was to pick Evie up and retire to that wonderful featherbed. But now that he had taken up the burden of responsibility, he wasn't setting it down again. Tucking the papers inside his shirt, Tyler reached for Evie. "It's time to find our villain, sweetheart. Are you going with me?"

  As if he had to ask. Smiling eagerly, Evie swung around and started for the door.

  Chapter 40

  "You're either going to have to teach me to ride or find a saddle for two," Evie complained from her position behind Tyler. She shifted her arms around him as she tried to find a comfortable seat.

  "The thought of you on a horse by yourself gives me the shivers, Mrs. Monteigne. I'll think about the saddle first."

  She pinched him through his shirt, and Tyler laughed. It felt good to laugh again. He felt as if an immense burden had been lifted from his shoulders. He couldn't remember the last time he'd slept, but the knowledge that Evie was behind him sent energy singing through his veins. He could conquer mountains the way he felt this morning.

  But it wasn't a mountain kicking up dust down the trail in front of them. If it was Tom and his gang of thieves, they were in a mountain of trouble instead, but Tyler tried not to let Evie sense this. Tom ought to be in the sheriff's custody by now. And after their hiding place was blown to pieces, the thieves ought to be halfway to Kansas. That line of dust represented trouble of a different sort, he suspected.

  It didn't take long for recognizable shapes to ride out of the dust. Tyler brought his horse to a halt, checked that his gun was within reach, and wrapped his big hand around the small one at his waist. "Here they come, Evie. This is your last chance to get rid of me."

  He felt her teeth nip into his shoulder and smiled. She had her claws into him deep, and he ought to be shaking her free. For her own good, he ought to push her out of his life. But he was a selfish bastard and he didn't intend to give her up without a fight. After five long years of ambling peaceably through life, he was ready for a knock-down, teeth-spitting battle.

  The sheriff led the pack. Right behind him rode Jason and Kyle Harding. Tyler frowned at the strangers behind them, the ones riding next to the lawyer, Hale. They looked surly and half-drunk. He could guess whose side they were on. His gaze drifted to the stragglers in the pack: Peyton and the real preacher from the church, quite a combination.

  "There he is! Arrest that man, Sheriff. I told you to keep him away from the lady. My word, if he's molested her in any way..." Hale signaled for his cronies to move in.

  Tyler had his gun in hand and aimed at Hale before the strangers could pull out of the pack or draw on him. He rested it calmly against his saddle horn as he met the sheriff's gaze. "I thought we'd come to an understanding last night, Powell. What is it you want now?"

  Powell lifted his big shoulders against his tight shirt. "Hale says you're a danger to Mrs. Peyton. Claims he brought her out here for her protection until the two of them can get married." He threw a look at Evie peering from beneath Tyler's arm, not looking any too frightened.

  Tyler shifted his position so Evie could see around him. The glitter of his eyes was decidedly dangerous as he looked down at her. "Is that right, Mrs. Peyton? Am I keeping you from your nuptials?"

  She dug her thumb into the sensitive spot beneath his arm and made him twitch. "Actually, Mr. Monteigne," she answered sweetly, "these gentlemen are interfering with my plans. But since they so kindly brought the preacher along, perhaps that situation can be rectified. Reverend, my husband and I want to confirm our vows. Can you do that for us?"

  Hale shouted in fury, and while confusion reigned, his surly companions moved in for the kill. The one closest to Tyler raised his gun, but it went flying out of his hand before he could pull the trigger. He screamed with pain and grabbed his wrist.

  Tyler aimed at the other two thieves and their gun belts went skittering into the dust as their horses reared. Fighting to keep their seats, they had no time and little thought for retrieving their weapons.

  Returning his smoking gun to its original position on his saddle horn, Tyler turned an unpleasant smile back to the lawyer. "You were saying, Mr. Hale?"

  While the Hardings closed in on the would-be a
ssailants, keeping them from retrieving their weapons, Hale turned his rage to the sheriff.

  "You can't let him do this! He's keeping an innocent young girl from her home and family. All he wants is Miss Howell's money!"

  The name Howell instantly swung the attention of both Hardings to the couple on the horse. "Howell?" they echoed each other.

  Evie smiled at them a trifle shyly. "Evangeline Peyton Howell. I was afraid of being murdered in my sleep if I gave my full name."

  "Evangeline..." Jason choked on the name and turned a glare to Hale. "Howell?" The word was more demand than question.

  Hale swallowed nervously. "I only just found out. She's been leading me a merry chase."

  "And that's why you brought the good reverend out here? To end the chase?" The elder of the Hardings was wound up now. He inched his horse closer to the quivering lawyer. "You were going to use us to make her marry you? Just when did you mean to tell us who she was? After the wedding? When you owned half our ranch?"

  Kyle grabbed the terrified lawyer's collar and lifted him bodily from the saddle. He silenced Hale's screech of terror with a shake. "What'll we do with him, big brother?"

  "Put him down, Kyle," Tyler called wearily. "We'll need him to straighten out the god-awful mess he's created. Evie and I don't want your damned ranch. We just want to get back to the kids."

  Peyton spurred his horse up next to Powell's. "My daughter is in need of a legal husband, Sheriff. I suggest we get the lot of them back to town and see that she has one before the day is out. Comprende?"

  Having spent a long sleepless night himself, the sheriff was only too willing to turn his horse back to town. He only glanced to Evie for assurance.

  "Are the children all right?" she inquired, seemingly unfazed by the snarling men surrounding her.

  "If you call blowing up half the damned town all right, sure." The sheriff swung his horse around and started home.