He took off his coat and gloves, unlaced his boots, poured a little hot water in a basin and diluted it with cold. On stocking feet, taking care to avoid any board he remembered squeaked, he tiptoed over to the bed. Kneeling down, he dipped a handkerchief in the water. Being as gentle as he could, he washed the tear stains from her cheeks.
She didn't move.
When he had finished, he slid her down until she lay her flat in the bed. For a moment he thought she would wake, but she merely sighed and rolled into a ball. He pulled the covers over her and stepped back.
He felt guilty for having wanted to be rid of her. But he and Zac were strangers, and there was nothing they could do for her. She probably wanted to get away from them. She had no reason to like them or to feel she could depend on them. When it came right down to it, she had no reason to trust them except that she was alone and vulnerable. She must be terrified.
Tyler decided he would have to think of some way to relieve her anxiety. It must be terrible to live in fear. He had never felt like that, but he imagined it must be terrible.
He wondered if she would be safe at the Cochranes. He was not without his weakness for women, and he had no reason to believe Zac was a saint, but neither of them would consider taking advantage of a helpless female. He had heard of the Cochranes, but he didn't know them.
As he started to prepare dinner, he couldn't help but wonder what would happen to Daisy when he took her to town. She wouldn't want to depend on the hospitality of friends for long, and she had already said she wouldn't return to her relatives back East. Neither could she run that ranch by herself.
The only other solution was marriage.
But she couldn't find a decent husband looking like she did now. He didn't mean the freckles. They didn't bother him. In fact, they intrigue him. They were like snowflakes, every one was different. They had a friendly look about them, like they were announcing she was a woman with a sense of humor.
No, it was the scar, the singed hair, and her size that worried him. The only men who would marry her now were men who made virtual slaves out of their wives. He had seen such women during his wanderings over the Southwest, women worn out, overworked, and colorless, women who had given up on life.
Daisy deserved better than that. Not that it was his business to worry about who she married, but he couldn't help thinking about it. She was a gutsy woman. She had taken a tremendous shock without hysterics. He imagined she realized what she faced in the months ahead. Still, all she had done was cry silently so she wouldn't disturb Zac.
* * * * *
Daisy woke to the sounds of hushed conversation and the muted clink and rattle of dinner preparations. She started to turn over when one of Zac's sentences emerged from the hush with startling clarity.
"Do you like her?"
"Why do you ask?" Tyler questioned.
"You're falling all over yourself to please her."
"I'm just trying to do the best I can for her while she's hurt. What else did you expect me to do? Once she goes to Albuquerque, I doubt I'll ever see her again."
Daisy heard the soft scraping of spoon against pot.
"Dinner's ready. Is she awake?"
"No. Want me to wake her?"
"No. Let her sleep."
He doesn't want to be bothered with me, Daisy thought. He'll be glad when I'm gone. That was okay. She'd be glad when she left. But somehow that didn't make her feel better, certainly not good enough to get up to eat. Giving in to the exhaustion that weighed her down, she drifted back to sleep.
* * * * *
Daisy came half awake. A comforting sense of warmth pervaded her whole being. She snuggled closer, her entire body luxuriating in the warmth. She turned over. But just as she was about to slip over the edge into oblivion, she realized the heat was coming from a virtual wall next to her. Still more than half asleep, Daisy became aware the wall was neither flat nor straight. It curved as her own body curved.
She froze. Zac was in the bed with her.
But even as the thought flashed through her mind, she heard soft snoring coming from the bunk above her.
Tyler! It had to be.
What could she do? She couldn't lie here nestled against his back. Neither could she start screaming. Gradually the panic receded. He was only sleeping with her to keep her warm. That had to be it.
Daisy eased away from Tyler until her body was pressed hard against the log wall of the cabin. She kept telling herself he wouldn't do anything to harm her. But no matter how much she reassured herself, she couldn't sleep. It was all she could do to stay in the bed.
Daisy felt the cold gradually settle around her. That didn't bother her as much as the realization that something in her wanted to stay close to Tyler. His presence made her feel warm and loved, like when she was a little girl and her father let her sit on his lap. She had felt beautiful then.
But that wasn't all. Her body responded to Tyler's presence in a way that startled her. She detected a kind of warmth, or heat, that caused her muscles to become taut, her skin to feel extra sensitive, her stomach to flutter nervously. Her lips felt dry. She moistened them with the end of her tongue. Even her breasts felt funny, a kind of tingle running through them. She felt cold and hot at the same time.
All in all, she felt quite unlike herself.
It shouldn't have happened. She didn't want it to. Several minutes passed before the prickly sensations began to fade and die away. She made up her mind she wouldn't let it happen again.
* * * * *
Daisy woke up starving. She sat up in the bed, and a pain shot through her head. She sank back to the pillow wondering what could have happened to make her head ache so. She put her hand to her head, encountered the heavy bandage.
Everything came rushing back.
For a moment, the shock of her father's death nearly overwhelmed her. It seemed unreal. But she remembered the shot, seeing him lying on the floor.
Once again tears welled up in her eyes and rolled down her cheeks. Once again she felt bereft, alone, abandoned. But she couldn't afford to give in to her grief. She was alone now. There was no one to take care of her but herself.
But she was not alone. Tyler was in her bed.
She turned her head, but Tyler wasn't there. Surely she couldn't have dreamed it. Nothing else in this horrible nightmare had been a dream. But there was no question about it, Tyler was not in her bed.
Taking care not to move too quickly, Daisy sat up. The fire had gone out, and the room was bitterly cold. She pulled the blankets tightly about her. Her head hurt, and the room spun before her eyes, but she could see Tyler asleep on the floor between the stove and the door. His feet hung off the thin mattress from the knees down. She was sleeping in his bed, and he was sleeping on her mattress.
She felt a pang of guilt. Tyler was silent, bossy, and taciturn, but he had taken care of her. He had held her while she cried. Despite what he said to Zac, she didn't believe he had done it just because she was sick. She wasn't experienced with men, but for a moment she had felt truly cared for. She thought she had sensed a reluctance to let her go. Maybe he didn't like her, but he wasn't as devoid of human compassion as he pretended.
Without warning, Tyler rolled into a sitting position, and Daisy found herself looking directly into his eyes.
Chapter Four
Daisy turned away almost immediately. His gaze was too direct, too disconcerting. Besides, she was convinced he had spent at least part of the night in her bed. The implied intimacy embarrassed her. It also had the same startling effect on her body she remembered from last night. She recognized the warmth of embarrassment as it flowed upward and threatened to flame in her face.
"When can I go home?" she asked. It wasn't what she meant to say. Those warm, brown eyes in that shaggy face raised conflicting emotions in her. She wanted to flee, yet she wanted to stay, to find out what he was really like behind that beard.
She had to do something. She couldn't just lie there with him looking at her. Tyler moved
first. He threw back the covers, and sat up. Daisy was relieved to discover he had slept fully clothed.
"You're too weak to travel."
"I don't feel weak."
Tyler folded his blankets with quick, practiced moves. "You may be able to walk around the cabin or even go a short way down the mountain, but you'd never survive a two-day trip in freezing temperatures."
"I can't stay here forever."
"You'll stay for the time being."
Her temper flared. Why must he always be telling her what to do? She felt stronger today, and he irritated her more.
Tyler folded the mattress and stacked blankets and mattress in the corner. He put a match to the fire he had laid in the stove and put a pot of water on to boil. He began slicing bacon and putting the thick slices into a heavy black pan.
"I ought to cook breakfast," she said.
"Stay where you are."
She did, but she felt guilty. Cooking was considered almost as much a part of being a woman as breasts and babies.
"You don't mind cooking?"
"He's crazy about it."
The sound of Zac's sleepy voice from the upper bunk helped ease the tension inside Daisy. As long as there was someone else awake in the cabin, she didn't feel the weight of their intimacy. She might not know either man well enough to trust him completely, but she trusted two more than one. Besides, she didn't have this startling reaction to Zac. The fire had taken the chill off the air in the cabin, but she snuggled deeper under the blankets.
"He's studied cooking all over the place," Zac continued, sounding bored with the subject. "Who else would have enough stuff in a prospector's cabin to stock a hotel restaurant?"
So he was a prospector, Daisy thought with mingled surprise and disgust. He seemed the type -- beard, old clothes, and long silences. She didn't understand why would a man who liked to cook would hide out in the mountains.
"My mother would have liked your kitchen," Daisy volunteered. "She was a good cook. She always complained she couldn't make anything taste as good as the cook they had when she was growing up."
"If your ma's family had a cook, what was she doing living in this godforsaken place?" Zac asked.
"I've often admired the Turkish practice of cutting the tongues out of their servants," Tyler remarked, giving Zac a threatening glare.
"I'm just asking what you're wondering," Zac said, clearly unperturbed.
"My mother was raised in very different circumstances," Daisy explained. "My father, too. It's just he was never good at handling money." Daisy resented having to admit her father's shortcomings, but defending him was pointless.
"You don't have to explain anything to Zac," Tyler said without turning away from his stove. "He's always been plagued by a rude tongue, no sense of decency, and a curiosity to know what's none of his business."
"If we're going to be locked up in this place, we've got to talk about something," Zac said. "Besides, it might explain why somebody wanted to kill her."
"I don't mind answering your questions," Daisy said, telling a bald lie. "You're kind to have taken so much trouble with me."
"That doesn't entitle us to be nosy."
"It damned well does," Zac contradicted. "Suppose that blasted killer is still after her? Our necks are in the same noose now."
"I'd be happy to put your neck in a noose," Tyler said. "It's probably the only way to still your tongue."
"Do you think they are, after me, I mean?" Daisy asked.
"Why not?" Zac said. "He's already come back once."
"It's impossible for anybody to have followed us," Tyler said. "It's been snowing for two days."
Daisy didn't feel that confident. The killer might not know where she was now, but he could be waiting for her to come out of the mountains. "Is that one of the problems about my going back to Albuquerque?"
Tyler nodded.
"What can your brother do?"
"Nobody will touch you if Hen's around," Zac said proudly. "He can shoot the eyes out of a snake and is twice as mean."
"Hen used to be a sheriff," Tyler explained. "He'll know what you ought to do. Now unless nobody's hungry, it's time to eat." He tossed some clothes onto Zac's bunk. "Get dressed before you come down. I doubt Miss Singleton wants her breakfast ruined by the sight of your skinny body."
"You're not such a wonderful sight yourself."
"People don't notice me much. But to hear you tell it, you're so gorgeous they can't stop gaping at you."
Daisy smiled at the banter between the two brothers. They apparently meant the awful things they said, but it didn't seem to bother either of them. Her father would have had apoplexy if she or her mother had ever spoken to him like that. He expected no criticism, only blind and instant obedience. She didn't understand the brothers' relationship, but she was drawn to it. It must take a special kind of bond, a special kind of belonging, to feel that free.
All her life she'd felt hemmed in by her father's domination and her mother's efforts to make her pretty enough to attract a husband. She was filled with things she was dying to say but had never had the courage. She listened to Tyler and Zac with envy. To feel this uninhibited must be heaven.
The smell of bacon scattered her thoughts and caused her mouth to water. It was unnerving to realize hunger of the body could be sharper than hunger of the soul. It could make her forget her thoughts of freedom or that while she had been worrying whether she could trust Zac and Tyler, they had been risking their lives to help her.
It couldn't make her forget Tyler had slept with her to keep her warm, but had left her bed before dawn so she wouldn't know and be afraid of him. That completely changed the way she felt about him. True, Zac was unbelievably handsome, even mussed from sleep and unshaved. But time and time again she found her gaze wandering back to Tyler.
It wasn't his conversation. He hardly spoke. It wasn't his eyes or his broad forehead. His eyes were an ordinary brown, and he was careful to keep them devoid of emotion. His forehead was nice, but it was practically lost in a sea of rich, brown hair. Her father's hair had been about the same shade, but he had no hair on his body. She could remember him sitting in the tub, his body white and soft.
She wondered if Tyler had hair on his chest. She wondered what it would look like, what it would feel like to touch. Would it be long and silky or did it form a thick, curly mat.
Daisy felt heat in her face. Involuntarily, her gaze cut to Tyler. He was looking at her. The heat in her cheeks became more intense. He couldn't know what she was thinking, but her blushes had to tell him she was thinking about him.
Tyler's gaze didn't alter. "You'd better put on your shoes," Tyler said. He walked over to the shelf by the door and picked up her shoes. They looked so small next to his boots. "You'll get splinters if you walk around bare footed."
"And I'll have to take them out," Zac said. "Tyler can't see anything that small without his glasses. That's why he's looking for gold-bearing rock. He can't see anything as small as gold dust."
Whipped between two emotional extremes, Daisy's gaze flew to Tyler. "You're prospecting for gold!"
"I have been for three years," he replied.
"The lost Indian mines?"
He nodded.
Daisy felt like she'd had the breath knocked out of her. Here she was on the verge of becoming rhapsodic because Tyler had endangered his life for her and he was a victim of gold fever just like her father.
She actually felt unwell. She dropped her gaze to the blanket covering her. She hadn't realized until now how much she had counted on his being a sensible, dependable man.
"If you don't feel like getting up, you can eat your breakfast in bed," Tyler offered.
"No, I'm all right," Daisy said, throwing off the covers. The cool air was a relief from the scorching heat of embarrassment and shock. She wouldn't have minded splinters. Anything to take her mind off her thoughts.
* * * * *
Daisy stared out the window at the huge snowflakes floate
d down to the earth like pieces of heavenly confetti. The whole world seemed to be white -- the ground, the trees, the mountains in the distance, even the air itself. The wind had finally stopped. Nothing moved now. She heard no sound, not even the snap and pop of pines and firs as they adjusted to the bitter cold. Only Tyler's footsteps in the snow showed evidence of any living creature outside the cabin.
Tyler was the reason she was staring out the window. She was trying to understand why learning he was searching for gold had devastated her so. She didn't know him well enough to be so strongly affected.
He was the first man who had ever made her feel she was special, not just someone to do the cooking and cleaning. He seemed unaffected by her size, her freckles, the dreadful bandage, or the danger that surrounded her. He had taken everything in stride, even her crying.
He had risked his life for her, continued to risk it, without expecting anything in return. That made her feel important. She had placed a great value on that importance. It made her feel worthy in a way nothing else ever had.
Only now it wasn't worth anything at all. She couldn't value the opinion of a man who would waste his life looking for gold. But even as she told herself to put Tyler out of her mind, that she didn't want to know anything more about him, have any more to do with him, doubts began to appear.
He had rescued her. He had taken her to his cabin knowing the killers were still after her, that they were likely to be after him as well. Maybe he wasn't as consumed by the search for gold as her father had been. Maybe he bossed people around out of habit, not out of an inbred certainty he knew best for everyone.
She told herself not to be a fool. She was probably reading too much into his acts of kindness. Any decent man would have done what he did. She'd better get herself down this mountain before her imagination got her into trouble.
She sighed deeply. "The weather's clearing," she said to Zac. "The sun might come out. Maybe I can leave tomorrow."
Tyler had left her alone with Zac for most of the morning. He was avoiding her. She was tempted to tell him he was jumping at shadows. She had no desire to live on this mountaintop with a taciturn, bearded prospector who had no money and did his best to appear unlikable.
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