Face impassive, he drawled, “Should I be worried?”
“Because I now have eggs?” Maria enjoyed his discomfort.
“I think you know what I mean.”
“Ahhh…that I have a secret admirer?” She regarded him with an amused look. “Actually, they were given to me by a friend who owed me a favor.” She watched the relieved look on his face and was glad he did not question her further. Settling back against the plush seat, she relaxed, enjoying the play of shadows through the trees cutting the road in half and the flame yellow of golden rod along the roadway forecasting the autumn season. “This buggy makes for a pleasant ride.”
“Yes, it’s well-sprung and easy to handle. We bought it for Betsy when she started working at the General Store. We didn’t want her handling a wagon and team of horses to deliver smaller goods around town. Now it sits idle at the ranch since Betsy owns the store and others deliver for her.”
“You and Betsy are very close, aren’t you?”
“You could say that.” His face took on a playful, radiant look. “Betsy was adopted by my parents as an infant. Mother had just delivered me, the last of four boys, so you can imagine her joy at finding a baby girl abandoned in our stables. Betsy and I grew up together and played together—almost like twins, and we conspired to aggravate the lives of our older brothers. We now make it a point to keep up the habit.”
Farther up the road, Tye slowed the team as they approached a spot in the road where a fallen tree limb blocked the buggy from passing. Stopping the horse, he tied the reins to the brake. “Stay seated.” He jumped down to drag the offending branch from the road.
“No. Let me help.” Maria hiked up her skirt and climbed down, following him.
“Maria, stand back.” He picked up the thick end and began to drag it across to the side. The words had barely left his mouth when two rattlesnakes slithered out from a gunnysack held shut by the weight of the leafy bough. One curled up in warning in the middle of the road, buzzing loudly. The other glided away from them and up the road toward the grassy edge. In a flash, Tye dropped the branch, wrapped an arm around Maria’s waist, and slammed her hard against his solid chest. At the same time, he drew his gun and fired twice, sending the head of each snake flying up onto the dusty road. Startled by the shots, the horse bolted, the motion of the buggy dislodging the loosely tied reins on the brake. With the whites of its eyes bulging, the horse went flying past them with the buggy bumping along behind.
“Nooo-ooo!” Maria screamed and tried to break loose to run after them, but Tye’s arm held her fast, her back plastered against him.
“Wait!” Gun still drawn, he swore softly under his breath near her ear. “Stop fighting me! We don’t know how many snakes were in the sack. There could be more.”
“I can’t breathe,” she choked out.
He released his grip, and she slipped down onto her knees in the middle of the road near his boots, heedless of any dirt soiling her dress. She sucked in a lungful of air. Cold fingers of fear pressed along her spine. She dropped her head into her hands as misery reared its ugly head. Again, they were without a horse and miles from the ranch. “How many enemies do you have, Tye?”
He stared down at her, his eyes dark and expressionless before he moved away to check both sides of the weedy road. “I’m serious, Tydall! How many?” She watched him gather a stick, pick up the limp bodies of the snakes, and toss them onto the gunnysack at the edge of the road.
“I don’t know, maybe it’s the same person.” He walked to her and held out his hand to help her up.
She slapped it away. “Get away from me! I hate this God-forsaken land!” Tears welled in her eyes and spilled down her cheeks. “I told Abigail this would never work.” She swiped at her face with the back of her hands. “We should have never come here. I could have put in a request for a teaching position back in Albany where there are civilized people who respect each other. I could tell in Uncle Henry’s letter that Aunt Emma had no love for his relatives. Why, oh why, did I listen to Abby? Now here we are stuck in the middle of a snake infested land with all types of vicious creatures like lynx and people without scruples!”
Patiently, without speaking, Tye stood above her and listened to her rant. Minutes seemed to pass like hours until he squatted in front of her and handed her his handkerchief. “At least life here is never dull, Maria,” he said in a soft voice.
She wiped her eyes and face, and let out a nervous laugh, trying to compose herself. “No, at least life with you is never dull.”
He stood and offered his hand again, and she let him pull her to her feet. “Let’s walk, Maria. The horse will either stop farther up the road or end up in the ranch yard. And let’s hope the baskets of food weren’t thrown out in the ruckus.”
“With our luck?” She begrudgingly set out, walking beside him.
They had barely covered a few yards when they heard a rider approaching from behind. Gun drawn, Tye pushed her off to the side of the road and behind him. Moments later, around a bend, Marcus came thundering up, and Tye stepped out to halt him. “You are sight for sorry eyes, Marcus.”
Marcus drew up his mount and looked at Tye with wrinkled brows, then back down the road where he had pitched the two headless snakes and the gunnysack. “From the look on your face, your afternoon is on a downhill slide, Tydall—to hell. Please, don’t tell me you lost the horse and the buggy?”
“Long story. And jokes would not be well received at the moment.” Tye threw a cautious sideways gaze at Maria a few feet away. She was shaking dust from her dress. Her hair had come undone and framed her face in a wild, disheveled array.
“Holy Mother in heaven, she looks like she could scare bats out of a cave!”
“Marcus!”
“All right, stay calm,” Marcus said in a low voice. “Tell me what in blue blazes happened.”
Tye squinted up at him. “Someone hoped we’d tangle with a few rattlers. What are you doing out this way?”
“The kitchen staff forgot to pack the dessert for your dinner tonight. I was leaving the barroom and heading home, so I said I’d make the delivery.” Marcus’s saddle creaked as he dismounted and untied a basket from behind it. He handed it to Tye. “I’ll take a ride up the road and see if I can recover your horse and rig.”
“Be careful, Marcus, someone planted that gunnysack.”
Marcus snorted, thumbed back his hat, and studied the shadowed forest around them. He heaved a weary sigh. “You know, Tydall, life with you has never been dull.”
“Someone already told me that,” Tye replied sourly.
“Where’s your dog?”
“I left him with Betsy. I was tired of vying with him for Maria’s affection.”
“You sure have your share of problems, brother.” Marcus shook his head and mounted.
“Just find our rig, Marcus, before I shoot you, too.”
****
Later, at the ranch house with the horse and buggy secure and the excitement of the earlier dilemma waning, Maria left Tye outside to send Marcus home and went inside to try to put herself in order. Knowing she must look frightful, she took a seat by the kitchen table and combed her hair with her fingers, trying to dislodge the tangles and gather it into a bunch at the back of her neck.
“Here, here. There’s a better way.” Tye quietly strode inside and stood over her. He motioned for her to follow him into a bedroom and pointed to a bench with a pink satin cushion sitting before a lady’s dressing table with an attached mirror. Undoubtedly, it was Betsy’s bedroom when she stayed at the ranch.
“Sit,” he ordered and when she reached for a brush, he pulled it gently from her hands. “Just relax, I know how to do this.” His callused hands gently turned her head toward the vanity mirror, and with her back to him, he brushed the snarls from her hair with long efficient strokes. The calm motion felt soothing after her teary cry, lulling her into serenity.
His low voice and warm breath near her ear startled her back to rea
lity. “What is your wish, princess? One braid? Two braids? Or a chignon?”
“Are you serious?” Her cinnamon eyes found his dark ones in the mirror.
He smiled and continued to work each lock, taking care to stop every time he hit a snarl and gently untangle it. “I assure you, my dear, Maria, I am the best. When Betsy and I were growing up, I had to wait for my mother to do my sister’s hair before we were allowed to go out to play. At about the age of eight or so, I realized if I could comb and braid the mane on my horse, I could fix Betsy’s hair, and we would get outside a whole lot faster.”
He looked at her in the mirror with a steady penetrating gaze.
“So how did you learn the chignon?” she asked. “It’s certainly not something most men would know.”
He continued to comb her hair. “When my mother died, Betsy and I were fourteen and had just come out west. One day, my father found her crying for hours in the bedroom…from grief or from loneliness…or maybe from both. But the whole crying spell began when she couldn’t properly put her hair up to go to town. She wanted to look older as if she were the woman of the house. Which, in truth, she was.”
“So what happened?”
Tye took a comb from the vanity, parted Maria’s hair in three sections, and began to loosely braid it. “Pa offered any one of us a gold eagle and a new rifle if we could get her to come around. I went into the bedroom, found out the problem, and dared her that together, we could make this so-called chignon if she helped and told me what to do. She had a picture of it from an Arthur’s Home Magazine. I also offered her the gold eagle to quit crying.”
“You bribed your grieving sister?”
“I had to.” He grinned a lopsided devilish grin at her in the mirror. “I wanted a new rifle. I was tired of hand-me-down shirts, boots, and weapons from my three older brothers. Anyhow, fifteen minutes later, Betsy was smiling, and we were on our way to town to buy supplies—and a new rifle.” He laughed. “It didn’t take much thought afterwards to use my sister and her weakness against my older brothers. Every time I had a chore I didn’t like, I told them they could help her do her hair, and someone always stepped forward to do the task for me. Little did they know she had mastered the chignon herself after a few tries.”
“Now I see why you and Brett are friends.” She watched while he reached for a ribbon from the vanity and tied the end of the braid. “You are both laid-back and self-assured. You don’t place much faith in the theory there are jobs meant only for men or for women?”
“Not much, I reckon—not after growing up with Betsy who had to learn everything we did. She can rope, ride, and shoot as good as my brothers. And once she started working at the General Store when she was sixteen, each of us had to take turns cooking for the family.” He smiled. “Now if you go around town telling everyone I fix women’s hair, I will be forced to deny it and tell everyone you’re having strange visions brought on by the exceptionally warm weather.” He winked and pulled the braid. “Come, I want to show you the ranch.”
Together they walked outside, and she could see he was proud of the well-maintained sprawling ranch house and its three barns for horses and domestic animals, carriages, and storage. The air smelled of hay, dust, moist earth, and cattle as they walked to the corral. The horses trotted over to the rail begging for some affection or a treat. Tye was silent as he stood beside her and watched her rub the forehead of his favorite mare. Maria suspected the earlier antics of the day had taken its toll on both their energies. She, too, was weary and had to stifle a yawn.
With daylight fading, they walked to the ranch house. Tye started a small fire in the fireplace while she lit candles and lanterns and unpacked the picnic baskets. Over a dinner of roast beef, mashed potatoes, and the inn’s best dessert of apple crisp with whipped cream, they tried to put the earlier incident of the day behind them. Later, after they finished storing the remains of the food, Maria went to the fireplace in the living area and stood staring at the dancing flames of yellow, orange, and red.
Moments later, Tye approached her from behind, and spoke in a low voice, “It’s much too lovely an evening to occupy ourselves with thoughts of what happened earlier today.” He pushed aside her braid and kissed her tenderly on the nape of her neck.
“Tye.” She turned to look at him. “This is the second time someone has tried to frighten us. If they had wanted to kill us, don’t you think they could have?”
“Do we have to talk about this now?”
“Yes.” She was not going to be distracted.
“What are you getting at?”
She pulled away and stepped back, staring at him. “The only time you’ve been shot at is when you’re with me. Maybe it’s me someone is trying to scare.”
“Why on earth would someone want to frighten you?”
She shrugged, and he stepped closer again. She wondered whether she should tell him about the warning on her blackboard but decided against it. She was certain it had to be the prank of a student. “Maybe someone is disgruntled with Abby running the inn, and if I decide to go back to Utah or head east, they know she’ll leave, too. Maybe it’s somehow connected with the death of my uncle.”
“Like I said, it’s much too complicated to sort out now.” He drew in a breath and let out a long sigh. “If it’s worth anything, Frank Norwell had the sheriff checking out a former hired hand of Lang Redford’s who was using a wallet like your uncle owned. He goes by the name of Jebb Masters.”
“What did he find out?”
“Masters said he bought it from a peddler who came through town a few weeks ago.”
“So the sheriff really hasn’t found anything new surrounding my uncle’s death?”
“No, and it’s much too beautiful an evening to speculate about death, Maria.”
She frowned and nodded. “You’re right.”
Gently, his hand cupped her chin and tipped her head back. He looked into her eyes. “The night is beautiful, but nothing is as beautiful as you are,” he whispered as his lips found hers.
When the kiss ended, she pulled away and leaned her forehead on his chest. “Were you ever homesick when your father first brought you here?”
“Are you?” he whispered in her hair.
“A little,” she said, her voice muffled by his shirt. “I worry I won’t be a good enough teacher. I worry the inn won’t be successful. I worry I won’t be able to adjust to this harsher kind of living. I really worry I might find this was one big mistake Abby and I made.”
“Ah, Maria, it’s no mistake.” He pushed her gently away, his hands on her shoulders. “Let me show you the most spectacular spot on this earth, and you decide whether there’s anything to match the Colorado Territory.” He went to the bedroom and returned with a quilt over his arm, then led her out to the stable where he tossed only a saddle blanket over his horse, and pulled her up behind him to ride bareback.
They took a path beside the house leading to Cherry Creek. The evening was filled with the night sounds of insects and somewhere far off, the hoot of an owl and the cry of a coyote. Minutes later, they arrived at a huge willow beside the gurgling creek and he slid off, helping her down. He tied the horse farther up the bank, parted some low-hanging abundant branches, and laid a quilt on the soft grass, then tugged her down beside him, leaning his back against the massive tree trunk and pulling her back against him. Between the leafy undergrowth, they could see the sky above with it mass of twinkling stars starting to appear in the night sky and out in front of them, fireflies emerged to dance and dart through the ferns and reeds along the riverbank.
“When I first moved here, after my mother died just months before back east, I found this spot. It was the perfect place to sneak away, to think, to mourn, to be homesick, to forget my worries, or just to be by myself, away from the noise and hectic life of a ranch. This is where I fell in love with the Colorado Territory. Have you ever seen such a spectacular light display put on by God and nature?”
“No,” she
whispered and watched in awe as the night grew inky black and the world lit up before her eyes. Millions and millions of more stars sparkled overhead and hundreds more fireflies frolicked around them. “It’s magnificent. Simply stunning.”
“No, you’re stunning.” He turned her and tilted her face up to touch his lips gently on hers. The kiss became more insistent, and Maria found herself pulling him closer as fiery sensations flooded her body. Just before she felt as if there was no more air in her lungs, he pulled away and pressed fevered kisses over her face and forehead. “Maria,” he whispered, “let me make love to you under the stars. Stay with me tonight.”
“I can’t stay, Tye. You know why.”
“Please let me make love to you and hold you all through the night.” His voice was tender, but insistent. His eyes never leaving her face, he reached around and untied the ribbon from her braid and worked his fingers through her hair letting it spill onto her shoulders and back. “I promise to make this night special, more special than all those stars in the sky.”
She shook her head. “I’ll make love with you, but you must promise you’ll take me home. I don’t want to leave you, but I can’t stay. I can’t risk ruining my reputation.” Her hands traveled to his chest. She could feel the heat of his body. He smelled of sweet dried hay, sunshine, and a hint of bay rum.
“Are you sure?” His gaze searched her face. He covered her hands with his.
She looked into his eyes, dark and earnest and remarkably serene. She pulled away, reached up and tunneled her fingers through his hair and kissed him, then dropped her hands to start unbuttoning his shirt. She realized she loved him with a passion that frightened her with its intensity.
“Am I sure I love you? Or sure I want to make love with you? Yes, to both.” She smiled.
He kissed her long and deep and hard, and when it ended, he quickly removed his clothes, then slowly disrobed her, his dark eyes full of burning passion and tenderness. He started with her face and slid his hands gently down her cheeks, the sides of her neck, then down her shoulders to her ribcage, caressing her. His hands explored the plane of her back, her small waist, and her narrow hips. His mouth dipped to close over her breast. As his tongue explored each one, he moved his hand to gently stroke her inner thighs and find her most erotic spot, his fingers exploring and tormenting her until she was soft and damp.
Under Starry Skies Page 17