The Temptress Read online

  “But there weren’t any more.”

  “No, just me. Some branches of the Montgomerys are very fertile and some are almost barren. There doesn’t seem to be any middle ground.”

  Tynan leaned back on the grass, stretching full length, his feet toward Chris. “She sounds like a wonderful mother. Do you miss her?”

  Chris looked away. “Every day of my life. She was strong and soft, sensible and intelligent, wise and…. She was all anyone could hope to be.”

  “I think you may be like her, what I’ve seen, that is.”

  Chris grinned broadly at him. “For that, you may turn around here and put your head in my lap.”

  “That is an honor,” he said as he did as she offered. “This is nice,” he said as Chris smoothed his hair back from his forehead. “You’re not like any other women I’ve met.”

  “Good. Ty, what are you going to do now that you’re free?”

  “I’m not yet. I have to get you back to your father.”

  “Yes, but what can you do besides shoot a gun and sit a horse well? Or get drunk and land in jail?”

  With his eyes closed, he smiled. “Doesn’t sound like much, does it? Well, let’s see, what can I do? I guess women don’t count, do they?”

  “Most definitely not.”

  “I know,” he said, opening his eyes. “I can run four whore houses at once.”

  Chris let out a gasp. “Somehow I don’t think that is a good—”

  “No, not the women. I let Red handle that, except if there’s a fight, then I separate the women, but one time Red’s bookkeeper got killed in the crossfire of a shootout—one I wasn’t involved in, I might add—and she asked me to look into the accounts because the bank was about to foreclose on one of the houses.”

  “Did the bank foreclose?”

  “Hell, no. Oh, excuse me. It turned out that little weasel had been embezzling her money. I found it buried under the front porch of his house. And I had to learn to do bookkeeping and straighten the whole mess out. Now, every time I see Red I go over her accounts.”

  “What a marvelous ability. My father says that half his empire is nothing but book work. You could be of great use to him.”

  “I’m sure that your father would entrust his accounts to a gunslinger.”

  “He entrusted his daughter to one,” she said softly.

  “I guess he did at that,” he said, smiling at her and beginning to run his hand up her arm. “Chris, do you really think he meant that about not touching you? Do you think he had any idea what he was asking?” His hand was at her neck.

  “Maybe he’d heard about your reputation with women and he wanted to protect his daughter’s chastity.”

  “Of course if neither of us told anyone what had happened, there’d be no way he’d know.” He was pulling her head down to his.

  “But my husband would know on my wedding night.”

  “What husband?” His lips were a breath away from hers.

  “The man I marry. The man I plan to spend all my nights with.”

  He was pulling her closer but she was resisting. “But just the other day you were offering yourself to me.”

  “But then I thought you couldn’t and that I was safe. I think we’d better go back to the others.”

  “In a minute,” he said, pulling her to him.

  Chris’s lips parted for him and again she was amazed at the feeling that passed through her at Tynan’s touch. It was as if her bones were disintegrating and she fell down across him.

  He was expert at maneuvering her body so that soon she was stretched full out beside him and it was what she wanted when he moved one of his heavy legs on top of hers. Her body arched upwards toward his.

  Later, she wondered what would have happened if he hadn’t heard voices and moved away from her. Chris just lay there, eyes closed, too stunned to move.

  “They’re coming back,” Ty whispered, lifting her off the ground into his arms. “Get dressed.” As if she were a doll, he leaned her against his shoulder and began to button the back of her dress.

  “What happens if I wear a dress that buttons down the front?” she murmured huskily.

  “Don’t. Save my sanity and your virginity and don’t tempt me more than you have already. There, stand up and get that dopey look off your face. They’re coming.”

  “Yes, Tynan,” she said, allowing him to pull her upright.

  Chapter Ten

  Chris and Ty were swept away together with the crowd of returning young people. People were getting restless and wanting to eat again and play games. The women took Chris with them so they could ask her questions about some of the stories she’d written and they left Tynan with the men and the boys—who constantly begged Ty for stories of the gunfights he’d been in.

  Chris and the women were on very friendly terms. They believed in her so much that they were willing to look differently at a man they’d been so sure was wrong. One of the women bravely asked Chris what a house of ill repute looked like inside and she had a good time entertaining them with stories of red wallpaper and highly polished brass lamps and women who looked very bored. They were all laughing when the shot rang out.

  Chris hoped she was wrong, but somehow, she knew that Tynan was involved with that single gunshot.

  Grabbing her skirts, she started running, the women behind her. On the ground, surrounded by men, lay Rory Sayers, a derringer in his hand, blood spreading over his shoulder—and standing over him was Tynan. Chris looked at Ty with disbelief on her face.

  “I’m afraid I’m going to have to take you in,” said a young man who Chris had seen wearing a deputy’s badge. “The sheriff will have to deal with this.”

  Chris’s eyes were still locked with Tynan’s and it was only after a long moment that she turned away. The face of every woman around her had a look of “I told you so” on it.

  Chris lifted her skirt and began walking back to the tables.

  “Chris,” Tynan called softly from behind her but she didn’t look back.

  At the tables she began packing food away, trying to stay calm while the others put the injured Rory on a wagon bed and started back toward town. Since Rory was yelling that they were going to kill him and also he was raging that he was going to kill Tynan, Chris assumed that he was going to live.

  Minutes later, Tynan walked past her, stopping within a few feet of her, but she didn’t turn around, instead, busying herself in putting the food away.

  The women came to help her, working in total silence as they gave her looks from under their lashes. After a few minutes, Chris could stand no more. She put down the food, turned toward the road and began walking back to town. She didn’t care about Red’s buggy that she left behind or about anything else for that matter.

  It was miles back to town but Chris walked all the way, shaking her head no at the people who stopped their carriages and offered her a ride.

  In the hotel, people were watching her in such a way that she ran up the stairs and into her room, slamming the door behind her. She was so ashamed of herself that she wanted to climb into bed, pull the covers over her head and never come out again. For the last two days, she’d strutted around this town and, in essence, told them they were all fools, that they didn’t know a man who’d lived among them most of his life. She’d used the love she’d earned as Nola Dallas to tell them that they knew much less than she did after spending only a few days with the man.

  Slowly, Chris began to undress, taking off the dress that Red had loaned her.

  How vain I was, she thought, to think that I knew more than they did. And how conceited I was to think that I could reform a man who has chosen a life of crime and violence. How right my father was when he introduced me to men from my own background, men I could understand, not men who went to picnics and shot people who disagreed with them.

  She packed her small bundle, put her riding habit back on and took the two dresses downstairs to the clerk. His eyes were different now. No longer was