A Taste of Heaven (11 page)

He took a tentative step, and then another,
until he was standing in front of her door. The cut on her hand was
a bad one. It would heal well enough, he supposed, but what if it
had started bleeding again? He put his fingertips on the edge of
her door and hesitated. A long wedge of light from his candle fell
through the opening and across the wide plank flooring. Jesus, he
must be out of his mind— Finally, he gave the door a push. The
candle in his fist wavered slightly.

In the semigloom, and small as she was, she
looked like a child in the bed. Her wounded hand lay palm up next
to the pillow, the bandage still pristine white. Even in sleep she
looked exhausted and vulnerable, but her long hair flowed behind
her like a satin drape. He reached out and lightly brushed the
backs of his fingers against its softness.

It was then he saw that cuddled to her like a
rag doll was the plaid shawl he'd bought for her this morning.

For a moment, he had the wild notion that if
he were to lift the blanket, he'd find a pair of angel's wings
folded against her body. Tyler backed out of the room more quickly
and quietly than he would have thought himself capable. He went to
his own room and shut the door, his heart thudding in his
chest.

He'd talk to Joe in the morning, he swore
with edgy resolve, jamming his hand through his hair. If his
foreman couldn't find a new cook for the trail drive, then by God,
Tyler would see to it himself tomorrow night when he went into
Heavenly. If it meant he'd have to offer the job to every man
standing at the bar in Callie's saloon, he'd do it.

He had to get Libby Ross out of his house and
out of his life.

*~*~*

Late the next afternoon, Libby pulled her
chair around to sit in a square of pale sunlight at the kitchen
worktable. A light breeze from the open door stirred her skirts
around her ankles. After dark gray days of soaking rains, the
weather had cleared and this afternoon was mild enough to let her
open the door to air out the kitchen.

Picking up a rolling pin, she began rolling
out a crust for the apple pies she was making. Her finger was still
tender, slowing her down and making some chores downright
impossible. Handling the pie dough was awkward business with her
bandage, and keeping the gauze dry was just a nuisance. But she did
as she'd been instructed. She half expected Tyler Hollins to sweep
in at any moment and inspect her hand.

She'd seen her employer several times today,
but mostly from the distance. He'd spent the day at the corral
across the yard, helping to break broncs, as Joe had called them at
breakfast. He'd apparently cleaned up her mess in the kitchen last
night because this morning she'd found the sink empty and all the
dishes put away.

Now and then, she glanced out the window and
saw Tyler sitting on the top rail, watching the cowboys on the
backs of a succession of wild horses that seemed bent on throwing
them off and killing them.

But when Tyler jumped down into the muddy
enclosure she put aside the rolling pin, lured to the yard by the
absolute power of the demonstration. No one at the corral noticed
her—all eyes were turned toward him as he slowly approached a
nervous-looking bay. Libby thought that the big horse was the same
color as Tyler's hair.

“That filly's got a mad-on now, Mr. Hollins,”
Noah said from his spot on the rail. "You'd better blindfold her or
she'll bite a chunk out of your hide."

“She's not going to bite me—are you,
darlin',” he murmured as he got closer to the horse.

The filly reared and gave him a baleful look
that supported no such confidence.

“Whoa, now darlin',” Tyler said, and jumped
back a step. “She's smart as a whip, you can see it in her eyes.
She'll make one hell of a cow horse.”

Noah shook his head doubtfully. “Maybe, but
not yet. She still don't even like that saddle. You ought to give
her another day or so to get used to it before you climb on.”

Tyler didn't answer. Instead he reached out
and gripped the reins and the side of her bridle. Pulling her head
down to his, he spoke in a low, quiet voice. Libby watched from
farther down the fence, but she couldn't hear what he was saying.
His words, obviously spoken with compassion and tenderness, were
meant only for the bay. The mask of his sharp-edged expression fell
away, revealing the handsomeness beneath, and for an instant Libby
found herself envying that horse.

Only vaguely conscious of it, she put one
foot on the bottom fence rail and climbed up so that her head
cleared, the top. With her lower lip clamped between her teeth, she
waited to see what would happen next.

Rory scaled the fence and sat next to her,
all gangly arms and legs. “Howdy, Miss Libby.”

Libby shaded her eyes against the afternoon
sun. “Hello, Rory. Is Mr. Hollins really going to ride that horse?
She doesn't seem very inclined to let him. In fact, she looks as
though she'd like to trample him.” Libby knew the feeling.

“Tyler?” His young face wore a look of mild
amazement, as though she'd suggested that the sun might rise in the
west tomorrow. “I never seen Tyler get throwed. He sticks like a
burr. Anyways, he never asks us to do nothin' he won't do
himself.”

She imagined that Rory was right Tyler was a
hard, intensely self-sufficient man, obviously without sentiment or
any other kind of emotion, except perhaps anger. At least in his
dealings with most people, that was the case. Except when he'd
patched up her hand.

After his gentling conference with the bay,
Tyler, maintaining his grip on the bridle and reins, pushed his hat
down more securely. Then he put his foot in the stirrup and hoisted
himself to the horse's back.

She immediately made her feelings known about
this circumstance. Though the men cheered and whooped, it seemed to
Libby that the angry, twisting, snorting beast had no other desire
than to shake off the offending rider and stomp him to death.
Bucking and diving around the corral, they drew so close to the
fence where she stood that Libby expected Tyler to crash through
the rails.

“Tyler, look out!” she shrieked.

Hearing her, his head came up and his eyes
connected with hers, blue and piercing. His concentration broken,
in the next second when the horse dove again he was flung from the
saddle and landed shoulder-first in the mud. Libby heard his breath
whoosh from his lungs.

“Oh, my God!” She clung to the rails and
gaped in horror, her hand pressed to her mouth. He'd fallen so
hard, surely he must have broken something. Could he move? Was he
badly hurt? The bay trotted off to the far fence, looking
indignant.

Libby's heart started again when Tyler
regained his feet. Rory and a couple of the men leaped down to
help, but he shook them off. The left half of his shirt and pants
were caked with mud.

When he turned to face her, guilt bloomed in
Libby's chest. She scampered to the ground and peeked at him
between the rails.

He walked over to her through the quagmire,
his steps a little stiff but deliberate. Two buttons had popped off
his shirt, and the clean side—the one that wasn't glued to his
skin—gapped away from his chest.

“Are you all right, Mr. Hollins?” she asked,
irked by the puny, scared sound in her own voice. She wasn't afraid
of him, although she realized now she shouldn't have distracted him
by yelling that way. She shouldn't care if he broke his silly neck
trying to get on a horse that obviously had no intention of being
ridden.

He removed his hat and briefly considered the
wet Montana dirt covering half of its brim. Then he looked up at
her.

“Mrs. Ross, shouldn't you be in the kitchen
getting supper ready?” He didn't shout. In fact, he spoke with a
quiet, conversational tone that reached only her. He didn't even
sound angry. But she knew better. His annoyance was reflected in
his eyes. “Well, yes, I—”

“The men will be expecting to eat pretty
soon.”

At the dismissal, Libby pressed her mouth
into a tight line. She inclined her head and turned for the house.
When she glanced back, she saw him watching her, as the bay had
watched him. Obviously she'd worried about his safety for
nothing.

Maybe the filly had had the right idea, after
all. Once more, she envied that horse.

*~*~*

An hour later, Libby finished crimping the
edges of the pies, then sat down to peel potatoes for supper.

Looking at the bandage on her hand again, her
thoughts returned to Tyler. He was so different from Wesley—Lord,
she couldn't believe she'd even considered the two men in the same
thought.

Wesley, though nearly the same age, had
seemed far younger than Tyler. By comparison he'd had a much softer
life, she supposed, than had Tyler. The planes of his face had been
more rounded, and his fair coloring more genteel. And she never
once heard him use the coarse language Tyler uttered every day. The
others swore, too, but not if they thought she could hear them.
Tyler didn't care who heard him.

Yet if she were going to depend on any man
again—and she found that prospect most unlikely—she'd be more
inclined to trust Tyler Hollins than Wesley Brandauer. Wesley's
earnest, honeyed words, she'd discovered, were nothing but
lies—dark, hurtful lies. His confession of love, his promise to
stand by her, all of it had evaporated as quickly as morning fog
along a summer stream. And with them had gone a lot of the hope
she’d carried in her heart since her orphaned childhood.

Libby sighed. She'd tried hard to put
Wesley out of her thoughts—even when she'd been snowbound in Ben's
cabin, and thinking about Wes had been
preferable
to the reality, of her situation.
She'd banished him from her heart, but she wasn't always successful
at locking him out of her memory. And now, humiliation and Wes
would be forever linked—

Just then, she became aware of a vibration in
the floor under her. She lifted her head to listen, but there
wasn't any sound, really. Not at first.

It began subtly, then increased to a heavier
rumble that made the glass in the windows rattle. Floating above
that sound was whooping and hollering that grew louder, then
fainter, then louder again, as though the wind carried it to and
fro. What was that? she wondered uneasily. It felt like an
earthquake.

The commotion drew her to the window to
investigate. She saw Tyler Hollins step up to the porch, as if to
get out of the way of an oncoming train. He shifted his weight to
one hip and crossed his arms over his chest. Looking down the road,
he grinned. His dog, Sam, ran back and forth, barking his fool head
off.

Resting her fingers on the windowsill, Libby
leaned forward to look in the same direction. It was then that she
saw two riders she recognized as Charlie Ryerson and Joe Channing
gallop past the house toward the corral. Both of them were hooting
at the tops of their lungs. Charlie's hat bounced on the back of
his shoulders, secured only by its bonnet strings, and Joe waved a
coil of rope alongside him. Behind them were about twenty horses of
different colors and markings. A blur of flying manes and long
tails sped past the porch on slender equine legs. The thunder
created by their churning hooves all but drowned out the voices of
the men following them, who were whooping and hollering, too. The
strength and wild beauty of the spectacle made goose bumps rise
along Libby's scalp, and she took a deep breath. She'd never seen
anything like it.

The men drove the horses into the corral,
where Noah and another man waited to close the gates. The animals
milled around restlessly inside, snorting and whinnying, their
heads lifted high on long, graceful necks.

Joe trotted back to Tyler, as mud-caked as
his own horse. Libby saw his big smile peek out from under his
mustache, and the rumble of his voice reached her through the open
door.

“I was on my way back from Heavenly when I
joined up with these boys. I couldn't let them have all the
fun.”

Tyler looked up at his foreman, and shaded
his eyes against the late sun behind him. “I guess they didn't find
any of our brand on the north range.”

Joe hooked one knee over his saddle horn.
“None that was alive, Tyler. But closer in, on Lodestar land, they
ran into a few of the One Pine boys, and they told the same story.
It's like that everywhere.”

“One Pine—God, Joe. They didn't really think
we've got their cattle, did they?" Amazement colored Tyler's
voice.

Joe shrugged. “Well, Lat Egan is desperate,
Ty. He's sent his boys on a wild-goose chase lookin' for their
brand over half the territory, thinkin' a few strays that drifted
are still alive. He's payin' the crew, but Kansas Bob said they're
ready to quit. He lost just about everything, and worse, they think
he's gone plumb crazy.”

With his back turned to her, Libby couldn't
see Tyler's face but she heard him sigh, and he hunched his
shoulders, as though a shiver had run through him. “Jesus, isn't he
ever going to stop looking back?”

“It ain't likely, Ty. It's been more than
five years already,” Joe replied.

Just then Rory came running up. “Joe! Did you
and Charlie bring those mustangs in?”

“We sure did, Rory. Charlie and Kansas Bob
and the rest were feelin' pretty grim about all the dead cattle
till they came upon these horses. I found 'em a couple of miles
outside of Heavenly, and we brought 'em in from there.” He grinned
again. “It sure felt good to be with healthy animals runnin' wild
through the grass.”

“Aw, dang it, Joe,” Rory put in. “I wish I
coulda gone with Charlie and Kansas Bob.” His young face wore an
expression of impatience and disappointment, and he scuffed at the
porch planking with his boot. “All I've been doin' is pulling balky
heifers out of the mud. Are you gonna let me go on the trail drive
this time, or do I have to stay home again?”