A Taste of Heaven (34 page)

Oh, because she'd thought Tyler
was
different
, she sneered,
that was why. He wasn't any different at all. Not really. She
doubted that he had a wealthy, society fiancée waiting in the
wings. But he'd revealed his innermost thoughts to her, he'd made
love with her, and now, of course, he regretted it bitterly. So
much, in fact, that he was going all the way to Billings to find
someone to take her place.

A wailing sob crept up into her throat, and
she clapped her hand over her mouth to muffle it. Oh, Tyler, why?
she mourned.

He hadn't had the guts to tell her what he
was planning. He'd simply sneaked away while she slept, without
even saying good-bye.

Well, this time, she wasn't going to pack.
This time, she'd make that detestable coward tell her to her face
that she was finished here.

And she had three or four days to work up the
nerve to listen.

Chapter
Fifteen

T
yler had
pushed the pinto as hard as he dared, trying to eat up the miles of
sage and grass between the Lodestar and Billings. Every time he
thought back to the fire and tenderness Libby had summoned in him,
born out of raging desire and desperation, he urged the horse on.
Now, after a day and a half in the saddle, he finally saw the town
emerge on the horizon.

It was one of the toughest things he'd ever
done, leaving his bed at dawn yesterday morning. He woke with Libby
asleep next to him, her arm looped around his middle, and the sheet
barely covering her full, soft breasts. Her face was buried in his
neck and she lay with one leg between his, the front of her pelvis
pressed tight against his hip. All he'd wanted to do was spend the
morning making love to her again.

But the night before, she'd whispered those
words to him in the instant just before he fell asleep. Hell, maybe
he wasn't even supposed to hear them. It had seemed so far from his
consciousness that it was almost like a dream. But it wasn't a
dream, and he knew what he had to do. Nothing else could have
forced him from her side and set him on this trip.

So he'd left a note on his pillow, and kissed
her good-bye.

Up ahead, the buildings began to take shape.
Saddle-sore and exhausted, he nudged the pinto into a canter. Yeah,
leaving her was definitely one of the hardest things he'd ever
done.

*~*~*

Libby woke with a start, and found she'd been
hugging her pillow again. She glanced around the walls of her room.
It was still dark, she thought unhappily. The last two nights had
seemed endless. Disentangling herself from the twisted bedding, she
went to the window and rested her forehead on the cool glass. How
quickly—in a heartbeat, or with the utterance of a few words—joy
could turn to despair.

Below, the Lodestar slept in the quiet
darkness, contrasting with the turmoil that churned within Libby's
heart. During the day, she crept around the ranch house like an
injured bird, feeling sick and empty inside. In front of the men,
she made a valiant effort to appear as though everything were
normal. She believed she succeeded, but only because Joe had gone
to the northern range shortly after Tyler left. Although he'd have
said nothing, Joe would have seen through her pretense, making it
difficult for her to maintain it. His sharp jet eyes missed very
little.

At night, sleep eluded her and at best, she
only napped, falling into a troubled doze for brief periods.
Keeping Tyler from her thoughts proved impossible. Over and over,
her treacherous memory would drift back to the night he had held
her in his arms, his skin warm on hers. Finally, she had closed
Tyler's bedroom door, leaving the bed unmade, so that she wouldn't
have to look at it and remember the way he'd touched her, or the
things he'd whispered to her—he'd sounded so sincere.

But he'd spoken even more candidly to
Joe the following morning.
I can't very
well have her cooking for us anymore, Joe. Not now.
No
matter how Libby analyzed it, there could be no mistaking his
meaning and intent. And Joe had agreed with him, so that meant that
he probably knew what had transpired in Tyler's bed,
too.

She gripped the edge of the windowsill.
Despite her resolve to face Tyler when he got back, she wished she
hadn't returned the hundred dollars that he had given her in Miles
City. If she still had it, she'd fly away across the prairie, away
from the man with sky-blue eyes who'd taken her heart.

About an hour before sundown the next
evening, Libby stood at the sink, with her hands submerged in hot,
soapy dishwater, and her thoughts on a gloomy path. She listened
for the muffled strikes of Rory's ax, but she didn't hear them yet.
Although he was certain that a top hand wouldn't split firewood for
the kitchen, it wasn't too hard to get his help with the proper
inducement. The chore might be beneath the dignity of a top hand,
but cookies apparently were not.

The door opened behind her, and spurs rang
across the plank floor.

“When you finish out there, I've got some
peanut butter cookies for you,” she said.

“Cookies aren't going to do the trick, Libby.
I've got an appetite for something else altogether.”

Her breath trapped in her throat, she whirled
and saw Tyler standing there. She froze like a doe caught in
lantern light, a sopping dishrag clenched in her hand. The kitchen
always seemed much smaller when he was in it.

He was dirty and he looked dead-tired but,
oh, damn him, he wore it so well. His eyes turned smoky with
desire, and he gave her a wicked grin that told her exactly what
his appetite demanded.

“Well, Jesus, honey, you don't look very
happy to see me,” he remarked ruefully. He took off his hat and
threw it on one of the tables. Then pulling off his gloves, he
tucked them into the waist of his chaps, and walked toward her,
arms open. “I rode fifty miles today to get home to you. I just
about wore out that pinto. Can't you even say hello?”

A slow-burning rage erupted in her, fueled by
humiliation and heartache. She squeezed the rag until soapy water
ran through her fingers and down to her elbow. Backing away from
him, she nearly fell over a low stool trying to put distance
between them.

He dropped his arms and his smile died.
“What's the matter with you?”

Libby found her voice, and it shook
with righteous fury. “
What's the matter
with me?
” she repeated incredulously. She looked down
at the wet cloth in her hand and threw it at his face with all the
strength that anger put into her arm. The rag hit its mark with a
slap, then tumbled down the front of his shirt, leaving a wet trail
before it landed on the floor.

A black, forbidding scowl contorted his
features, but she didn't have the presence of mind to feel fear, or
anything else but betrayal.

He kicked the rag to the far wall and rubbed
his face on his bare forearm. “Libby, what the hell is going on? I
did some hard riding to get back here to see you,” he barked. He
took two more steps forward, as if to clutch her arms.

She scrambled back, putting the worktable
between them, eyeing him warily. “You stay away from me, you liar!”
she ground out, her heart thudding in her chest. “I thought you
were better than him, but you're not. You're the same. He made me
think he cared about me, too, but I was only an—an amusement.” She
heard the hysterical edge in her words, but she didn't care how she
sounded. With a voice that began to tremble, all the pain and
bitter anguish that she'd never been able to vent on Wesley came
pouring out in a torrent. “To him, I was just the cook in the
kitchen, n-not even a real person with feelings to hurt, or a heart
to break . . . ”

Tyler was so damned confused and mad himself,
he could barely follow what she was talking about. Of all the
accusations she'd hurled at him, though, he grabbed the one that
sounded familiar.

“What are you talking about? Does this have
to do with something that happened in Chicago? Maybe you'd better
tell me the real reason you left!” He stayed on his side of the
table, but he put his hands on its surface and leaned toward
her.

She wrapped her arms around herself. “I told
you —I just couldn't stay there anymore.”

He pounded his fist on the tabletop, once,
making everything on it clatter. Libby jumped, too. “Damn it to
hell, that's not good enough. I have the right to know who you're
comparing me to!”

She glared at him, then lowered her eyes. “I
suppose you do,” she said. Weariness crowded out the wrath in her
voice, and she told him about Wesley, Eliza Brandauer's spoiled,
handsome son who made Libby believe that he cared about her, and
even went so far as to promise eventual marriage. One night, when
his mother was supposed to be out of town, he brought her to his
room on the pretense of stitching a rip in his shirt.

Libby kept her gaze fixed on the table. “If
he'd been anyone else, I would have worried.” She shook her head,
as if still trying to understand. “But I trusted Wesley. As soon as
I was in the room, he closed the door.”

His gentle, affectionate kisses rapidly
escalated into rough, insistent groping that frightened and
offended Libby. “I'd never thought about a woman being raped by
someone she knew. But that's what he would have done to me. I guess
I should be grateful that Mrs. Brandauer came home when she
did.”

With a single knock on the door, Eliza
Brandauer walked in, outraged by the sight of her son rolling
around on his bed with the cook, whose skirt was hiked up to her
thighs.

Libby tipped her face down. “Oh, God, I
wanted to die. Wesley said nothing in my defense—nothing. Mrs.
Brandauer called me a whore and dismissed me on the spot. I was to
be packed and out of the house by morning—she wouldn't abide a
whore sleeping under her roof, she said. Moral propriety was very
important to her.” Her voice quivered with the tears that coursed
down her face unchecked. “I ran from the room and I heard her scold
Wesley, asking what he supposed his fiancée’s family would think if
they learned he'd been dallying with ‘the servants.’
Fiancée . . . ” She repeated the word, as
though it were beyond her comprehension.

Word of Libby's discharge and Wesley's
upcoming wedding spread quickly through the house. That kind of
news always did. Even her adopted family of Melvin, Birdie, and
Deirdre shunned her because she'd committed the grievous sin of
forgetting her place and consorting with Mr. Wesley, and him newly
engaged, too.

“After ten years, I suddenly found myself on
the sidewalk with nowhere to go, no one to turn to. I had barely
any money. I walked all day trying to find a job, but I didn't have
any luck. I looked disreputable, I guess. Finally I knocked on the
kitchen door of a church. The pastor's housekeeper let me stay in
exchange for work until Ben sent me the tickets to come out
here.”

Tyler stared at her. The picture in his mind
of Libby wandering the streets of Chicago made his eyes burn. His
throat was so tight with suppressed emotion, it felt as if there
were a whole sourdough biscuit in it. “And you thought that after
the other night—”

Her head came up then, and so did the volume
of her voice. “Oh, well, what about the other morning, Tyler?” she
demanded, her hands on her hips. “What about telling Joe that you
couldn't let me cook here anymore? You can sleep with a whore in
Heavenly, but you won't have one cooking for you, is that it? No,
you had to go to Billings to find someone to take my place.”

His heart clenched in his chest. “Sleeping
with me makes you a whore?”

Ignoring his question, the razor-edge of her
voice broke, and in barely more than a whisper she uttered, “You
just rode off. I watched you go from this window right here. You
didn't even tell me good-bye. Even Callie Michaels got a good-bye
from you.”

Tyler gaped at Libby, stunned. Her face was
colorless, but her eyes had darkened to charcoal. She folded her
arms across her chest, withdrawing into herself.

“But I never told Callie that I loved her,”
he shot back, feeling persecuted now.

“How nice, do you want a reward?” she
snapped, her eyes full of pain and fire. “You never told me that,
either.”

“Then what did I write in that note? I don't
know how much plainer I could have put it!” He was shouting now,
too.

“What note? You didn't leave me a note.”

A muddle of feelings closed in on
Tyler—exasperation, fury, and distress for what the Brandauers had
done to her, hurt, grinding fatigue, harassment. He put the heel of
his hand to his forehead and took a deep breath.

“I thought I was being considerate by not
waking you. Damn it, now I wish I had. I left you a note on my
pillow the morning I left.”

“I don't believe you.”

Abrupt silence fell in the kitchen and they
stared at each other, entrenched and breathing hard. Libby wore an
expression of utter distrust.

Breaking this stalemate, Tyler strode around
the end of the table and grabbed Libby's wrist. “Come on.” He
pulled her along toward the door to the dining room.

Libby caught a glimpse of glittering anger in
his eyes, and for the first time she felt real terror. Though she
tried to free her arm, it was useless—she couldn't break his grip.
In the space of a breath, she'd lost command of the situation and
Tyler, with a hot, feral energy, seized it. She'd never seen him so
furious, or so dangerous.

She looked up at his straight back, and
narrow waist and hips as he dragged her up the stairs. His chaps
slapped softly against the legs of his jeans, his spurs clinked
with each thunderous footfall. “Tyler, let go of me. You can't mean
to do this.”