The Temptress

by Jude Deveraux

  Chris sputtered for a moment. Was he actually asking her for sympathy? “So now you’re…and I’m supposed to…of all the dastardly, disgusting, repulsive things—I want you to know that Asher asked me to marry him. He didn’t ask for a quick assignation, he wanted to marry me, to live with me forever.”

  “He wants to live with your father’s money forever.”

  “So what’s the difference between you two? He wants my money and you want my body. Neither of you seem to want me. Well, let me tell you, Mr. Tynan,” she advanced on him, “I’m not sure I want either one of you. I certainly don’t want what you offer.”

  He caught her arm. “Chris, you do want me. I know it. I can see it in your eyes. And I want you, so why not?”

  She gave him a serious look, the muscles in her jaw working. “And do you plan to include marriage in your offer?” she asked softly.

  He took a step back from her as if she’d just contracted a contagious disease. “Marriage? Chris, you know that’s impossible. Your father would send me back to jail on a life sentence and then you’d have no husband. I couldn’t do that to you.”

  “Men!” she gasped. “What convenient memories you have. My father said that you’d return to prison if you touched me, yet you were more than willing to risk that because it was something you wanted. But now you hold it up to me when the matter of marriage is mentioned. Listen to me, Tynan, and listen good. I am not going to go to bed with you again and you can believe me.” She turned on her heel and started up the hill toward the spring, grabbing the bucket in anger.

  “You’ll give in,” Ty said after her, “and you’d better not let Prescott touch you.”

  “You hardheaded, vain…cowboy, I’m never going to let you touch me again!” She dug the bucket into the spring water, then, on impulse, stuck her face under the cold water. She wasn’t sure whether she needed cooling off from her temper or from Tynan’s kisses, but, whichever it was, her blood was steaming.

  She stayed at the stream for a while before returning to the cabin and settling down beside Pilar to sleep. She woke repeatedly during the night, sometimes sitting up with a jolt and looking around her. Each time she woke, she saw that Tynan was still leaning against the post, still watching the old man.

  By the time morning came, she felt as if she’d not been asleep at all. She sat up, rubbing her aching back and looked around her. Ty was gone from his post and Asher was in the yard in front of the cabin saddling his horse. She walked toward him.

  “The old man’s giving Ty trouble,” Ash said in the way of a greeting. “We may have to tie him on his horse just to get him out of here.”

  Chris stifled a yawn. “I hope he ties him face down over the saddle.”

  Asher caught her arm and pulled her close to him. “This is the last time I’ll see you for a while. I hope you’ll miss me. I hope you’ll think about my proposal. I hope you’ll…” He began to kiss her neck. “I hope you’ll say yes.”

  The next minute, Asher was on the ground as Tynan jerked him away from Chris. Ty stood over him, feet apart, fists ready.

  “Come on, Prescott, get up. You’ve been asking for this for a long time. Or aren’t you man enough to maul somebody your own size? Do you only pick on women?”

  “For heaven’s sake!” Chris said, going to Asher to help him up.

  Tynan advanced on the man.

  “If you touch him again,” she said, “so help me, I’ll ride out of here with him. What in the world is wrong with you?”

  Tynan lowered his fists and there was a bewildered expression on his face. “I don’t know,” he said in wonder. “Prescott, you better go now so you can use all the daylight. The old man will go with you but you’ll have to watch him every minute. I think he understands now that we’re hiding out so he’ll do what he can to make money off that knowledge.”

  As Asher stood, Tynan looked a bit sheepish for a moment, then he turned back toward Chris. “You wouldn’t go, would you? I mean, I’d have to bring you back and someone needs to stay with Pilar.”

  Chris looked at him for a long moment. “No,” she said at last, “I won’t leave. Not if you don’t hit Asher again. Now, could you leave us alone? I’d like to say good-bye.”

  Tynan didn’t move a step. “You can say good-bye right now. He has to leave.”

  “If you think—” Chris began, ready to give him a piece of her mind, but a call from Pilar stopped her. “Yes, I’m coming,” she answered, then deliberately turned and put her arms around Asher, meaning to kiss him good-bye, and show Tynan that he had no right to give her orders. But her lips never reached Asher’s because Tynan pulled her away from him and held her to him, her back against his front.

  “Get on your horse, Prescott,” he said in a deadly voice.

  Asher hesitated for a moment, but, then, with a sigh, he put his foot in the stirrup. “We’ll settle this later,” he said, glancing back to the old man who was sitting atop Tynan’s horse and ready to leave.

  Tynan, still holding Chris, stepped back. “Make sure you watch him night and day. Don’t give him a minute or he’ll take all you have and maybe your life with it.”

  “Yeah,” Asher muttered and, with one quick look at Chris, reined his horse away. “Come on, old man,” he called over his shoulder and then was gone from sight.

  Chris pushed away from Tynan. “Release me, you oaf!”

  She turned to look at him, anger in her eyes. “What right do you think you have to tell me what to do? Just who do you think you are?”

  Tynan looked completely confused, seemed to want to say something but, instead, turned on his heel and went up the hill toward the spring.

  Chris stood there for a moment, glaring after him, before she went to Pilar.

  “I thought there was going to be a fight there for a moment,” Pilar said as Chris handed her a full canteen.

  “I’d like to take a club to his head,” Chris said. “He doesn’t want me but then he hits anyone else who does want me.”

  Pilar leaned back against the hay as Chris began unbandaging her shoulder. “Oh, he wants you all right. He wants you badly.”

  “And I know exactly how he wants me.” Pilar smiled. “I’ve never seen him like this. Even that time with that rancher’s daughter, he wasn’t like this. We all hoped then that he was going to settle down, but it didn’t work out.”

  “Was that when he ended up in prison?”

  “Red tell you about it?”

  “Most of it. Pilar, how do you know Tynan? Why were you living with him at Owen Hamilton’s?”

  “He saved my husband’s life.”

  Chris stopped cleaning Pilar’s wound. “Your husband?”

  “I used to work with Red when I was younger. Tynan was there, the prettiest, sweetest little boy you ever met, and we all adored him. After the old man took him away when he was six, I hardly ever saw him again. And when I did see him, I’d see that he’d grown harder. He’d seen a lot in his short life and it’d made him cynical. But by then I’d married a rancher and we had a couple of kids of our own and I wanted to forget where I’d known Ty.”

  “Children?” Chris whispered.

  Pilar smiled. “Two little boys. They’re nine and seven now.” She paused a moment. “One day I was in town and I saw Tynan on the street. He grinned at me and started toward me, and all I could think of was that he was going to let the ‘good’ townspeople know where I came from and they were going to see that I wasn’t the respectable rancher’s wife they thought I was. I hate to say it, but I ducked into a store and acted as if I didn’t know him. Ty was the perfect gentleman and two days later when I ran into him again, he acted as if he’d never seen me before in his life.”

  “So how did he save your husband’s life?”

  “I don’t like what I did then. I wouldn’t speak to Ty on the street but a week later, when my husband was being threatened by a big rancher trying to drive us off our little place, I didn’t hesitate to ask Ty for help—and Tynan didn�
�t hesitate to come to my aid.”

  “But later, when he asked you to help him get into Hamilton’s house, you agreed.”

  “I didn’t even ask what he wanted. I just kissed my family good-bye and went with him. Jimmy didn’t ask what he wanted either, because he knew he could trust Ty.”

  Chris’s hands paused in rebandaging Pilar’s shoulder. “Why did he want you to come and pretend to be his wife?”

  Pilar smiled. “He wouldn’t say, wouldn’t answer me when I asked him. But one day, he muttered something about a curvy little blonde who was trying to tempt him out of his soul.”

  “Hmph!” Chris said. “Some tempting I’ve done! I made the fatal error of liking him, just plain liking him. I liked the way he took on responsibility when he was leading us through the rain forest. And he helped me when I needed him.”

  “And then he also happens to be the most beautiful man alive,” Pilar added.

  “That had nothing to do with it. He was so quiet. With most men who are silent, I usually find that they just plain don’t have anything to say, but I thought that maybe Tynan did have something to say, but he was repressing it. I’m not sure what it was, but I was certainly drawn to him.”

  “Was?” Pilar asked. “You aren’t any longer?”

  Chris rocked back on her heels. “He isn’t any different from other men. He only wants one thing. I thought he felt the same way about me that I did about him, but he told me he wanted nothing to do with me, that I was wrong about him. He told me to leave him alone—except of course I was free to…”

  “To go to bed with him?”

  Chris nodded, her head down. “I’m not any different from a hundred other women to him.”

  “I’ve never seen him act like he did a few minutes ago with another woman. I’ve never seen even the slightest sign of jealousy before. Are you sure you aren’t different?”

  Chris stood, taking the bowl of dirty water with her. “I’m quite sure. He’s made it clear what he wants from me and he just doesn’t want anyone else to have what he’s being denied. Tynan doesn’t love me any more than he loves…than he loves that old dog. Now, I want you to rest and I’m going to cook something, if I can find anything around here that’s edible.”

  “Anything will be all right,” Pilar said thoughtfully. “Ty will help you. He is quite capable of handling anything.”

  “He can’t handle love,” Chris said softly. “He can’t find love at the end of a gun or by using his fists, so he runs away from it. Go to sleep now.”

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chris spent an hour trying to make a stew with the few ingredients from around the cabin and from the saddle bags. There hadn’t been much time to pack when they’d been escaping Dysan and now they were feeling the lack of provisions. She looked at the cabin and decided to see if there was anything inside it. So far, the smell of the place had kept her from getting too close to it.

  Holding her breath, she went to the door and looked inside. This looked as if it were the old man’s treaure trove. He seemed to have kept everything he’d ever owned. No matter how worn out it was, how deteriorated, how many bugs infested it, the old man had kept it.

  Chris glanced over her shoulder toward where Pilar was resting and she felt a renewal of courage. What was a little unpleasant smell or a few crawly things compared to a human’s comfort?

  She took the shovel that Tynan had leaned against the outside wall of the cabin and began to carve a way into the interior.

  Two hours later, she had made a huge pile outside by the edge of the cliff. She wasn’t going to push anything over until she’d had a chance to inspect it in the daylight, but, mostly, there seemed to be improperly cured hides and hardened pieces of food that were covered with ants.

  In the back corner of the single room, she found a little wooden crate, the kind used to ship fragile items across the sea. Lifting it, she carried it outside into the sunlight.

  It had a big lock on it, but, like everything else in the cabin, the lock was rusting away, so, after a few minutes of work, she managed to open it. There were a few dollars inside, with mold growing on the bills, a big rock that looked as if it were solid gold, and in the bottom was a photograph of a young, pretty woman. Chris held it to the light, wiped the mold off a corner, and studied the woman. She looked happy and pleased about something and ready to take on the world. With a smile, Chris put the photo in her pocket and began to close the box.

  “Anything interesting?” came Ty’s voice from behind her.

  “You should be sleeping,” she said. “You were awake all night.”

  “I got enough. What are you doing? I never saw a woman who liked to snoop more than you do.”

  “I wasn’t snooping, I was cleaning.”

  With an infuriatingly knowing little smile, he sat down beside her. “Cleaning inside locked boxes?” he asked, nodding toward the big, rusty lock on the ground beside her. “Find anything interesting?”

  “Only about two pounds of gold,” she said smugly, holding out the big rock to him. “This is why your miner doesn’t want to leave this place.”

  Ty took the rock, leaned back on one elbow and looked at it. “Fool’s gold,” he said. “The old man doesn’t know gold when he sees it. Up on the side of the hill, there’s a place where he’s been digging for years. He was digging it when I was a kid.”

  Chris took the rock from Tynan. “If there’s no gold, why does he stay here? Why does he live like this?”

  “He believes there is gold and facts have nothing to do with this man’s beliefs. As for why he lives like this, he’s just afraid to let anything go. If he can’t sell it today, he’ll keep it until it’s worth something.”

  “Like babies. They’re not worth much as newborns, but strong little boys can work.” Tynan didn’t reply to her, just gazed at a bird overhead, seeming to be content to lie still for the moment. “How has he lived up here? He must have had money for food from somewhere. Has he always stolen things and sold them?”

  Tynan took a while to answer. “He used to steal but now I send him money when I can.”

  “You? But why? After what he did to you and the way you hate him, I’d have thought you’d do nothing for him.”

  “That old man is the closest thing to a father I’ve ever had. Besides, I didn’t want him selling any more children.”

  “I wonder how someone like him got to be the way he is. I wonder what awful things happened to him. I bet he was in love once. Maybe he lost her and never recovered.”

  Ty was looking at her as if she’d lost her mind. “What makes you think that old man ever loved anybody?”

  “I found a picture of the woman he loved.”

  “Let me see it,” Ty said softly and Chris gave him the photograph. He looked at it a long while before handing it back to her. “He said he threw it over the side and I believed him.”

  “You’ve seen this?”

  “It was my most treasured possession for most of my life.”

  She hesitated. “Who is this woman?”

  “I’ve been told she’s my mother.”

  “Your mother? But, Ty, don’t you realize that if you have this maybe you can find out who she is? Find out who you are?”

  “I know who I am,” he said with a set jaw.

  Chris looked at the picture for a while. “What’s her name?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “But didn’t you ask?”

  He looked at her. “Who was I going to ask? The old man told me she said one word before she died and that was, ‘Tynan.’ ”

  “Did you show the photo to the women in…to Red and the others?”

  “Sure, they saw it, but no one knew who she was. They thought it was all real romantic and they kept buying frames for the picture, then the old man’d come and take the frame and sell it. It was a great source of income to him for years.”

  Chris turned the picture over. “It says something on the back, but I can’t make it out.” />
  “Sa. It has the letters Sa on the back and the rest is faded. I used to imagine that my mother’s name was Sarah.”

  “You’ve spent a lot of time looking at this, haven’t you?”

  Tynan didn’t answer her, but lay on his back and looked at the sky. “I missed seeing the sky while I was in prison. What you can see is covered by iron bars. And I didn’t like the noise either.”

  Chris wanted to hear more about the photo. “How did the old man get this picture? If she had this, she must have had other things too.”

  “He sold everything else, even her clothes and her underwear. I imagine he threw her naked body off the side there. Or else it’s still around here.”

  “Tynan! How can you be so crass? The woman was your mother, and she died giving birth to you.”

  He sat up. “She died from three bullet wounds in her back.”

  “But who wanted to kill her? Why?”

  “Is there anything to eat around here? Maybe I could scout up some game.”

  “Are you going to answer me? Do you have any idea why someone would shoot a woman who was carrying a child?”

  He looked down at her. “Why do men cheat at cards? Why do men get drunk and try to kill each other? I don’t know. She wandered in here with three big holes in her back, lay down, gave birth to me, said ‘Tynan,’ then died. That’s the sum of all I know. The miner watched her give birth, planned to leave both her and the kid, but then he thought he could sell what clothes she hadn’t bled on and the screaming brat, so he stripped her and carried me down the mountain. That’s it, Chris, that’s all there is to tell. He sold everything except the picture. Nobody wanted a photo of a woman they didn’t know, so I took it one summer when he had me up here working. Now, can I eat?”

  Chris sat on the ground and looked at the picture. “She’s a very pretty woman.”

  “Was. She was pretty. She’s been dead for a long time. Chris, why are you so all-fired interested in my mother?”

  “I’m interested in—” She stopped abruptly. She’d almost said that she was interested in him. “I’m a reporter,” she said, rising. “I’m curious, that’s all. I’m curious about everything.”