Rory came up then and offered his hand to Tyler in a very grown-up gesture. His young face was serious and dignified. Libby had seen him wear that expression from time to time since the day Charlie died. It was as though he'd buried the last of his childhood with his friend.
“What do you say, Rory?” Tyler asked, slinging his arm around the back of the boy's neck. “Does this sound all right to you?”
Libby realized then what significance Tyler's remarriage might have for Rory. After all, his sister had been Tyler's first wife.
Rory nodded. “Yeah, if it'll keep Miss Libby here so we don't have to worry about her leavin' anymore.”
Tyler replied, “That's exactly what it means.”
A bright smile lit up his face. Then he asked in a wheedling tone, “Miss Libby, ma'am, do you think you'll still bake cookies once in a while?”
“Peanut butter?” she asked.
“Oh, yes, ma'am!”
“I think that's one job I'd better keep, then.”
One by one, the men approached the informal receiving line to congratulate them—Kansas Bob, Noah, the Cooper boys, and all the rest, including Jim Colby.
Jim was a big man with a lantern jaw and quiet, solitary ways—the complete opposite of the man he'd replaced. There wasn't much he could do around the ranch with his arm in a sling, but both Joe and Tyler had insisted on keeping him on at full pay.
As she received their sincere best wishes and good-natured teasing, Libby basked in the well-being that washed over her. She might not have blood relatives to witness her marriage to the man standing next to her, but she had the people at this ranch.
And that counted for a lot.
*~*~*
Plans went forward for the wedding, and Libby's days were busy. No formal invitations were sent. Rather, news of the event was spread by word of mouth, and Nort Osmer was counted upon to do most of the broadcasting. The ceremony would take place at the Lodestar, and there would be a cookout feast afterward.
Libby forced herself to remember that while it felt otherwise, this was not her first marriage. And she was a widow on top of that, marrying after a disgracefully short period of mourning. In Chicago, where rigid Victorian etiquette held sway, even a domestic would be expected to wear black for at least two or three years. Things might be more relaxed in Montana, but a white dress for Libby was still out of the question.
When Tyler took her into Heavenly to buy the fabric for her wedding gown, with a trace of regret she passed over a bolt of fine white lawn in favor of lavender shadow stripe.
“Was that nine yards, Mrs. Ross—uh, Miss Libby?” Nort asked, measuring off the stripe.
“Yes, that's right,” she said, watching him unroll the fabric on the counter.
“I swan, who'd have dreamed when you came here last September that you'd be marryin' two of our boys within a year's time?” Nort pondered tactlessly. He looked up from his yardstick. “I guess this was what you could call one of them whirlwind courtships.”
Just then the door opened behind Libby, and she turned, hoping that Tyler had finished his business with Sheriff Watkins. She doubted that Nort would feel quite so reflective if he were here. Instead, she saw Callie Michaels.
“Hello there, Nort. And if it isn't Mrs. Ross,” she exclaimed, smiling, and looking around the store. “I thought that was Ty's wagon out front. Where has he run off to?” She swept in with a rustle of emerald brocade and gardenia perfume.
“Oh, he's down talkin' to the sheriff,” Nort said.
Callie walked up to the counter and rubbed the lavender shadow stripe between her soft, plump fingers. “Running up a new dress?” she inquired of Libby. “Except for church and those dances at the Grange hall, there aren't many places around Heavenly to wear a nice dress.” She looked down at her own brocade and laughed broadly. “ ‘Course, I don't go to church and we've got dancing every night at the Big Dipper.”
Libby smiled and backed up a step, the perfume starting a headache at her temples. “Mr. Osmer, you'll put in a spool of matching thread, too, please?”
“I guess Montana didn't scare you off, after all. Ty said you'd decided to stay on and work for him in his kitchen.”
She heard the barb hovering under Callie's remark. She found it unnerving to be in the company of this woman who'd spent more time touching her future husband's body than Libby had herself.
“Actually, I've been promoted,” Libby began.
“That's right, Callie,” Nort jumped in. “Tyler and Miss Libby here are gettin' married. We're just now measuring off the dress goods for her weddin' dress. And Ty is talking to Jack Watkins about performin' the ceremony.”
This time, Libby silently blessed Nort for his gabbiness.
Though her expression did not change, the madam's face paled beneath her powder. “Well, is that a fact?” she said a bit too brightly. She turned her knowing smile on Libby, and looked her up and down. “Then I probably won't be seeing him—for a little while, anyway. Nort, I'll come back when you're not so busy.”
She left as she'd arrived, with a swish of brocade and a choking cloud of gardenia.
When the door closed, Libby let out a low, angry breath and released her clenched fists.
“By dang, that Callie,” Nort laughed and shook his head. “If she don't take the cake.”
Libby knew it wasn't cake that Callie Michaels was interested in taking.
*~*~*
That night, Libby lay in Tyler's arms, quivering in gasping astonishment at the pleasure he summoned from her body. After a climax that had left her weeping and exhausted, she rested in his strong embrace, her own pulse still echoing faintly in her womb.
“Are you all right?” he murmured, slowly smoothing her hair. She could hear the smile in his voice—he knew very well what her answer would be.
“Yes. You're pretty pleased with yourself, aren't you?”
“Well, maybe a little. It's more important that you're pleased.” His big hand ran up and down her bare back.
She stretched against him languorously. “I am, but you have an unfair advantage over me. You learned in school how to—um, how this works.”
He laughed softly and kissed her forehead. “Trust me, honey, this isn't something you can learn from a book. It's mostly instinct and practice.”
Practice. It made her think of Callie Michaels and all the “practice” he must have gotten in her bed. Telling herself that it shouldn't bother her was not very effective.
“Uh, you mean like when you went into Heavenly on Saturday nights . . . ” Her voice trailed away. She didn't have the courage, or even the right, she supposed, to ask what his life had been like before.
Rolling her to her back, he turned on his side to face her and propped his head on his hand. The vague shape of him loomed over her in the darkness, and he interlaced his fingers with hers.
“What's this about?”
After an awkward start, she told him about seeing the woman at Osmer's that afternoon.
He sighed. “Libby, what was between Callie and me, that was mostly business. It might be hard to understand, because here in this bed, it's so personal with us—” He paused, as though searching for the right words. “I guess I was friends with her. I went to her looking for forgetfulness more than anything else. You know . . . I paid her. She and I never had real intimacy, not like this. Hell, she wouldn't even kiss me—she thought it was too familiar or something.”
“Oh.” This cheered Libby enormously, although she couldn't say why. But it probably accounted for the reason Tyler liked to kiss her now. She squeezed his hand.
“And anyway,” he continued, “after you got here—well, things were never the same. I couldn't—it didn't—” He stumbled to a halt.
Libby waited, trying to puzzle out what he meant. “What?”
He took her free hand and pressed it to himself, that particular part of his anatomy now in repose. “It was like this the whole time.” He sounded self-conscious, a rarity for him.
/>
“Really?” she asked. The brief touch of her own palm, though, was apparently enough to revive him. Now she was very happy. She remembered Callie, with her cloying smell of gardenias, and that complacent, secret smile.
He leaned over and nuzzled her neck. “When that happened, I knew I wanted only you. That was why I told Callie good-bye,” he said simply. “And it seems the more I get of you, the more I want.” The kisses he left behind were warm, soft.
She couldn't suppress her giggle when he touched a ticklish place.
“Are you going to let me see the material you chose for your wedding dress?” he asked, working his way down her shoulder.
She turned her head toward the window. “I didn't get white, if that's what you're wondering.”
“Did you want white?”
“It really wouldn't be appropriate.”
He was up on his elbow again. “Why the hell not?” he demanded.
“For one thing I'm a widow. Plus, well, Tyler, you should know better than anyone. I’m not a virgin—”
He put a finger to her chin and brought her face back to his. “You were a virgin when you came to my bed and I’m going to be your husband, the only man you'll ever sleep with. If you want to be married in white, there's no reason why you shouldn't be.” He smoothed her hair back from her forehead and chuckled. “Besides, I've seen a few pregnant women go to the altar in white. It's not illegal, you know.”
She reached up to pull him back down to the pillow. “I don't give a damn what color the dress is as long as you're there.”
He laughed. “That's the spirit. You're starting to sound like me. Now let's see,” he said, kissing her throat, “where did I leave off?”
*~*~*
The golden days that followed were the sweetest that Libby had ever known. In love, Tyler Hollins was a very happy man. When they were alone, they couldn't keep their hands off each other. And he seemed to find so many reasons to come to the kitchen.
“I'm just checking to see if you'd made cookies again, sweetheart.”
“Libby, could you sew this button back on before I lose it?”
“Did you call me? I was down at the barn and I thought I heard your voice.”
One noon, Joe pulled her aside and teased, "Ty is just about useless—I can't give him a job to do that he'll stick with. I never seen a man so lovesick in my life.”
For her part, Libby could hardly look at Tyler without smiling and blushing. Between their nights of heart-stopping passion, and the affectionate, laughing companionship of their days, she was left almost breathless. Now and then she'd notice the crew watching them with good-natured amusement, but if anyone suspected that they were doing more at night than sleeping chastely in their own beds, no hint of it was dropped.
On an evening a week before the wedding, Libby and Tyler sat on the front porch after supper, watching the sunset. He had his feet propped up on the porch railing, and a drink on his knee. Libby sat next to him, mending a rip in one of his shirts. This quiet peace and contentment seemed like a miracle to her after the winter she'd endured. Even when she'd envisioned a life with Wesley, her imagination had not shown her a picture as mellow as this.
Across the yard by the bunkhouse, Noah Bradley was showing off some tricky roping maneuvers to Joe, Hickory Cooper, and Kansas Bob Wegner. Tyler watched them, shading his eyes against the low-angled sun.
“Dr. Franklin stopped by today while you and Joe were out on the east range,” she said.
Tyler turned his head to look at her. He didn't think he'd had more than two brief conversations with Alex Franklin in the four years that the doctor had lived in Heavenly. “Yeah? What the hell did he want?”
She shrugged, snipping a length of thread from a spool. The fire of the sun turned her hair and lashes to gold. “Nothing special. He looked at Jim's arm. Then he stopped by the house to say he'll be at the wedding if no emergency comes up—he said there's really too much work for one doctor. He seems like a very nice man.”
Tyler grunted noncommittally and returned his attention to Noah's roping. Sure, nice man—let him deal with the heartache of losing patients, he told himself.
“Tyler?”
“Have you ever thought you might practice medicine again?”
His breath stopped in his chest “Libby—”
She leaned forward in her chair. “Don't get angry. I'm just curious.”
He looked at her delicate, pretty face and sighed. How could he explain it to her—the nightmares . . . waking up in cold sweats that in his dreams had been rivers of blood . . . listening to frigid winter winds that had echoed through his brain like a woman screaming. Even now, sometimes he heard it. What could he say about the cold hand that closed around his heart whenever he thought of watching helplessly while another patient died? How could he make her understand any of it? He barely understood it himself.
“I'm not angry, honey.” He drained the glass in his hand. “Once, there was nothing more important to me than being a doctor. Taking care of the land and the stock, taking care of people—those things were so interwoven, I couldn't have told you where one ended and the next began. But all of that changed when Jenna died. I'm not a doctor anymore, and I'm glad for that.” He dragged his feet off the railing and stood up. “I think I'll wander down there and show Noah a thing or two about that hooly-ann throw he's trying to make. His loop isn't big enough.”
Libby watched him as he crossed the yard. He might look more like a cowboy than a doctor—the way he walked, the lift of his head. And he might claim to prefer it that way.
But Libby wasn't so sure. He was still trying to outrun the demons that haunted him.
*~*~*
“You boys try to stay clear of that bob wire fence of Lat Egan's,” Joe warned at breakfast the next morning. “His vigilantes have nailed signs to the posts with skulls and crossbones, and 3-7-77 painted underneath. I heard in town yesterday that one of his men took a shot at the J Bar J crew after those boys wouldn't let 'em inspect their cattle for a brand. The way things are right now, it wouldn't take much to get a range war goin'.”
Tyler looked up from the coffee Libby was pouring for him at the stove. It had taken all the willpower he had to make himself get out of bed today. The temptation to lie in the linen sheets with her in his arms had been almost impossible to resist. Hearing Joe's words made him wish he'd given in to it and pulled the quilt over their heads—trouble was brewing on the plains. He could feel it.
“What does that mean?” Rory asked, loading his own coffee with three spoonfuls of sugar. “What's 3-7-77?”
“I ain't seen it around here for years now, but it stands for three feet wide, seven feet long, and seventy-seven inches deep." Joe leaned back against the wall, popping half a biscuit into his mouth.
Possum chuckled a bit nervously. "Sounds like the measurements for a grave."
“That's exactly what it means,” Tyler put in. He propped his foot on Libby's low stool and leaned his forearm on his knee. “It's a death threat. What is going on over at the One Pine? I haven't heard about rustlers in the area. Lat has water holes over there, but we've all got water.” He was about to suggest that Lattimer Egan had lost his mind altogether, but he didn't, not in front of Rory. Rory never saw his father, but respecting the ties of blood, Tyler tried not to say too many disparaging things about him when the boy was around.
Joe shook his head. “Honest to God, Tyler, I don't know. I just don't want any of our people getting shot.”
“We might have to take this up with the sheriff and some of the other ranchers around here. We've managed to avoid a range war all these years—I sure as hell don't want to see one start now.”
“Me, either.” Joe put his cup down on the table then, and put on his hat. “All right, we got a lot to do, and the sun's up. Let's get going.” He reviewed the assigned jobs for the day, then grinned at Tyler and Libby. “If you decide to join us and earn your supper, Mr. Hollins, we'll be doin' a little brandin' down by
the creek. Your fancy ropin' ability would be appreciated.”
Tyler felt his face grow warm, but he just laughed. “I'll be along in a minute.”
At the tables, last gulps of coffee were downed and Noah grabbed a biscuit to take with him. After a moment of pounding boot heels and jingling spurs, the lovers were left alone.
Libby gave him a puzzled, worried look. “Tyler, a range war?”
He opened his arms to her and enfolded her in his embrace, resting his chin on the top of her head. Her softness against his chest and the scent of her hair made him think again about sneaking back upstairs with her and closing the door. Closing out trouble, dosing out the rest of the world.
“Don't worry,” he murmured to her. “I’m beginning to believe that Lat is crazy, but we're safe. Nothing can happen to us here. He's just a bitter, mean bastard whose own life is so miserable that he wants everyone else to be miserable, too.”
She backed up and gave him a meaningful look. He nodded ruefully and kissed her. “Yeah, maybe that could have happened to me. But I was saved by an angel.”
That afternoon, after making sure that Tyler was at the corral, Libby went upstairs to her room to put some finishing touches on her wedding gown. She'd been certain to work on it only up here, and only when he was out of the house. Her dress might not be white, but that was no reason for the groom to see it a week before the ceremony.
Lifting it from the hooks in her closet, she was glad that the gown had come together so beautifully. The high neck and huge gigot sleeves made her already small waist tinier still, and the bodice came to a point on her abdomen over a circular skirt that fitted smoothly over her hips. In a way, she was glad that this dress was lavender—it would be a shame that a garment so lovely could be worn only once. Tyler had said that they might be able to get away for a trip to Helena before fall roundup. She smiled as she imagined wearing this gown to supper in a hotel dining room, with her handsome young husband sitting across the table from her.
Pulling a chair to the open window, she settled in a square of mild June sun, looking out now and then at the sea of grass that rippled in the breeze. Though she was not likely to forget the previous winter, she'd come to love this place in a way that she had never foreseen. The expanse of land and sky, the songs of red-winged blackbirds and finches, the riot of wildflowers—it was a place of wild contrasts. Just like the men it bred: tough and tender, peaceful and violent. She'd seen Tyler rope a calf and wrestle it to the ground for branding, and at night, had felt his hands caress her with infinite, wondering gentleness.
A Taste of Heaven Page 27
