Daisy

by Greenwood, Leigh

  Zac wasn't about to be taken in by a confession that didn't sound in the least bit contrite. "You don't have to sound so proud of yourself."

  "I'm not."

  "You act like it."

  "Put the mules up," Tyler said. "Be sure to rub them down well."

  "I'll see to the mules, but I mean to find out why she took off. She can kill herself if she wants, but she's got no business trying to get you killed, too."

  "Get moving," Tyler said, a sharp edge to his voice.

  "You knew he'd come after you, didn't you? Even if it meant he might die in a snowstorm." Zac snatched the reins of the two mules from Tyler and stalked off. "You're not only selfish and stubborn as hell, you're stupid."

  Zac's censure forced Daisy to face the enormity of what she had done. She supposed she knew Tyler would follow her, but it hadn't occurred to her that anything would happen to him. He seemed much too big to be in danger. She resented being called stupid because she suspected she had been.

  "Don't pay any attention to Zac," Tyler said as he started toward the cabin. "He was just afraid he was going to have to cook his own dinner."

  Daisy didn't smile. She preceded Tyler inside, painfully aware she was going to have to find some way to apologize. She wanted to retreat to her corner, to hide behind the curtain until she felt able to face him again, but she knew she had to do it now if she was ever to do it at all.

  She looked at Tyler out of the corner of her eyes. He was taking off his heavy clothes, putting up his rifle.

  "Did you find a deer?"

  "No."

  "Why not?"

  "Too cold, I guess."

  He wasn't going to help her. Okay, she could do it on her own. "I didn't mean for you to follow me. I didn't mean to put you in danger."

  "I know."

  "I thought I could get through. I wanted to go home."

  "I know."

  "Don't keep saying that in that calm, tolerant voice. Yell at me or something."

  "I already did." Tyler looked at her out of veiled eyes. "You don't have to feel guilty."

  "Yes, I do."

  "Okay, if you want to."

  Daisy stomped her foot. "I don't want to. I want to hit you for making me so mad. I have to apologize, and you're making it virtually impossible."

  "I don't want your apology," he said.

  "Then you can go on being angry at me."

  "Do you want me to be angry with you?"

  "You ought to be. Zac is."

  "He's just afraid he'll--"

  "I know, afraid he'll have to cook is own dinner."

  "I was going to say he was afraid he'd have to rescue both of us."

  Daisy stopped. "Would he?"

  "Of course."

  "Why? You two say terrible things to each other. You practically buried him in the snow yesterday."

  "He's my brother."

  Daisy thought about that for a moment. "Then I endangered two people besides myself." She sat down at the table and didn't speak again until Zac returned.

  "I want to apologize to both of you," she said before Zac could open his mouth. "It was stupid of me to attempt to escape. I wouldn't have done it if I'd had known it would put either of you in danger."

  Zac's gaze cut to Tyler, then back to Daisy. "Why did you run away?"

  "I was angry."

  "You headed out into a blizzard because you were angry?" Zac asked, incredulous.

  "Tyler refused to help me find out who killed my father."

  "I told you I couldn't do as well as the sheriff."

  "It's not that. You made it sound so unimportant, like it didn't matter. How would you feel if you didn't know?"

  "There's another reason, isn't there?" Tyler asked.

  Daisy looked surprised at his question, but she didn't reply.

  "What else is she mad about?" Zac asked.

  "What is it?" Tyler asked. "You don't have to be afraid to tell us."

  "I don't feel comfortable here," Daisy confessed after some hesitation. "You don't want me."

  "Is that all?" Zac asked, disgusted.

  "I'm a lot of trouble," Daisy interrupted. "I've taken your bed, half your room. You wouldn't have to go hunting for more food if it weren't for me."

  "I didn't mean to make you feel like that," Tyler said. "It's just I don't know how to make people feel welcome."

  "You've tried," Daisy said, "but I don't belong here."

  "It was a little awkward at first," Tyler agreed. "Zac and I don't have any sisters, so we don't know how to treat females, but we're glad of the company."

  Zac looked at his brother like he'd suddenly lost his mind. "I'm going to be sick if I listen to much more of this." He grabbed his coat. "When you're in your right mind again, let me know."

  "Zac doesn't like me," Daisy said after Zac slammed the door behind him.

  "Zac can't stop thinking of himself long enough to feel strongly about anybody else."

  "But he was prepared to go after you if you got lost going after me."

  "We're a strange family, but we look after each other."

  "Is that the reason you're looking after me?"

  He had thought so. Randolph men always protected women. Any man would. But her presence had caused him to experience so many new feelings, he couldn't be sure why he did anything. From his fascination with freckles to his never-flagging lust, she had rocked him right down to his foundations.

  He could still feel a lingering tension from riding double. He could remember every curve of her body; he could still feel her warmth and softness. It had been all he could to do remember he was rescuing her from a blizzard. There were times when he wasn't even aware it was snowing.

  "I'm looking after you because you needed help, and I was the one to find you."

  She turned away, displeased with his answer. No more than he. The words didn't begin to touch on the welter of feelings that kept erupting unbidden within him. She had touched something inside him, something he had buried more than twenty years ago. It upset his balance in a way he couldn't explain. All his life he had refused to feel. Now that he did, he didn't know what to do about it.

  He watched her disappear behind her curtain. He used to think she was only mildly pretty. Now even the bandage couldn't dim her loveliness in his eyes. He could see some hard case, some shiftless skunk, gazing into those brown eyes and promising anything just to be able to look into them every day. He didn't think Daisy would be taken in, but he couldn't be sure.

  He'd have to make sure she was in good hands when he took her to Albuquerque. That shouldn't take long. Then he could go back to prospecting. June seventeenth loomed over his head.

  * * * * *

  Toby lifted his coat and turned his backside to the fire. "I say we forget about them until all this snow melts," he said. The three men had taken refuge in a miner's cabin. The miner, unwilling or unable to give them the information they wanted, was tied up in the shed.

  "At least we ought to wait here until it stops snowing," Ed said. He held his hands out to the fire, which was just beginning to thaw out his nearly frozen limbs.

  "We can't afford to wait," Frank said as he paced the cramped, untidy interior of the cabin. "What if they decide to go down to Albuquerque?"

  "What if they do?" Toby countered.

  "They'll notify the sheriff."

  "So what. Nobody's coming up here in weather like this."

  "She can describe me. The sheriff'll be on the lookout when I came down."

  Toby climbed into the prospector's bunk, pulled the covers up to his chin. "If you got to worry about something, worry about what we're gonna eat. I ain't seen no game in three days."

  "There's some stuff in here," Ed said, rummaging around on the shelves.

  "It won't last long."

  "I ain't got time to worry about your stomach."

  "You'd better," Toby said, comfortably settled. "It was your idea to get us up here. If it was up to me, I'd been snug in Bernalillo. A couple of
times I thought it'd be our bodies that were bleached bones come spring."

  "Don't worry," Ed said when he saw Frank was unhappy. "If we can't get out of these mountains, she can't neither. We'll get her yet."

  But Frank had a bad feeling about this. He had missed twice when it was easy. Now they were caught at ten thousand feet in a killer snow storm. Like always, things just seemed to keep going wrong. And his damned uncle and cousin weren't helping. Trouble was they had no ambition. They didn't see anything wrong with being a cowhand.

  But Frank had bigger ideas for himself. And this job was his first step up. He didn't mean to let it slip away.

  * * * * *

  The next day dawned bright and sunny. But the cabin was blocked in by an extra foot of snow.

  "If it stays like this all day, it'll melt a few inches," Tyler announced after coming in from taking care of the mules.

  Zac shuffled a deck of cards. "Yeah, but it might snow again."

  "Not for a day or two."

  "Then can I go home?" Daisy asked.

  "When that snow melts, every stream between here and the Rio Grande will be a boiling cataract. It'll be another day or two after that before you can leave."

  Daisy was feeling the strain of confinement. She was also feeling overpowered by her sense of guilt. It all had to do with Tyler, but she wasn't going to admit her feelings for him were so strong they had caused her to do something that crazy. She didn't want to admit she had run away to escape his disapproval. Nor would she admit she didn't mind so much being here anymore. That raised too many questions she couldn't answer.

  She longed to see Adora, to ask if she had ever felt this way. But after living such a sheltered and uneventful life, she doubted Adora would understand the conflicting feelings which raged in her breast. She knew Adora's brother wouldn't. Guy Cochrane had always admired Daisy for her calm, level-headed approach to life. He would never be able to understand the feelings that had driven her to flee into a snowstorm.

  Neither could Daisy, but she couldn't concentrate enough to figure them out, not with Tyler and Zac almost within arms’ reach. She needed more privacy than she could find behind her blanket. She needed to be safe in Adora's bedroom, miles from Tyler's disconcerting presence.

  She was also bored by the long hours of inactivity. She was so restless she couldn't sit still to read. She had to do something or go crazy. "I have an idea," she announced. "Let's tell our secret dreams."

  "Our what?" Zac asked.

  "Our secret dreams. It's one of the things Mother and I used to do on dull days."

  "I don't have any."

  "Sure you do. Everybody does."

  "They're not secret because he's told everybody," Tyler explained.

  "He hasn't told me."

  "Why would I want to?"

  "Because you're bored. You've dealt yourself a top hand and you didn't even noticed."

  Zac looked at his cards, shrugged, laid them down. "I want to go to New Orleans and be a gambler on a river boat," he said.

  Daisy's smile disappeared. "I'm not going to do this if you're going to make fun of me."

  "I'm not making fun."

  "Yes, you are. Nobody wants to do anything as stupid as that."

  "I tried to tell him that," Tyler said from across the cabin. "So did George."

  "It's not stupid," Zac protested, irritated. "Prospecting for gold you'll never find or staying in this godforsaken territory, marrying a dirt-poor rancher and raising a dozen kids -- now that's stupid."

  "Okay," Daisy said, willing to placate Zac, "you want to be a river boat gambler. What then?"

  "What do you mean what then?"

  "There's got to be something else. You can't want to do nothing but gamble."

  "What else should I want to do?"

  Daisy couldn't believe Zac was serious. Instinctively she looked to Tyler.

  "He's telling the truth," Tyler confirmed. "His only ambition is to become a successful parasite."

  "A spectacularly successful one," Zac amended, not the least abashed.

  "What about you?" Daisy asked Tyler.

  "I don't want anything."

  "Yes, you do," Zac said.

  "What?" Daisy asked, but Tyler wouldn't speak.

  "He wants to build fancy hotels," Zac informed her. "He's up here looking for gold to pay for them."

  Chapter Nine

  Tyler closed his book with a snap, an involuntary action he immediately regretted. He would have preferred Daisy not know how much Zac's words irritated him. Neither did he want to explain his dream to her. He wondered how, in such a short space of time, she had come to expect to be allowed into the private world of his mind. He wondered how he had come to consider letting her in.

  Daisy was watching him, waiting expectantly. He remained silent.

  "Aren't you going to say anything?"

  "What do you want to know?"

  "Where you're going to build your hotels. What they'll be like. I love hotels."

  Tyler knew what he wanted right down to the last detail, yet he was reluctant to tell Daisy. If he did, it wouldn't be his dream anymore. Yet it was pointless to remain silent. Nothing short of strangulation would prevent Zac from telling everything he knew. "I want to build hotels in Denver and San Francisco every bit as luxurious as anything in New York."

  Daisy looked shocked. "I imagine a plain, clean room is all most people would want."

  "Tyler doesn't care about most people," Zac explained. "He means to please himself."

  "But what if nobody else wants the same thing?" Daisy asked, apparently unable to believe anyone would build an entire hotel just to satisfy himself.

  "They can stay somewhere else," Tyler said.

  "But that's crazy," Daisy exclaimed. "You'll go broke in a month."

  Tyler felt like he'd been dashed with a bucket of ice water.

  "Uh oh, now you've made him mad," Zac said.

  "Have I?" Daisy asked.

  "No," Tyler replied, but he was afraid he gave the lie to his denial by asking, "How does living in The Centennial or Post's Exchange Hotel a few days a year make you an expert on what people in Denver and San Francisco might want?"

  Now it was Daisy's turn to get angry. "I may not know anything about rich people in big cities," she replied, cheeks flamed with embarrassment, "but I know a great deal about people who build castles in the air. My father did that, and he never made a cent. The same thing will happen to you."

  Tyler wanted to get up and walk out of the cabin. He wanted to be as far from Zac's wide-eyed expectation and Daisy's scornful earnestness as possible. He had tried to explain to George why he wanted the hotels, why he needed to earn his place in the family. He guessed he hadn't done a good job. He hadn't been able to make George understand that after being described by his father as being unworthy of the family, being born a Randolph wasn't enough to make him feel he deserved his share of the family fortune. Besides, the others had done something to earn their portion.

  George had voted to give him the money, but the others had refused. Tyler didn't need to be rejected by Daisy as well.

  "What would you do?" he asked Daisy.

  "Me!"

  "You seem to think you know how hotels ought to be run."

  "I never said that, but I do know people want hot baths, good food, and comfortable beds. If you want them to have anything else, you'll to have to convince them it's worth paying for."

  "What would you suggest I do?"

  "I don't know," Daisy admitted. "I doubt I've seen half the things you're talking about."

  "Then I suggest you not criticize until you have."

  Daisy looked so shocked Tyler was sorry he'd spoken so sharply, but she had no right to judge him. It was obvious she wasn't rejecting his idea of a hotel, just the kind he wanted. She was rejecting him. That hurt even more because he liked Daisy and wanted her to like him.

  "We've both told you what we want," he said, forcing a weak smile to his lips. "Now it's yo
ur turn."

  Tyler noticed Daisy's hesitation. He wondered if she was reluctant to tell him what she really wanted or if she was simply reluctant to tell him anything after the way he'd acted.

  "Come on," Zac urged. "This whole thing was your idea."

  Daisy still looked uncertain when she said, "I want to live in a house like my mother grew up in."

  "Is that all?" Zac asked, disgusted.

  "When Mama used to fall into a melancholy, she would tell me about it. She made it sound wonderful."

  "What could be so wonderful about a house?" Zac wanted to know.

  "She lived in a big house in Philadelphia with trees and grass and flowers everywhere. Granddaddy worked for a bank. They were important people and had lots of friends. Summer evenings they'd sit on the porch. People would stop and talk until late at night. Mama had a room to herself and never had to clean or wash or cook. Granddaddy used to take them to all kinds of wonderful places in the summer. Mama had dozens of young men who came to courting, wanting to take her places, to buy her things." She sighed. "My mother was extremely beautiful. Lots of men wanted to marry her."

  "Then why did she marry your pa?"

  "Because she fell in love with him," Daisy said, her eyes flashing angrily.

  "That was a mistake."

  "What was?"

  "Falling in love."

  "Why do you say that?"

  "She left all that to come to New Mexico, didn't she?"

  "You'll have to excuse Zac," Tyler said. "He's never loved anybody but himself, so he wouldn't understand."

  "You're no different," Zac snapped. "You don't even like your own family."

  "You still haven't told us your most secret dream," Tyler said to Daisy.

  She flushed. "W-why do you s-say that?"

  "You hesitated a minute ago. Just now you stammered and turned pink. What do you really want?"

  "I just told you, " Daisy insisted.

  "But that's not what you want most of all. That was the game you asked us to play, wasn't it?"

  Daisy threw Tyler a resentful look.

  "What else could a woman want besides money, position, and some rich man to fall in love with her?" Zac asked.

  "Freedom," Daisy said. The word burst out like a balloon held under water. "The right to run my own life."