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“Miss Mathison, I’m sorry about this afternoon. I shouldn’t have lost my temper. It’s just that I think we should keep this trip on an employee, employer basis. As I pointed out to you, I haven’t been around women for a while and there are things that are difficult for me.”
“Do I make things difficult for you?” she whispered in such a way that there was no doubt of her meaning. She hoped he’d say she was making his life hell.
He rocked back on his heels and grinned at her again. “Not anything that I can’t handle. Now, be a good girl and go to sleep.”
“No good-night kisses?” she asked, a little angry at his laughing at her.
“Not from me,” he said and she smiled because there was horror in his voice. As he walked away, she turned over on her stomach and went to sleep.
The first thing that greeted Chris the next morning was the sight of Tynan bending over the fire. His hair was damp and there were fresh fish frying in a skillet.
“Did you go fishing?” she asked, smiling at him.
He mumbled something but she couldn’t hear what it was before he stood and walked to the horses.
All morning Tynan stayed away from her and the three of them rode in silence on the trail.
When they stopped at noon to eat, Tynan quickly told Asher to take Chris with him to gather firewood.
Asher took Chris’s elbow and half propelled her toward the path they’d just traveled.
“I hear your father is in shipping, too,” Asher said for the second time before Chris heard him.
“Yes, he is,” she said distractedly. “Canning, shipping, cattle, a couple of saw mills, anything he can get his hands on.”
“Yet you left it all to run away to New York to become a newspaper reporter. But now you’re back.”
“Not by choice. I plan to return to New York as soon as I get back to my father’s house.”
“Ah, I see. Somehow, I thought you had other plans.”
“Such as?” she asked, turning to look at him. “Did my father tell you that I had other plans?”
“Only that you were ready to settle down, that you were still young enough and he had hopes that you—”
“Young enough for what?” she interrupted.
“Why, to start a family I would imagine.”
Chris bit her lower lip to keep from replying hastily. “No, I don’t think I’m over the hill yet, even at my advanced age. I assume women can still bear children at my age.”
“I didn’t mean to give offense.”
Quickly, Chris looked at him and a wave of guilt ran through her. Here she was walking in the forest with a handsome young man who was trying to be polite and she, because of some imagined infatuation with a man she barely knew, was being almost rude to him. She smiled at Asher. “I’m sure that you didn’t, Mr. Prescott. How did you meet my father?”
Asher returned her smile. “He and my father were friends and did some business together. I saw you once when you were a little girl. You were with your mother. I thought she was the prettiest woman I’d ever seen.”
“So did I.”
He began to gather firewood from the ground, making a stack of it at her feet.
“And why did my father choose you to go on this rescue mission?” She also picked up a few pieces of wood and added them to the pile.
“I think he took who he could get. There aren’t many men my age who have no business, and, after working for myself for so many years, I can’t seem to settle down to just being an employee.”
“I know how you feel. My father continues to tell me what to do and how to do it, even sending men after me when I don’t obey him.”
“Yes, but you’re a—” Asher took one look at Chris’s sparkling eyes and stopped. “I almost put my foot in it that time, didn’t I?”
