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Tynan ran his hands up her arms. “Oh Chris, you are killing me. I had it easy in prison compared with this. Why did you pick me and not Prescott?”
Chris started to get off his lap but he pulled her back down. “I won’t bother you again, I assure you.”
He moved so that his face was near her neck and she could feel his soft, warm breath on her skin. “You’ll always bother me. Every time you take a breath, you bother me. And I can’t stand to see you with Prescott. Chris, I’ve never wanted anything so badly in my life as I’ve wanted you since that first night I held you. I have nearly gone insane in the last few days. I think about you all the time. I can’t even stay in the camp when you’re there because I’m afraid that I’ll do something like throw you on my horse and take you away with me.”
“But I offer myself to you and you laugh at me. You’ve done nothing but yell at me to get away from you since I first met you. I don’t understand!Canyou make love? You’re not physically impaired?”
“If you weren’t so innocent, you’d know the answer to that right now from where you’re sitting on my lap.” He began to bite her earlobe and Chris just about melted into him. “If I make love to you,” he said, moving down her neck, “I…”
“Yes,” she whispered, her head back so she could enjoy his touch more.
“If I make love to you, your father will send me back to prison.”
“Oh,” Chris murmured, not really hearing him. Then she sat up and looked at him. “My father willwhat?”
“He’ll send me back to jail. Look, Chris, I didn’t want to tell you this and I really tried to get around it, but the truth is, you have been declared off limits to me.”
She drew back from him, moving off his lap. “I want to hear the whole story.”
With a sigh, Ty leaned back on his arm and looked at her. “I was in jail on a life sentence but your father got me out to rescue his daughter. When you said that he had enough money and power to get what he wanted, you were right. He got me out but he holds the papers and he’s made the rules: I touch you and I go back to prison.”
“Well, we shall see about that,” Chris said. “My father has been giving me orders all my life and I’ve only obeyed half of them—if that. We’ll just go back to him and tell him that he can’t do that to us.”
Ty took her hands in his. “Chris, he’s right. He doesn’t want his only child to marry somebody like me. I don’t even know how to treat a good girl like you. I don’t know how to live in a house like that big one of your father’s or even how to stay in one place for very long at a time. I’m not husband material and your father knew it. He didn’t want me doing anything to his daughter short of marriage and we both knew I wasn’t the marrying kind. Do you understand?”
“No,” she said softly, looking into his eyes. “I love you and—”
“No you don’t. You’ve just been too busy with your newspaper over the years to notice men and now you’re worried that you’re getting old and you think you’re in love with the first man you see.”
“Then why aren’t I in love with Mr. Prescott?”
He leaned back, winked and grinned at her. “I’m better looking. There’s no competition.”
“I think you’re right,” she said, moving out of the shelter. “I believe Ihavemade an error.”
He caught her shoulder and pulled her back inside. “Don’t get angry, Chris. Under other circumstances, I’d love to climb into bed with you, but I don’t want to go back to that hellhole and I don’t want to be unfair to you. You deserve a man who’s husband material. I’m not. I hope you can understand.”
“I think I understand better than you think,” she said coolly. “I want to apologize for my forwardness, for following you, as you’ve asked me not to do, and for imposing myself on you. I will try to do better in the future and not give you cause to fear that you will have to return to prison because I have put you in an impossible situation. Is that what you wanted to hear? May I go now?”
“I think you’re angry with me. I didn’t mean—”
“I am angry with myself,” she interrupted. “And deeply embarrassed. I’ve never thrown myself at a man before and I can assure you that I will never do it again. You won’t have any more problems from me, Mr. Tynan. Now, I’d like to go back to my tent and take a nap, if that’s all right with you.”
He frowned. “Yes, of course. Chris, I really do appreciate the offer, I mean when you thought that physically I couldn’t—”
“We shall never know, will we?” she said as she left the shelter.
Chapter Seven
By the time they entered the little town at the edge of the rain forest, Chris had cried all the tears she could cry. She had done a marvelous job of staying away from Tynan. No matter what he said to entice her to stop and talk, she’d ignored him.
Nor did she spend much time with Asher. She did what work was required to keep the camp running and nothing else.
Tynan, after a day of attempting to talk to her, began to stay away from the camp more and more often until, at the last, he was the shadowy figure he had been at the beginning of the trip.
“This has not become the joyous trip I’d hoped for,” Asher said with sadness and confusion in his voice. Chris didn’t say anything. All she wanted was to get away from the place where she’d made such a fool of herself.
It was still morning when they pulled into the little town at the foot of the rain forest. The place was busy with shoppers, wagons being loaded, cowboys strolling about, and a few women stopping and talking to each other. Most people halted when they saw the strangers come into town.
