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“Sometimes you need to get into clothes real fast. There now, all done. I’ll pick you up tomorrow.”
“Not on your life. Frankly, Mr. Tynan, this has gone far enough. You don’t want to go to jail and I’d like to get home to my father. I think that tomorrow we should start south toward my home.”
“We can wait one more day. Look, Chris, you’re not going to make a fool of me in front of this town—and especially not in front of Sayers. You told him we were engaged and I want at least a day of acting like we’re engaged. I’d like to show these people that I can…”
“Can get a ‘good’ girl like me?” she asked softly. She put her hand on his chest. “Tynan, perhaps I’ve misled you. Perhaps it was the rain forest, the feeling of being isolated, something that made me lose my sense of proportion, but now that we’re back to civilization, I think we should stay away from each other. After all, you would have to go back to prison if you touched me.”
He took her upper arm in his hand and bent his face close to hers. “Right now Sayers is in a saloon telling half the people in this town that Nola Dallas is going to marry the murderer. Andyou’rethe one who gave him that idea.”
She smiled at him in such a way that he took a step backward. “Tomorrow is Sunday. How about church in the morning and I’ve been invited to the town picnic later. Shall we appear as an engaged couple? Just for the day, of course, and on Monday we can start the journey home. And then we’ll no longer be engaged. Does that suit you?”
“Church?” he asked and even in the darkness, she could see his face turning pale.
“Church,” she said firmly and slipped her arm through his. “We’d better get out of this alleyway or my reputation will be ruined, engaged or not. I’ll see you the first thing in the morning.” They were almost back at the hotel. “Cheer up, Mr. Tynan, I’ll make sure that you enjoy the day. Goodnight, dear,” she said to him as she smiled at a passerby. “You may kiss my cheek,” she whispered, “and don’t unbutton so much as a cuff, if you don’t mind.”
Still too stunned to speak, Ty bent and kissed her cheek, then looked up to see three women standing in the hotel lobby looking at him with disapproving eyes. On impulse, he grabbed Chris about the waist and kissed her quite thoroughly.
When he released her, Chris had to catch a chair back to keep from falling.
“See you in the morning, sweetheart,” Ty said with a wink, replaced his hat and left the hotel.
Chris tried to regain her composure. “Oh, my, but he does get carried away,” she said, smoothing her dress front. “Goodnight,” she said to the women who were watching her with their mouths hanging open.
Chris whistled all the way up the stairs.
Chapter Nine
Asher Prescott was waiting for her outside her room. His face was grim. “I feel I must talk to you.”
“I am rather tired and I…” she began then stopped. When a man got it into his head that a woman needed lecturing, it was just better to let him get it out of his system. Chris had learned years ago that “teaching” a woman seemed to make a man feel much better. “Yes, what is it?” She stood there patiently and waited.
“I don’t think you’re conducting yourself properly and I believe you’re losing your sense of proportion. I know you like to champion the underdog but sometimes the underdog isn’t deserving of a champion. I believe, Chris, you should know something about the man whose cause you are fighting.
“When he was sixteen he was already known as a gunslinger. He killed not one but two men in a street shootout. By the time he was twenty, he had more enemies than most people have in a lifetime. Did you know that for a while he rode with the Chanry Gang? Once, he was caught and sentenced to hang but the gang blew up the jail and got him out. He’s taken on jobs that were suicidal, walking alone into towns against twenty outlaws.”
Asher began to warm to his subject. “And the women, Chris! Hundreds of women! To somebody like him, a woman isn’t someone to love, she’s someone to bed, then leave. You talk of love for this man, well, he doesn’t even know the meaning of the word. He’s a no-good wastrel and he’ll never be anything else.”
Chris didn’t say a word, just stood there and looked at him.
“You’re talking of marrying him but I don’t think you understand what marriage is. It’s the day in day out of living together. This Tynan can be charming when he wants to but tonight he was morose and sullen. He can’t talk, he knows nothing about civilized society, and that woman who everyone says is probably his mother…. Well, Chris, I can’t believe you even agreed to eat at the same table with her. I for one—”
He stopped himself then smiled at her fondly. “You know what I think? I think this Tynan is interesting because he’s a mystery. You solve the mystery and you’ll find he’s just another run-of-the-mill, cheap gunslinger. What you need, Chris,” he said softly, taking a step toward her, “is a husband from your own background. A husband and children.”
She gave him a wide-eyed look. “Someone like you, Mr. Prescott?”
“I find you averyattractive woman, Chris.”
As he leaned forward, his eyelids closing as if to kiss her, Chris opened the bedroom door and slipped inside, closing it firmly behind her. “Kissthat,Mr. Paid-to-Marry-Me Prescott.”
She went to bed thinking of the coming picnic.
The next morning, Tynan was waiting for her in the hotel lobby wearing a clean suit, leaning against a window frame reading a newspaper.
“Good morning,” she said, smiling up at him.
He smiled too when he looked at her, but he looked as if he were smiling through adversity.
Chris pulled on her gloves. “Are you ready to go?”
