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“Don’t hold your breath. A week from now, I’m going to be free. I won’t have the responsibility of taking care of some spoiled little rich girl who thinks she can have whatever—or whoever—she wants merely by asking. I’m going to befree,you hear me? Not you or anybody else is going to take away my freedom.”
“Stop it, both of you,” Pilar said. “You sound like my two boys. Look, we have to spend the next few days together so why don’t we try to get along? Ty, you’re probably angry because you haven’t had any sleep and your leg hurts. Why don’t you lay your head in Chris’s lap and she’ll tell us a story? I’d offer my lap but I plan to stretch out here and sleep myself.”
Chris didn’t look at Tynan and there was a long moment of silence. “All right,” she said at last. “Maybe we do need some rest. You may use my lap.”
“Only if you swear this won’t be taken as a marriage proposal.”
“If you were one of my children,” Pilar said, “I’d smack you for that. Now lay down there and behave yourself.”
Chris leaned back against a tree and Tynan lay his head in her lap. For a moment, they were very stiff, touching as little as possible.
“I read a book in French last year,Le Comte de Monte Cristo,I could tell that story,” Chris said.
“Only if the people don’t get married and live happily ever after,” Tynan said, his head turned, his eyes closed.
“It’s a story about greed, betrayal, infidelity, murder and revenge. I think it might be your autobiography.’
“Sounds all right,” he said, snuggling his head in her lap.
“I’m sure the French nation will be pleased that you approve.” She started her story, telling of the revenge that began over two men in love with the same woman.
“Figures,” Ty grunted, but said nothing else while Chris’s voice began to soften as she told the story.
Within minutes, she heard the soft sounds of Pilar’s breathing as she slept in the drowsy afternoon. Tynan also seemed to be asleep, and, feeling safe, she began to stroke his hair back from his face. He looked so young with his face relaxed. There was a dirty bandage on his leg, dirty from his constant moving about the forest, showing through the hole in his trousers that the bullet had made.
She kept on with her story, even though she knew that both her listeners were asleep, but she liked stories and she liked to tell them. At the tragic end of the story, she stopped, her hand on the side of Tynan’s face, her fingers buried in the curls of his dark hair, and listened to the birds.
“I liked that,” he said softly into the stillness.
“I thought you were asleep,” she said and started to move her hand away.
He caught it in his own. “No, I wanted to hear the story. A store clerk told me that at about the time I was born, the miner sold him a book. I always wondered if it was a book from my mother and, if it was, what it was. I’ve always liked stories.” Idly, he began to kiss her fingertips, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to do.
“Will you stop that?”
“Chris, if I were going to get married, I swear, you’d be the first woman I’d consider. In fact, thinking about living with you is the most tempting offer I’ve ever had. You’re pretty, enthusiastic in bed—”
She gave a sharp look at Pilar but she seemed to be sound asleep.
“And you’re the most interesting woman I’ve ever met. I’ve talked to you and told you things I’ve never told anybody, but, the truth is, I’m just not marriage material. I don’t think I could stay in one place for very long—that is, if I ever get out of jail where your father would throw me if I dared think I was going to marry his precious daughter. Don’t you see that it just wouldn’t work?”
Chris didn’t let the anger she felt show. It seemed that men could rationalize anything. He didn’t want to get married—was probably terrified of the idea—so he tried to tell her that he couldn’t because he was only thinking of her. “I understand completely,” she said with sympathy in her voice. “You don’t want to get married and I refuse to sleep with a man who won’t marry me. We’ll leave it at that.”
He turned his head to look up at her. “But, Chris, shouldn’t we take what happiness we can find? When we can find it? Before we’re separated forever and never see each other again?”
She gave him her sweetest smile. “Not on your life.”
For a moment, she thought he was going to start yelling at her again, but there was just the hint of a smile on his full lips. “You can’t blame a man for trying.” He turned his head again and resumed kissing her fingertips. “By my calculations, we have at least four more days before Prescott returns with your father. Who knows what will happen in that time?”
“I know what willnothappen,” she said smugly, but Tynan didn’t seem to believe her as he began applying his teeth to her sensitive palm.
•••
“There you are, old man,” Asher Prescott said as he readjusted the smelly man’s bindings for the third time. There was a part of Asher that was bothered by what they’d done: they’d taken the man from his home and now he was being bound hand and foot, yet the old man had done nothing to merit such abuse. So, when the old man had complained that the ropes were too tight, Asher had had pity on him and loosened them.
“I’m going to get some sleep now,” Asher said, rubbing his eyes. He’d been in the saddle for almost two days and he knew that if he didn’t rest, he’d never make it to Del Mathison’s house.
With one last look of sympathy at the old man who huddled against a tree, his little dark eyes looking suspicious, Asher settled down to sleep, using his saddle as a pillow.
