Texas Rose TH2 (13 page)

Sometime later, with appetites nearly satiated, they negotiated the uneasy path of conversation.

"You promised explanations," Evie reminded Tyler as he refilled his glass with warm beer.

Tyler sipped the liquid and contemplated the persistent woman seated across from him. He knew she couldn't be much more than twenty, but at that age he had been a man grown. The war did that to people. He wondered what it was that had turned this beautiful child into a woman so young. He'd certainly had a hand in it, but he had only stolen the last vestige of innocence. Evie Peyton hadn't been a true innocent for a long time.

"I have a foul temper," he answered casually.

"I noticed." Evie waited.

Tyler set the glass down and frowned. "What do you want me to say? Ben's my best and only friend. We grew up together. He taught me to fish and ride. He was supposed to be my slave, but he was closer to me than my brothers. They were a lot older and always about their own business. Ben's only business was me."

"So you yell at him when he gets shot?"

Tyler moved uncomfortably in his chair. "He had no business risking his life for anyone. He doesn't even want to be here. He has family back in Natchez."

The door opened and shut behind them, but neither noticed until someone kicked the chair between them. Daniel stumbled over a loose floorboard as Ben draped his long form into the chair.

"Saw the two of you go out. Took you so long to come back, thought maybe we ought to come pry one of you off the ceiling. Pardon us if we're intruding." Ben helped himself to the pitcher and Tyler's glass while Daniel maneuvered into a chair across from him.

Daniel sent Evie a nervous glance, but she ignored it while daintily wiping her fingers on her handkerchief since there seemed a dire dearth of table linens.

"Not at all, Mr. Benjamin." Evie sent Tyler a cold glance. "Since we've never been properly introduced, 1 assume that's the appropriate address?"

"Benjamin Wilkerson the Third, spelled out and not with Roman numerals," Tyler intoned with years of practice. "If there ever was one born to be an upstart darky you found him."

Ben grinned and folded his arms across his chest. "My ma believed I was meant for better things."

Tyler shouted for another pitcher of beer and more glasses. Since they were the only patrons in the place, it shouldn't have been a difficult request, but no one answered his call. With a wry look to Ben, he shrugged and rose. "Excuse me, ladies, gentlemen. I have a bad habit that I'm about to indulge in. Go on without me."

Ben rolled his eyes and looked resigned. Understanding that smoking a cheroot wasn't the habit he had in mind, Evie watched with a degree of nervousness as Tyler headed for the rear of the cafe. She was beginning to learn a few things about Tyler Monteigne, and one of them was the error of considering his casual grace as laziness.

He disappeared into the kitchen, and a moment later there was a loud outburst having to do with "damned niggers" and "not in my place," followed by a slamming noise, the tinkle of broken glassware, and a thump.

A few minutes later Tyler emerged dusting off his frock coat. The young boy who had served them earlier came rushing after him with a tray of beer and glasses. The look on his face was more astonishment than anger, and he set the tray out without a hint of resentment. Giving the table's occupants a look of curiosity, he hurried away without a word.

Tyler settled back into his chair and helped himself to a fresh glass. "Benjamin was his mother's third boy. The other two died early, and both were named Benjamin. She was a damned persistent woman, just like some others I know."

He smiled beatifically at Evie's astounded expression.

She recovered rapidly. "Tyler Monteigne, you are not only a liar, a cheat, and a donkey, but a man of rare perception. You were telling me why you were yelling at Mr. Wilkerson."

Daniel spluttered in his first drink of beer at Evie's famous two- pronged thrust.

Tyler shrugged and held his gaze on her. "I spent three years in a Yankee prison, Miss Peyton. I was seventeen years old when I went in and twenty when I came out. They would have carried me out in a wooden box if it hadn't been for Ben. He found me, joined the Union army, and got himself stationed at the prison until the war was over. He told them he couldn't see well enough to shoot a gun, but he was real good with his fists, and they believed him and put him where he requested. Do you have any idea how difficult that was?"

"And to this day the damned fool thinks I did it for him," Ben grumped as he sipped his beer. "I told you he was real pretty but not too bright."

Tyler grinned. "I'm not so dumb that I don't know you were after my plantation. Thought you almost had it, didn't you?"

Ben shrugged. "Worked well for a while. You were the only one left to inherit and if you had to sell it for back taxes, can't rightly see why it couldn't go to me. That Yankee captain thought my offer was damned funny. Wouldn't have worked if you'd been dead."

Daniel interrupted this obviously rehearsed routine. "You're saying that Tyler had to sell his plantation because of back taxes and Ben bought it? I knew the Freedman's Bureau was saying they were going to give every slave forty acres and forty dollars or some such idiocy but they never did. How can a slave buy a plantation?"

"Ben's a bigger card cheat than I ever was," Tyler said. "He cleaned those Yankee soldiers out for nigh on to three years. The taxes weren't all that much but after being in prison, I didn't have a red cent, and they wouldn't give me time to earn any. The Ridge was too tempting a prize."

"All right. I give up. So what happened? Why isn't Ben running the plantation right now and making you work in the kitchen or something?" Caught up in the story, Evie momentarily forgot her grievances. Ben and Tyler were unlikely companions, but they were as close to friends as she and Daniel had out here. It suddenly struck her that in the dime novels, Pecos Martin always had a sidekick.

It was Ben's turn to shrug. "I didn't have all that much money. All the people who worked the plantation pooled their resources, so we all owned it. That was our down fall: too many chiefs and not any Indians. Everybody wanted to move into the big house and sip lemonade and nobody wanted to work the fields. It was like giving a bunch of children a chance to play dress up. Some of us tried, but the times were against us. I don't know nothin' about cotton. I'm a horse trainer.

"We didn't keep the cotton clean. It got picked too late. And nobody wanted to buy it when we got it to town. Even the Yankee carpetbaggers wouldn't buy from darkies. Not that the crop was much good, but they could have given us something. Tyler had to take it down to New Orleans to unload it. By the time he got back, Dorset had forced the place into auction and bought it himself. He was the military commander by then, and we were still under martial law. There wasn't nothing nobody could do."

"So Ben and I duded ourselves up in fine clothes with the proceeds from the cotton and went to Natchez. End of story."

Tyler shoved his chair back and rose from the table, offering his arm to Evie as he did so. It was evident he didn't mean to express his feelings about the whole situation, and Evie was beginning to think she really didn't want to know. She had evidence enough of what happened when Tyler Monteigne gave vent to his feelings. She wasn't prepared to experience that holocaust again. She took his arm as coolly as he offered it and nodded to Ben.

"It's been a pleasure, Mr. Wilkerson. Don't tell Daniel too many tales; he tends to believe them." As she strolled out on Tyler's arm, she could hear Ben chuckling behind them. She liked to leave men laughing.

She threw Tyler an anxious look. He wasn't laughing. He wasn't even smiling. And he hadn't said anything about going away.

Her stomach knotted as she realized she wasn't certain whether she was better off having him stay and help her find out what happened to her parents or having him go away and never reminding her again of what had happened between them. Both alternatives had an element of danger—was she better off with him or without him?

As they entered the hotel lobby and she disengaged her hand to properly return to her room alone, Tyler answered her questions without their being asked. Catching her hand in a firm grip and fastening her with a steely gaze, he said, "It's your turn, Miss Peyton. I'll have the truth from you before I leave this town. Would you prefer to do it in your room or mine?"

Chapter 10

Tyler wanted her to tell him a story. Evie loved to tell stories, although she occasionally had difficulty separating truth from fiction. Fiction was so much more entertaining, but she had a niggling feeling this man wouldn't appreciate the difference.

She wasn't wearing gloves, and Tyler's fingers were smooth against hers where they touched. But when she tried to draw away, their pressure was strong and inescapable. A shiver of something warm flowed through her veins while his hand clasped hers, but she refused to give in to his easy attraction. She had more character than the floozies he was accustomed to. She knew what he was, and she refused to become another one of his women.

"Does this mean you're still on my payroll?" she asked sweetly.

"No, ma'am, it doesn't. It means you still owe me the truth, and I mean to collect." Tyler circled his thumb in her palm.

He wasn't playing fair, but then, neither had she. Evie jerked her hand away and tucked it under her arm. "Under the circumstances, I don't believe I owe you anything, Mr. Monteigne." She thought she managed the royal princess look rather well, although she didn't think it would work in a Pecos Martin book. "Unless you mean to help us, I don't see any reason why we should see each other again."

She caught up her skirt and regally climbed the stairs without him.

Tyler stared after her. Women didn't walk away from him. It was a fact of life he had taken for granted. And women he had taken to bed not only didn't walk away, but clung like thorny roses. It had never occurred to him that she could just walk away and he would have absolutely no claim to say anything about it.

He didn't like the feeling one little bit. Reason told him that he ought to let the spoiled brat go. He had better things to do than to baby-sit a pair of greenhorns with trouble up their sleeves. And she was the kind of woman he had sworn long ago not to touch. She was doing him a favor by walking out. But reason had nothing to do with the fury steaming out his ears. He hit the steps running.

Tyler grabbed the edge of her door as she opened it, standing with his back against it so she had to brush by him to enter her room. Evie threw him a wary glance and refused to enter.

"I never said I wouldn't help. You've just never told me what you needed done." Smiling at her wouldn't do any good, Tyler reflected. He had smiled at her before, and she had all but slapped him in the face. If he couldn't get under her skin with his looks and charm, what in hell would it take?

Frowning, she crossed her arms over her chest. "I am not one of your women, Tyler Monteigne. I want that perfectly understood."

Tyler relaxed and leaned against the door jamb, mockingly crossing his arms in imitation of her stance. "Yes, ma'am. I prefer a little experience on my women, anyway."

That struck where it hurt, but Evie's didn't flinch. "Fine, then you can wait until Daniel comes back to hear our story, if that's what you like. But unless you mean to help us, I don't see any purpose in it."

She was offering him another chance to walk away—and he wasn't taking it. Tyler wasn't exactly certain why. It could have something to do with the delectable curve of her waist beneath all that lace. Or the indignant swell of her bosom when she realized he was staring at it. But mostly he thought it was boredom and curiosity and the need to know more of what went on in that strange mind behind those deceptive dark eyes.

"I don't rob banks for anyone," Tyler replied calmly.

"I wouldn't ask you to." She offered a tentative smile. "It could be very simple, and I won't need you at all."

"Or it could be so dangerous that you need a gunslinger like Pecos Martin to protect you," he offered solemnly.

"That was Daniel's idea. I'm not certain if he thought he needed a gunslinger to keep me in line or my relatives."

"If they're anything like you, I suspect both reasons. Daniel is a very astute young man."