"You said I could do anything I wanted. You were the one who encouraged me to try to be on my own. You can't hold back now. That would make you worse than Guy."

They started back up the trail looking for a camp site. "How do you figure that?"

"Guy doesn't really believe a woman can take care of herself. He might agree to any number of things to placate me, but he would never encourage me. You did."

"Encouraging you doesn't mean I think you're ready to tackle rustlers."

"I didn't say I wanted to tackle them. Maybe I just want to be certain you won't get hurt."

"Is that important?"

"Of course it is. I don't want any of my employees to get hurt."

"I'm not your employee."

Daisy refused to fall for that. "I may not be paying you, but you're working for me."

"So you don't care anymore about my safety than that of Bob Green's hands."

Now he was getting personal, digging for information. She didn't mean to give in that easily. "Why should I? Do you care especially for my safety?"

"I'm here."

It wasn't much of an admission, but she figured it might be the best she was going to get out of him. "Why are you here?"

Tyler didn't answer. Daisy wondered why it was so hard for him to put his feelings into words. It was hard to imagine what could have happened to make him so insular. She'd been dominated and confined, her self-esteem destroyed, but it had only made her more anxious to find someone to love, to share her life. It seemed to have worked just the other way around with him. One more reason why they weren't good for each other.

"Because I can't be anywhere else."

He fell silent. She guessed she would have to be satisfied with that.

"I liked you better the way you were back in camp."

That got him. He turned in the saddle to face her. "How's that?"

"You talked and smiled and acted like an ordinary human being. People enjoyed being around you. But I've watched you change with every mile we've traveled today. It's like you've been wearing a mask and it has been falling off bit by bit until there's nothing left but the Tyler who was back in the cabin."

"You don't like him?"

She was feeling stronger, more in control. She figured she could answer him honestly. "Not especially. He doesn't give and he doesn't share. When he talks, it's in cryptic utterances that choke off conversation rather than start it, freeze emotion rather than warm it."

She watched his back grow rigid. She wondered if his face was any more expressive.

"There is a different man inside you. The one who took care of me, cared how I felt, empathized with my suffering. I fell in love with that man, but I lost him somewhere."

There, she had said it. It had taken all her courage, but at least she had gotten the words out. And it had to come out between them. Otherwise, their parting would always be incomplete.

"What if he came back?"

"He would never stay. The other you wouldn't let him."

Tyler stopped his gelding in a grove of pine and spruce that grew along a wash snow melt had turned into a noisy stream. "This looks like a good camp site." He rode into the thicket until the trail was no longer visible.

"Suppose he did come back to stay."

"I could never marry a man like that," Daisy said. "He's not a complete person. He's a fragment, just like the sociable fragment you pulled out back at camp. I suppose you've got other fragments I haven't seen." She dismounted. "Here, give me the reins. I'll take care of the horses while you fix supper."

As Tyler watched Daisy curry the horses and picket them near some gra.s.s, he decided that was what was wrong with this whole relationship. It was backwards. She was taking care of the horses, and he was cooking. She was the boss, he the employee. She had control of her feelings, and he didn't. From the moment he had left Willie Mozel at his claim, he'd been operating in uncharted territory.

Why couldn't he concede he didn't know what he was doing? It was about time he admitted his feelings of inadequacy weren't limited to his family. It was tied up with his perception of himself. He had lost control because he was trying to do something he had fought against this whole life.

He was trying to reach out to Daisy, but he was scared to death. When she said she loved him, something inside him leapt for joy. Some barrier came down, one he'd propped up for years, one he thought was impregnable. Yet Daisy with her freckles and curls had cracked it wide open with just three little words.

It didn't seem to matter that she wouldn't marry somebody like him. She loved him. For now that was more than he could handle.

He seemed to have lost his sense of pride, but that didn't mean as much as he expected. He'd held on to his pride all his life, and it hadn't made things any better. He had a feeling if he could just figure out how to open up to Daisy, pride wouldn't be so important.

She said she loved him but wouldn't marry him. Love wasn't enough, and he knew it.

"Tell me what you've got in mind," Daisy said when she came to the fire. "Mmmm, that smells delicious. You've got to teach me how to cook like that before you leave. You've spoiled me for my own cooking."

Tyler was a little startled that she took his leaving for granted. He had never intended to stay more than a few weeks, but he had a.s.sumed he'd be dropping by periodically to see how she was doing. Apparently Daisy expected him to disappear for good.

"I thought I'd ride back to their camp sometime after midnight. Maybe I can drive off the cows without waking them up. You can be waiting here. If they follow, I can hold them off while you drive the cattle back to your land."

"Wouldn't that be dangerous alone?"

"I'm not very good with a gun, but I can hold an army at bay with a rifle."

"You think they'll fight?"

"I don't know. They may figure it's easier to go back and rustle more. I can't figure out how you come to have so many unbranded cattle."

"My father wouldn't hire enough hands. He didn't trust anybody but Rio. He was convinced he was close to finding that mine. Maybe he thought they would try to steal it from him." Daisy poured herself a cup of coffee. She took a sip. It burned her tongue. "He wanted to find gold so he could go back and show his family he had become rich on his own. He never understood that mother and I didn't care. How long do you think it'll take us to finish branding?"

They talked of general things while they ate, but Tyler's thoughts still revolved around the fact Daisy loved him but expected nothing of him. The more he thought about it, the more determined he was to make her change her mind.

He loved her and wanted to marry her. Fool that he was, he couldn't see that's why he'd been following her around.

Tyler's hand paused with the fork half way to his mouth. He had fallen in love with a woman who didn't like his kind of man and wouldn't marry him on a bet. He put the food in his mouth and chewed slowly. What a h.e.l.l of a mess. Somebody once told him gold was never any trouble until you found it. They should also have told him being in love was no trouble until it happened to you.

But that wasn't his most immediate problem. Daisy was only a few feet away. He didn't know how he was going to get through the night without making love to her.

Chapter Twenty-four.

Daisy moved restlessly in her blankets. The ground beneath her was cold and hard, but she was hardly aware of it. Every nerve in her body seemed to be focused on the fact that Tyler lay only a few feet from her. She wanted him to make love to her so badly she almost asked him. But no matter how much her body ached for him, she wouldn't let him touch her unless he admitted he loved her.

Not that he seemed to be straining at the leash. He hadn't been very talkative after dinner, but she was used to that. It was like old times.

She turned over in her bed, but she wasn't any more comfortable. It was going to be a miserable night. She almost hoped the rustlers did fight. At least it would give her something else to think about.

She lay there watching Tyler. She shouldn't have, but she couldn't help it. She felt something pulling her to him. He must have felt it as well, for he turned to face her. Their gazes met across the short distance that separated them. His eyes had always been shuttered as though shielding him against everything outside himself. Tonight they were open, wide and luminous. He had never seemed more accessible, as though he had finally been able to set aside the barriers that separated him from her and everyone else in the world.

But there was something new in his gaze tonight, something at once more warm and more appealing. It was almost as though he were inviting her inside. She knew it couldn't be true, Tyler was incapable of truly letting anyone inside him, but the inclination was there. Maybe even the wish.

"I love you."

Daisy froze. The words should have set her on fire, but they turned her mind and body to stone. She was unable to move, to answer, to think. She felt like she had waited all her life to hear Tyler say those words, and now she was paralyzed, stupidly helpless and mute.

"Knowing what you think of me, I doubt you wanted to hear that."

He didn't know anything about it at all. But then he never had. She marveled that a man with his sensitivity could know so little about women. Even if she didn't love him, even if she never wanted to see him again, these would have been welcome words.

"I didn't want to admit it."

That didn't surprise her. He had spent his entire life convincing himself he felt nothing. It wasn't surprising it took him a long time to recognize love when it finally showed up.

"Zac knew it a long time ago. Laurel did, too. I suppose I didn't because I spent too many years refusing to feel."

"Why?"

There was a pause. Daisy thought he had lapsed into one of his long silences. She was surprised when he started to talk in a flat, measured voice.

"My father was a cruel man. Some would even say vicious. He used to make us compete against each other for his praise. You've only seen Hen, but my four older brothers are just like him. I could never be as good. They were always taller and better looking and smarter, able to ride faster and jump higher.

"When I was seven, Pa brought home a beautiful blood bay colt with black points. He said I could have him if I could prove I was good enough. He knew my brothers would let me win so I could have the horse, so he made me race against a boy I hated, Leonard Craven.

"For a week George and Madison took me over every foot of the course, advised me how to take each jump, which hills to take slowly to conserve energy, which turns were too tight to take at a full gallop. I loved that horse. I named him Cyclone because he was the fastest horse in the barn. I knew I was going to win the race.

"But Leonard was three years older. It was a matter of pride with him not lose to me. He went out fast and blocked me when I tried to pa.s.s. He crowded me at the jumps and nearly caused me to go down. I would have won anyway, but as I started to pa.s.s him in the straight, he struck Cyclone across the head with his crop causing him to veer off course.

"I lost by a half length.

"Pa was so mad at me for losing he gave Cyclone to Leonard. At that moment, I hated him, but I knew I couldn't show any feeling. That would only make Pa madder. So I hid in the barn. I didn't mean to cry, but when I thought of Leonard riding Cyclone I couldn't help it.

"Pa caught me. He said men didn't cry, especially not Randolph men. He said even though I wasn't a very good Randolph, he was going to make sure I never cried again. He was going to beat me until I could take every lick without a tear. And he did."

Daisy was horrified. She couldn't believe any man could do anything so vicious, so cruel. "How did you not cry?"

"I did at first. The riding crop hurt. He'd hit me, shouted at me to stop crying, then hit me again."

"I don't know why you didn't cry all the harder."

"Because I hated him too much. I was going to show him he couldn't touch me, not inside where it counted. I stopped crying and stared him in the face until he quit. I only spoke to him once after that."

"What did your mother do?"

"Stand around wringing her hands and begging me not to anger my father while one of the women in the kitchen put salve on my welts. Ma always believed Pa would be loving and kind if his sons just wouldn't make him angry."

"What was the one time you spoke to him?"

"I ran away. George brought me back, but I made up my mind to get back at Pa. I jammed a rock between the hoof and frog of his favorite hunter's left fore. When it came time for the big fall hunt, the horse came up lame, and Pa lost a big bet. I told him I did it. He nearly killed me, but I just looked at him. I told him if he ever touched me again, I'd kill him when I grew up. Soon after that we moved to Texas. Pa joined the Confederate army, and I never saw him again."

Daisy didn't know when or how it happened, but she found herself out of her own bedroll and next to Tyler, her arms around him. It reminded her of the night he held her when she cried about her father, only Tyler wasn't crying. He couldn't.

"I decided if I didn't feel anything, nothing could hurt me. I didn't feel anything when we left Virginia, when Pa and the boys left for the War, when Ma died. But now, when I want to feel something, I can't."

Daisy wondered if he had really tried. It probably scared him too much, made him feel he was losing control. She had never had control. Falling in love had actually liberated her. He had done that for her and didn't even know it.

"I didn't say this to convince you I'm any different than you think. I'm not sure why I told you. I just thought you might like to know."

Daisy took Tyler's arm and put it around her. Her own feelings were just as tumultuous, but she was even more certain she loved him. If she could have done something for him, she would have. But by now, she'd tried everything she could think of. She could only continue to love him.

"I'm cold," she said. She hadn't meant to utter the words, but she'd been thinking them. She'd been thinking something else, too.

"I can't sleep next to you all night, then leave before dawn like I did in the cabin."

"I know."

"But you don't want to marry a dreamer, a man with gold fever, a man who tries to boss you around."

"I love a man like you."

"I don't understand."

"Neither do I."

Tyler reached over and brushed her cheek. "I do love you. I'm not just saying that. I wouldn't want you to be sorry in the morning."

"I'll only be sorry if you don't."

"I've wanted to make love to you almost from the first moment I saw you."

It was a charming thing for him to say, but just because he said it didn't mean she had to be brainless enough to believe it. "You couldn't have, not with blood on my face and my head wrapped in bandages."

"Prospectors don't see many women. You looked good to me, even if you weren't looking your best just then."

A mixed compliment at best, but she guessed she'd take it until something better came along. He leaned over and kissed her gently on the lips.