Seven Brides: Daisy Part 11

"I was angry."

"You headed out into a blizzard because you were angry?" Zac asked, incredulous.

"Tyler refused to help me find out who killed my father."

"I told you I couldn't do as well as the sheriff."

"It's not that. You made it sound so unimportant, like it didn't matter. How would you feel if you didn't know?"

"There's another reason, isn't there?" Tyler asked.

Daisy looked surprised at his question, but she didn't reply.

"What else is she mad about?" Zac asked.

"What is it?" Tyler asked. "You don't have to be afraid to tell us."

"I don't feel comfortable here," Daisy confessed after some hesitation. "You don't want me."

"Is that all?" Zac asked, disgusted.

"I'm a lot of trouble," Daisy interrupted. "I've taken your bed, half your room. You wouldn't have to go hunting for more food if it weren't for me."

"I didn't mean to make you feel like that," Tyler said. "It's just I don't know how to make people feel welcome."

"You've tried," Daisy said, "but I don't belong here."

"It was a little awkward at first," Tyler agreed. "Zac and I don't have any sisters, so we don't know how to treat females, but we're glad of the company."

Zac looked at his brother like he'd suddenly lost his mind. "I'm going to be sick if I listen to much more of this." He grabbed his coat. "When you're in your right mind again, let me know."

"Zac doesn't like me," Daisy said after Zac slammed the door behind him.

"Zac can't stop thinking of himself long enough to feel strongly about anybody else."

"But he was prepared to go after you if you got lost going after me."

"We're a strange family, but we look after each other."

"Is that the reason you're looking after me?"

He had thought so. Randolph men always protected women. Any man would. But her presence had caused him to experience so many new feelings, he couldn't be sure why he did anything. From his fascination with freckles to his never-flagging l.u.s.t, she had rocked him right down to his foundations.

He could still feel a lingering tension from riding double. He could remember every curve of her body; he could still feel her warmth and softness. It had been all he could to do remember he was rescuing her from a blizzard. There were times when he wasn't even aware it was snowing.

"I'm looking after you because you needed help, and I was the one to find you."

She turned away, displeased with his answer. No more than he. The words didn't begin to touch on the welter of feelings that kept erupting unbidden within him. She had touched something inside him, something he had buried more than twenty years ago. It upset his balance in a way he couldn't explain. All his life he had refused to feel. Now that he did, he didn't know what to do about it.

He watched her disappear behind her curtain. He used to think she was only mildly pretty. Now even the bandage couldn't dim her loveliness in his eyes. He could see some hard case, some shiftless skunk, gazing into those brown eyes and promising anything just to be able to look into them every day. He didn't think Daisy would be taken in, but he couldn't be sure.

He'd have to make sure she was in good hands when he took her to Albuquerque. That shouldn't take long. Then he could go back to prospecting. June seventeenth loomed over his head.

Toby lifted his coat and turned his backside to the fire. "I say we forget about them until all this snow melts," he said. The three men had taken refuge in a miner's cabin. The miner, unwilling or unable to give them the information they wanted, was tied up in the shed.

"At least we ought to wait here until it stops snowing," Ed said. He held his hands out to the fire, which was just beginning to thaw out his nearly frozen limbs.

"We can't afford to wait," Frank said as he paced the cramped, untidy interior of the cabin. "What if they decide to go down to Albuquerque?"

"What if they do?" Toby countered.

"They'll notify the sheriff."

"So what. n.o.body's coming up here in weather like this."

"She can describe me. The sheriff'll be on the lookout when I came down."

Toby climbed into the prospector's bunk, pulled the covers up to his chin. "If you got to worry about something, worry about what we're gonna eat. I ain't seen no game in three days."

"There's some stuff in here," Ed said, rummaging around on the shelves.

"It won't last long."

"I ain't got time to worry about your stomach."

"You'd better," Toby said, comfortably settled. "It was your idea to get us up here. If it was up to me, I'd been snug in Bernalillo. A couple of times I thought it'd be our bodies that were bleached bones come spring."

"Don't worry," Ed said when he saw Frank was unhappy. "If we can't get out of these mountains, she can't neither. We'll get her yet."

But Frank had a bad feeling about this. He had missed twice when it was easy. Now they were caught at ten thousand feet in a killer snow storm. Like always, things just seemed to keep going wrong. And his d.a.m.ned uncle and cousin weren't helping. Trouble was they had no ambition. They didn't see anything wrong with being a cowhand.

But Frank had bigger ideas for himself. And this job was his first step up. He didn't mean to let it slip away.

The next day dawned bright and sunny. But the cabin was blocked in by an extra foot of snow.

"If it stays like this all day, it'll melt a few inches," Tyler announced after coming in from taking care of the mules.

Zac shuffled a deck of cards. "Yeah, but it might snow again."

"Not for a day or two."

"Then can I go home?" Daisy asked.

"When that snow melts, every stream between here and the Rio Grande will be a boiling cataract. It'll be another day or two after that before you can leave."

Daisy was feeling the strain of confinement. She was also feeling overpowered by her sense of guilt. It all had to do with Tyler, but she wasn't going to admit her feelings for him were so strong they had caused her to do something that crazy. She didn't want to admit she had run away to escape his disapproval. Nor would she admit she didn't mind so much being here anymore. That raised too many questions she couldn't answer.

She longed to see Adora, to ask if she had ever felt this way. But after living such a sheltered and uneventful life, she doubted Adora would understand the conflicting feelings which raged in her breast. She knew Adora's brother wouldn't. Guy Cochrane had always admired Daisy for her calm, level-headed approach to life. He would never be able to understand the feelings that had driven her to flee into a snowstorm.

Neither could Daisy, but she couldn't concentrate enough to figure them out, not with Tyler and Zac almost within arms' reach. She needed more privacy than she could find behind her blanket. She needed to be safe in Adora's bedroom, miles from Tyler's disconcerting presence.

She was also bored by the long hours of inactivity. She was so restless she couldn't sit still to read. She had to do something or go crazy. "I have an idea," she announced. "Let's tell our secret dreams."

"Our what?" Zac asked.

"Our secret dreams. It's one of the things Mother and I used to do on dull days."

"I don't have any."

"Sure you do. Everybody does."

"They're not secret because he's told everybody," Tyler explained.

"He hasn't told me."

"Why would I want to?"

"Because you're bored. You've dealt yourself a top hand and you didn't even noticed."

Zac looked at his cards, shrugged, laid them down. "I want to go to New Orleans and be a gambler on a river boat," he said.

Daisy's smile disappeared. "I'm not going to do this if you're going to make fun of me."

"I'm not making fun."

"Yes, you are. n.o.body wants to do anything as stupid as that."

"I tried to tell him that," Tyler said from across the cabin. "So did George."

"It's not stupid," Zac protested, irritated. "Prospecting for gold you'll never find or staying in this G.o.dforsaken territory, marrying a dirt-poor rancher and raising a dozen kids -- now that's stupid."

"Okay," Daisy said, willing to placate Zac, "you want to be a river boat gambler. What then?"

"What do you mean what then?"

"There's got to be something else. You can't want to do nothing but gamble."

"What else should I want to do?"

Daisy couldn't believe Zac was serious. Instinctively she looked to Tyler.

"He's telling the truth," Tyler confirmed. "His only ambition is to become a successful parasite."

"A spectacularly successful one," Zac amended, not the least abashed.

"What about you?" Daisy asked Tyler.

"I don't want anything."

"Yes, you do," Zac said.

"What?" Daisy asked, but Tyler wouldn't speak.

"He wants to build fancy hotels," Zac informed her. "He's up here looking for gold to pay for them."

Chapter Nine.

Tyler closed his book with a snap, an involuntary action he immediately regretted. He would have preferred Daisy not know how much Zac's words irritated him. Neither did he want to explain his dream to her. He wondered how, in such a short s.p.a.ce of time, she had come to expect to be allowed into the private world of his mind. He wondered how he had come to consider letting her in.

Daisy was watching him, waiting expectantly. He remained silent.

"Aren't you going to say anything?"

"What do you want to know?"

"Where you're going to build your hotels. What they'll be like. I love hotels."

Tyler knew what he wanted right down to the last detail, yet he was reluctant to tell Daisy. If he did, it wouldn't be his dream anymore. Yet it was pointless to remain silent. Nothing short of strangulation would prevent Zac from telling everything he knew. "I want to build hotels in Denver and San Francisco every bit as luxurious as anything in New York."

Daisy looked shocked. "I imagine a plain, clean room is all most people would want."

"Tyler doesn't care about most people," Zac explained. "He means to please himself."

"But what if n.o.body else wants the same thing?" Daisy asked, apparently unable to believe anyone would build an entire hotel just to satisfy himself.

"They can stay somewhere else," Tyler said.

"But that's crazy," Daisy exclaimed. "You'll go broke in a month."

Tyler felt like he'd been dashed with a bucket of ice water.

"Uh oh, now you've made him mad," Zac said.

"Have I?" Daisy asked.

"No," Tyler replied, but he was afraid he gave the lie to his denial by asking, "How does living in The Centennial or Post's Exchange Hotel a few days a year make you an expert on what people in Denver and San Francisco might want?"