Evie wiped at the moisture in her eyes and finally listened to Tyler's muttering.
"You'll be a damned wealthy woman in a few months. You could go back to St. Louis and have your choice of husbands. You'd better start reconsidering right fast." Tyler caught her waist in his hands and tried to set her back on the floor.
Evie sat right back down again. Tyler had pulled on his shirt, but he hadn't fastened it. She ran her hand over the silky fur exposed there. Tyler glared. She smiled.
"What do you think about babies?" she asked innocently.
"They happen," he growled.
"So they do." Without further explanation, Evie picked up the next piece of paper on the table.
Tyler wrapped his arms around her waist and squeezed until she looked over her shoulder at him. "Are you trying to tell me something?"
She looked surprised. "Of course not. You already know where babies come from, don't you?"
"Have we made a baby?" he asked cautiously.
She gave him an absent smile, patted his chest again, and turned back to her reading. "After this morning, I wouldn't doubt it. What do you think this means about his wife inheriting one-half of everything he owns?" She pointed at the phrase in Randall Harding's will.
Tyler briefly contemplated strangling her. The crashing realization he had been harboring secret hopes that she might be carrying his child struck him like a backlash from a muzzle-loader. He stared at the slender woman in his lap, circled her waist with his fingers, and wondered how it would feel when she began ripening with his child. His loins instantly responded to the notion. Groaning at his one-track mind in Evie's presence, Tyler grabbed the will from her hand and read the damning phrase. More familiar with the legal niceties than the Harding brothers, his mind instantly grasped the implications.
"Didn't Harding die first? Your mother lingered some weeks after his death, didn't she?"
Evie nodded, and her gaze met Tyler's.
"I think, my wealthy wife, that you just may own one-half of the Double H."
"What would I do with a ranch?" she asked, quite reasonably. "The trust money is nice. I can buy new clothes for the children and maybe make the house bigger with that." At a sudden thought, she glanced at him hesitantly. "That is, if you're planning on staying here."
Anxiety lined her brow, and Tyler gave up the battle. She was sitting on a mountain of gold and worrying about whether they could stay in that miserable little shack behind the livery. He nuzzled her neck and resolved to work out the monetary details later. Evie was bright enough to translate the volumes of legalese, but she hadn't quite grasped the concept of what it would mean to them. Everyone else in the world would think he was after her money. Evie worried if he would stay in this wretched little town.
"It's your money. You can do what you want with it. My concern is Hale's plan for all this. If he knows who you are, why hasn't he told you about your inheritance? Isn't that what an honest lawyer would do?"
Obviously distracted by this new question, Evie considered what she knew of the lawyer. "Mr. Hale's always been honest with me, except for not telling me he knew who I was, not until last night, anyway. I wonder how he knew?"
Tyler caught her hands and pressed them together, redirecting her wandering thoughts. "It doesn't matter how he knew. What matters is why he didn't do something about it. You've been living on beans with that teacher's salary of yours. Why wasn't he giving you the money the trust supplies?"
"He was, until Nanny died. I thought maybe the money was going to Nanny's lawyers, and I didn't want to let them know where I was, so I didn't write to them. But if he knew all along who I was, then he could have just given me the money. It doesn't make sense."
"Has Hale been courting you, Evie?"
She shrugged. "He says nice things and wants to take me to dinner all the time. He keeps telling me he will take care of everything for me. I suppose that would be pleasant if I was inclined to lean on others, but I'd rather take care of myself."
Tyler grinned and settled her more comfortably in his lap. "Then why did you go looking for Pecos Martin?"
Evie frowned at him. "That was different. That was for Daniel. Now quit looking so smug. Do you think Hale meant to