she waited patiently for him to light a fire in the ghastly heat of this day.
Tyler walked out, returning shortly later with an armload of tinder. He set the fire, went back out for some larger limbs, and fed them into the blaze until they caught. Then he stood and stared down into her pale face.
"I'm going back out to look for Ben."
Her blue-black eyes widened into shadowed circles. "Ben? What happened to Ben?"
Of course. She hadn't seen him fall. She was too busy running like a scared goose in the opposite direction. Tyler wanted to ask her what the hell she had thought she was doing, but he was too tired to care anymore.
"One of the passengers shot him," Tyler replied with a hint of scorn, the only emotion he could summon at the moment. When she seemed at a loss for words for once, he turned and walked out. There was still enough daylight left to ride back to the road. He didn't give a damn what happened to Miss Evie Peyton while he was gone.
By the time Tyler returned, without any sign of Ben or his horse, the sun had long since gone down. Tyler was weary clear down to the marrow of his bones, and the contents of the flask of whiskey in his saddlebag was the only thing keeping him going.
He could smell the smoke from the fire as he brushed down his horse and the stray he had found, watered them, and fed them some hay from the ramshackle stall beside the house. He threw the saddle over the gate when he was done, picked up his bags, and headed for the cabin and Evie.
He hadn't come home to a woman since he was seventeen years old. The eight years since then might not have been long in terms of time, but they were decades in terms of experience. Tyler felt nothing now at the thought of the woman waiting for him, supper on the table, her lovely face lined with worry. He wanted to feel nothing.
Evie always caught him by surprise. He walked in and found her hanging her newly washed petticoats beside the fire. In the fire's light, her wet hair gleamed with dull red against chestnut. She looked up at him without surprise or criticism, and his glance dropped to her slim figure silhouetted against the fire. To his disappointment, she had donned a corset and all the other proper accoutrements of a lady after her bath, all except the heavy petticoats.
"There's a vegetable stew in the pot. Help yourself." Evie went back to adjusting her petticoat so the wet side faced the fire.
Tyler watched through hooded eyes as she played the part of homemaker. She was always playing some part or another. He ate his stew while she shook out the bedcovers and inspected the mattress for insects. He sipped his whiskey while she scoured the plates and pot. She was beautiful, efficient, and eerily silent. He liked it that way. They had nothing to say to each other.
But when Evie left the cabin to avail herself of the privy before retiring for the night, other ideas stirred from somewhere in Tyler's insides. He knew he was halfway to being drunk. He didn't often indulge, but the occasion seemed worth the effort. Still, even knowing he was drunk, he couldn't keep the visions from forming in his head.
Evie returned with a length of rope from his saddle, and Tyler watched in bemusement as she looped it around a peg in the wall and carried it across the room to loop it to another. He waited in drunken anticipation for the whole thing to come tumbling down when she proceeded to knot a sheet over the makeshift line, but she evidently had some experience in creating cloth walls. She was now effectively hidden behind the sheet. All he could see of her was her trim ankles when she removed her shoes.
Tyler contemplated Evie's bare toes beneath the sheet when she sat on the bed and pulled off her stockings. Just looking at her toes made his loins ache. They curled against the rough wooden floor while she worked at the rest of her clothing. He wanted to take those toes and cup them in his hands to keep them from the splintery wood floor. He would rub their softness until she sighed with pleasure. In his imagination Tyler slid his hands from those soft feet to slender ankles. The alcohol rushing