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