“Honey, we ain’t even come to unfair yet. Like I said, Ty never did fool around with clean girls, he always had sense enough to stay away from ’em. But that didn’t keep the girls from swarmin’ around him. They like the way he ignores ’em. Well, one of ’em, a real pretty little thing used to twitch her tail around Ty till he was about to break. Then one day she come into the saloon to get him. I saw her cryin’ and he was holdin’ her. He’s always been a sucker for tears, couldn’t stand ’em on a woman. Next thing I knew he was saddlin’ a horse and takin’ rifles out of a cabinet. This girl said that a big rancher around here was attackin’ her father and could Ty help.”
Red took a drink of her whiskey. “I told him not to go, that it wasn’t his fight, but he wouldn’t listen. There was a gun battle and when the dust and gunpowder settled, the big rancher’s son was dead and Ty was being hauled off to jail.”
“And that’s when you rescued him.”
“Heard about that, did you? Yeah, we rescued him. He didn’t kill that man’s son, that girl did and he was gonna hang for it rather than turn her in. It seems that she’d been sneakin’ out to see the boy and had only been usin’ Ty to make him jealous. But, even knowin’ that, he wouldn’t turn her in. I got to thinkin’ that maybe he didn’t mind dyin’. Sometimes he acts like he don’t think he’s worth much.”
“He said he wasn’t good enough for me,” Chris said softly. “He said I deserved more than somebody like him.”
“Don’t you believe it, honey, there ain’t nobody better ’n him.”
“That’s exactly what I thought too,” Chris said with a grin. “Do you think there’s any way I can tempt him into giving me what I want?”
“And what you want is Tynan?”
“With all my heart and soul.”
For a long while, Red stared at Chris. “You know, you may be just what he needs.” She stopped and narrowed her eyes. “I feel like I know you from years of readin’ your stories, but I’m warnin’ you that if you think Ty’s just one of those cases of yours and you get rid of him after a little while I’ll—”
Chris burst out laughing. “This is a turn of events, isn’t it? Isn’t it usually the father who warns the prospective young man?”
Red returned her smile. “I ain’t too good at bein’ a mother.”
“It seems to me that you’ve done a fine job. At least I like what you’ve done. My problem is that Ty doesn’t like me. At least not the way I like him. How can I get past the threat of prison and the memory of how another so called ‘good’ girl treated him? And, besides, I think he really likes another type of woman better than me.” Chris looked down at her own slight curves.
Red didn’t get to answer because of the voice at the door.
“Red, you awake?”
There was no question of whose voice that was.
“Just a minute, Ty, baby,” Red called. “You come with me,” she said, taking Chris’s arm in her hand as she opened a closet door. “This is a place for men that can’t but like to watch. You stay in here and listen. I’ll find out how much Ty does or doesn’t like you. You game?”
It was on the tip of Chris’s tongue to ask questions about the closet, but she suppressed herself. “Yes,” she whispered, then Red half shoved her into a chair and closed the door.
“I’m just comin’, Ty honey,” she called and went across the room to open the door.
Chapter Eight
Ty’s hair was wet and he was just buttoning his shirt.
“Don’t even put it back on,” Red said, holding the door open for him. “I want to look at that back of yours.”
“It’s fine,” Tynan said but removed his shirt obediently.
Red ran her hands over his skin, turned him toward the light—and the closet—so she could see better. “It’s all right but it’ll be weeks before it’s fully healed. And you’re skin and bones. We need to fatten you up.”
He put his shirt back on. “You sound like Chris.”
“She that little blonde rode in with you? The one everybody’s sayin’ is Nola Dallas?”
Ty poured himself a whiskey and sat down on the sofa. “God, that’s good. The thing you miss most in prison isn’t freedom but the small pleasures of life like good food and drink, a clean bed,”—he grinned—“and women. You ought to pay that Leora more. Whatever you’re paying her, it’s not enough.”
“You’re not answerin’ my question. Is that little blonde Nola Dallas?”
“Yeah,” he said, looking at his whiskey. “Tell me what’s been going on the last couple of years. Business good? You seem to have more girls than usual.”
“I think some of the girls in the tub with you weren’t mine,” Red said heavily. “Tynan, stop dancin’ around me. What are you doin’ back here? Are you free from jail permanently or what?”