My Darling Gunslinger (7 page)

“My mistake,” she said with a shrug of one shoulder. “It’s not the first time, and likely it won’t be the last.”

His head snapped up.

“Never fear, Mr. Morgan, I won’t harry you for kisses again. Of that you can be certain.”

He only rubbed one hand down the back of his head and winced. He’d likely have a goose egg, and as far as she was concerned, he deserved one. A great big excruciatingly painful one.

He didn’t say anything, only continued to rub his head and stare at her with dark, unblinking eyes.

“Well, now that we’ve cleared that up, I’ll leave you to rest.” Charlotte turned to make a quick retreat.

“What did we clear up?” he barked.

“The fact that you don’t want to kiss me,” she answered as she breezed around the foot of the bed.

“Who the hell are you?” he growled.

“Goodness, I thought you’d figured it out,” she called as she crossed the threshold into the hall. “I’m Charlie Green.”

Just what the lady needs.

Jasper Heimlich

Ty made a valiant effort to pay attention to Sebastian’s chatter about the baby lamb that had been born during the night, but he just could not get the softly whispered words out of his mind.

Do you want to kiss me?

It had been a week since she’d asked the question that had sounded like an offer but couldn’t have been. A week during which Ty had rested in the little bedroom at the back of the house until he thought he might go stark-raving mad from boredom.

Sebastian Green had visited him every afternoon, spending hours at the foot of the bed, his angelic voice crisp and clear as he’d finished
Robinson Crusoe
and begun
A Tale of Two Cities
.

Akeem had visited him each morning to help him to the luxurious bathing room down the hall, patiently waiting while he bathed in water near to scalding hot.

Mr. Chang had shaved him every day, all the while studying him through black eyes. Occasionally he’d asked Ty a question about his experiences as a hired gun, to which Ty had mostly shrugged and remained silent. When he’d grilled him as to his knowledge of ranching, he’d grudgingly admitted his ignorance.

Magnus McDonough came by most nights after the house had settled into the silence particular to homes surrounded by nothing but rolling hills, distant mountains and millions of stars in an otherwise black sky. He’d offered scotch whiskey and regaled Ty with stories of his travels. Magnus had seen damn near all of the world and bedded every kind of woman imaginable, to hear him tell it.

Mrs. Chang and Miss Daisy had taken turns bringing him his meals. At first it had been simple broth, then thick, rich chicken soup. Just last evening he’d graduated to mutton stew. Jasper Heimlich had not lied. Miss Daisy made a mean mutton stew.

Of Charlie Green, otherwise known as Mrs. Charlotte Green, Ty had seen little beyond the shadow of her lithe form passing in the hall and the occasional glimpse of her bright eyes peering around the doorframe when she thought he might be asleep.

So it came as something of a surprise when she strolled into his room just after Sebastian departed to join Magnus and Ken Chang in rounding up sheep for sheering.

She looked as fresh as a spring morning in a yellow, gingham dress with a satin ribbon tied into a big bow at her waist. On her head, she wore a wide-brimmed straw bonnet with matching ribbons trailing out behind her.

“If you feel up to it, Mr. Morgan,” she called out cheerfully as she rounded the corner of the bed, “I thought we might take a constitutional about the ranch.”

“A constitutional?” he repeated, his voice unnecessarily harsh. What the hell was a constitutional?

“A promenade,” she clarified, which only confused Ty further.

He itched to dig through the drawer of the nightstand beside his borrowed bed for his dictionary. The only thing that kept him sitting still was the suspicion she’d laugh to learn he hadn’t a clue what she was talking about.

“A walk, Mr. Tyler,” she offered, her smile stiffening.

“With you?” An image of her tucking her soft, pale hand into the crook of his elbow and smiling up at him sent heat rushing up his neck.

Her smile dimmed then disappeared altogether. She seemed suddenly uncertain, her gaze skittering away to rest somewhere over his right shoulder. “I thought you might like a bit of fresh air and exercise. Pardon my presumption.”

Before he could find voice to speak, she spun about, her full skirts swirling around her, and glided from the room, yellow ribbons floating on the breeze left in her wake.

“Damn.” He’d somehow managed to offend her. And he’d barely spoken half a dozen words.

He debated whether to follow her for all of two seconds before gingerly scrambling off the bed. He found his boots lined up in the corner and his hat hanging off the footboard. He’d searched the unoccupied rooms of the house the night before. His gun was nowhere to be found.

He tugged on the cuffs of the soft, white cotton shirt Miss Daisy had sewn for him and brushed his hands over his worn dungarees.

When he recognized the nerves skittering up his spine, he muttered an oath.

He wasn’t going courting. Hell, no.

As if he had any notion how to go about courting a lady. As if the lady would allow it. Hell, she’d likely run screaming if she knew the images that drifted through his head every time he remembered her whispered words.

Do you want to kiss me?

Charlotte Green of the soft hands and crisp, foreign speech would have been sorely shocked by what she’d have gotten if Ty had taken her up on the offer.

Tyler Morgan was the son of a whore. He’d been raised in a brothel. He’d seen things no boy had any business seeing. Hell, he’d done things no boy had any business doing. He’d known more about sex by the time he’d lit out at fourteen than most men learned in a lifetime.

What he knew about kissing ladies wouldn’t fill a thimble.

Charlotte would have found herself flat on her back with his cock buried between her trembling thighs before she could have even thought to call out for help.

Ty quietly made his way down the stairs, his footfalls silent on the worn runner. The front door was open, sunlight streaming across the polished wood floor of the foyer. Charlotte stood on the porch with her back to the house, one hand wrapped around a wooden pillar, the other idly twitching her dress at her thigh as if she was unhappy with the drape of her skirts.

He smiled at the feminine gesture.

She sure was a dainty little thing, all pale limbs and big eyes.

Too delicate, too pure for the likes of him.

Without warning, the lady spun around, her gaze unerringly finding him at the foot of the stairs, one hand going to the yellow bow of the wide ribbon wrapped around her waist.

“Didn’t mean to startle you,” he said as he crossed the foyer and stepped out into a balmy spring afternoon.

“Daisy is in the barn milking Blossom,” she offered, taking a step back. “She’d be happy to accompany you on a walk. She knows the land better than I do, having lived here a number of years.”

“Reneging on your offer?”

“I thought you might be more comfortable with Daisy.”

Ty couldn’t dispute her words. Miss Daisy would definitely be a more comfortable companion. For all he had the odd notion he’d seen the mousy little housekeeper before, she didn’t set his heart to racing or inspire lurid fantasies of pale limbs and soft moans.

“You’ll do,” he muttered.

“Why, thank you kindly, Mr. Morgan,” she replied wryly.

“Tyler.” He waited expectantly.

She spun around and marched down the three steps and onto the lawn that spread out before the house. “Are you coming, Tyler?” she called over her shoulder.

“Don’t I wish,” he murmured below his breath. Christ, she was going to kill him with her innocent words delivered in crisp accents.

They walked along the side of the house toward the barn and the rolling pastures beyond in silence, Charlotte two steps ahead so that Ty had the pleasure of watching her hips sway under yards of muslin and petticoats so starched he could hear their rustle over the sounds of sheep bleating and wind ruffling through the trees.

“We’ve had a letter from Uncle Jasper. It seems he has set off for Prussia.”

Charlotte’s words snapped Ty’s gaze up to fasten upon the back of her head covered by the silly straw bonnet. Tendrils of golden hair had escaped their pins to bounce jauntily against her neck and shoulders with each step she took.

“Jasper Heimlich is your uncle?” Ty asked in surprise. The old coot had a lot to answer for.

Charlotte looked back over her shoulder to meet his gaze before turning forward once more. “In truth, Jasper is a distant cousin on my mother’s side, but I like to think of him as the uncle I never had.”

“Are you Prussian, then?”

“English on my father’s side,” she replied, slowing to allow him to walk beside her. She peered up at him from beneath her bonnet, her eyes startlingly blue in the sunlight. “I spent much of my childhood traveling between London and Berlin.”

“You speak Prussian?”

“Naturlich,” she replied with a smile.

“Your uncle kept muttering something while we played,” Ty began.

“Uncle Jasper is a great one for muttering to distract others,” she agreed with a soft laugh.

“Not much distracts me when I’ve a winning hand.”

“I would imagine not much ever distracts you.”

Ty might have told her that she distracted him. Mightily.

“I’ve been wondering what he was saying,” he said instead.

“Do you remember the words?” She strolled over to the white-washed fence enclosing the long, narrow sheep barn. Leaning her hip against a post, she faced him, her head tilted back to meet his eyes.

For the space of three beats of his heart, Ty could only stare at her, his thoughts drifting away on the warm spring breeze.

Do you want to kiss me?

Hell, yes. He wanted to lean down and capture the smile flitting around the edges of her pretty pink mouth, to take her breath into his body and hold it there.

Charlotte looked up at him expectantly, and Ty forced his muddled brain back to reality.

“Jenna da va de dame brock.” Ty pushed the foreign words past his lips.

Charlotte blinked in obvious surprise. “Genau das was die Dame braucht,” she corrected, her voice laced with laughter.

“What was he saying?” Ty demanded gruffly, feeling ten kinds of foolish.

“Are you quite certain you remember the words, that you are pronouncing them correctly?”

“They’re stuck in my head,” he assured her, fascinated by the wash of color traveling up her long neck and across her cheeks.

“Was there a lady playing cards with you?”

“No.”

“No?” she repeated doubtfully.

“There was a whore perched on my knee,” he admitted just to bedevil her.

“Is that so? I suppose you spoke true when you said nothing distracts you from a winning hand.”

Ty hid his surprise at her calm acceptance of the words he’d have sworn would send her into a ladylike swoon.

“Perhaps you didn’t so much win the hand as have it given to you,” she said, her gaze intent upon his face hidden in the shadow of his hat.

“The thought has crossed my mind,” he admitted.

“Uncle Jasper is getting up in years.”

“He might have wanted to be rid of the responsibility.”

“Oh, no,” she immediately answered with a shake of her head that sent ribbons dancing around her upturned face. Ty watched one settle across her shoulder, the end drifting to rest between her breasts.

“No?” His fingers itched with the need to trace the path of the ribbon from just below her ear, down the slim column of her neck, and over the swell of her breast to the shadowy valley beneath her bodice.

“He likely thought he was too old…” Her words drifted off and Ty’s gaze snapped back up to find her looking at him with the same dreamy expression she’d worn the last time they’d talked.

Do you want to kiss me?

Jesus, he wasn’t made of stone. If she kept looking at him like that she’d get more than kisses from him. He’d have her ruffled skirts hiked around her hips and his cock buried…

Something in her words halted his fantasies of bending the lady over the fence.

“Too old to protect her,” he whispered.

Charlotte lost the look of a woman begging for kisses. It drifted from her face to be replaced with an odd sort of expectancy.

“He made me promise Charlie Green and family would always have a home here,” Ty said, suspicions crowding his mind.

“And you agreed?” The surprise in her voice grated on his already taut nerves.

“I didn’t know Charlie Green would turn out to be a proper English Lady more suited to some fancy eastern parlor than life on a ranch,” he grumbled.

“And now?” she asked, her voice little more than a soft whisper.

Ty looked away, to the hills that spread out for miles beneath a sky nearly as blue as her eyes.

The Zeppelin Ranch was spread out before him, acres of gently rolling hills dotted with cows and sheep. Tall trees sprouted up here and there along the stream that meandered down from the distant mountains. It was a fine spread, better than any he could have bought no matter how carefully he saved one bounty after another.

If, in order to claim it, he had to saddle himself with a woman far beyond his reach, so be it.

“Just what the lady needs.”

The softly spoken words whispered over his heated flesh like a caress and brought his eyes back to Charlotte.

“Genau das was die Dame braucht,” she said in that same breathy whisper. “Just what the lady needs.”

Ty’s gaze collided with Charlotte’s and he had the strangest sensation she was looking deep inside him, to the farthest reaches of his soul, searching for things long buried and forgotten, if they’d ever existed at all.