He smiled at her. “With a few hitches, I am more or less free.”
“Hitches? Such as what?”
“One pretty little blonde that’s about to send me back, that’s what.”
“Oh?” Red asked, eyebrows raised.
“Don’t play innocent with me. Even in the tub the girls were giggling about this famous Nola Dallas being here. Is she really all that famous? I mean I know what she’s done, her father gave me a stack of newspaper articles to read about her or by her, but I thought that out here…”
“Honey, she’s what every woman dreams of being: brave, courageous, a fighter, and she’s made it in a man’s profession.”
“More than I’ve done,” Tynan muttered.
“Was it really bad in jail?” Red asked, sitting across from him.
“I think old man Dickerson had friends. I guess he figured that if he couldn’t kill me with a rope, he’d have it done with whip and chains.”
Red reached out, caressed his cheek and Ty kissed her palm. “But you’re out now,” she said.
“If I keep my hands off that pretty little daughter of Del Mathison’s. And I’ve had easier jobs.”
“You like her, huh?”
“Well enough, I guess. Any man would like a woman who put herself in his path the way she does. The first few times I met her she didn’t even have her cloth
es on.”
Red leaned back against the sofa. “Really? I can’t imagine that someone of Nola Dallas’s fame would have to pursue a man.”
“Well, she damn well has pursued me. Said she wanted to spend the rest of her life with me.”
“Would that be so bad? A home and kids?”
Tynan stood and refilled his glass. “Are you going to start on that again? Look, even if I did marry somebody, it couldn’t be her. Her father holds the papers for my release. I take her back to him, leave her and I get a full pardon. I touch her and I go back to jail. And then there’s the money, too.”
“For taking her back?”
Ty looked at Red. “Did you see that city dude that rode in behind me? He’s a fine, upstanding citizen, born with parents and a silver spoon in his mouth, and Mathison wants his daughter to marry him. I get ten thousand dollars if I bring his daughter back in love with Mr. Asher Prescott. Course she had to go and fall for me.”
“How inconvenient for you.”
Tynan grinned at her. “It wasn’t my fault. I told you she followed me everywhere. I tried to stay away from her but there she’d be—usually stark naked. I’m only human, you know.”
“More human than the rest of us. Did you ever think that maybe she liked you?”
“A girl like her? All she wanted was a fling before going back to her rich daddy. I’d have one night in the hay, then the rest of my life in jail regretting it. No thanks. Deliver me from good girls. I think I’ll just stick with Leora and her kind.”
“Oh Ty,” Red said, standing, putting her arms round the back of him. “What are you going to do with your life?”
“Not spend anymore time in jail. I thought I’d take the ten thousand and buy some land with it.”
“The money you get for matchmaking Miss Mathison with that man? You’re sure you can do that?”
Ty walked to the window and looked out into the street below. “I admit it’s not easy, not with what Mathison gave me to work with. That man has no…force, I guess you’d call it. He doesn’t even know how to win a girl.”
“Not like you do?”
He looked back at her. “Are you mad at me about something? You seem awfully short tempered.”