“He is the leader of this group,” Chris said, “and it’s been his decisions that have kept us from getting killed.” She continued on her way to the spring.
He caught her arm. “I didn’t mean to be angry. I guess I’m just jealous. Chris, the real reason I wanted to talk to you is…”
“Yes,” she said, looking up at him in the moonlight. “What did you want to say to me?”
“I wanted to ask you to marry me.”
Chris was taken aback for a moment. All she’d been able to think about for the last few days was getting away from Dysan. “Isn’t this rather sudden?”
“You know it isn’t. Chris, I’ve fallen in love with you, with your spirit and your courage. Any woman who’d chop through the back of a wagon to make herself heard is the woman I want to spend my life with, no milksop women for me.”
“And it’s not my father’s money? Or the fact that he’s offered you a position in his business? That doesn’t make me more attractive to you?”
Asher opened his mouth to speak but nothing came out. Instead, he drew Chris to him and kissed her softly and gently. “At one time, I thought that I’d have married Del Mathison’s daughter if she were as ugly as my father’s favorite mule, but then I met you and everything changed. Chris, you’re like no other woman I’ve ever met. I wish with all my heart that you’d marry me. And if it’s your money you think I’m after, I’ll give up all claim to it. I think that with you at my side, I could start over again, and this time I wouldn’t fail.”
Still holding her in his arms, he smiled down at her. “I don’t think you’d allow any failure on my part. I think if there were a setback in my finances, you’d crack a whip over my head, and not allow me to give up.”
She smiled back. “No, I don’t guess I do give up, not if I want something badly enough.” Suddenly, she thought of Tynan. “Unless I have to give up,” she murmured.
“I think we’d make a good pair,” he said. “We’d have my level-headedness and your spirit. I could keep your feet on the earth and you could prevent me from giving up when the going gets rough.”
She laughed. “You make us sound like a merger.”
He snuggled her closer. “Some mergers can be quite good. Chris, please say you’ll think about it. I’ll do whatever you want. If you want me to renounce your father’s money, I’ll do so. Whatever you say.”
“That seems rather drastic and my father does want someone to help him run the place.”
“Are you saying you’ll marry me?” he asked, his eyes alight.
“Like hell she will,” came Tynan’s voice from behind them. “Get your hands off her, Prescott. And if you don’t, I’ll shoot them off.”
Chris moved away from Asher. “You’re supposed to be asleep.”
“Is that what you were hoping? That I was asleep so you could meet him behind my back?”
“Now just one minute, Tynan,” Asher said. “I have every right to do whatever Miss Mathison wants. After all, you were hired to help me win her. Oh, Chris,” he said as he realized what he’d revealed.
“It’s all right, I knew. Tynan, you have no right to interfere in what I do. Now, I want you to go back to—”
She didn’t finish the sentence because Tynan grabbed her arm and pulled her to him. He couldn’t walk very well as his leg was stiffening, but he could force her closer to him. “Prescott, go back to the camp and see to Pilar and watch the old man. I’ll be there in a minute.”
Asher started to protest, but one look at Tynan made him decide against it and he turned back toward the cabin.
“Get your hands off of me!” Chris said, trying to je
rk away from him, but not succeeding. “You have no right to interfere in this. Besides, I believe my father hired you to help him fall in love with me.”
“I don’t even want to know how you found that out, but that was before…”
“Yes? That was before what?” She was looking up at him with anger flashing in her eyes.
He grabbed her to him, burying her face in his shoulder for a moment, then kissing her as if he were starving.
“Please don’t, Ty,” she said, her voice sounding as if she were in agony. “Please leave me alone.” She tried to push away from him, but he wouldn’t release her.
“Chris, I can’t stand to see him touching you. I just can’t stand it.” His hands were going up and down her back, caressing her, touching her neck, his thumbs toying with her ears.
She managed to push away far enough to look at him. “You can’t stand it? What right do you have to prevent me from doing anything? What right do you have to even voice an opinion? I made an absolute fool of myself over you and you threw everything in my face and now you stand here and tell me I can’t talk to a man who has the most honorable of intentions.”