The Temptress (Montgomery/Taggert 8)

Still smiling, and feeling like the most desirable woman in the world, she sat on the grass and leaned against the log. “I have second sight,” she said simply. “I’ve only had two visions but even one was enough to get my name changed. It seems that it’s a tradition with the Montgomerys to name all the women with second sight Christiana.”

“So what happened when you were six?”

“My parents and I were in church and I don’t really remember how I felt beforehand, but one moment I was standing beside my mother and the next I was in the aisle screaming that everybody had to go outside. My mother said the congregation was too stunned to move, but she knew the traditions of her family and knew that every third or so generation a girl was born with second sight. So my mother yelled the single word that was guaranteed to clear the building.”

“Fire,” Ty said.

“Yes, except that after the people ran out of the building in a state of panic, and one of them broke a stained glass window with a chair, they saw that there was no fire. I will always remember the looks on the faces of the people as they advanced on my mother and me. I thought they were going to kill us and I tried to hide in my mother’s skirts.”

She took a breath. “They had just about reached us when the sky opened up and a bolt of lightning hit the church and the back half of it collapsed. When the dust cleared, the people looked at my mother and me as if we were witches. I’ll never forget my mother’s look that day. One of the men said, ‘How did Mary Ellen know?’ My mother put her nose in the air, took my hand and said, ‘My daughter’s name is Christiana.’ And it has been ever since. Of course my father wasn’t exactly delighted since I’d been named after his mother, but Mother promised him more children and he could name them what he wanted.”

“But there weren’t any more.”

“No, just me. Some branches of the Montgomerys are very fertile and some are almost barren. There doesn’t seem to be any middle ground.”

Tynan leaned back on the grass, stretching full length, his feet toward Chris. “She sounds like a wonderful mother. Do you miss her?”

Chris looked away. “Every day of my life. She was strong and soft, sensible and intelligent, wise and…. She was all anyone could hope to be.”

“I think you may be like her, what I’ve seen, that is.”

Chris grinned broadly at him. “For that, you may turn around here and put your head in my lap.”

“That is an honor,” he said as he did as she offered. “This is nice,” he said as Chris smoothed his hair back from his forehead. “You’re not like any other women I’ve met.”

“Good. Ty, what are you going to do now that you’re free?”

“I’m not yet. I have to get you back to your father.”

“Yes, but what can you do besides shoot a gun and sit a horse well? Or get drunk and land in jail?”

With his eyes closed, he smiled. “Doesn’t sound like much, does it? Well, let’s see, what can I do? I guess women don’t count, do they?”

“Most definitely not.”

“I know,” he said, opening his eyes. “I can run four whore houses at once.”

Chris let out a gasp. “Somehow I don’t think that is a good—”

“No, not the women. I let Red handle that, except if there’s a fight, then I separate the women, but one time Red’s bookkeeper got killed in the crossfire of a shootout—one I wasn’t involved in, I might add—and she asked me to look into the accounts because the bank was about to foreclose on one of the houses.”

“Did the bank foreclose?”

“Hell, no. Oh, excuse me. It turned out that little weasel had been embezzling her money. I found it buried under the front porch of his house. And I had to learn to do bookkeeping and straighten the whole mess out. Now, every time I see Red I go over her accounts.”

“What a marvelous ability. My father says that half his empire is nothing but book work. You could be of great use to him.”

“I’m sure that your father would entrust his accounts to a gunslinger.”

“He entrusted his daughter to one,” she said softly.

“I guess he did at that,” he said, smiling at her and beginning to run his hand up her arm. “Chris, do you really think he meant that about not touching you? Do you think he had any idea what he was asking?” His hand was at her neck.

“Maybe he’d heard about your reputation with women and he wanted to protect his daughter’s chastity.”

“Of course if neither of us told anyone what had happened, there’d be no way he’d know.” He was pulling her head down to his.

“But my husband would know on my wedding night.”