“Now that’s done,” he said. “Unless you want more of the same.”
Tally stared at him without comprehension. Good God, she had utterly failed with him in nearly every respect. And he was laughing at her. He was laughing.
She leaned on the wall and caught her breath, lungs straining against the bindings that held her breasts flat. “How long have you known?” she demanded.
“Since we met.” He yawned and snapped his teeth like an animal. “I knew it’d have to come out sooner or later. Just a question of when.”
She thought quickly back over every encounter she’d had with the folk in Tombstone, the woman in Turquoise and the Brysons. “How is it that you guessed when no one else has?”
“I see things that are hidden,” he said. “I’m very good at it.”
“So you’ve been playing with me.” She smiled, picked up her hat and laid it on the table. “I’m sure it’s been most amusing.”
“You were playing games, not me,” he said. “Are you afraid of men, or is it just that you wish you had a little more between your legs?”
Tally pronounced her most elegant curse. “I wouldn’t be one of your sex for anything in the world. And as for being afraid…” She leaned over the foot of the bed. “I’ve known how to protect myself since I was fifteen.”
He propped himself up on his elbows and stared pointedly at her chest. “Maybe it ain’t fear. The devil knows what you’re like under that getup. Maybe you’re just scared no man would want you.”
How she longed in that moment to prove just how much men had wanted her—still wanted her, whenever they saw her as she was, as she could be. But he was still playing like a cat with a mouse. He was testing her for weakness. Men did not make her weak.
“Maybe,” she said, “I don’t want them.”
He wet his lips, and she shivered at the memory of his mouth on hers. Cochon. She should have hit him. And there was the .44 at her hip….
“How old are you—Tal?” he asked, interrupting her fantasies. “What’s your real name?”
“A lady never reveals her age,” she said. “And Tal is good enough for me. I don’t need fancy things. Only my freedom.”
“Freedom to ride around wild without any of the proper folk knowing about it?”
Heat rushed into her cheeks. “It harms no one. I work the ranch like my brother, like our hands Bart and Federico. I have no children and no husband to tend.”
He leaped up from the bed and crossed to the washstand, wetting one of the towels. Tally guessed his intent but refused to run. He bathed her face with surprising gentleness, wiping away the accumulated grime. He whistled softly.
“You clean up real nice,” he said. “My guess is that ugliness ain’t your problem.”
She took the towel from his hand and returned to the washstand. Her own face, framed by golden hair, stared back at her from the oval mirror. “I have no problem,” she said, “as long as people leave me alone.”
Kavanagh’s reflection joined hers. Solemn, not mocking, not cruel. “Why?” he asked. “You thought if I knew what you were, I’d hurt you. Did a man hurt you, Tal?”
The caressing note in his voice set her swaying like a willow in a high-desert wind. Oh, yes, he was very good at finding things that were hidden. But he had said she was a lousy liar, and that meant he, too, could make mistakes. She had become very good at lying with absolute sincerity.
“I’ve seen what men can do to women,” she said, meeting his eyes in the mirror. “I prefer to keep myself unentangled.”
He lifted a strand of her hair in his calloused fingers. “We’re two of a kind, ain’t we, Tal? I’ve got no use for women.”
“Except Esperanza.”
His eyes narrowed in anger and relaxed again. “You never loved a man?”
“Never.”
“You were always safe from me.”
“I couldn’t be certain of that. If I dress as a man, it means I expect to live in a man’s world. No special favors.” No being lusted after because of how I look. No lying under some smelly, sweating pig who can’t or won’t be true to a woman of his own. No more hypocrisy.
“You told me never to touch you the way I did in Turquoise,” she said. “Now I’m telling you the same thing. Never touch me again.”
To her secret amazement, he backed away, hands raised as if to ward off attack. His mouth curled in a smile. “I don’t plan to,” he said. “That was just to prove that there ain’t nothing between us but business.”
Because he’d kissed her and felt nothing. He was a wonder, a marvel—true to his dream of one woman and not even tempted by such intimacy with another. Her opinion of him kept changing, and she wanted no more than to flee this house and breathe the sweet night air until her head was clear of this constant spinning.
“I believe you,” she said slowly. “God knows why.”
“You’re a religious one, are you, Tally-girl?” he asked, heading for the door. “Say a few prayers for me.”
“I doubt my prayers would do you any good.”
“Maybe not.” He pointed his chin toward the washstand. “Clean up. I’ll be back in an hour, Tally-girl.”
“Kavanagh! Don’t call me Tally-gi—”
He walked out of the room and closed the door behind him. Tally felt her way to the bed and sat down with a thump. Perspiration prickled along the back of her neck, and she realized what she had denied every moment of the past ten minutes.
She’d been terrified. Only part of that fear had been of Kavanagh himself. The rest had come from her utter lack of control, her mistake in underestimating a man she should have known was more dangerous than she could imagine.
Moving with short, sharp jerks, she unbuttoned her waistcoat, unbelted her gun, pulled off her shirt and unwound the bandages underneath. Her breasts ached. She slipped off the men’s britches and the suspenders that held them up around her waist. Layer by layer, she stripped down to her skin and stood naked before the washstand. She used two of the towels to bathe her body, combed out her hair until it was free of snarls and tangles, and unpacked her spare shirt from her saddlebags. She counted every minute she spent in the room.
When she was dressed again, she took the basin and refilled it from the pump between the cabin and the barn. Laundry flapped in the night breeze, but she caught no sight of Kavanagh.
She met him at the door of the bedroom. His hair was damp and his face clean. He looked her over and gave a short nod. “Good. I’ll sleep in the barn tonight.”
“No special favors, Kavanagh.”
“Be a damned waste if that bed don’t get some use.”
Not a hint of innuendo shaded his words. Tally relaxed. “All right. You take it for three hours, and I’ll take it after that.”
“After I dirty up the sheets? I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. You go first.”
“You’re a stubborn tête de mule, Kavanagh.”
“Whatever that is, I’ll take it as a compliment.” He touched the brim of his hat and turned to go. She made a move to stop him. He froze.
“Why?” she asked. “You don’t like women. You don’t trust them. Now that you know what I am—”
He turned around, towering over her, though she wasn’t small or