but no one will take me on.”
“I couldn’t pay you, Tye,” she said plainly. She took a deep breath and hurried on. “What I’ve decided I need is a husband. That way, you’d have a stake in the place. The work you did would be to your own benefit. As you know, when a man marries, his wife’s property becomes his.”
He stared. Deepening pink tinged her smooth cheeks.
Slowly, he worked at assimilating her words and the idea behind them. He raised a hand to knead the back of his neck and took an unconscious step or two. “I think I’m confused here. What is it you’re asking me?”
“I’m asking you to marry me.”
He looked her over for some gross mistaken identity. This was Meg Telford, no doubt about it. Meg Telford in his room. Asking him to marry her. He shook his head to clear it. “You don’t know what you’re asking.”
“Yes, I do.”
“You can’t. Nobody in Aspen Grove will even look at me or talk to me. You’d lose the respect of everyone in town if anyone knew you were here right now. You saw how your family acted when you talked to me in the mercantile! You can’t want to marry me.”
She stood abruptly. “I don’t give a fig what anyone’s going to say about it. I don’t need this town’s approval to do what I believe is right.”
“You say that now, but you don’t know what it’s like. You don’t know jack squat about how it is to have people look at you like you’re dirt. You.’ve never spent Sundays or holidays alone or seen women snatch their skirts aside so’s not to touch you.” He ran a nervous hand through his hair. “Trust me, you’d think differently after that happened a few times.”
Primly, she moved back to the chair and sat. “Anyone who would treat me like that after knowing me all these years wouldn’t be worth having as a friend.”
Fine talk, but she hadn’t lived it.
Tye studied her perched on the chair. Marriage. To this woman. He couldn’t keep his curious gaze from sliding to her rounded breasts beneath her starched dress, and images of sleeping with her had him moving to stand behind her.
“Ma’am, you’re talking of marriage here. I just can’t believe you’ve thought this through.”
“I’m not an innocent young girl,” she countered. “I know what marriage entails.”
A delicious surge of heat teased his body. He tried to let his brain do the reasoning. “I want children someday,” he said honestly. She might as well know his concerns. He wouldn’t saddle himself with a woman who could give him land, only to find she wasn’t willing to see to his other wishes.
To his surprise, she didn’t blink an eye. “So do I. There’s no reason I can’t give you children.”
What more could he want? Meg was the most beautiful woman in the whole damned county. She was offering to turn her land over to him, marry him and give him children.
He didn’t have to wonder, “Why me?” The privilege had fallen to the only able-bodied, unmarried man in the area. Not exactly flattering.
But promising.
Very promising. And as long as they were revealing their expectations, he had more. “There’s something else I want,” he said.
She turned her head, but not enough to see him. “What is it?”
Tye’d come back with a plan to prove his worth to this community. The war had shown him that when it came to wearing a uniform, picking up a gun and fighting, he was as good as any man. No one he’d fought beside had cared whether or not he bore his father’s name. He’d fought prejudice and ridicule in this town since he was old enough to raise his fists, and these people would only see him differently once he proved himself an equal. “I want to start a packing plant.”
“A—packing plant? Like in the East?”
“Yes.” He abandoned his inhibition and moved to sit on the edge of the bed, where he could look directly at her. “I listened to cattlemen the last few years. I heard their stories of losing hundreds of head while driving them or shipping them by rail, about how the cattle lost weight and brought less money. If we could slaughter them here, we’d save the trip and the hardships. We’d ship the dressed meat right out. Think how much more meat will fit in the railcars already dressed.”
“What kind of investment are you talking about?” She was listening!
“A big one. I’ve been saving because I needed to buy land. But if I already have the land, all I have to do is build pens, a slaughtering house, and then hire workers.”
“There are no workers.”
“There will be if there are jobs for them.”
Thoughtfully, she studied him. Her gaze wavered reflectively to a spot over his shoulder, then back to his face. “But you’d still help me with the ranch? I need your word on that. And you have to promise me you’ll never sell Joe’s ranch.”
“If I agree to marry you, I’ll do whatever I can to make the ranch a success. But I would need the same promise from you.”
“About the packing plant?” she asked.
He nodded. “It would benefit you. You wouldn’t have to ship cattle.”
“All right. If you’ll marry me, I’ll help you get your packing plant started. And—you won’t ever sell?”
“I won’t ever sell. Unless you ask me to.” Something here was too good to be true. But then, he was her only choice. Belittling as that might be, her proposal was an end to his quest for land. He could have his dream.
“All right,” he said. “These are the terms—I help you keep the ranch and get it going. You help me get the plant started. This will be a marriage in all respects.”
She blushed noticeably, but she nodded.
“Then I agree to marry you.”
She paused only momentarily before getting to her feet. “Very well, then. We’ll arrange it as soon as possible. Next week sometime. Will that be convenient?”
“I’m not goin’ anywhere.”
“Perhaps Saturday?”
“Whatever you’d like.”
“I’ll let you know.”
He walked her out the door, down the flight of stairs, and assisted her onto the wagon. This time when he extended his hand, she looked at it, and then up at him, before she placed her gloved one in it. It would have been much easier if he’d simply lifted her, but she obviously got up and down unassisted the rest of the time, and he wasn’t comfortable with touching her in a more familiar manner.
Yet.
She raised herself up to the seat and straightened her skirts. She met his eyes and he could have sworn she was thinking the same thing. “We’ll
