Now it was Daisy's turn to get angry. "I may not know anything about rich people in big cities," she replied, cheeks flamed with embarra.s.sment, "but I know a great deal about people who build castles in the air. My father did that, and he never made a cent. The same thing will happen to you."

Tyler wanted to get up and walk out of the cabin. He wanted to be as far from Zac's wide-eyed expectation and Daisy's scornful earnestness as possible. He had tried to explain to George why he wanted the hotels, why he needed to earn his place in the family. He guessed he hadn't done a good job. He hadn't been able to make George understand that after being described by his father as being unworthy of the family, being born a Randolph wasn't enough to make him feel he deserved his share of the family fortune. Besides, the others had done something to earn their portion.

George had voted to give him the money, but the others had refused. Tyler didn't need to be rejected by Daisy as well.

"What would you do?" he asked Daisy.

"Me!"

"You seem to think you know how hotels ought to be run."

"I never said that, but I do know people want hot baths, good food, and comfortable beds. If you want them to have anything else, you'll to have to convince them it's worth paying for."

"What would you suggest I do?"

"I don't know," Daisy admitted. "I doubt I've seen half the things you're talking about."

"Then I suggest you not criticize until you have."

Daisy looked so shocked Tyler was sorry he'd spoken so sharply, but she had no right to judge him. It was obvious she wasn't rejecting his idea of a hotel, just the kind he wanted. She was rejecting him. That hurt even more because he liked Daisy and wanted her to like him.

"We've both told you what we want," he said, forcing a weak smile to his lips. "Now it's your turn."

Tyler noticed Daisy's hesitation. He wondered if she was reluctant to tell him what she really wanted or if she was simply reluctant to tell him anything after the way he'd acted.

"Come on," Zac urged. "This whole thing was your idea."

Daisy still looked uncertain when she said, "I want to live in a house like my mother grew up in."

"Is that all?" Zac asked, disgusted.

"When Mama used to fall into a melancholy, she would tell me about it. She made it sound wonderful."

"What could be so wonderful about a house?" Zac wanted to know.

"She lived in a big house in Philadelphia with trees and gra.s.s and flowers everywhere. Granddaddy worked for a bank. They were important people and had lots of friends. Summer evenings they'd sit on the porch. People would stop and talk until late at night. Mama had a room to herself and never had to clean or wash or cook. Granddaddy used to take them to all kinds of wonderful places in the summer. Mama had dozens of young men who came to courting, wanting to take her places, to buy her things." She sighed. "My mother was extremely beautiful. Lots of men wanted to marry her."

"Then why did she marry your pa?"

"Because she fell in love with him," Daisy said, her eyes flashing angrily.

"That was a mistake."

"What was?"

"Falling in love."

"Why do you say that?"

"She left all that to come to New Mexico, didn't she?"

"You'll have to excuse Zac," Tyler said. "He's never loved anybody but himself, so he wouldn't understand."

"You're no different," Zac snapped. "You don't even like your own family."

"You still haven't told us your most secret dream," Tyler said to Daisy.

She flushed. "W-why do you s-say that?"

"You hesitated a minute ago. Just now you stammered and turned pink. What do you really want?"

"I just told you, " Daisy insisted.

"But that's not what you want most of all. That was the game you asked us to play, wasn't it?"

Daisy threw Tyler a resentful look.

"What else could a woman want besides money, position, and some rich man to fall in love with her?" Zac asked.

"Freedom," Daisy said. The word burst out like a balloon held under water. "The right to run my own life."

Zac acted like he thought she was crazy, but that didn't matter. Tyler didn't look like she'd just given the wrong answer to an important question, and she was really talking to him.

"All my life my father made every decision -- what I wore, what I did, even what I fixed for dinner. Mama always said he was very smart -- he graduated from Yale. I swore if I ever got the chance, I'd show him I was just as smart as he was."

"How were you going to do that?" Tyler asked.

"Get married and have my own home."

"Why get married?"

"I want to. Mother said every woman needs a husband to protect her and do things for her."

"Make up your mind," Zac said. "First you want to be your own boss, then you want to get married."

"If you get married with that att.i.tude, you're giving up on yourself," Tyler said.

"What else can I do?"

"You have a ranch and a gold mine."

"They're both worthless. Besides, I don't know how to run a ranch."

"You can learn. My family did."

"It's easier for a man," Daisy said.

"Maybe, but you're smarter than most men."

Tyler's answer stunned Daisy. No one had ever considered her intelligence an advantage. Even Guy Cochrane, the least domineering man she knew, considered it no more than something to be tolerated. No one had ever suggested she actually put it to use, especially not to learn how to run her own ranch.

On days when her father was away at his mines, she would sometimes spend hours imagining what she would do when she had her own home. The more tyrannical and unkind he got, the greater her need to escape him, to learn to feel some self worth.

But since she was poor, she never expected to have any real control of her life. She saw marriage as only a partial escape, but the only route open to her. Now her father's death had freed her from his domination, but it hadn't provided her with an income. It had possibly given her the means of making her own living, but now that she was faced with the opportunity for total freedom, the idea frightened her. She was ignorant of just about everything she needed to know to survive. Marriage to a kind and understanding man seemed safer.

But Tyler seemed to think she could learn. She wondered if he could be right.

He was asking her to look at herself in a whole different way. She didn't know if she had the courage. She had never liked having someone else control her life, but it terrified her to think of being completely on her own.

Yet a tiny sliver of excitement danced wildly in the pit of her stomach. As excitement goes, it wasn't much of a sliver, certainly not compared to Tyler's spending the night in her bed, but it was an energetic little creature. It deftly avoided murderous a.s.saults by common sense, fear, and pessimism. It actually seemed to gather strength from these triumphs.

But her brain was not immune to the attacks. It wasn't long before she concluded her only sensible course of action was to return to Albuquerque and marry the best man she could find. Yet that impish little sliver refused to go away. And it had abandoned her stomach to flit through her heart, making it beat faster, into her brain, reviving hope she had beaten down.

Tyler believed she could do it. Maybe she could.

But Tyler was a dreamer. She knew from bitter experience some men built their dreams out of the tissue of impossibility. She was afraid Tyler was one of those men. If so, his faith in her was as meaningless as her father's certainty that someday, somehow, he would find gold.

"I'll think about it." She knew she would think of little else for days to come.

Tyler and Zac were cutting firewood. Zac sawed the logs into one-foot lengths and Tyler split them into pieces small enough to fit into the stove.

"Do you think she's a fortune hunter?" Zac asked.

The same question had teased Tyler all morning. He hoped Daisy was just like most women, wanting a little beauty and romance in her life. But he couldn't ignore the possibility she was concerned only with money, clothes, fancy trips, and a big house, not the man himself. This didn't match the image of her in his mind. Not at all.

"I wouldn't take everything she says literally."

"Why would she say it if she didn't mean it?"

"Maybe because she's afraid of being poor again."

He remembered their first years in Texas well enough to know what it meant to worry about your next meal. But his family hadn't given up. They hadn't compromised. They had stuck together and fought until they had won.

But there had been seven of them.

"Maybe because she's alone," Tyler said as he cleaved an oak log in two with a single swing of the ax. "If she decides to go back to her ranch, she'll need help."

"You could do that."

"I don't have time."

"You wouldn't have to stay with her, just look in on her now and then."

But he wouldn't. He didn't trust himself to spend time alone with Daisy. He didn't think he'd lose his head, but he couldn't be certain. He hadn't been acting like himself these past few days. No telling what he would do if they were together for weeks at a time.

He was petrified at the thought of being caught in marriage by a woman who wanted him for his money. He intended to live on what he could make. Which so far was nothing. It was okay for him to live in poverty because of principle and pride, but he couldn't ask a woman to do that. And if they started a family, he'd be forced to accept the inheritance he didn't want and didn't feel he deserved. Not to mention taking a job he hated.

He had already made up his mind if he hadn't found gold by his deadline, he would disappear. He could never live on his family's charity. On that there could be no compromise. He was already considering places to go. Australia figured high on his list.

But he didn't want to disappear. He might not get along well with his family, but he liked them. Tyler tossed aside several split pieces and settled a new log in place.

"She'd need somebody around the ranch all the time," he said, then split the log in half. "And unless we find out who's trying to kill her, it won't matter. She'll have to stay in Albuquerque." He methodically reduced the half log to four wedge-shaped pieces.

"If you're not willing to look after her, you'd better stop encouraging her to go off on her own."

"I'm not encouraging her," Tyler said, tossing the split pieces aside and positioning the second half of the log. "I just don't think she ought to marry somebody just to have a husband."

"Why not if that's what she wants?"

Why not indeed? What gave him the right to think he could order other people's lives? No one approved of what he'd done. They said he was a fool to refuse his inheritance. They'd probably say Daisy was wise to make a sensible marriage.

But he believed she was too capable to sell herself short. If she compromised, it would be out of fear. He wanted to tell her she didn't have to be afraid, but he couldn't, not if he didn't intend to be around to pick her up when she stumbled. He wasn't willing to give up his dream to help her gain hers. It sounded awful, even to him, but that's the way it was. His whole future depended on the next few months.

So did hers.

But she wasn't his responsibility. Besides, she didn't want his help. She disapproved of him so much she had tried to run away. She'd ridiculed his plan for the hotels. The best thing was to take her to Albuquerque as soon as possible. If he didn't know what she was doing, he wouldn't worry about her. He needed to keep his mind on his work if he wanted to find gold before his deadline. He really didn't want to go to Australia.

Tyler finished splitting the last log and started gathering an armload to take inside. "It probably won't matter what I say," he said to Zac. "I'm sure the Cochranes will be happy to give her any advice she needs." Knowing that should have been a relief to him instead of an irritation.

Daisy sat down so Tyler could change her bandage. So far he had refused to let her do it. She hadn't minded so much at first, but she felt better with each pa.s.sing day. And as she grew stronger, she became more irritated by his restrictions.

"I don't suppose you'll let me to change it myself today," she said. The question was purely rhetorical.

"You can't see as well as I can."

"I can't see you at all," she snapped. "Your beard covers your face so completely I wouldn't know you if I were to see you without it." She hadn't meant to mention his beard, but it was a constant source of irritation to her.

"You aren't likely to get the chance," Zac said. "He hasn't shaved in years. Or cut his hair, from the looks of it."

"I always think people with a beard have something to hide," Daisy said.

She felt Tyler's hand still for a fraction of a second before it resumed its work.

"Why do you say that?" he asked.

She was glad she didn't have to look into his eyes. He could be rather intimidating.

"A beard is like a mask. You can't see the face behind it. You can't tell if a man means what he says."

"You can see his eyes, hear the tone of his voice, observe his behavior."

"But the face is the only true means of expression," Daisy insisted. "He who covers his face, covers the window to his soul."

"Sounds like something you read in a book," Zac said with a shudder.