"Did Willie get home safely?"

"Yes. You shouldn't be out. It's too cold."

"I want to see how the deer is doing."

Tyler didn't understand what could be so endearing about a female swallowed up by a coat too big for her, but he felt a sudden rush of warmth all through him at the sight of Daisy slogging through the snow, her face peeping out of the fur-lined hood. Protective feelings he didn't know existed welled up inside him. He was probably the least violent of all the Randolphs, but some things he just couldn't tolerate. No one was going to hurt Daisy while she was with him.

"Do you think it was too cold last night?" Daisy asked as they headed toward the shed.

"The heat from the mules and the burro would have kept it warm."

"The icicles are hard as rocks."

"This deer has survived blizzards. I'm sure it's okay."

There wasn't much room inside the shed. The mules had apparently accustomed themselves to their strange companion, but the burro had not. The deer scrambled to its feet when they entered. The burro immediately swung its head around, teeth bared.

"It hasn't eaten anything," she said, pointing to the oats and hay. The deer didn't seem to have touched the food.

"It's probably still tired. Now that it's rested up, its appet.i.te is bound to come back."

"Are you sure?"

Tyler had no idea. He didn't know a d.a.m.ned thing about deer, but he didn't figure that would be the best thing to tell Daisy. "Sure. It's just not used to people," he said, grasping for any explanation as to why this blasted animal wouldn't behave the way Daisy expected. "It's used to running way when it sees people."

"Oh." Daisy looked thoughtful.

"Let's leave it alone for a while. Maybe it'll eat."

"And if it doesn't?"

"I'll have to find something it will eat."

The sun was up over the trees when they left the shed. "It's going to be a pretty day," Tyler said.

"But cold. It doesn't look like much of the snow will melt."

"No, but it'll be pretty."

"Do you think I'll have to stay here much longer."

"I wish you didn't think of it that way."

"What way?" she asked. She pushed the hood back from her face so she could see him better.

"Like you had to stay."

She lifted her hand to shield her eyes from the glare of the sun. Her gaze became intense. "I thought you did."

"Not anymore."

"Me neither."

They stared at each other for a long moment. Daisy was the first to move away.

Daisy started to walk back to the cabin. "I thought you didn't like having people around. Zac says you're the loner of the family."

Tyler fell in beside her. "I don't mind people. It's just I don't find I need them much."

"Not at all if you mean to live here," Daisy said, swinging her arm in an arc that took in the cabin, the shed, and the snow-covered mountains.

"There are some needs within a man other people can't satisfy."

"I know, but to stay up here alone for months at a time."

"Let me show you something." He extended his hand toward her.

Daisy stood still. "What?" she asked.

"You'll have to see for yourself."

Daisy felt reluctant to follow him. She sensed going with him would be making some kind of admission, lowering a barrier, taking a step forward from which she might later find it impossible to retreat. Yet there was something irresistible about the smile that curved his lips, the light that danced in his eyes. He was usually so unemotional, so unmoved by any kind of feeling, it was impossible to refuse to discover what could have caused the light within him to beam with unsuspected energy.

"It's not very far," he said. "It won't take long."

It wasn't time or distance that bothered her, at least not time and distance you could measure. She didn't trust the feeling that made her smile, reach out to take his hand, and answer, "Okay." Some unknown quant.i.ty stirred, some restless unbridled spirit she had thought long since bludgeoned into stillness. She was afraid of the uprush of excitement, the expectation that something special was at hand, something good, something wonderful.

She knew it wasn't true. She had learned her lessons long ago. She didn't want to forget them now. They had cost her too much.

For a time, Daisy wondered if they were actually going to be able to reach the spot Tyler had in mind. The snow was deep and the crust hard enough for her to walk on. But not too deep or too hard for Tyler. He powered though the snow with amazing strength, leaving a path in his wake Daisy could follow. She wondered if anything could stand in the way of such a man. If anybody could make his dreams come true, it was Tyler.

She told herself not to be foolish. Physical power didn't translate into control of one's fate or command of the forces pitted against anyone who tried to succeed against fantastic odds. Tyler would never manage to turn his dream into reality by looking for lost gold mines. That took something more, something dreamers didn't have.

That was before he picked her up and carried her through a particularly deep drift.

He didn't ask. He didn't give her any warning. He simply turned around, scooped her up, and headed into a waist-high snow drift like he was walking through whipped cream. Nothing like this had ever happened to Daisy, and the sensation was breathtaking. She felt weightless, like the merest wisp of a female. At the same time it felt wonderfully exhilarating. It was as though being swept off her feet, as though not being responsible for the movement or direction of her own body, relieved her of the weight of responsibility for everything else.

She felt feminine, fragile, and pet.i.te.

The optimism with which he faced life invaded her mind and soul. For a few brief seconds her spirit felt free of the pressure that which had always kept it weighed down. Things she had never considered possible seemed within her grasp if she would only reach out.

Then he set her on the ground, and her merry-go-round came to a halt with a dispirited whimper.

"It's not much farther," he said, taking her by the hand and pulling her forward. "It's just around those rocks."

Dazed by the whiplash effect of her abrupt mood swings, Daisy followed. The fact that she was climbing over rocks covered with ice and snow hardly registered. When she finally reached the top and stood up, a blast of frigid air nearly knocked her off her feet. Tyler took her hand to steady her then put his arm around her shoulders and drew her close.

"This is what I wanted you to see."

Chapter Twelve.

They stood atop a saddle between two high peaks. The face of the mountain fell away in a sheer drop of several thousand feet, giving Daisy an un.o.bstructed view of the Rio Grande valley more than six thousand feet below.

For a moment she was too stunned to breathe. She felt like she was perched on the spine of the world. Looking up at the peaks on either side made her feel dizzy. Looking down at the valley, the Rio Grande a thin line winding its way between the brown and green, she felt terribly small. She could see the mesa seventy-five miles across the valley as clearly as if it were only seventy-five feet away.

"I come here whenever I feel discouraged," Tyler said. "Sometimes I come just because I like being here."

"Why?"

"My family thinks I'm crazy to keep looking for gold. After so many years, so many failures, it's sometimes hard to keep going."

Daisy was surprised he would make such a confession to her. She was certain he'd never said anything like that to Zac. She didn't know why he had brought her here, or why he was holding her so close.

"But each time I stand here and look out, each time I see an eagle floating on the updraft or a mountain sheep climbing what looks like a sheer cliff, I realize anything is possible. Compared to this, finding gold is nothing."

Daisy tried to feel what Tyler felt. She thought she caught a fragment of the exultation that transformed him from the quiet, phlegmatic prospector into a beaming visionary, but it slipped through her fingers with the softness of a sigh.

"You can't see it when you're down there," Tyler said, pointing to the town below and its tiny, almost invisible buildings. "People and pa.s.sions get in the way. But up here, you can see the world as G.o.d sees it."

Then Daisy felt it, too. She felt the shackles of her own fears fall away as though turned to dust. The restraints she had always accepted seemed to have lost their unbreakable hold. The limits, the rules, the conventions that dashed every hope as it was born lost the poison in their bite.

A paroxysm of joy seemed to lift her literally off her feet. She held tight to Tyler and pointed her face into the wind. It wasn't cold now. It was bracing, invigorating, filled with energy that flowed into her limbs. For the first time in her life, possibilities felt as limitless as the extraordinary panorama that stretched before her.

She felt so happy, she wanted to dance across the rocks and laugh aloud. Wanting to share this moment, she looked up at Tyler. His expression was so intense it scared her.

Then he kissed her.

No man had ever kissed Daisy. Even shared confidences with Adora Cochrane were insufficient to have prepared her for the impact of Tyler's embrace. She felt her strength drain away, leaving her weak and helpless. Yet even as she thought she must slip from his grasp and fall to the ground, energy flooded her with a power that left her breathless.

She found herself kissing Tyler back, something she'd never imagined doing with him or any other man. She knew nothing of the art of kissing or of the pleasures it promised. Her body responded instinctively to Tyler's embrace just as it hinted at something even more marvelous.

Daisy wasn't prepared for Tyler's tongue to invade her mouth, but she felt no desire to resist. Like a key turning in a lock, Tyler's probing tongue unleashed such a flood of pa.s.sion within her that Daisy broke away, more shocked at her herself than at Tyler's boldness.

"Why did you do that?" she asked, breathless.

"I've been wanting to do it for days."

"But why?"

"Do I have to have a reason?"

In that instant, Daisy realized though Tyler might not need a reason, she did. In her need, she had read reason into his actions. In that golden moment between the time his lips first touched hers and the instant they broke apart, her mind had built up a whole host of reasons and expectations. Even though she hadn't had time to put them into words, not even into conscious thought, she knew her reasons were quite different from Tyler's. Hers spoke of a future as endless as the vista before them.

His spoke of pa.s.sion of the moment.

Knowing that cooled the magic warmth that had flooded her body.

The vista before her lost its enchantment. It was no more than rocks and snow. The wind bit into her skin and whipped her skirts about her ankles. Her foot slipped, and she was fearful of falling. Holding on to Tyler's hand long enough to climb down from the rocks, Daisy started back toward the cabin.

"What's wrong?" he asked, following.

She didn't answer. He caught up with her when she floundered in a snowdrift.

"I didn't mean to upset you," he said as he helped her to her feet.

Daisy held his hand only as long as it took to steady herself. Then she started running.

"Slow down. You'll hurt yourself," Tyler called.

She didn't stop.

Suddenly he was in front of her, blocking her path.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing."

"I had to be something. You were all right one minute, running from me the next."

"I don't like heights."

She knew he didn't believe her, but she couldn't explain how his kiss had promised her everything one moment and his words s.n.a.t.c.hed it away the next. He wouldn't understand what she was talking about. For one moment she had believed there was more to her future than marriage to the first man to ask her. For a moment, she had hoped for everything a young woman dreams of when she first realizes she's a woman.

"Are you sure that's all?" Tyler asked.

"Yes. I want to go back to the cabin. It's cold up here."

He hesitated, but Daisy didn't give him time to ask more questions. Following the path he had made through the snow, she hurried down the mountain.

It was all her fault. She shouldn't have gone with him. Neither should she have allowed the view to cause her to forget the experiences of a lifetime. Looking over the edge of a mountain couldn't change anything. It didn't matter if people were too small to be seen from so high up. They were still there. They would always be there.

Daisy pushed past a limb laden with snow and heard it thwack against Tyler. She turned in time to see him snap the limb from the tree with one angry flick of his wrist. That frightened her a little.

He was so much like her father, always ready to command, to expect others to follow. He displayed just enough common sense to make you think he was sensible and responsible, but underneath there was nothing substantial. He planned his whole life around the possibility he would find his fortune in the ground. When common sense caused him to doubt, he rekindled his folly by standing on a mountain top.

She knew better. Being around Tyler confused her. His kiss had rocked her off her foundation. She had used her disapproval of him to deny that she liked him, that her reaction was anything more than a physical response. She knew better now, and she wouldn't let that happen again. She stumbled into the yard, relieved to be anch.o.r.ed once more to reality by the solid presence of the cabin.

"You sure you won't tell me what's wrong?" Tyler asked.

"You'd better see about your deer," Daisy said. She brushed some of the snow off the skirt of her dress.