The Emperor's New Clothes (32 page)

“
Troilus and Cressida
.” Her voice rose nearly to a cry. “‘This love will undo us all!'”

“Also from
Hamlet
. ‘Forty thousand brothers could not with all their quality of love make up my sum.'” He drew a deep breath and stared into her eyes. “‘I loved Ophelia.'”

“You're misquoting again.” Her voice trembled. “It's the other way. ‘Forty thousand brothers' comes after—”

“Ophelia!” He clenched his jaw.

“Damn you, Tyler Matthews.” Defeat flooded her. This was surely a mistake. “Very well, I love you! I've always loved you. And God help me, I probably always will. And you'll break my heart and leave—”

“I will never leave you! Why can't you believe that! I love you.”

“Certainly you say that now, but—”

“No!” Frustration washed across his face. “What do I have to do to get through to you? I love you today and I will love you tomorrow and always. And we will be together forever!”

“Forever? Hah!” She wanted nothing more than to believe him, but everything she'd ever seen in her life told her to ignore that nagging voice in the back of her head that cried this was real and forever. How could she take that risk? “You can't help it, Tyler. It's in your nature.”

“My nature?”

“Yes indeed.” She glared. “You're just a man.”

“Well, you needn't make it sound like a disease!”

“Well, it's not something you can recover from,” she snapped. “It's very much like a broken heart. It's incurable!”

“If I break your heart you can…um…you can…” He pulled his brows together in an obvious effort to come up with something to convince her.

“What? Shoot you?”

“Yeah, you can shoot me.”

She snorted in disdain. “I already did that once, and it wasn't very satisfying.”

“You claimed that was an accident. This time it will be deliberate, and you've said it yourself if you wanted to—”

“I would have killed you.” Gad, she didn't really wish to kill him! The realization of what she did want struck her with a force she never expected. All she wanted, all she'd ever wanted, was to be in his arms and by his side for the rest of her days. “And as much as I hate to admit it, I'm not at all certain I'd ever really kill you,” she admitted.

“But I'd deserve it.”

“Well, that's true enough.”

He picked up her hand and kissed her palm. “You won't have to shoot me, ever.”

“Not deliberately anyway.”

“Ophelia!”

“Accidents do happen, you know.” She forced a pleasant smile to soften the very real threat in her words. “I can't imagine I would ever kill you, but I will not hesitate to shoot—”

He pulled her into his arms. “I'd prefer to avoid any shootings, fatal, deliberate or accidental, in the future.”

“It's probably best. You don't seem to deal with even minor pain at all well, and who knows what the very nice people of whatever this town ends up calling itself now would do if I actually killed you. Some of them were more than willing to hang…” She gazed up at him, and her heart stilled. And for the first time, she looked in his eyes and knew, deep down in some secret
place she'd always kept hidden and protected, that the love shining in his eyes was right and true and lasting. “Damn, I do love you.”

He grinned. “Then kiss me, Ophelia.”

Her lips met his, and joy surged through her. Why had she fought this for so long? Why had she wasted so much time? Why had she denied what she'd known from the moment she'd met him and he'd talked to her of Venice and a moon made for lovers?

She pulled back and studied him for a moment. “If I marry you—”

“When you marry me.”

“Very well.” She sighed. “When I marry you, will you take me to Venice and show me the moon made for lovers?”

“Ophelia.” He laughed. “I don't have that kind of money.”

“What do you mean”—a sinking sensation settled in her stomach—“you don't have that kind of money?”

“Jack's got all the money in the family. I'm struggling just to get my ranch going again.”

“You don't have any money,” she said slowly.

“Nope.”

“And I can't keep the money Jack gave me?” A hopeful note rang in her voice.

“Nope.”

“Not even a little?”

“Nope.”

“You're trying to tell me I went through all this hard work and effort and energy. I helped build an opera house, taught plump matrons to be fairy queens, confronted laughing horses, threw myself off a porch and lost my sister, and not only do I not get to be a countess anymore, but I can't keep any of the money either?” She glared in indignation.

“Not even a dollar.” He grinned. “You'll just have to make do on love.”

“Love.” She smiled weakly. “Wonderful.” How ironic. Now that she finally believed in the elusive emotion, it was damn near all she ended up with.

“Is it enough?” he said softly.

Ophelia gazed into his eyes, and realized that anyone who'd told as many lies as she had would surely recognize the truth when she finally faced it. And it was indeed the truth. As true as the emotion shining in his eyes. His dark, delicious eyes. And she'd always loved chocolate. “It's enough.”

Still…

She traced her finger along the side of his jaw. “Have you ever noticed, Tye, how politicians always seem to have a great deal of money?”

“Ophelia.” He growled the word.

“I was simply thinking, my love, that you could use your position as mayor as a starting point. I mean, surely it can't be all that difficult to go from mayor of—what is it now, Empire's End—to being territorial governor and then on to the senate and possibly even pres—”

He groaned. “Ophelia.”

“Yes, Tye?” She gazed at him with as much innocence as she could muster.

He glared down at her with such a profound mix of exasperation and sheer desire in his eyes that she didn't even flinch when he heaved a heavy sigh, flicked a tan finger in the air and said:

“Rope.”

…Empire's End, Wyoming, 1891
.

“You're all set.” Tye slapped the rump of the horse he'd just harnessed to the surrey and turned to his wife. “Life would sure be a lot easier around here if you'd just learn—”

“I know, I know,” Ophelia said in the manner of one who'd heard the same speech over and over. “Life would be much easier if I'd just learn to ride. Well, I won't. I don't want to and you can't make me.”

He quirked a brow and pulled her into his arms, his voice low and suggestive. “I thought I could make you do anything.”

She gazed into his chocolate eyes and her breath caught. Gad, three years and a baby later, and he could still fire a heat inside her that weakened her knees and her resistance. She hadn't even had to shoot him. Not once.

He nuzzled the sensitive flesh beneath her ear, and she gasped. “Tyler Matthews, stop that! If you don't let me go, I'll be late.”

His words tickled against her neck. “I don't see what you women do every Tuesday and Thursday anyway that's so damned interesting.”

“Oh, this and that.” She stifled a grin. “Typical female activities mostly. Nothing you'd be particularly interested in.”

He released her and grinned. “Probably not. You'll be home before dark?”

“Always.” She brushed her lips lightly against his, and let him help her into the small buggy they'd bought after their marriage, a model very similar to Lorelie's. She snapped the reins, the horse laughed in that sarcastic manner all horses seemed to have around Ophelia and they were off. She'd read recently about the fanciful notion of horseless carriages, and did so hope it wasn't simply idle speculation. Eliminating the necessity of those nasty brutish creatures would certainly make life more enjoyable.

Actually, life in general was proceeding quite nicely, and Ophelia looked forward eagerly to today's meeting of the Every Other Tuesday and Thursday Afternoon Ladies Cultural Society and Theater Troupe. If her luck held in the next few months, and she needed all the luck she could get against the ladies of Empire's End, she'd have won enough money to take Tye to Venice and show him the moon. Lorelie said she'd keep the baby and she did promise not to lose her. Of course, Jenny would be around as well. She and Zach hadn't married after all, at least not yet.

It continued to amaze Ophelia how the men of Empire's End hadn't an inkling of the activities of the Every Other Tuesday and Thursday Afternoon Ladies Cultural Society and Theater Troupe. Gad, any idiot
could have figured it out if they'd simply paid attention to what was actually in front of their eyes as opposed to what they expected to see.

She often thought about that very thing. Idly, in the back of her mind, she tried to determine why she'd had such horrible difficulties when those damn tailors in that silly fairy tale had encountered few problems at all. Just like them, she'd tried to sell something that didn't exist.

Maybe her scheme was far too grand or a touch too fanciful. Maybe she wasn't as good an actress as she thought. And maybe, just maybe she couldn't have lived happily ever after the way she was now if she'd managed to pull it off.

Still, the notion nagged at her from time to time. Why was it people very often couldn't see what was right in front of them? What made fairly intelligent men believe, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, that wives told their husbands everything? And why would anyone accept an actress's masquerade as a countess when she plainly couldn't even remember her dead husband's name?

And she wondered now and again in odd moments if the tailors had lived happily ever after as well with their ill-gotten gains. Or if they'd ever realized, as she had, that there was far more to life than the mere monetary rewards to be reaped by fabrication and deception and deceit. And she now firmly believed, with a conviction strengthened by the love of one man and the friendship of very nice people, that the fact held true whether you were peddling a castle that didn't exist or duping a town that longed for respectability or even, or perhaps especially, if you were selling…the emperor new clothes.