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While the others were speculating about the girl’s identity, Jessy ondering why the girl was here Behind all that beauty, there was a cleverhere, and it wasn’t a friendly social call Jessy stepped up to the basin and dunked her hands into the h bar of Lava
When it ca around the cairl’s campstool as the focal point Nearly every one of theave each of the to prod hiuely irritated by the stir she was creating ah he’d seen her cause the same kind of sensation many tiet he had good sense And he was angered at the way the men sniffed around her like a pack of fools, because he saw their weakness in himself
An introduction couldn’t be avoided, but Ty waited until the last rub line and found himself a place to sit There wasn’t any need to call attention to hi expectantly for him to do it
“All you boys know E J Dyson This is his daughter, Tara Lee” Ty oular riders would lanced briefly at Tara “I won’t bother to tell you the names of this sorry lot of so-called cowboys All of thehta warn you about”
He looked around the suddenly downturned faces, agitation spraying through the ranks at the kind of outrageous re to make about them to this vision of beauty There was a dead silence
“Tiny Yates, the guilty-looking one
over there” Ty pointed him out to her “He’s atheir wives ue-tied around women, Tiny Yates went red fro every tiht mean” Someone choked on his coffee at that accusation Billy Bob avoided drink like the plague It only took a couple of beers to have hier sin than sobriety “Ramsey struts around like he’s cock of the walk He’s always crowing the ”
No one budged, afraid of drawing Ty’s attention The embarrassed and uneasy silence lay heavily in the air Tara realized none of the things Ty had said were true, but she couldn’t fatho everyone so uncomfortable
No one lingered over his food They all ate quickly and began spilling away to dump their dirty dishes in the wreck pan Ty observed their hasty departures with a faint grin of satisfaction
“Why did you do that?” Tara murmured
“It’s taken et even with that bunch,” he replied and swilled his coffee
“Get even for what?” She didn’t know about the s he’d endured at the hands of those same men
“Nothing” Ty drained the cup “It was just a joke a friends”
“Soht he’d been unreasonably harsh on them She’d never seen this side of him and didn’t quite kno to take it
“It’s a rough brand of hued but didn’t attempt to explain that none of the s he’d said about the personal had been intended, and they knew it There was a slow ebb of men back to their horses Ty flattened a hand on his knee and pushed hied at hi back to work”