now, and Nichole didn’t know if she could face seeing him with that china doll of a woman. “I could camp out in this grove. No one would ever find me. You know I could stay here for months.”
“This time we ain’t fighting Yanks, we’re fighting folks that know these hills as well as we do.” Wolf hesitated a moment as if he felt sorry for her. “I know being shipped to Texas and the McLains is a dent in your pride, but better that than getting killed. The McLains are the only men I can trust, Nick. We’ve no family, and any friends we had before the war won’t know us now. Except for Tyler and Rafe, all the Shadows have gone home to their own problems. I can’t fight for my land and worry about you. You’re going to Texas.”
Nichole knew it was useless to argue any longer. “All right, but let me go in my own clothes, not in some dress.” Before her parents died, when she’d only been a kid, her mother had never minded her living in her brother’s hand-me-downs. She could barely remember putting on a dress even as a child.
Wolf wasn’t a man who budged easily. “Dressed as a woman is the only way you’ll make it out of the county alive. They’ll be watching every man who leaves. Nick Hayward has a price on his head, but Nichole Hayward is unknown. So put on those duds I bought you.”
Nichole stormed off to the stream using every swear word she’d ever heard. She dressed in the ugly olive green skirt and whiskey-colored jacket Wolf had picked out for her at the mercantile. The skirt was too large in the waist and the jacket an inch too tight across the bodice, but she hardly noticed. Her brother, her only kin, was kicking her out of her state. Her own brother was sending her to the hell of Texas with only a prayer of finding one of the McLains. With her luck, they were all dead, or whiny little Bergette had made them turn around and go back to Indiana.
Since Wolf had helped with the delivery of May and Daniel’s twins, he’d talked as though the McLains were his family and not just some men he’d met once. Nichole had tried to forget Adam, but Wolf hadn’t made it easy. He retold their days in Indiana as though it had been his only trip to the normal world in this lifetime. He bragged about Adam being a great doctor and Wes being one of the only Yankees who knew how to fight.
When she tried to step back in the clearing without falling over her hem, the men froze. Tyler, who’d ridden with her for three years, stood as though a lady had just entered a room. He dusted himself off and smoothed back his curly black hair.
“Nick?” He tilted his head slightly as if he didn’t believe his eyes. “Is that you?” His normally emotionless face was twisted with confusion.
“Say a word and I’ll gut you like a pig.” Nichole stared at him in challenge.
Tyler lowered his eyes, slowly-far too slowly for Nichole’s way of thinking.
“I… I never thought… I-”
“Well, you can stop thinking whatever it is you’re thinking right now as far as I’m concerned. I’m still Nick, nothing more.” She’d called Tyler a lot of names over the years, but fool had never been one of them. It came to mind now.
The boy Rafe, not yet out of his teens, slapped Tyler on the shoulder. “She’s more, ain’t she, Tyler? She’s a whole lot more.”
“Shut up,” Tyler mumbled.
Nichole couldn’t stop looking at the way Tyler’s eyes had changed. He stared at her so hard it looked as if the firelight was coming from him and not reflecting off the campfire. Suddenly, she knew what he was thinking as truly as if he’d spoken the words out loud.
“Stop it!” she shouted placing her fists on her hips. The effort only tightened the material across her bust-line. Nichole greatly missed her bindings and she could see she wasn’t the only one who noticed them missing.
“Stop what?” Tyler raised his hands in surrender but couldn’t seem to get the smile off his face.
“Stop thinking of me as a woman. I’m Nick.
Tyler looked guilty. “I know.” He swallowed hard making his Adam’s apple bob up and down. “I’ve ridden with you and trusted you with my life. But I never thought you’d look the way you do in a dress.”
“She sure don’t look like one of us.” Rafe giggled. “One Shadow has a few more curves.” Rafe moved his hands over his own chest showing how hers rounded out.
Both Tyler and Wolf’s fists swung toward the boy. In dodging, he stumbled backward, almost landing in the fire. The warmth sobered him.
Nick reached for her Colt, but the weapon wasn’t at her hip. She wanted to shoot all three of them. Rafe thought she was a freak in a sideshow, Tyler couldn’t stop staring at her like she was fresh-made apple pie, and Wolf was so overprotective he would smother her completely at any moment.
Grabbing the carpetbag Wolf had bought, Nick shoved her normal clothes inside, then lifted her Colt from the branch where she’d hung it. If this was anything like the reaction of the rest of the world, she’d rather stay here and be shot. Since Wolf wouldn’t allow that, she figured she’d need the fine new Colt he’d bought her last year. She didn’t know if she could stomach every man from here to Texas acting like his brains had been drained.
Much to her frustration, her anger brought tears to her eyes. Not because of the way the men were acting, but from a memory she’d been trying to bury for months. Adam. He’d never treated her like a freak, gawking and staring. Adam had always acted as though her clothes were normal. He’d even told her he liked her hair short. When he looked at her, he didn’t just see a man or woman, he saw her.
“I’m sorry about Rafe.” Tyler reached for the bag. “He’s just having a little trouble seeing that you’re still our Nick, no matter how you’re dressed.”
Nichole switched the bag in her hands, moving it away from his grip. “And you, Tyler? Are you still my friend?” She could tell he was as shocked as Rafe, only for some reason Tyler was trying to please her with his words, something she could never remember him trying to do. She’d always seen him as a good fighter who had little to say.
“Of course,” he answered. “It’ll just take a little getting used to. You’ve always been able to count on me, Nick.”
He couldn’t hide the smile that spread across his face, and she knew things would never be the same between them. He seemed to have developed a twitch that kept lowering his eyes to her bosom.
“Wolf says I’m to take you into town.” Tyler tried to focus on her face.
“All right,” Nichole mumbled as she gave Wolf a quick hug good-bye. It was one of the few times they’d touched, and though both tried, the hug was awkward. They moved only close enough to pat one another on the back a few times and then stepped away.
“Don’t give the McLains any trouble,” Wolf ordered. “They’re good folks.”
She nodded and climbed into the buckboard. Tyler rounded to the other side and climbed in beside her. Nichole stared hard at her mountain of a brother. She knew he’d find her when this trouble was over, there was no need for him to repeat himself. He loved her, though she doubted he’d ever say the words.
When she and Tyler were out of sight of the others the darkness closed in around them and Nichole relaxed. She was at home in the early spring night. Now her clothing didn’t matter, she and Tyler were only voices.
“Tyler?” She finally broke the silence. “Could you be honest with me?”
“Sure,” Tyler volunteered.
“Completely?”
“Completely.”
“How do I look? I mean as a woman.”
He pulled the reins and stopped the horses. She fought down nervousness as he turned toward her. He was her friend. She had nothing to fear from him.
“You look great, Nick,” he answered. His voice was lower than normal. “You are prettier than just about any woman I ever seen.”
“You haven’t seen all that many.”
“I’ve been around a few,” he said defensively.
“Then why did you and Rafe act like such fools? Wolf told you I was his sister days ago. You knew I was a girl.”
“I guess it didn’t soak in until we saw you in that dress. Nick, a man treats a woman different and that’s a fact. I may try not to say anything, or look at you, but that don’t keep me from thinking things. And after seeing you in that dress, things will always come to mind when I’m with you.”
