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so happy when Joe was alive. "I'm sorry. Can I do something to help?"
    She raised her head and looked him in the eye, unsettling him, unaccustomed as he was to having women meet his gaze. "There is. I just don't know if you'll be willing."
    "What is it?"
    "The Telfords are putting a lot of pressure on me to sell."
    Damn! Her husband had bought a prime piece of land, and if she was offering it to him, he hadn't a snowball's chance in hell of coming up with enough money.
    "I won't sell, however." Her chin rose a notch once again. "I'm determined to hang on to the ranch. Joe and I bought that place together. He sank money and time and all his dreams into making a go of it, and I'm not going to sell out just because things are a little tough. Not without a fight."
    "I admire that. I wouldn't sell it if it was mine."
    "That's what I want to talk to you about."
    "What?"
    "I have two old men and two young boys besides myself. Last year I hired a few extra reps for roundup, but I can't do it again. I've had to sell several things to keep the place going."
    She knew he didn't have any money, so the only thing she could want from him would be labor. "Are you asking me to work for you? I've tried to get work everywhere, but no one will take me on."
    "I couldn't pay you, Tye," she said plainly. She took a deep breath and hurried on. "What I've decided I need is a husband. That way, you'd have a stake in the place. The work you did would be to your own benefit. As you know, when a man marries, his wife's property becomes his."
    He stared. Deepening pink tinged her smooth cheeks.
    Slowly, he worked at assimilating her words and the idea behind them. He raised a hand to knead the back of his neck and took an unconscious step or two. "I think I'm confused here. What is it you're asking me?"
    "I'm asking you to marry me."
    He looked her over for some gross mistaken identity. This was Meg Telford, no doubt about it. Meg Telford in his room. Asking him to marry her. He shook his head to clear it. "You don't know what you're asking."
    "Yes, I do."
    "You can't. Nobody in Aspen Grove will even look at me or talk to me. You'd lose the respect of everyone in town if anyone knew you were here right now. You saw how your family acted when you talked to me in the mercantile! You can't want to marry me."
    She stood abruptly. "I don't give a fig what anyone's going to say about it. I don't need this town's approval to do what I believe is right."
    "You say that now, but you don't know what it's like. You don't know jack squat about how it is to have people look at you like you're dirt. You've never spent Sundays or holidays alone or seen women snatch their skirts aside so's not to touch you." He ran a nervous hand through his hair. "Trust me, you'd think differently after that happened a few times."
    Primly, she moved back to the chair and sat. "Anyone who would treat me like that after knowing me all these years wouldn't be worth having as a friend."
    Fine talk, but she hadn't lived it.
    Tye studied her perched on the chair. Marriage. To this woman. He couldn't keep his curious gaze from sliding to her rounded breasts beneath her starched dress, and images of sleeping with her had him moving to stand behind her.
    "Ma'am, you're talking of marriage here. I just can't believe you've thought this through."
    "I'm not an innocent young girl," she countered. "I know what marriage entails."
    A delicious surge of heat teased his body. He tried to let his brain do the reasoning. "I want children someday," he said honestly. She might as well know his concerns. He wouldn't saddle himself with a woman who could give him land, only to find she wasn't willing to see to his other wishes.
    To his surprise, she didn't blink an eye. "So do I. There's no reason I can't give you children."
    What more could he want? Meg was the most beautiful woman in the whole damned county. She was offering to turn her land over to him, marry him and give him children.
    He didn't have to