Page 32 of Texas Destiny
She was sweet, so incredibly sweet.
He threw off the blanket, scrambled to his knees, rested his hands on his thighs, and continued to look at the tent. He’d make her some coffee before he woke her. Thicken it with sugar just the way she liked it. He’d warm up some water for her.
He turned and froze. She was sitting on a log, her hands pressed between her knees.
“Good morning,” she said softly.
“You’re awake,” he croaked, grimacing for telling her something she obviously knew.
She smiled, and he lost the ability to draw air into his lungs.
“I wanted to see a Texas sunrise. It was beautiful.”
He sank to his backside, fighting off the urge to tell her that she was more beautiful than any sunrise he’d ever seen. Her braided hair was draped over one shoulder, her face pink from an early-morning scrubbing, her green eyes bright with appreciation. He thought he’d never again be able to look at the sun easing over the horizon without thinking of her, just so, enjoying the start of a new day. To him, a day was just something to be gotten through.
“I guess when you think you’re going to die, you start to appreciate things a little more. What was the first thing you wanted to see after you were wounded?” she asked.
“My ma.” He grabbed his hat and settled it into place. He’d never told anyone that. He’d wanted his ma so badly that he’d felt like a baby.
“But she was too far away to come to you.”
Her eyes held so much understanding that he couldn’t stop himself from dredging up the memories. “Yeah, she was too far away, and she had Austin to care for, so even if she’d known I’d been hurt, she wouldn’t have been able to come.”
“You didn’t tell her you were hurt?”
He shook his head. “Dallas said knowing would just make her worry. After the war ended, we headed home. When we got there, it was so quiet. You could feel in your bones that something wasn’t right …”
His voice trailed off into the dawn.
“What wasn’t right?” she asked, gently prodding him to continue.
Houston shifted his backside over the hard ground. Physical comfort eluded him as easily as peace of mind. He’d never discussed that day with anyone, not even Dallas. Sometimes, he felt a strong need to discuss it with Austin, to see if he remembered, but if Austin held no memories of that time, he didn’t want to give him any. “We found our ma in her bed. She’d been dead for some time. I was glad then that Dallas hadn’t written her about me, that we hadn’t give her more cause to worry.”
“Do you know how your mother died?” she asked.
“Figured she’d taken the fever. Our pa wasn’t one to make friends so no one checked at the farm while we were gone. We don’t know how Austin managed to survive. He was like a wild animal when we found him.”
“Those are the memories you think Austin has of the war?”
“I’ve got no idea what memories he has. If he doesn’t have any, I don’t want to give him mine.”
“So you never talk about it.”
“Nope.” He stood and rubbed his hands along his thighs. “If you’re feeling strong enough, we’ll head out this morning.”
She smiled then, a smile that made his heart ache, a smile that made him wish that, in his youth, he’d traveled a different path.
Chapter Eight
As the wagon rumbled over the uneven ground, Amelia clung tenaciously to the seat. She was regaining her strength with each passing day, and with each passing mile, she grew closer to Houston.
She knew sheshouldn’thave these feelings. She knew shecouldn’thave these feelings. She had signed a contract stating she would travel west to marry Dallas. She didn’t think he was a man prone to breaking contracts or dismissing them. She had been wallowing in the depths of despair, her world closing in on her, her options dwindling when she’d received his letter of hope. She owed him for lifting her out of the mire into which the war had dropped her, for altering her destiny.
She read his letters each night before she went to sleep, trying to hold an image of the man within her heart, but it was Houston she heard whimper in the hours past midnight, it was Houston she would sneak out of the tent to watch sleeping.
He never seemed truly at rest. As he slept, beads of sweat would coat his face and neck. He would begin to breathe hard as though he were running a great distance.
She told him she awoke early to appreciate the sunrise, but the truth was she enjoyed those moments before dawn when the sun’s feathery fingers would touch his face and his breathing would calm as though in sleep he recognized that he’d survived another night.
