Page 73 of Texas Destiny
“Thank you,” she said as she lowered herself to the ground.
“Think we’re having beefsteak today,” he said, dropping down beside her.
“I suppose when you raise cattle, you always have meat to eat.”
“Yes, ma’am, we do.”
She sighed, her mind suddenly blank. Asking questions of Houston had come so easily. She couldn’t think of a single thing to ask the man she was going to marry.
“Do you—”
“I’ve never—”
She laughed, he smiled as their voices bumped into each other.
“Go ahead,” he said. “No, you go first.”
“All right.” He yanked a spear of grass out of the ground and slipped it between his lips. “I was just gonna say that I’ve never had a girl before so you might need to prod me from time to time if you need or want things.”
“You’ve never had a girl?”
He flung his arm in the direction of the cook. “No, ma’am. As you can see, my company is made up of men and cattle.”
“But you’ve been to a brothel.”
He sat straighter. “I beg your pardon?”
“Houston said that sporting women don’t charge you, so I’d assumed you’d had a woman.”
“I meant I’ve never had a steady girl.” He leaned forward until she could see her reflection in the brown depths of his eyes. “Did Houston mention that I stopped visiting brothels when I got your first letter?”
“No, he didn’t tell me that.”
Dallas stretched out beside her, raised up on an elbow, and smiled. “Why don’t you tell me everything hedidmention?”
Dallas rode his horse hard, with the cold midnight wind circling him, and his temper hotter than a branding iron straight out of the fire.
Houston said … Houston thought … Houston had told her …
Dallas had spent the afternoon and early evening hearing about everything Houston had ever said to Amelia. Dallas had known Houston for twenty-eight years and his brother had never in his whole entire life talked that much! Never!
Not when he was a boy working the cotton fields, not when he was beating a drum for the Confederacy, not when they’d traveled back to Texas … Never!
Dallas hadn’t planned to break his leg, but when he had, sending Houston after Amelia had seemed the right decision.
He’d known Amelia would be safe with Houston. Houston kept to himself, had since after the war. Dallas had moments when he felt regret over that … and a measure of guilt. Sometimes, he wondered if his actions on that fateful night had been self-serving. He’d never gone back on his word in his life, but he often wondered if the price of keeping his word had been worth it.
He shoved the unsettling thoughts back into the dark corner of his heart that he reserved for regrets, and set his spurs against his horse’s sides.
A rough ride usually calmed him. But tonight, nothing was working. He kept hearing Amelia’s voice, speaking Houston’s name so softly, as though she liked the way it sounded or enjoyed saying his name. As though she spent time thinking of him …
He drew his sweating horse to an abrupt halt and listened to the beast’s breath wheeze into the night. He wasn’t a man who usually abused his animals, and any other time, he would have dismounted and asked no more of the horse than he asked of himself.
But this time he had a burning inside him that couldn’t be contained. He urged the horse forward at a slower gait. He saw the lantern hanging on the front porch of the log cabin, a lantern to welcome strangers and friends alike. He hadn’t expected Houston to be so accommodating.
He drew his horse to a halt just beyond the front porch and gazed at the simple log structure. Judging by the size, he didn’t think it could be more than one room. It reminded him of … home.
Home before the war. Home, where his mother would flap her apron at them when she discovered them sticking their fingers into her precious sugar or honey. Home, where his pa would let him herd the few cattle they owned instead of making him work in the fields. He’d hated the fields, hated the cotton. Sitting on a horse with the scent of cattle riding the wind was preferable any day to tearing up the land and breaking his back to do it.
