Page 92 of Texas Destiny
He felt as though he’d just been kicked in the gut by a mustang. What the hell did he know about a woman’s first time? He knew whores. Their stench, their bodies that were always ready for a man, their outstretched hands asking for more money. He looked away. “Christ, I don’t know.”
A thick silence built between them.
“Thank you,” she finally said and turned to go.
He grabbed her arm and looked at her, really looked at her for the first time, into the green depths of her eyes. He could see the terror. He pulled her against him, wrapped his arms around her, and touched his cheek to her soft hair.
“He won’t hurt you,” he said quietly. “If he can help it, he won’t hurt you. The women I’ve known were so used … He’ll kiss you … and he just won’t stop.”
“But kissing won’t make a baby.”
He slipped his thumb beneath her chin and tilted her face up, wanting desperately to remove the worry from her green eyes. He swallowed hard. “He’ll lay his body over yours.” He cradled her face, wishing he could cradle her body. “And he’ll give what he always gives: the best of himself.”
She smiled then, so sweetly with so much trust that his heart ached. “I’ll miss you,” she said quietly.
“You know where I live. If you need—” She shook her head with a profound sadness. “No, this at long last is our final good-bye.” She stretched up on her toes and kissed him lightly on the lips.
He couldn’t stand it: the betrayal reflected in her eyes, the hurt, the disappointment. He’d rather have the hate. “I killed my father.”
He released his hold on her and averted his gaze. She’d hate him now, hate him as he hated himself.
“I don’t believe you,” she said softly.
He laughed derisively. “Believe me, Amelia. For thirteen years, I’ve run from it. For thirteen years, the truth has stayed as close as my shadow.”
“How did you kill him?”
“You want the gory details?”
“I want to understand how the man I traveled with could have possibly killed his father.”
He stared into the distance, stared through the passing years. “I was his drummer. He gave the orders and the beat of my drum told the men what those orders were. In the thick of battle, you can’t hear a man’s words, only his dying screams and the sound of the drum. The smoke grows so heavy that it drops like a fog, surrounding you, burning your eyes, your throat, suffocating you until you can’t see the man issuing the orders.
“But you can hear the beat of the dram. So wherever my father went, I had to be. When he rode into battle, I ran by his side, beating … beating my drum while bullets whistled past and cannons roared.”
His mouth grew dry with the familiar fear licking at his throat. He could smell the smoke and blood. He could hear the screams.
“His horse went down, kicking at the air, screaming in agony. My father scrambled to his feet and pulled his sword from his scabbard. ‘Let’s go, boy!’ he yelled.
“Only I couldn’t. The man standing beside me fell. The ground exploded in my face. My father hollered at me again. I started to run. As fast as my legs would take me, I started running back to the place where I’d slept the night before.
“He came after me, yelling, ‘By God, I won’t have a coward for a son!’
“He grabbed my arm, jerked me around, but I turned away from him, struggling to break free. Suddenly, there was a loud explosion, a bright light, pain … and he was gone. And then there was nothing but blackness.”
“That’s when you were so terribly wounded?”
He laughed mirthlessly. “Yeah, I should have died, too, but I didn’t. I prayed for death hard enough, but some prayers just aren’t meant to be answered.”
“You can’t really believe you killed your father?”
“If I hadn’t run, he wouldn’t have died. I was just what he always said I was. A coward. A weak no-account excuse for a son.”
“But you were a child.”
“I was old enough. At fifteen, Dallas was marching into battle with a rifle in hand and men following him.”
“You’re not Dallas.”
