Page 108 of Texas Destiny
Houston’s chest ached more than it had when shrapnel had cut through it. He rose and joined his brother. “I owe you for keeping your word and not letting me die. The doctor was wrong. I never regretted that I’d lived. I only regretted that Pa didn’t.”
Dallas shook his head. “He had no right going after you. He had men to command. His place was to lead them. He wanted to shape you into the man he thought you ought to be. A battlefield wasn’t the place to do it.”
“You don’t blame me at all?”
Dallas glanced at him. “It was his decision to run after you, stupid as it was. I loved him, Houston. I admired his strengths, but he wasn’t perfect.”
“I loved him, too,” Houston said, for the first time realizing that he had indeed loved his father. “I just couldn’t be what he wanted me to be.”
“No fault in that. God help me, I’m his mirror image.” Dallas looked back toward the corral at the woman still standing with the moonlight wreathed around her. He had never expected her to love him. He was too much like his father, a hard man to love, not truly appreciated until he was gone. Neither did he relish the thought of taking a woman to his bed, knowing she was thinking of another. Especially if that man was Houston.
“Give her a divorce,” Houston said. “I swear to God I won’t touch her for a month, not until she knows for sure whether or not she’s carrying your son.”
Dallas raised a brow. “It’s highly unlikely that she’s carrying my son, since we are constantly interrupted.”
“Then give her an annulment.”
“What in God’s name makes you think she wants to marry you? You stood in my parlor and held your peace. You don’t think that might have broken her heart?”
“She has every right to hate me, but at least let me ask her.”
Guilt, misunderstandings, and regrets had given Houston thirteen years of solitude. Now, Houston had the opportunity to receive the love of a woman, something Dallas would never have. Any woman could give Dallas the son he wanted, but only Amelia had returned to Houston his smiles and laughter.
“I’ll leave the decision up to Amelia,” Dallas said quietly. “Let me talk to her. If she wants an annulment, I’ll give her one. If she wants to marry you … I’ll hold my peace.”
A full moon graced the heavens, its light illuminating Dallas’s way as he approached the corral. Valiant skittered away to the other side, but the woman remained, gazing into the darkness beyond the corral.
Dallas crossed his arms over the railing. “That’s a beautiful horse.”
“Yes, she is.”
“Houston has the patience of Job when it comes to horses.”
“Yes, he does.”
“You know what I was thinking about when I was walking out here?”
Shaking her head, she glanced at him.
“I was thinking about the last time I heard Houston laugh. We’d been swimming in the creek. I told him to get out, and while I was dressing, he hid in the shadows. When I looked up, I couldn’t see him. I thought he’d drowned. Made a fool of myself, thrashing through that water, looking for him. He laughed so hard I thought he’d bust a gut.”
She smiled softly. “I can’t imagine that.”
“No, I don’t imagine you can. The next day, our pa went to war, dragging us along with him. I never heard Houston laugh again until the first night you were here. Fifteen years is a hell of a long time for a man not to laugh.”
He trailed his finger along her cheek. “I don’t need love, Amelia, but I think you do, and if you find it with a man who dreams of raising horses, know that you do so with my blessing.”
Tears welled in her eyes, and a tremulous smile curved her lips. “I think if you’d come to Fort Worth to fetch me, I might have fallen in love with you.”
He smiled warmly. “I’d think the fates had conspired against us if I didn’t believe that we shape our own destiny. In my office is a man who wants to make you part of his destiny. I think it would be worth your time to listen to what he has to say.”
Houston sat in the chair, his elbows on his thighs, his shoulder aching unmercifully. He ran Amelia’s cloth through his fingers, over and over. He knew every silken strand, every knot, every loop. It was all he’d have of her if she didn’t come, and he had a feeling she wasn’t going to come.
“Dallas said you wanted to talk with me.”
He shot out of the chair at the sound of her gentle voice. He wadded up her cloth and stuffed it into his duster pocket. “Yeah, I did.” He pulled her mirror out of his other pocket. “You left your mirror on my table.” He extended it toward her.
“You can keep it,” she said quietly. “We have lots of mirrors here.”
