Page 38 of Texas Destiny
He swept his gaze over to her. “Yes.”
“Well, right now, I’m tired and would love to sleep in a bed. If we keep our clothes on, with the bundle board between us, I see no problem with us sharing the bed.”
A corner of his mouth crooked up. “You don’t think I could crawl over that?”
She angled her chin. “I don’t think youwouldcrawl over it.”
He met her challenge gracefully. “All right. Which side do you want?”
“I’ll take this side next to the table.”
He walked across the room and sat on the side of the bed nearest the window. The rope bed creaked beneath his weight. “Can I take off my boots?”
“And your hat and your coat.”
Amelia took a last glance around the room. Beth’s clothes hung in a wardrobe with no doors. Her wardrobe contained fewer clothes than Amelia’s new wardrobe, but Beth possessed something Amelia didn’t.
“Oh, isn’t this beautiful?” she asked in a quiet voice of reverence as she crossed the room and touched her fingers to the finely detailed white lace covering the silk gown.
“White’s not very practical,” Houston said. “It’d be showing all the dirt before the morning was half over.”
“A woman would only wear it once.”
“Seems like a waste of money then.”
“I suppose, but I guess you’re paying for all the memories it would hold.” “Memories?”
“Yes,” she replied, glancing over her shoulder at the man sitting on the bed, wondering briefly if men held onto memories as women did. “A woman would wear it on her wedding day.”
He furrowed his brow. “What are you gonna wear when you marry Dallas?”
She shrugged and walked to the bed. “Something that we purchased in Fort Worth, I imagine.”
“You should have told me you needed something special.”
She sat on the bed with her back to him and removed her shoes. “I don’t need something special.” She quickly slipped beneath the covers and rolled to her side, her back against the bundle board.
The bed shifted as he stretched out on the other side of the board.
“Do you mind if I keep the lamp burning?” she asked.
“Don’t mind at all.”
“Will it keep you awake?”
“No. I always sleep with a light burning.”
Amelia rolled to her back. “You do?”
“Yep. The light from a campfire or the lamp beside my bed.”
The gruffness of his voice stated more clearly than his words that it had cost him dearly to admit that, to reveal a part of himself that she imagined no one else knew. She hugged herself, hoarding the information he’d shared with her. “Is Dallas’s house like this one?”
“Nope.”
“What does it look like?”
He took a long moment to answer. “It’s big.”
