Page 28 of Texas Splendor
“Think about moving to town,” he said quietly.
“I can’t.”
“A woman like you deserves more than memories in her life—”
“You need to get going before it gets much darker,” she whispered, the tears stinging the backs of her eyes.
“When I’m finished with my business in Austin, I could stop back by here—”
“No.” She shook her head emphatically. “It’d be best if you didn’t.”
“I’m going to worry about you, Sugar,” he said in a low voice as though he wasn’t comfortable admitting his concern.
“I’ll be fine,” she assured him.
He gave a brusque nod and, with one lithe movement, swung up into his saddle. “If you need to get in touch with me—for any reason—I’ll be staying at the Driskill Hotel.”
“That’s a fancy hotel.”
“So I hear.”
He touched the tip of his finger to the brim of his hat. “Miss Grant, you are without a doubt, the sweetest woman I’ve ever known.”
He sent his black stallion into a gallop.
Loree watched until he disappeared in the fading twilight. Then she dropped to her knees and wept. He was wrong. A woman like her didn’t deserve more than memories in her life.
She deserved to hang.
Austin walked the streets of the state capital wondering just what in the hell he thought he was doing. His tracking experience was limited to finding cow dung over the plains of West Texas. Dallas had taught him to use a rifle, gun, and knife but even those skills were useless here. He’d left his gun in his saddlebag in his room at the hotel.
He’d arrived near midnight, anxious to register for a room and bed down for the night. He’d been bone weary and had expected to fall asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow.
But the pillow didn’t smell like the one that graced Loree’s bed. As comfortable as the bed was, it didn’t have the one thing he wanted: a tiny lady who had somehow managed to slip beneath the gates that surrounded his heart.
It was ludicrous to care for her as much as he did after knowing her such a short time, but he couldn’t get her out of his mind. Every time he heard soft laughter, he turned to see if it was hers. When he passed women on the street, he compared them to the woman who had tended his wound—and he found them all lacking. None carried her guileless smile. None walked without pretense. He couldn’t see bare toes, smudged cheeks, or golden eyes filled with tears.
And he wanted what he couldn’t have: to see those eyes filled with happiness. But even the thought of going to her had no place in his heart when he had nothing to offer her. He’d only bring her more pain until he cleared his name. If he took her to Leighton, she’d have to endure the suspicious stares that followed his every step. The shadow of his past would touch her, and he couldn’t stand the thought. With that realization, his determination to find Boyd McQueen’s killer increased.
He walked through the doors of a saloon and began to feel more in his element. Saloons didn’t differ that much from town to town.
Wiping a glass, the bartender raised a dark brow. “What can I do for you?”
Austin tilted his head toward the sign above the bar that boastedBARTON SPRINGS HIGH GRADE WHISKIES.
“I’ll take a whiskey.”
The bartender smiled. “Good choice.”
He poured the amber brew into a glass and set it in front of Austin. Austin leaned forward, placed his elbows on the counter, and wrapped his hands around the glass. “You get a lot of business in here?”
The bartender nodded. “At night mostly. Not that much during the day.”
“Could you get word out that I’m paying fifty dollars to anyone who knows anything about a man named Boyd McQueen?”
The bartender sucked one end of his mustache into the corner of his mouth and began to chew, his eyes narrowing in thought. “Other fella’s paying five hundred.”
Austin’s stomach tightened into a hard ball. “What fella?”
