Wild Texas Rose

by Christina Dodd

  WILD TEXAS ROSE

  Christina Dodd

  Kindle Edition

  Copyright 2012 by Christina Dodd

  All Rights Reserved.

  No part of this work may be reproduced in any fashion without the express, written consent of the copyright holder.

  Wild Texas Rose is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed herein are fictitious and are not based on any real persons living or dead.

  TEXAS, 1882

  CHAPTER ONE

  “IT’S OUR dance, Rose.”

  Seated in a chair against the wall of the ballroom, Rose Laura Corey froze.

  That voice. That insolent, laughing male voice. How long since she’d heard it last? How many years had it haunted her guilty dreams?

  You’re going to be mine someday.

  Thorn Maxwell hadn’t said it aloud, but the vitality of that promise made nine years ago had never diminished.

  Her hand holding the plate of barbequed ribs trembled briefly, but she steadied it. Her heart raced in an unseemly manner, but she calmed it. Pinning a fixed smile to her lips, she raised her formal gaze to her nemesis.

  He was not noticeably discouraged, aggressively looming his six-foot-four inch body over her seated figure with all the arrogance of a man sure of his welcome. He added, “You promised me.”

  The heels of the dancers clacked on the floor, the music sang a waltz, but the sounds of conversation faded in the big ballroom. Every widow and spinster seated in the long row with Rose thrust her long neck out, like a curious fowl, for a better view.

  The whole county paused to avidly watch this unlikely combination of spinster and scoundrel.

  Sue Ellen Pogue, hostess of the round-up party, biggest gossip in Presidio County, and Rose’s dearest friend, cut sharply into the silence. “You’ve been gone eight years, Thorn. When did she promise it to you?”

  With a slight bow, Thorn acknowledged Sue Ellen, but his gaze devoured Rose.

  Jabbing Rose with one sharp elbow, Sue Ellen said, “Everyone’s watching you, Rose. He’s been gone nine years. When did you promise it to him?”

  Thorn’s face had changed from the pure, exquisite handsomeness of youth, and Rose marked the transformation. The artistically arranged curl on his forehead had given way to a plain comb-back that left his features stark and unadorned. The sun had marked the smooth, juvenile skin, burning lines across his brow and creases beside his mouth. His beard, close-shaved, showed blue-black in ever- present shadow.

  Yet the brilliant blue eyes were the same: hot, demanding, seeing more of her than any other person. The arrogance was the same: proud, sure, knowing what she wanted without asking.

  She was relieved. Of all the nightmares she’d suffered, that had been the greatest. That Thorn Maxwell’s magnificent spirit would be crushed by the labor, the indignity and the cruelty of prison.

  Snapping his fingers beneath her nose, he presented her with his broad, creased palm. “You promised me this dance, and I have reason to know you always keep your promises.”

  Rose looked at the palm, then at him. “I am not a dog, to be summoned by a snap of your fingers.” She handed Sue Ellen her plate. She took a breath, obstructed by the whalebone requirements of her corset. “But you are right. I did promise you this dance, and I will fulfill my promise.”

  “Well!” Sue Ellen absorbed the remarkable admission as a sponge absorbs water. “I never!”

  Thorn’s smile softened, and he spoke only to Rose. “Ah, Rosie, my darlin’, how I have missed you.”

  Rose ignored the flattery. She had reason to know it false.

  Placing her hand in his, she rose. He pulled her onto the dance floor at arm’s length, making a production of the simple act of beginning a dance. He did it to attract attention; he had always done everything to attract attention.

  And he succeeded.

  They succeeded. The other couples edged away, leaving them a clear circle within the dancers, and the creases around Thorn’s mouth deepened in satisfaction. He was enjoying himself a little too much, Rose decided, but before she could protest, he did what was expected of a man on a dance floor.

  He gathered her into his arms.

  His forearm slid across the middle of her back, his fingers spread across her waist. She might not have been wearing the worn silk dress, the corset cover, the corset, or the chemise for all the protection they afforded her. The heat of his palm burned right through the layers to her skin. When she would have caught at his hand, he pulled her into his body and sensation overwhelmed her.

  They fit well together: the thin, spare rancher and the muscled convict.

  They always had.

  The music hadn’t stopped — only they hadn’t moved. They stared into each other’s eyes like two lost souls who glimpsed home.

  The brazen bad boy disappeared, leaving a man tender with remembrances.

  Her strict, controlled facade dropped away, and she gave no thought to what she revealed. She knew only that he was the iron, she the fire, and together they were forged of steel.

  He touched her cheek with one finger, rough against soft, and whispered, “Rose, you have the most beautiful eyes of any woman I’ve ever seen.”

  Flattery.

  She stiffened. “Are we going to dance or talk?”

  He threw back his head and laughed — loudly, joyously, making them even more of a spectacle than they already were. “For a minute there, I thought we were going to make love.”

  She tried to jerk away.

  But he jerked her back and around in a tiny circle. “We’ll dance.”

  The arm across her back seemed heavier. When he took her hand, she carefully fused her muscles, tendons and bones into one long, tense line from elbow to fingertip. It symbolized resistance, intrepidity, dignity — those qualities which she prized so highly.

  He seemed unimpressed.

  They traveled the floor slowly, out of step with the beat; she watching her step and carefully holding her petticoats and skirt out of the way, he watching over her shoulder, as stilted as two people posed for a daguerreotype. The other couples, at first goggle-eyed, began to lose interest, and a few dancers joined them on the floor. Then more, until Rose lost the sensation of being on display.

  As the noise around them returned to normal levels, Thorn murmured in her ear. “You dance mighty fine for a woman with a stick up her rear.”

  Well, she couldn’t complain of flattery now. “I did warn you I couldn’t dance.”

  “So you did. Ten years ago. And I promised I would teach you.” They twirled in a stiff circle. “You’ll find that I, also, always keep my promises.”

  You’re going to be mine someday.

  “I can live without learning.” She didn’t mean dancing.

  “That’s not living. That’s existing.” He didn’t, either.

  The corset made her breathless, and she gave serious thought to fainting. But she’d never done it before, and feared failure.

  She’d already failed in so many things.

  “The first thing you have to learn,” he said, “is to loosen up.”

  “I wouldn’t know how.”

  “Why, darlin’, I can teach you” — he glanced around at the big room made bright with kerosene lamps — “but not here.”

  “That’s enough dancing for one night,” she decided, and gave him a firm push on the chest. He let her go, and she reflected smugly that he could be handled, if treated like a refractory horse. “I have some visiting I must do.”

  “Selling horses to the ranchers, Rosie?”

  She fell off her cloud of superiority and hit the ground with a thump. “How do you know what I’ve been doing?”

  Rocking back on his booted heels, he tucked his thumb
s into the top of his faded denim jeans. “It’s the talk of the party. Miss Rose Laura Corey has been breeding those horses since she was sixteen years old, and now that’s she’s … what? Twenty-five?”

  “I’m seven months younger than you are, as you well know, Thorn Maxwell.”

  His blue eyes twinkled. “That’s right. I’d forgotten. Twenty-six just two weeks ago. October eighteen. My, my, how time flies.”

  “Horses,” she prompted.

  Glancing around at the surrounding couples, he asked, “Do you really want to discuss it with me here?”

  “I don’t want to discuss it with you anywhere else.”

  “Your distrust wounds me deeply, Rose.” Like a naughty boy brought to justice, he hung his head and sighed. “Deeply.”

  “Horses.”

  He peeked up from beneath his brows and grinned. “Couldn’t ever make a fool of you, could I?”

  “No one else ever made such a fool of me.”

  Hard experience and her own innate dignity had taught her to keep emotion from her voice, but he seemed to hear more than she wished, and took pity. Straightening, he said, “Word is that, woman-like, Miss Rose gave up trying to raise good cutting horses and has concentrated on ladies’ horses. Nice, gentle mounts for a matron to ride. Horses with enough spirit for a girl to ride. Talk is, the men might be willing to take a look at your horses — just to keep the womenfolk happy and to help you out.”

  “Is that what this batch of self-righteous cattlemen are saying?”

  “Yes, ma’am. That’s what they’re saying.”

  It meant they would buy. It meant she would make enough money to keep her land and maintain her beloved horses until she could breed and break some more. It meant she would survive. Yet triumph mixed with fury, and she snapped, “Help me out? My parents died eight years ago, and this is the first time any of those charitable ranchers have spoken of helping me out.”

  “This is the first time any of those ranchers laid eyes on Goliath.”

  “Goliath?” Her focus returned to Thorn. “What do you know about Goliath?”

  “He’s the best-looking stallion this county has ever seen.”

  “Texas has ever seen.” But her correction was automatic. Something about Thorn’s innocent drawl didn’t ring true, and her gaze fell to the place on his belt where his holster normally rested. The worn, scraped leather bore mute testimony to constant wearing and constant use.

  Why? It was obviously to Rose he hadn’t been in jail for the whole of the time he’d been gone … eight years and eleven months.

  Oh, call it nine years.

  His muscled, fit body told her — and every other woman — that he’d lived hard. His brown, tough skin and watchful demeanor certified an existence on the edge of civilization. What had he been doing?

  With a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach, she stepped closer to him again and lowered her voice. “Didn’t you just get back into the county?”

  Putting his arm around her, he drew her close. “Why, Rose? Are you afraid I’ve been seeing other women? You know there’s no one for me but you.”

  She freed herself in a flurry and whipped around, moving toward the safety of the chairs. As she reached the edge of the dance floor, his whiskey-warm voice hailed her. “Rose,” he called with such promise in his tone that the band stopped playing and the dancers halted in their tracks.

  She didn’t want to turn around. She recognized mischief when she heard it. But as always, when Thorn presented temptation, she heeded its siren call. Pivoting on her heel, she glared. “What?”

  Bunching his fingertips, he kissed them, then flung the kiss with open-handed generosity across the floor. “Later, darlin’.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  The gusty sigh from the widows and spinsters nearly knocked Rose over.

  If Thorn Maxwell had any decency, he would have turned away and laughed, making it clear to all he was making fun of skinny, old maid Rose Laura Corey.

  He had no decency.

  He perceptibly lusted after her like a hawk after a field mouse.

  It was a good act. It fooled every soul in Presidio County.

  It even fooled her.

  She might have stood there, a thunderstruck dimwit, if not for Sue Ellen.

  Sue Ellen, who appeared at her elbow and demanded, “When did you promise that dance to him?”

  Rose sagged. She should have remembered. Once Sue Ellen latched onto a thing, she hung on like a bulldog with lockjaw. “About ten years ago.”

  Grabbing Rose’s arm, Sue Ellen hauled her backwards to an open place against the wall. “What else did you promise him?”

  Rose gathered the shreds of her dignity about her. “I did not promise him another thing.”

  Sue Ellen snorted. “Maybe I should ask what he promised you.”

  You’re going to be mine someday.

  Blushing, Rose stammered, “Why?”

  “By chance,” Sue Ellen continued, “are you bothered with a draft?”

  Rose tried to escape Sue Ellen, but with all the effort of her tiny body, Sue Ellen held her in place. “What are you talking about?” Rose demanded.

  “Half your hair pins are gone, and your bun’s coming loose.”

  As if on command, the severe chignon at Rose’s neck slithered down her back. With the instinct of a lady at her toilette, she caught it before it uncoiled completely to reveal the knee-length, chestnut-shiny, unmanageable mass.

  Across the room, Thorn watched with all the appreciation of man invited into a woman’s boudoir.

  Sue Ellen continued, “And your dress is unbuttoned right to the edge of your chemise.”

  A judicious exploration proved Sue Ellen was right.

  Thorn lifted his drink in salutation.

  Rose glared, but it didn’t matter how angry he made her.

  All that mattered was that moment between the breath going in and the breath going out, between fear and flight — that silence wherein only their two souls could speak.

  “Do you see the way he watches you?” Sue Ellen edged behind Rose and buttoned buttons as quickly as she could.

  “I imagine everyone sees how he watches me,” Rose answered dryly.

  “I’m frightened for you, Rose. He wants to give you saddle rash.”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re certainly taking this calmly!” Taking the ribbon out of her tumble of sausage curls, Sue Ellen looped it around the heavy rope of Rose’s hair and, with the inborn ability of a coquette, she fashioned a new style. “You live alone, and now you’ve got a man who’s taking off your clothes and letting down your hair in public. He’s a hardened criminal. He’s probably raped thousands of women—”

  “Oh, Sue Ellen!” With more humor than wisdom, Rose chuckled. “He’s never had to rape anyone. Every widow with an itch in her drawers is intent on raping him.”

  Sue Ellen tried to hold it in, but she couldn’t. She giggled, her bustle waving behind her like the sting of an excited honeybee. “Some women have no shame, especially when it comes to a man like that.” Flipping open her fan, she eyed him over the top. “Look at the way he fills those jeans. Look at the women gathering around him! And — oh, isn’t that rude?” She fanned herself in vexation. “Jeanette stepped right between us, and I can’t see him anymore.”

  Rose couldn’t see him, either, but she didn’t care. She couldn’t care.

  “She’s flirting with Thorn, and her a married woman. Isn’t that disgusting?”

  “You flirt all the time, Sue Ellen, and you’re married to the wealthiest rancher in West Texas,” Rose observed.

  “Sonny doesn’t care. You know that.”

  “No, I don’t know that. When he was a little boy, Sonny was always the kind who didn’t want something unless someone else wanted it. Seems like you flirt to rile him.”

  Sue Ellen neither denied nor affirmed Rose’s accusation. “Anyway, it’s different flirting with a convict. Why” — she drew an excited breath — “h
e might be dangerous.”

  The growing crowd of women around Thorn parted, giving Rose a glimpse of the smiling, hard and handsome face. “I would guarantee it.”

  With exaggerated care, Sue Ellen adjusted her already-low neckline and rhinestone-edged cap sleeves to display even more of her bosom. “In that case, perhaps I should sacrifice myself for my dear friend.”

  Rose caught Sue Ellen’s train before she had taken more than one step to join Thorn’s admirers. “Sue Ellen, don’t do this.”

  Sue Ellen had tugged the velvet out from between Rose’s fingers when Sonny Pogue bellowed, “Sue Ellen!”

  Jumping like an indentured servant at her master’s call, Sue Ellen abandoned her planned flirtation and hustled toward the portly, perspiring man she had married. Rose turned her head away. She couldn’t stand to watch them together — Sue Ellen cloying and sweet, Sonny demanding and tyrannical.

  Keeping close against the wall, Rose moved to the door and stepped out on the porch where tin lanterns provided licks of light through their lacy clefts. Unobserved, she thought, but Sonny bellowed again. “Rose, you’re not leaving?” His bulk blocked the light. “You must stay the night.”

  Patient with Sue Ellen’s husband as she had never been with plain Sonny Pogue, Rose answered, “I can’t. I must go and tend the horses.”

  Sonny dragged Sue Ellen through the opening like an extra appendage. “Don’t you have any ranch hands left?”

  “I have Patrick,” Rose said.

  “That old Irishman?” Sonny curled his lip in expressive opinion. “You know what I think of the Irish. Thieves and drunkards.”

  Irritated at the criticism of her friend, Rose said, “Patrick’s good with horses.”

  “You don’t have to snap!” Sonny protested. “Just like a woman to resent a little advice.”

  “I didn’t realize it was advice.” Rose took the first step off the verandah. “I thought it was faultfinding.”

  “No, no.” Sonny put on his jovial persona. “I wouldn’t criticize you. Why, I’ve known you since we were children. We grew up together, you and me and Thorn. ‘Course, you and me turned out all right, and Thorn was always a bad seed, but you fixed him when you—”