by Sharon Sala
“Honor O’Brien?”
“Yes?” she answered hesitantly.
“This is Trace Logan. Remember me? From the parking lot?”
How could she forget him? Honor’s breath caught in her throat. She took a deep, shaky breath before she spoke.
“Yes, I remember you,” she said. “How did you know my name?”
There was a short silence before Trace managed to answer. “I asked someone at Charlie’s,” he said. “They also told me why you were crying.”
“Oh!” came her quiet response.
“I know it’s late. But I couldn’t sleep. I kept thinking of you and…I just felt I needed to call. Are you all right now?”
Honor felt a smile beginning inside her heart. It quickly spread to her face as she gripped the phone tighter and held it a little closer to her ear.
“Yes. I’m all right. Thank you for asking.”
There was an awkward silence and then Trace started to speak when Honor interrupted him with a question that made him nearly drop the phone.
“Are you for real, Trace Logan?”
“What do you mean?” he asked sharply. Surely she hadn’t already discovered the true reason for his presence. A sick feeling pulled at the pit of his stomach.
“I mean, are you really this caring and this nice? Or do you have an ulterior motive?” Then she asked sharply in her usual forthright manner, “You aren’t married are you?”
There was a quiet chuckle at the other end of the phone before Trace answered.
“Which question shall I answer first?” he asked with a smile in his voice.
Honor blushed. But it was dark, and she was alone, and it didn’t matter anyway. She would still have asked the questions in the same manner.
“Well,” Trace continued, “I don’t know about nice and caring. Some of my business competitors would swear I’m not very nice. But I think they’re just jealous.”
Honor smiled.
“And,” Trace said, “I really do want to know if you feel better. And no, I’m not married. Not now. Not ever.” Trace took a deep breath and blurted out before Honor had time to ask any more dangerous questions, “Now, it’s my turn. Will you have breakfast with me tomorrow? I find I’ll be staying a bit longer than planned.” He waited anxiously for her response.
The lift in her voice was evident. “Yes. I’d love to have breakfast with you,” Honor answered, shocked at herself for wondering what it would be like to have breakfast every morning with Trace Logan…for the rest of her life. “But you better not be one of those ‘bran and fiber’ fellows. Charlie’s specializes in the best homemade biscuits in Texas.”
Trace burst out laughing. He couldn’t help it. She was so engaging and so honest. He’d never met anyone who came across as openly as Honor O’Brien.
“It’s a date,” he finally managed to say past the last of his laugh. “What time?”
“You just get up and get here,” Honor said. “I’ll be waiting.”
Trace’s heart skipped a beat as her words registered in his brain. Dear Lord! He’d love to know someone like Honor would always be waiting.
“Great! See you in the morning,” Trace said.
He knew he was just going to make matters worse by getting on a personal level with Honor. But heaven help him, he couldn’t stop himself.
Honor hugged the phone to her breast long after Trace had disconnected, reluctant to sever the nonexistent link. She didn’t know where this breakfast was going to lead, but at this moment Honor felt it was the most important meal of her life.
* * *
She was pouring coffee at one of the tables. Laughing at something one of the customers had just said when Trace walked into the restaurant. She was even prettier than he’d remembered. And in the light of day Honor looked younger than he knew her to be. That glorious black jumble of curls was pulled away from her face and fastened at the neck with a single strand of red ribbon. She wore little to no makeup. Her bright-red sundress stood her out in the crowd like a cherry on top of an ice-cream sundae. When she walked, the short, flared skirt wrapped teasingly around and between those long, long legs, and Trace felt his pulse accelerate. He furiously rejected the fantasies that popped into his mind. He couldn’t afford to let them in. It might prove embarrassing in more ways than one. He still had to walk across the room.
Honor looked up and saw him standing at the entrance to the dining room. The smile on her face was instantaneous, as was that single dimple at the corner of her mouth. Trace watched, fascinated, as she hurried toward him.
“Hi!” she said.
If she had any sense she knew she should at least be embarrassed by this meeting. But she couldn’t quit looking at him. She’d known last night that he was nice-looking. Even that couldn’t be hidden in the night shadows. But she hadn’t realized just how striking he really was.
He had to be three or four inches over six feet. That she liked. She had to look down at nearly every man she met. His eyes were somewhere between fudge and chocolate-chip brown. His hair was just about the same thick, rich color and had a slight tendency toward curling. His features were just as she’d remembered. But his lips were not. They were better. She’d never seen a man with such an expressive mouth. She wondered what it would feel like to be kissed by those lips and then felt herself blushing. This had to stop.
“You better be hungry,” she said cheerfully, as she grasped him by the arm and began pulling him toward an empty booth. “I am. I’ve been up for hours and I’d hate to embarrass myself by eating more than you.”
Trace found himself laughing again at her exuberance and amazing lack of pretense. He couldn’t remember when he’d been out with a woman who would even mention the fact that she’d ever experienced hunger pangs. Most of them were on perennial diets.
“Bring on the biscuits, woman,” he teased, as he sat down in the brown leather booth. “I couldn’t sleep for thinking of them.”
Honor grinned. “Just let me turn in our order and tell Hank I’ll be off the floor for a while. Do you want eggs, sausage, bacon?”
“Anything handy, just well done,” he answered.
“This is Texas, mister. It doesn’t come any other way.”
She left him with a smile on his lips and hunger for more than breakfast warring with his good sense.
The meal was great. At least Trace thought it was. He couldn’t really have said how it tasted. He ate everything put in front of him and didn’t remember chewing a bite. All he could see was Honor’s face and Honor’s smile. He let her talk. Sometimes listening. Sometimes not. Sometimes just watching the animation of that beautiful face.
It was when she started asking personal questions about him and why he was here that Trace began to pay closer attention to what he was saying. This was where it was going to get tricky.
“So,” Honor asked, “what brings you to this part of Texas?”
“My boss sent me to locate someone with whom he’d lost contact,” Trace said.
“Who’s your boss? And where are you from? It’s obvious from your speech as well as your clothes that Texas is not home,” Honor teased. “You haven’t said ‘y’all’ or ‘whut fer’ even once.”
Trace grinned. “I’m from Colorado,” he answered. “I work for a man named J. J. Malone, of Malone Industries. I guess you could say I’m his second in command.”
Honor raised her eyebrows in appreciation of his title, and then a look of pleased remembrance appeared on her face.
“My mother was from Colorado,” she cried. “Colorado Springs, actually.”
“It’s a small world,” Trace said quietly. “So am I.”
This was beginning to get difficult. Now, anything he said was going to be construed at a later date as prying or lying. Either way, he was going to come out a loser.
“So, your mother was from Colorado,” Trace remarked. “Do you have any other family here, or are they all still back in Colorado?”
“My mother was an orph
an,” Honor remarked, and then she smiled. “But I have Uncle Rusty. He’s not really my uncle, but we claim each other anyway. And, I have more friends here than you could shake a stick at. That’s Texan for a whole lot,” she explained with a grin.
“I guess your father is dead?” Trace asked casually.
“Yes,” she said, a sad, lost expression darkening her gray eyes. “He died in Vietnam, before he and Momma could ever marry. He didn’t even know I existed.”
Trace nodded sympathetically, while trying valiantly to hide his shock. So much of the story she was telling him was the actual truth. He wondered just how much of it was fabrication and how much of Charlotte O’Brien’s life had run parallel to Honor’s real parents. They’d probably never know.
“That’s a shame,” Trace said quietly. “I would have hated not knowing you existed, Honor. The luckiest day of my life was yesterday when I pulled into this parking lot.”
For once, Honor was speechless. All she could manage was a blush and a silly, embarrassed grin.
“That’s very generous of you,” she finally managed. “I doubt very many strange women throw themselves at you in such fashion. I will say thank you once more, and then if you want to stay my friend, don’t remind me again of how pushy I was. Momma would have had a fit. She didn’t raise me like that, I swear.”
“Looks to me like she did a pretty good job,” Trace teased, delighted to watch that single dimple coming and going at the side of her face. “Do you look like your mother?” He hated himself for the questions he knew he was obligated to ask.
“No.” She wiped absently at a damp ring her water glass had left on the tabletop. “Momma always said I looked like my father’s side of the family. But because they didn’t ever marry, she didn’t have pictures. I used to get the feeling that they might not have approved of her. She rarely talked about her life before Texas and Charlie’s.”
Trace nodded. Everything fit. Charlotte’s reticence to speak of her past. Her claim that Honor looked like the other side of the family. And conveniently estranged so that she never had to produce proof of their existence. Why did all this evidence make his heart hurt?
“When do you have to leave?” Honor asked. She hated the thought, but it was evident.
“Soon,” he said quietly. Then he surprised himself as well as Honor as he reached across the table and grasped her hand.
“You said you came to locate someone for your boss,” Honor repeated. “Have you found him?” She couldn’t take her eyes off the path he was tracing on her knuckles.
“Yes,” Trace answered. “I found who I was looking for.” Then he quickly changed the subject. “What’s your favorite thing to do?”
She answered with no hesitation. “Eat pizza and dance.”
Once again, Trace’s delighted laugh echoed in the dining room.
“If you can stand a busman’s holiday, I would love to take you out to eat tonight. You’ll have to name the place since I’m a stranger to the area. And, I don’t know about the dancing…but I’m game to try.”
“Pick me up about eight o’clock,” Honor said, barely masking the urge to clap her hands in delight. “We’re not far from Odessa. There’s a great pizza place on the south side of town. After we eat, I’ll show you how Texans spend Saturday night.”
“Is that a promise or a warning?” Trace asked with a smile.
“All I have to say is, wear comfortable shoes.”
Honor looked up at the influx of new customers pulling into the parking lot. “Well,” she said with a smile and a sigh. “I better get back to work.”
As she scooted out of the booth she turned abruptly. The skirt of her red dress flared, then wrapped around her shapely figure before it came to rest above her knees. Trace tried not to think of the tempting shape of the body beneath that dress.
“See you tonight?” she asked again, hating to break the merry mood they’d created.
‘It’s a promise,” Trace said softly, and watched the joy in her eyes as she turned and walked away.
He was going to regret it, but he wanted one more night with Honor O’Brien before he had to tell her that she didn’t exist. He quickly left Charlie’s for his next destination, which was back to the lawyer who’d first directed him to Honor. He was going to need all the help he could get to finish the job ahead.
* * *
Honor was waiting on her front porch when she saw Trace’s blue rental car turn off the highway into the parking area of Charlie’s. Nightfall was only a thought away as she bounded off her porch and ran across the graveled lot to meet him.
Trace parked, opened the door, and had just emerged when he heard the sound of footsteps behind him. He turned to see Honor running toward him, her hand in the air, a smile of welcome on her face. Words were beyond him. He knew that if he went blind tomorrow, it would be enough to remember the sight of Honor coming to him with such joy.
He forced back the warning signals going off in his brain. This wasn’t a wise thing to do, but he was operating on feelings, not good sense. For one of the few times in his life, Trace Logan let his heart overrule his head.
“Are you ready?” Honor asked breathlessly, and threw her arms around Trace’s neck in a friendly, exuberant hug of welcome.
Trace choked on his speech as his arms tightened convulsively around her. She felt even better than she smelled, and she smelled heavenly.
“What perfume are you wearing?” he whispered in her ear, as he buried his face in the tumult of her curls.
“Passion,” she said softly, and then leaned back to look him carefully in his face. “Don’t you like it?”
“My God!” Trace muttered, and pulled Honor’s arms from around his neck before his body betrayed him and embarrassed them both. “Like it?” he continued, and quickly seated her in the car. “It should probably be sold in a plain brown wrapper. On you, woman, it’s dynamite.”
“That’s what it’s supposed to be,” she said, then grinned as she watched Trace’s shaky hands miss the keyhole of the car’s ignition. “Let’s eat.”
Trace smiled, rolled his eyes heavenward, and headed for Odessa in a cloud of dust.
* * *
They’d demolished all but one piece of the largest and best pepperoni pizza Trace had ever eaten. He was past being surprised at Honor’s lack of pretense and didn’t even offer to share the last slice. He knew better. He held up his hands in defeat and pushed it toward her. She didn’t blink an eye as it went the way of the others she’d enjoyed.
“That was so good,” Honor said. She sighed, pushed back her plate, and grabbed a handful of paper napkins to remove what was left of the pizza from her face and hands. “I haven’t been here since just before Momma got sick.”
The familiarity of the checkered tablecloths and dripped wax candles in ancient wine bottles reminded Honor of happier times. Tears brimmed.
Trace didn’t miss the fact that her emotions were overwhelming her. “I know this is hard, Honor. But I’m glad you’re letting me share this time with you.”
He couldn’t stop the quick, instantaneous feeling of panic that hit him in the gut every time her mother was mentioned. It didn’t matter how many times he told himself that he was doing this out of love for J. J. Malone. It was only a matter of time before he had to confess his true reasons for being here. And when he did, everything that had bloomed between them was going to die.
Ignoring his guilty conscience, he grabbed the check and pulled her to her feet.
“Come on, woman. You’ve got a promise to keep. No more sad thoughts tonight. You promised to show me a Texas Saturday night.”
* * *
The music was loud. Trace thought it was country, but at this decibel level it was hard to tell. Honor included Trace in the friendly chaos as she greeted old friends in the smoky darkness of Tilley’s Texas Two-Step. It had the usual assortment of rowdy customers, a busy bar, and a better than mediocre band playing what Trace could only assume were the crowd favo
rites. Western music wasn’t his favorite easy listening, but he was about to get a crash course in country music appreciation.
Honor grinned at the look of culture shock on Trace’s face and leaned over, practically yelling in his ear just to be heard.
“What do you think?” she shouted, and watched his struggle with an answer that wouldn’t insult her. She couldn’t resist the laugh that bubbled up her throat and casually patted his arm as she pulled him toward an empty table. “It’s all right,” she yelled, “I’ll ask you again later.”
He was swept up into the most exuberant, exhausting, enchanting night he’d ever experienced. Honor patiently walked him through a round of dancing called Cotton-eyed Joe. It was performed with much yelling and cheering from the couples that stepped and scooted around and around the darkened dance floor.
Just as Trace felt he was finally getting the hang of the dance, it was over. Then she pulled him into another, and another, until he forgot what he was supposed to be doing with his feet and concentrated on how good it felt to be constantly holding Honor O’Brien close.
When the music slowed to a more sedate, familiar strain, Trace pulled Honor closely into his arms, ignored the persistent cowboy who kept trying to cut in, and swung her into the shadowy corners of the dance floor.
“This is more like it,” he whispered in her ear. Her soft curves pressed against his chest as his hands slid below her waist and splayed in dangerous abandon across the flare of her hips.
Honor’s heart pounded. But it was not from exhaustion. It was from the intense feeling of being in Trace Logan’s arms. She could feel his heartbeat pulsing beneath her ear. It raced beneath her fingers as she slid her arms around his neck. Her body flowed against him as the music took them where they dared not go alone.
Trace felt her shiver and pulled her closer, stifling a moan as she acquiesced with no hesitation.
“Are you cold?” he asked softly, sliding his hands up her back and nesting them in the damp tangle of hair.