A Texan's Honor

by Leigh Greenwood

  But Lonnie wasn’t at the ranch when they got there.

  “He ain’t come in yet,” Jem said. “I don’t know where he is. He’s never this late.”

  Unsure of what to do next, Bret took the men to Sam. Sam thought their story was just as unbelievable as Bret did.

  “Lock them up in the barn,” Sam said. “They’ll keep until I hear what Lonnie has to say.”

  “He’ll tell you we ain’t no rustlers,” the talkative man said as Hawk and Zeke pushed the two out of the room. The other man never did speak.

  “I don’t believe a word of it,” Emily said after the door closed behind the four men. “Lonnie would never do anything like that.”

  “You heard what they said,” Bret reminded her. “They didn’t try to hide what they’d been doing.”

  “There’s got to be another explanation,” Emily insisted.

  “You bring Lonnie to me the minute he gets back,” Sam said.

  But Lonnie hadn’t returned by the time the men finished their dinner. Nor had he returned by the time they went to bed.

  “I want you to keep your brothers here,” Sam said to Bret while Emily was getting him ready for bed. “We’re short of hands, and they seem like good men.”

  “The best you’ll find,” Bret assured him, “but what will they do?”

  “I’ll decide tomorrow. I’m tired now.”

  “Then I’ll say good night,” Bret said.

  Emily put her hand on his arm. “I want to talk to you before you go to bed,” Emily said.

  “I’m going to check on the piebald. He seemed to be favoring his left foreleg.”

  Outside, the temperature had dropped and the air felt damp. Bret hoped they were in for a little rain before the dry months of summer set in. The piebald was standing at the edge of the corral. He didn’t move away when Bret climbed through the bars. “Gotten used to me, have you?” he said to the big horse. The piebald butted him with his head. “I love you, too, you big ugly mutt, but try not to knock to me down. I just want to check your leg.”

  “If you have to make love to a horse, you’re in worse shape than I thought.”

  Bret looked up to see Hawk leaning against the corral. He wasn’t surprised he hadn’t heard him come up. Hawk could move like a shadow when he wanted to.

  “Not all of us have your success with the ladies.”

  Hawk made a noise that sounded like he was clearing his throat. “Hell, even my horse doesn’t like me. What’s wrong with his leg?”

  “I can’t find anything, but he seemed to be favoring it this morning. You have a look.”

  Hawk climbed through the bars, ran his hand up and down the piebald’s leg. “It’s a little warm. Might be a good idea to give him a couple days off.” He stood and patted the piebald’s neck. “He looks like a good, strong horse.”

  “His owner wants to make him a cutting horse, but Emily and I think he’s perfect for all-around ranch work.”

  “You two working together?”

  “Yeah.” Bret laughed. “I had to prove to her I wasn’t a greenhorn. For my reward she gave me the only horse she couldn’t train.”

  “How’s he doing?”

  “He’s stubborn, but he figures it out.”

  “There seems to be a lot of stubbornness around here.”

  Bret laughed again, but not with as much humor. The sound of a closing door caused the two men to glance back at the house in time to see Emily starting toward them. “I think it’s time I got some shuteye,” Hawk said. “I’m so sleepy I can barely hold my head up.”

  “Coward,” Bret said.

  “I’m just leaving the field to you. She’s a lot prettier than the piebald.”

  Hawk waved to Emily as he made his way to the bunkhouse. Giving the piebald one last pat, Bret climbed back through the bars.

  “Is anything wrong with the piebald?” Emily asked when she came up.

  “Hawk thinks maybe he strained a tendon. He was favoring his left foreleg when we finished up this morning, so I’ll probably give him a couple of days off.”

  Emily leaned against the corral, looked at the piebald, then the other horses. “I can’t believe I thought you were a complete greenhorn.”

  “You had no reason to think otherwise.”

  “I should have been fair enough to wait until I got to know you before I made up my mind.”

  “You weren’t angry at me, just at what I’d been sent to do.”

  “I was a little angry at you for agreeing to do it.”

  “And I wasn’t exactly happy with your attitude toward me or my errand.”

  Emily laughed, a little nervously, Bret thought.

  “I’m glad we both got a chance to change our minds,” Emily said. After a pause, she added, “You did change your mind about me, didn’t you?”

  “Nope. I thought you were a beautiful, high-spirited woman when I first met you, and I think the same thing now.”

  He couldn’t be sure in the pale light of the moon, but he thought she blushed.

  “I’m not sure I ever thanked you for working out a compromise that keeps me from having to go to Boston. You know Dad only agreed because you said you’d come back.”

  Bret nodded.

  “Why did you agree?”

  “You got what you wanted, and I got what I wanted.”

  “You had already made an agreement with Dad about the stock. He could have sold the ranch, forced me to go to Boston. You would have got what you wanted without having to spend four months in a place you dislike helping me find a husband.”

  “I don’t dislike Texas,” Bret said. “It’s just not my home anymore.”

  “Could it be again?”

  Bret felt himself tense. “What do you mean?”

  “When are you leaving?”

  “I can’t leave with your father so ill.” That sounded like a weak excuse; there was nothing he could do to help her father. “And we still haven’t caught Lonnie.”

  “The boys can take care of Lonnie, and we both know my father’s not going to get any better.”

  “Are you trying to get rid of me?”

  “No. I’m trying to find out why you’re staying.”

  There it was, the question he’d been hoping to avoid. The question others had all been asking him in one way or another. “I don’t want to leave you alone when you’ve got so much on your hands.” That was only a small part of the reason he wanted to stay. “I’d feel better if Ida and Charlie were here.” But even then, he still wouldn’t want to leave.

  “I can take care of myself. And if I need Charlie or Ida, I only have to send for them.”

  “But that’d take two days. Anything could happen in that time.” It still wasn’t what he wanted to say. They stood there, looking at each other—moonlight making it difficult to read expressions, impossible to see into eyes.

  “Do you like me?”

  Emily’s question sent shock waves ricocheting through Bret’s body. He turned away, looked at the horses on the far side of the corral. “Of course I like you.”

  “Look at me,” Emily said. “Do you like me?” she repeated when he faced her. “I don’t mean like a friend. I mean like somebody special, somebody you’d like to see a lot, someone you wouldn’t want to leave.”

  She’d put the question to him squarely. He could refuse to answer, or he could lie, but there was no way he could equivocate. She had rested her arm on the top corral pole. Bret reached over to cover her hand with his. “Yes, I do like you in all those ways, but it’s something I’ve told myself I can’t have.”

  “What if I felt the same way about you?”

  He felt his hand close around her fingers. “I hope you don’t. It’s not much fun to want something you can’t have.”

  “Why can’t I have it—we have it?”

  “Because your life is here, and mine is in Boston.”

  “But you like Texas. You like being on a ranch again. You look happy when you talk about the time you spen
t on Jake’s ranch. You like the people who made up your adopted family. Every time you need help, you think of them first. You look grim and determined whenever you talk about going back to Boston.” She took his hand in both of hers. “You’re not happy there, but you could be happy here.”

  Bret took her hand in both of his. “I don’t expect you to understand this—Jake and Isabelle never did—but my uncle turned his back on my mother, my father, and me in succession, and he forced the family to do the same. That’s been eating at me ever since I was seven. For twenty years it’s been like gorge in my throat, always threatening to choke me. It doesn’t matter whether I’m happy or not. Proving he was wrong is something I have to do.”

  “Why do you care what he thinks?”

  Isabelle had asked him that question in one of her letters. It had bothered him a lot until he finally realized the problem was in his own head. He couldn’t feel worthy until acceptance came from his uncle because his uncle had been the one to reject him. “It’s just the way I feel. I know it’s stupid, but nothing has been able to change it.”

  “Maybe this can.”

  Emily withdrew her hands from his grasp, took his face in her hands, and kissed him gently on the mouth. Bret tried to resist, but it was futile. In less than a second, his arms pulled Emily into a crushing embrace. All the passion he’d been holding back, all the desire, all the hope, came spilling from the broken dam and drowned his resistance. He’d never known that anything could feel so good, so right. It was as if they’d been made to fit with each other. He knew that what he was doing was foolish, but he didn’t care. He’d worry about that later. Right now he held Emily in his arms.

  Somewhere in the back of his head, he thought he heard a horse approach the ranch house, but he had no thoughts to spare for anyone but the woman in his arms.

  “That didn’t feel exactly like a friendship kiss,” Bret said once they’d broken their kiss and he’d been able to get his breath.

  Emily slipped her arms around his waist and leaned against him. “It’s a special kind of friendship. I can’t stand to think of you going back to Boston and being miserable.”

  He’d been thinking it meant something a little different.

  Their second kiss was more lingering, less impassioned. As they kissed searchingly, Bret realized they were both looking for answers, both looking for a level of interest, passion, desire, need, that neither of them had been able or willing to put into words. The sound of running feet caused them to break apart.

  “You gotta come right now,” Jinx called out even before he reached them. “Some man named Joseph has just come up to the house. He says he’s got to talk to you right away.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Joseph Abbott’s unexpected appearance at the ranch sent Emily’s feelings into a tailspin. She’d forgotten how much she liked him. She hadn’t forgotten he’d warned her against Bret. If she had, the tension between them would have reminded her. She and Bret had arrived back at the house to find Joseph standing in the middle of the great room looking as if he were afraid to sit down. She knew their ranch house was rustic compared to houses in Boston, but it was comfortable nonetheless.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked. “I mean, why didn’t you tell me you were coming?”

  Joseph stepped forward, took her hand, and kissed it. She couldn’t resist throwing an amused glance at Bret, who looked far from amused.

  “I couldn’t stop worrying about you all alone with your father so ill,” Joseph said. “I decided to see if I could be of any help. I remember you very fondly from your visit several years ago, but I’m sure you know that from the letters I’ve written.”

  It was obvious from Bret’s frown that he hadn’t known anything about the letters. “I’ve enjoyed your letters,” Emily said, “but they haven’t made me like my Abercrombie family any better.”

  “I’m sure it takes a while for someone who’s grown up in Texas to get used to our ways,” Joseph said. “Everything is so new and rough down here, while Boston is more than two hundred and fifty years old. I’m sure Bret would tell you we’re set in our ways.”

  “He’s been too busy helping me with my horses and finding a couple of rustlers to have much time to talk. Sit down. You must be tired after your journey. I’m surprised you didn’t stop somewhere and ride in tomorrow.”

  “After spending one night in a household of boisterous children, I’d have ridden ’til morning before being subjected to the same again.” He turned to Bret. “Apparently, you got along fine with all the children.”

  “You must have stayed with Ida and Charlie Wren,” Emily exclaimed. “He used to be our foreman.”

  “I can see why you replaced him,” Joseph said as he eased himself reluctantly into a chair covered by a buffalo hide. “The man is thoroughly unpleasant.”

  “We didn’t replace him.” Joseph’s criticism annoyed Emily. “He left to start his own ranch.”

  “I’m sure I wish him luck.” Joseph turned a jaundiced eye to Bret. “So you’ve been playing the cowboy? You can take the man out of Texas, but you can’t take Texas out of the man.”

  Emily liked Joseph, but she didn’t like the way he said that. It was clear he thought the association with Texas lowered Bret’s status. “With Dad being sick and our foreman helping the rustlers, I don’t know what I would have done without him.”

  Joseph’s reaction was so abrupt, so startled, Emily would have thought it was his cows that were being rebranded. “I can’t believe your foreman was helping the rustlers.”

  “I couldn’t, either, but the rustlers said he hired them. We’ve got them locked up in the barn waiting for Lonnie to show up.”

  “You didn’t catch Lonnie?”

  “He disappeared. None of the boys knows where he could have gone.”

  Joseph’s concern was evident. “I’m more glad than ever I decided to come. It must have been terrible to find you had a traitor in your midst.”

  “I am anxious to ask Lonnie why he did it.”

  “I don’t imagine you’ll ever see him again,” Joseph said. “Why would he come back when he knows you’d arrest him?”

  “Everything he owns is here.”

  “He will probably come get his belongings at night,” Bret said. “I expect the hands will look the other way. Texans like to give people a second chance. That’s what coming West is all about. It’s why your father left Boston.”

  “Sam Abercrombie left Boston because—” Joseph broke off as suddenly as he’d started. His gaze swung from Bret to Emily, who was looking at him with narrowed eyes. “He left because he wanted excitement,” Joseph finished up.

  “Dad says he left Boston because it was full of dull, narrow-minded people who preferred living in the past and punishing anybody who didn’t agree with them,” Emily said. “He said his relatives were the most dull and narrow-minded of all.”

  “Bostonians are proud of their past,” Joseph said. “At least we don’t have savage Indians roaming around. I thought I saw one when I rode up.”

  “It was probably Hawk,” Bret said. “He’s one of my adopted brothers.”

  Joseph looked stunned. “He was talking to a black man.”

  “Zeke. He’s another of my brothers,” Bret explained.

  “I didn’t know you had such an interesting family,” Joseph said.

  “You mean Bret’s been in Boston for six years and you didn’t know about his brothers? I knew in a week.”

  Joseph looked a little uncomfortable. “Bret and I don’t see that much of each other. We work in different parts of the company.”

  “But you’re cousins. You must see him all the time outside of work.”

  “I work late a lot,” Bret said. “Besides, I can’t afford to do the things Joseph and his friends do.”

  “Surely he takes you along.”

  Joseph squirmed in his chair, looking more uncomfortable than ever.

  Bret turned to him. “You must be tired. It�
��s a long ride from Charlie’s ranch.”

  “I’m sorry,” Emily said, getting up. “Let me show you to a room.”

  “I can do that,” Bret said. “I’m sure you want to check on your father.”

  “Thanks,” Emily said. “I’ll see you in the morning,” she said to Joseph. “You can sleep as late as you want. Just tell Bertie what you’d like for breakfast. Now you can satisfy your curiosity about how exciting it is to live on a ranch in Texas.”

  Her father seemed to be sleeping peacefully when she checked on him, but she didn’t like the way he looked. His skin was almost gray and his breath was shallow and labored. The trouble with his heart must have been more serious than either of them had thought. She’d make sure he got as much rest as possible for the next day or so.

  She sat down in the chair next to his bed, took his hand in hers. This change in their roles seemed strange and uncomfortable to her. Until a few months ago he was the strong, invincible man who’d always been the center of her life. He’d taught her to ride, to love being outside, to love Texas. Her mother had said she should have been a boy. Neither Emily nor her father saw anything strange in a girl loving to ride, training horses, being happy to live on a ranch a two-day ride from the nearest city. They’d camped out, helped with roundups, branding, and doctoring. She’d even helped deliver a foal once.

  All of this had made her father’s insistence that she go to Boston a surprise. After all the years he’d spent instilling in her his love of freedom from Eastern society’s rules and regulations, why would he think she’d leave the ranch? She knew he’d only agreed to the compromise of Galveston because Bret had promised to go with her.

  She wished she could tell him how she felt about Bret. Maybe her father could tell her how to convince him to stay in Texas. She knew that no matter why he felt he had to go back, he wasn’t happy in Boston. She didn’t need words to know that Joseph didn’t think of Bret as an equal. Bret did like being at the ranch. This was where he belonged. She just didn’t know how to make him see that.

  She sighed, placed her father’s hand by his side, and stood. She kissed him on the forehead. Maybe she would talk to him when he started to feel stronger. He’d lived in the same two worlds as Bret and had never regretted turning his back on Boston. Maybe he could help her find a way to convince Bret he was making a mistake.