Texas Tender

by Leigh Greenwood

  “Why can’t you do it?”

  “It looks like I’m staying with Carl, Van, and Idalou.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Idalou enjoyed watching Van and Carl square off against each other. Van had the advantage of age and an innate belief that he was always right, but they were Carl’s cows, and he had plenty of backbone.

  “Do you still think he can’t take care of himself?” Will asked Idalou after they’d watched Carl argue Van down until Van agreed to handle the herd the way Carl wanted.

  “You can’t blame a sister for worrying about her little brother,” she said to Will. “And if you do, it’s too bad, because I’m not going to apologize.”

  Will laughed quietly. “My sisters still worry about me, and I’m ten years older than Eden.”

  Will and Idalou were sitting next to the coals of the fire that had been used to cook their supper. Idalou had been shocked when Will had volunteered to make the stew.

  “It’s the only thing I can make,” he said, “but I’m good at it.”

  He’d been right. Van and Carl had eaten two helpings. They’d gone off to check on the herd and to decide on the watch schedule for the night.

  Will took a long swallow of coffee and threw the rest away. “I need to walk off my supper. You care to keep me company?”

  Idalou had been waiting for a chance to take Will up on his offer for a walk, but she hadn’t expected it to happen in the middle of a river canyon. Or with cows for her chaperons. “I need to work out a few kinks,” she said. “I’ve gotten a cramp sitting on the damp ground.”

  “Let me help you up.”

  Spry as a teenager, Will bounced up, took the hand she held out, and brought her to her feet. He’d held her hands many times before, but this time it was different. He wasn’t pulling her out of the water, and he wasn’t helping her on or off her horse. He was inviting her to spend some time alone with him, and that made it really different.

  Idalou hadn’t been this excited to be with a man since Webb, but the feeling wasn’t the same. She and Webb had known each other for years and had grown into a romantic relationship without really thinking about it very much. Everybody had assumed they’d get married. So had they until she started to blame his father for the trouble at the ranch and Junie Mae came to live with her aunt.

  But Idalou wasn’t drifting into anything this time. From the beginning, she’d fought her attraction to Will despite Carl’s hard-to-believe assertions that Will was interested in her. It would have been much more logical for him to be interested in Junie Mae.

  Her stomach clenched. Would she ever stop feeling jealous of Junie Mae?

  “It’s a little chilly down here by the river,” Will said. “Do you want something on your shoulders?”

  Webb would never have thought to ask her that. “I am a bit chilly, but the blanket I brought would be too heavy.”

  “You can wear one of my shirts.” Will pulled a tan shirt from his saddlebag. “I never travel without extras.” He held it for her to slip her arms into the sleeves. “Warm enough?”

  “It’s perfect.” The internal heat generated by his attentiveness was threatening to make her too warm. His attention felt special to her, and she liked the feeling. Van and Carl came up just as they were getting ready to leave.

  “Where are you going?” Van asked.

  “We’re taking a walk before turning in,” Will said.

  “I’ll come with you.”

  “You’ve got to watch the herd,” Carl reminded him. “You’ve got first watch.”

  “It’s not time for me to start yet.”

  “I’m sure you and Carl have things to talk over before he turns in,” Will said.

  “We sure do,” Carl said, giving Will a big wink.

  “Like what?” Van asked.

  “I wanted to talk to you about your father investing in rebuilding our dam,” Carl said.

  “Why should he do that?” Van asked.

  “That’s what I need to explain to you. You go on,” he said to Will and Idalou. “You already know what I’m going to say.”

  Idalou had no idea what her brother was going to say, because he hadn’t mentioned it.

  “Your brother is playing matchmaker,” Will said as soon as they were out of earshot.

  “What?”

  “He thinks we ought to get married.”

  Idalou thought the ground was going to give away under her. She couldn’t believe Carl had actually mentioned that possibility to Will.

  “Did you tell him he was crazy?” she finally managed to ask.

  “I’ve heard worse ideas.”

  There had to be something she was missing. They’d hardly had more than a couple of normal conversations and Will was saying being married to her wasn’t a bad idea. Did he really mean that it might be a good idea? She didn’t dare look up at him until she had a better sense of what he was thinking. As for her own mind, well, she wasn’t sure she was coherent enough to think at all.

  “Ever since he fell in love with Mara, Carl thinks everyone ought to be in love.”

  “And you don’t?”

  “I didn’t say that.” He was confusing her, when she was already having more than enough trouble knowing what to say.

  “I think he’s just concerned about you,” Will said. “Pretty much the same way you’re worried about him. He believes Webb really hurt you.”

  Liking Will—and she did like him—wasn’t at all similar to liking Webb. First, she didn’t have the same history with Will, no years of friendship that could bridge the gap to something more serious. Everything with Webb had been simple and straightforward. Everything about her experience with Will had been turned upside down when he’d paid off the loan. Anything that developed between them would be affected by their business relationship. Yet in matters of the heart, it was essential to be able to keep the lines between the two areas clear.

  “It did hurt,” Idalou said, “but not the way he thinks.”

  “What way was that?”

  She wasn’t sure she wanted to tell him. It made her too vulnerable, and she’d learned that being vulnerable was dangerous. Yet she wanted him to know. “Webb hurt my pride more than anything else. I wasn’t in love with him. Still, no woman likes to be tossed aside for another.”

  “If you didn’t want him, why did you care?”

  Only a man would ask a question like that. “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “It sounds a lot like I don’t want him, but no one else can have him. Does that seem fair to you?”

  “It was the way he left me, without warning, without an explanation.”

  “If you didn’t love him, why did you care?”

  Will really didn’t understand, and there was nothing she could say that would enable him to see it from her viewpoint. Webb’s behavior had made her feel unworthy of love, or worse, unlovable. “You don’t have to be deeply in love to resent being tossed aside. It hurts even worse when you’ve been thinking of yourself as part of a couple, and the other woman is younger and prettier than you, has been in town less than a week, and everyone in town knows before you do.”

  “Junie Mae isn’t prettier than you.”

  Maybe he’d forgotten what she looked like; it was too dark to refresh his memory. “You don’t have to try to spare my feelings. I know Junie Mae is beautiful.”

  “Beauty comes in many forms. The face is only one of them.”

  “It’s the most important. It’s what people see every time they look at a person.”

  “Only in the beginning, and then only if you’re not interested in looking beneath the surface. Some of the most beautiful people I know are really ugly because they’ve never had to develop their character, whereas even a plain woman can be pretty if she’s beautiful inside.”

  Will was the most direct person she’d ever met. And the most unemotional. He would probably say I love you in the same tone of voice he’d use to order his supper. How could a woman tell if he meant w
hat he said, or if he was just trying to make her feel better?

  “You find that hard to believe, don’t you?” Will asked.

  “I’ve seen too much evidence to the contrary.”

  “Like the way women react when they look at me.”

  “That’s one example.”

  “You don’t react like that.”

  “No, but—”

  “So why can’t I be different, too?”

  Men couldn’t ignore Junie Mae’s beauty. They simply weren’t built that way. “What about me do you find more appealing than physical beauty?” she asked. This was where men always fell apart. Ask them to describe anything about a woman beyond her face or her figure, and they went blank.

  “Your stubbornness.”

  Will grinned so broadly the shadows of evening were driven into retreat, but not even his smile could light up all the dark places in her heart. She’d never gotten over the sudden loss of both parents, having to grow up so quickly, being forced to face the world head-on with no one to guide her, being responsible for the ranch and for her younger brother. Without her stubbornness, she couldn’t have survived. “Nobody likes my stubbornness, not even Carl, so you can stop laughing at me.”

  “I was laughing at myself.” He turned her around until the moonlight was on her face. “I always avoided women as strong-minded as my mother. The joke is that you’re the first woman I’ve ever been seriously interested in.”

  “I don’t think I like being thought of as a joke.”

  “Or an irony?” Will laughed softly.

  “Especially that.” She tried to pull away, but he wouldn’t release her.

  “I don’t think a complacent wife would be much fun.”

  “Who’s talking about marriage?”

  “I am.”

  By now she ought to be used to Will tossing off statements that would send her into shock, but this was a real ground shaker. He was rich, handsome, charming, and able to do anything a man ought to be able to do. He couldn’t be seriously thinking of marrying an ordinary woman with no ranch, no family, and a difficult disposition.

  “We hardly know each other. I can’t even tell when you’re telling me the truth.” She had trouble trusting in others for fear that something would happen to take them from her. She’d had to put up a tough outer shell to hide the hurt.

  “I didn’t mean it like it sounds.” She hated the hurt she saw in his face. “I mean I don’t know you well enough to understand you. You say things—like this talk about marriage—that make no sense to me. I can’t tell if you’re talking about us or in the abstract.”

  “All you have to do is ask.”

  “I’m afraid.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m not ready for either answer you’d make. And no matter what answer I gave you, I’d still have to repay you for the loan.”

  Now she’d landed herself in the middle of it. She didn’t want him to say his interest in her was only momentary, something to while away the time until he left. She didn’t want him to say it was only a matter of business. She didn’t even want him to say he found her fascinating but not a woman he’d consider for a longer relationship. Yet she wasn’t any better prepared to have him say he was thinking about spending the rest of his life with her.

  She’d been so dazed by the turn of the conversation that she was completely unaware they’d walked well away from the campsite. Shadows from the rim of the canyon cast part of the floor into an inky blackness her gaze couldn’t penetrate. At the same time, the moonlight reflecting on the sandy banks and the silver waters of the river made that part of the canyon as bright as day.

  They passed cows lying down, passively chewing their cuds, their calves sprawled out beside them on the meager grass. The animals watched the humans as they passed, their heads slowly swiveling, moonlight reflected in their eyes making them glow an eerie red. The very calmness of the scene seemed to mock her inner turmoil.

  “Then we won’t talk about it anymore,” Will said. “How are you and Junie Mae getting along?”

  She wanted to talk about their relationship. She just didn’t know what to say, because he’d jumped so far ahead of her, offered her so many possibilities. “We’re getting along fine. She’s depending on me to delay her aunt’s realization that she’s expecting a baby.”

  “Did she tell you who the father is?”

  “No. She said she wants nothing to do with him. She says you’re going to come up with a solution.”

  “I know.”

  He didn’t sound excited about it. She tried to tell herself she wasn’t jealous, that he didn’t like Junie Mae the way he liked her, but she couldn’t shove aside that tiny niggling doubt.

  “Have you figured out what to do?”

  “I have an idea. I just have to wait to see if it’ll work.”

  She wanted to ask if he was intimately involved in the solution, but she didn’t feel she had that right. She kept reminding herself that Will was the most direct person she’d ever met. If his solution would have any effect on their relationship, he would tell her. Only she couldn’t decide exactly that their relationship was. This walk was the first time they’d spent time together as a couple. “Why did you ask me to walk with you?” she asked. “Not just tonight. Those other times, too.”

  Will grinned, and her knees grew weak.

  “I thought that was obvious.”

  “We’ve seen each other for one reason or another every day since you arrived in Dunmore, but it’s been business, not personal. I don’t know—”

  Without warning, she found herself in Will’s arms being kissed in a way that Webb could never have managed in a million years. Her mind, overwhelmed by the implications of the kiss, shut down at once. Her body, much more resilient, responded by telling her arms to encircle his waist and her mouth to yield itself up to his lips. Once that was accomplished, her body molded itself to his, drawing heat and support from his warmth and strength.

  It took about ten seconds for Idalou to realize she’d never really been kissed. She didn’t know how to describe what Webb’s and her lips had done together, but it wasn’t vaguely related to what Will was doing with her mouth. He wasn’t simply kissing her. He was exploring her, tasting her, tempting her to explore and taste him. Will’s mouth and tongue were everywhere at once, leaving Idalou’s head in a whirl and her heart beating a wild tattoo in her chest.

  She didn’t have time to question why their relationship had catapulted so far forward without warning, or to wonder whether she was ready for this unexpected change. About all she was capable of deciding was that she liked what was happening. When he finally released her, she was unable to stand on her own and clung to him.

  “Does that make things any clearer?” he asked.

  While Idalou battled to pull herself together enough to give him a coherent answer, she could see that Will wasn’t his relaxed, calm, in-control self. Though he concealed it better, he was nearly as breathless as she. The kiss had obviously affected him more strongly than he’d expected. It made her feel good to know she was not the only one to receive an unexpected jolt. Will, the man whom every women panted after, panted after her.

  “I think so,” she said, “but it is a bit of a surprise. I didn’t know your feelings were so . . . intense.”

  “You would have if you’d talked less and let me kiss you more.”

  That was putting it on the line. “Maybe if you’d kissed me more, I’d have talked less.”

  She was becoming rather fond of Will’s soft chuckle. “I can guarantee that,” he said.

  Idalou turned and started walking back to camp. “I hope what I’m about to say isn’t going to make you angry, but if I let you kiss me—”

  “When you let me kiss you.”

  “If I let you kiss me, it’ll have nothing to do with your having paid off the loan.”

  “I never thought your kisses could be bought. If I had, I wouldn’t have kissed you. Or paid off the loan.”

/>   Idalou turned to face him. “Why did you pay it off? I mean, why did you really do it. If we don’t find the bull, you’ll end up part owner of a ranch you don’t want.”

  Will took Idalou’s hands. Putting his arms around her waist, he pulled her closer until she had to look up to see his face. “It’s complicated.” He sighed. “I hated seeing you and Carl so miserable. You were caught between trying to find the bull and coming up with the money to keep the bank from taking your ranch. I was certain you’d ultimately find the bull, so paying off the loan would take the pressure off.”

  Idalou looked up at Will, wondering if there was more he wasn’t saying.

  “I also wanted a chance to get to know you better, but that wasn’t going to happen as long as you couldn’t think about anything except the ranch and that bull. That affected everything I said or did. I wanted you to see me, and I didn’t want what you saw to be colored by all this other stuff.”

  “And all that was important enough for you to pay off the loan?”

  “Yes.”

  A man couldn’t be much clearer than that. Now she had to figure out just how she felt about Will. She knew she liked him, she knew she wanted him to like her, but she hadn’t gotten much past that. She was grateful to him for paying off the loan and pulling her out of the floodwaters, but she’d have been grateful to any man who’d done that for her. Will was talking about something bigger and more important than liking him or being grateful. He was talking about love, and frankly, that scared her. She couldn’t let herself fall in love with him, knowing she could lose him just as she’d lost her parents and Webb. That was why she clung so desperately to Carl, to a ranch she didn’t even like. She pulled out of his embrace.

  “I was hoping you liked me, but I wasn’t prepared for anything like this,” she said. “I don’t know what to say.”

  Will reached for her hand. “Then don’t say anything.”

  “But I ought to know my own mind.”

  “You’ve had a lot to worry about. I’m afraid it’s not over. You and Carl have to be careful.”

  “Why?”