Page 39 of Texas Honor

When she heard Ward’s deep voice, her heart ran away. She hadn’t realized how shattering it was going to be to talk to him. She’d assumed Lillian would answer.

“Hello?” he repeated impatiently.

Mari took a calming breath. “Is Aunt Lillian there, please?” she asked formally.

There was a long pause. She couldn’t know that hearing her voice had made a similar impact on him.

“Hello, Mari,” he said quietly. “Are you all right?”

“I’m very well, thank you. How is Aunt Lillian?”

“She’s fine. It’s her church social night. Billy ran her over there in the pickup. She’ll be home around nine, I guess. Have you got a job?”

That was no business of his, especially seeing as how he’d caused her to lose the one she had in the first place. But hearing his voice had done something to her pride.

“Yes, I’m working at a bank,” she told him, mentioning its name. “It’s big and convenient to where I live. I work with nice people, and I’m making a better salary there than at the garage. You needn’t worry about me.”

“But I do,” he said quietly. “I worry about you a lot. And I miss you,” he added curtly, the words so harsh that they sounded quite involuntary.

She closed her eyes, gripping the receiver. “Do you?” she asked unsteadily, trying to laugh. “I can’t imagine that.”

“Someday soon I may work on making you imagine it,” he said, his voice deep and slow and sensuous.

“I thought I’d told you already that I am not in the market for a big bank account and my own luxury apartment in Victoria, Texas,” she returned, hating the unsteadiness that would tell him how much that hateful proposition had hurt her.

He said something rough under his breath. “Yes, I know that,” he said gruffly. “I wish you were here. I wish we could talk. I made the biggest mistake of my life with you, Marianne. But I think it might help if you understood why.”

Mistake.So now that was all he felt about those magical times they’d had. It had all been just a mistake. And he was sorry.

Tears burned her eyes, but she kept her voice steady. “There’s no need to explain,” she said gently. “I understand already. You told me how much you loved your freedom.”

“It wasn’t altogether just that,” he returned. “You said Lillian had told you about what happened to me, about the woman I planned to marry.”

“Yes.”

He sighed heavily. “I suppose she and my mother colored my opinion of women more than I’d realized. I’ve seen women as nothing more than gold-digging opportunists for most of my adult life. I’ve used them that way. Anything physical came under the heading of permissible pleasure with me, and I paid for it like I paid for business deals. But until you came along, I never had a conscience. You got under my skin, honey. You’re still there.”

She imagined that he hadn’t told anyone what he was telling her. And while it was flattering, it was disturbing, too. He was explaining why he’d made that “mistake” and was trying to get them back on a friendly footing. She remembered him saying the night he’d come to her room that he’d had that intention even then. It was like lighting a match to the paper of her hopes. An ending.

“Don’t let me wear on your conscience, Ward,” she said quietly. “You can’t help the way you are. I’m a puritan. An old-fashioned prude. I won’t change, either, even if the whole world does. So I guess I’ll be like Aunt Lillian when I’m her age. Going to church socials and playing cupid for other women...” Her voice broke. “Listen, I have to go.”

“No,” he ground out. “Marianne, listen to me!”

“Goodbye, Ward.”

She hung up before he could hear the tears that were falling hotly down her cheeks, before the break in her voice got worse. She went to bed without calling back. He’d tell Lillian she’d called, she knew, but she couldn’t bear the risk that he might answer the phone again. Her heart was in tatters.

She went to work the next morning with her face still pale and her eyes bloodshot from the night before. She sat at her desk mechanically, answering the phone, going over new accounts, smiling at customers. Doing all the right things. But her mind was still on Ward and the sound of his voice and the memory of him that was eating her alive.

It would get better, wouldn’t it? It had to! She couldn’t go on like this, being haunted by a living ghost, so much in love that she could barely function as a human being. She’d never understood the idea of a couple being halves of the same whole until she met Ward. Now it made perfect sense because she felt as if part of her was missing.

When a long shadow fell across her desk just before lunchtime, she didn’t even look up.

“I’ll be with you in just a minute,” she said with a forced smile as she finished listing a new account. And then she looked up and her body froze.

Ward stared down at her like a blind artist who could suddenly see again. His green eyes found every shadow, every line, every curve of her face in the stark, helpless silence that followed. Around them was the buzz of distant voices, the tap of fingers on keyboards, the ringing of telephones. And closer there was the rasp of Mari’s hurried breathing, the thump of her heart shaking the silky pink blouse she was wearing with her gray skirt.

Ward was wearing a suit—a very elegant three-piece beige one that made him look even taller than he actually was. He had a creamy dress Stetson in one big hand, and his face looked thinner and drawn. His green eyes were as bloodshot as hers, as if he hadn’t slept well. She thought as she studied him that he was the handsomest man she’d ever seen. If only he wasn’t such a cold-blooded snake.

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