Page 52 of The Promise of Jenny Jones
“Someone back in that village will have let Luis and Chulo know that the dead cousins snatched the kid.”
“Possibly. But they won’t know that we have her back.”
He was right again. She hated that too.
If they’d been traveling without a child, they would have reached the railroad tracks with time to spare before the northbound came whistling through. But Graciela slowed their pace.
When it became obvious they had missed the train, Ty dropped back beside Jenny’s mare. He tilted his hat brim toward a smoky haze rising in the distance. “Must be a village up there. I say we find a place for the night. Agreed?”
Her gaze fixed on Graciela’s flushed face, and she nodded. “The kid could use a bath, a decent meal, and a good night’s sleep.”
“So could I,” he said, flexing his shoulder muscles. He and Graciela were pasted together by sweat. He was mildly surprised by how fatiguing it was to ride for hours with her leaning against his chest. “How are you feeling?” he asked her.
“Sad,” his niece answered in a small voice.
He didn’t know what to say to that. Adults were not as frank about expressing feelings as he’d discovered his niece was. Pulling his scarf off his neck, he wiped perspiration and dust from his face, searching for a comment.
“I’m sorry you’re sad,” he said finally. When that didn’t seem adequate, he added, “I can see how you would be.” People she’d trusted and loved were dying all around her.
“Uncle Ty?” she asked in that same small voice. “Do you love me?” Shifting on the saddle, she turned huge blue-green eyes to study his face.
“Well,” he said uncomfortably, staring into a sober gaze so like his own. Frantically, he searched his conscience, weighing truth against a glib equivocation. When he cut a glance toward Jenny, she was watching with a smirk on her lips.
In the end, there was only one possible answer. Any other reply would have been unnecessarily cruel.
“Yes, I do,” he said, the words sticking to the roof of his mouth. This was the answer Robert would have wanted.
“Could you say it?” she asked after a hesitation, tears brimming between her lashes.
Oh God. He drew a breath, ground his teeth together, then mumbled, “I love you.” If Jenny uttered one word, made a single choking noise, he’d kick her off her horse and ride off without her. When he shot a scowl in her direction, she was gazing straight ahead, sucking in her cheeks. But she wasn’t laughing, and she didn’t make a sound.
“I love you, too, Uncle Ty.” Graciela kissed his jaw, then nestled back against his chest.
His grip tightened on the reins and he stared at a point in space, trying to figure out what had just happened.
He wasn’t a man who frequented places where children were likely to be. Consequently, his exposure to children had been severely limited, and that’s how he’d preferred it. When he did encounter children, he generally ignored them, irritated by the noise they made, their interruptions, the difficulty of trying to converse with undeveloped minds.
Therefore, he was totally unprepared for the unaccustomed emotions aroused by one trusting declaration and one innocent kiss.
Frowning, he reminded himself that Graciela Sanders was half-Barrancas. She was the living proof of his brother’s folly, his brother’s lack of judgment. A mistake. Ty’s original plan had been to fetch Marguarita and her child, deposit them on Robert’s doorstep, and from that moment encounter them only at a distance and at infrequent family gatherings. He had been unable to imagine any circumstance under which he would willingly share the same room with a Barrancas.
Suddenly he could.
And that was disturbing. He couldn’t sort out how he felt about this abrupt and mystifying change. When he became aware that Jenny had spoken, he blinked and turned his head. “Are you talking to me?” He thought she’d muttered something that sounded like “ungrateful snot,” but that didn’t make sense, so he must have heard wrong.
“I said let me do the talking. You’re such a rude bastard that if you inquire about a room, we’ll spend the night sleeping in cactus spines.”
He gave her a tight-lipped smile, recalled his wooing campaign, then replied in English rather than Spanish. “I’ll leave the arrangements in your capable hands, darlin’. No one could resist your dulcet charm.”
Out came her dictionary and the rifling of pages. And then a suspicious frown. “Do you mean to say dulcet or was that a mistake?”
“Honey, you’re the sweetest thing this side of the Rio Grande.” A grin twitched his lips, and he felt better. Mrs. McGowan’s advice had been smack on target. If nothing else, he’d just knocked Miss Jenny Jones off-balance and left her reeling with the confusion he read in her eyes.
She checked the dictionary entry again, then shoved it back into her pocket. Her face flickered through a half dozen emotions as she struggled to glue the word dulcet on herself. Ty almost laughed, guessing that she didn’t find the fit too comfortable.
Graciela shifted against his chest. “Jenny is not sweet and she is not charming.”
“You speak English?” he asked, blinking at the top of her head.
