Page 37 of The Texan Duke
Connor studied the other man. Sam had a knack of singling out a female wherever he was. You could almost see him throw a rope over her head and cull her from the herd.
“She doesn’t seem your type,” Connor said.
Sam arranged himself on the corner of the desk, folded his arms, and stared out the window behind Connor.
“I wasn’t aware that I had a type,” Sam said.
That was different. Whenever he’d commented on one of Sam’s women in the past, he’d been met with amusement, not a tight-lipped response.
Was it because his aunt was a duchess? He never thought that Sam would give a flying flip for a title.
“She just doesn’t seem like someone who would tolerate a backward American,” Connor said.
“Who are you calling backward, boy?” Sam asked with a smile. “I can wine and dine with the best of them. I have lots of charm when I need to use it.”
“Did you know?” he asked, turning the conversation away from Sam’s attraction to his aunt. “About my father being a twin?”
Sam’s gaze moved from the view to Connor’s face.
“He might have mentioned it once or twice.”
“Why didn’t he mention it to me?”
“Don’t think it was important to him.”
“Or the reason he left Scotland? Did he tell you that?”
“By the time I met your father he’d already been in America a few years. I wasn’t interested in his past. Neither was he. Why are you?”
“The past is reaching out and biting me, Sam, and has been since I set foot in this place. I’d think you’d be smart enough to figure that out.”
Sam didn’t say anything else, but then Connor didn’t expect him to. Sam was one of those men who didn’t care what other people thought of him. If they liked him, he was fine with that. If they despised him, he was fine with that, too. He rarely explained himself—the only occasion Connor could remember was when Sam and his father had been late getting home from Austin and had to face his mother’s anxiety and ultimate irritation. The fact that his father stood by his horse for several minutes, his head resting on the saddle, was a dead giveaway. Graham McCraight was, on the only occasion Connor could remember, stinking drunk.
“We just got a little carried away, Linda,” Sam had said. “He’s fine.”
“And why did you get a little carried away, Sam Kirby?”
Connor had recognized that tone in his mother’s voice and wanted to warn Sam that he was in deep trouble. Sam evidently knew it, too, because he bowed his head, staring at his hat in his hands and uttered the closest Connor had ever heard to an apology from the man.
“My fault, Linda. All my fault.”
His mother had eventually forgiven Sam, especially since the man had done everything he could to ease her burden after Graham died.
“I think what you want to know is if he regretted his decisions,” Sam said. “Did he want to redo any of it?”
Connor didn’t answer, but maybe Sam was right.
“He didn’t,” Sam said. “He was damn happy with his life, with Linda, with you and the girls. He was proud that he was giving you something that would live on.” He looked around the room. “Maybe like this place.”
“Then why’d he kill himself, Sam?”
Sam didn’t say anything, maybe to give himself time for the shock to wear off. He looked away, focusing on the view once more, probably visually trailing the footprints of the fox Connor had seen earlier.
“Did you think I couldn’t figure it out?” Connor asked. “My father taught me everything he knew about guns, Sam, and that was plenty. I knew from the story you told that it couldn’t have been an accident. It had to have been deliberate.”
“You weren’t there. You were off playing soldier.”
He didn’t say a word, merely continued to look at Sam.
