Page 121 of The Honorable Texan
Rey expelled a breath.This was going to work out even better than he’d dreamed.Amazing, he thought, how a single act of kindness could expand like ripples around a rock dropped into a pond.
“He’s not much good on a horse anymore,” she continued chattily, “but he really knows veterinary medicine.”
“He might go back to teaching one day.Not in Houston,” he added gently.“But Texas is a big state, and when he’s been away from alcohol a couple of years, who knows?”
“The ranch will be good for him.You did mean it, didn’t you?”she added quickly.“It wasn’t something you said to help him want to get better?”
“I very rarely say things I don’t mean, Meredith,” he replied.“Well,” he added with a frown, “I wasn’t exactly telling the truth about washing the dogs.”
“Excuses, excuses.”She toyed with her purse.“Rey, thank you for giving him a second chance.”
He laughed gently.“I’ve got an ulterior motive,” hemurmured dryly.“When you come to the ranch to visit him, you can make me a pan of biscuits.”
“Just you?Not one to share with Leo?”
He shifted behind the wheel.“He can go find someone to make him biscuits,” he said.“Surely, somewhere in Texas, there’s a woman who’d do it just for him.”
“Your other brothers, do their wives bake?”
“Dorie and Tess do,” he said.“But Tira hasn’t got a clue how to,” he added on a sigh.“Simon doesn’t mind.They have a cook who can.Although he’s really not much on biscuits, so it doesn’t matter.”He grinned.“You should see him with his sons.Two of them now.They’re still toddlers, and he’s a whiz at fatherhood.Dorie and Corrigan have a boy and a girl and Cag and Tess have a son.That makes me an uncle five times over!Christmas is going to be a real treat this year.”
She thought about Christmas.It was going to be a lonely one for her, with her father down here on the ranch.
He saw the look on her face and reached out to catch her hand in his.“Hey,” he said softly, “you’re invited for Christmas, you know.We’ll pack up the kids and go over to the annual Christmas party at the Doctors Coltrain.They have huge layouts of Lionel trains that they run every year, especially with a little boy of their own who’ll be big enough to play with them in a couple of years.Draws a big crowd.Do you like train sets?”
She smiled.“I do.”It lifted her heart to know that she was going to be included in the family get-together.She loved children.It would make the season less traumatic for her and her father, because they were missing two members of their immediate family.
“We’ll make it a happy Christmas,” he said softly.
She tangled her fingers into his.“I’ll have that to look forward to, when I go back.”
“It’s premature right now, but if you decide to move down here, too, I’d bet good money that Micah Steele would offer you work.”
She looked at his big, warm hand holding hers.“I like Jacobsville.”
His fingers grew possessive.“I likeyou.”
“Thanks.I like you, too, and if you’ll loan me your cell phone, I’ll call the minister right now and we can set a date,” she added with wicked haste.
He chuckled.“Hold on, tiger, I may have been lying about washing the dogs, but marriage is a big step.You have to look out for me.I know you can tame snakes and handle heart attacks, and you bake good biscuits.But how do you look in a suit, and can you dance?”
“I look great in a suit,” she said firmly, “and I can do Latin dances.”
He grimaced.“I can’t.How about a nice, slow two-step?”
“I can do that, too!”
He glanced at her.“What do you like to read?”he asked.
The next few minutes were spent in gleeful harmony, going over things they had in common.They liked the same basic forms of relaxation, and they even thought alike on politics and child-raising.It was a very good start.Meredith had seen far too many relationships start out with nothing more than sex for a foundation, and they didn’t last.It took common interests, common beliefs, friendship, to make a lasting marriage.
Marriage.That word, once so warily approached, now seemed as natural as letting Rey hold her hand allthe way back to Jacobsville.She wondered where they were going together in the future, and hoped it was someplace nice.
* * *
She had togo back to work the following week.Friday morning she had her suitcase packed.She was wearing her tailored beige suit with her blond hair in a neat ponytail when she followed Rey out the front door.He carried her suitcase to his car and put it in the trunk.
“I’ll be back late this afternoon,” he told Leo.“If you need me, I’ll be on my cell phone.”He patted the cell phone carrier on his belt.
