Page 84 of The Honorable Texan
“I’ll remember.”
“We’ve got a big garage apartment,” Leo told her.“It’s got picture windows and a whirlpool bath.Tess lived there until she and Cag married.I think you’ll like it.”
“I don’t mind where I stay,” she said easily.“I’m grateful to have a job at all.I really couldn’t go to work in Houston looking like this.It would have been embarrassing for my boss.”
“You won’t have people staring at you on the ranch,” Leo assured her.“And it won’t take too long for those bruises to heal.”
“I’ll be fine, but you’ll have to take it easy for a few days still, I’m sure they told you that,” she returned at once.“No violent exertion.Concussion is tricky.”
“I know that,” Leo told her.“We had a man who was kicked in the head by a horse.He dropped dead three days later while he was walking into the corral.It was a hard lesson about head injuries.None of us ever forgot it.”
She averted her eyes.She didn’t like thinking about head injuries just now.
“I’ve got to stop for gas,” Rey said as they reached the outskirts of the city and he pulled into a self-service gas station.“Anybody want something to drink?”
“Coffee for me,” Leo said.“Meredith?”
“I’d like a small coffee, black, please.”
“I’ll go get it after I fill the tank,” Rey said.He got out and started pumping gas.
Leo leaned his arm over the backseat and looked at Meredith openly, his dark eyes quiet and gently affectionate.
“You’re still having a hard time with Rey, aren’t you?”he asked her.
“He doesn’t really like me,” she confessed with a wry smile.“And I have to admit, he puts my back up, too.He seems to want to think the worst of me.He was convinced that I mugged you.”
He chuckled.“You aren’t tall enough to have knocked me out,” he said.“But Rey doesn’t like women much.He had a bad time of it with a young woman who turned out to be a call girl,” he added, noticing absently how stunned Meredith seemed to be at that remark.“He had the ring bought, the honeymoon spot picked out, and then he found out the truth about her.It took him years to get over it.He was crushed.”
“I guess so,” she said heavily.“Good Lord, no wonder he thought the worst when he saw how I was dressed.”
Leo frowned.“I just barely remember the rig you had on.What was it, some sort of costume?”
“I’d been to a wild Halloween party and had just escaped when I saw those men bending over you,” she told him.“I ran at them waving my arms and yelling, and frightened them off.”
“That was taking a hell of a chance!”he exploded.
She shrugged.“I’ve done it before,” she said.“I learned it from my…from my brother’s best friend,” she amended, forcing the words out.It was much too soon to try to talk about her tragedy.“He taught karate in the military.He said that sometimes all it needed was a yell and the element of surprise to spook an attacker and make him run.It works.”
“Not all the time,” Leo said darkly, “and not for women.I’m all for equality, but most men are bigger and stronger than most women, and in hand-to-hand, you’d lose.You can’t count on a man running, loud noise or not.”
“Well, it worked for you,” she amended, and smiled at him.“I’m glad, because I couldn’t have wrestled those guys down.”
He nodded.“See that you remember it,” he told her.“Don’t take chances.Get help.”
“Some help those partygoers would have been,” she scoffed.“Half of them were drunk, and the other half probably wouldn’t have walked across the street to save a grandmother from a mugging!”
“Then why were you at a party with them?”he asked reasonably.
She picked at a fingernail.“A girl I know from work said I needed a night off and insisted that I come.I wore an old costume, the only one I had, and thought I’d enjoy myself.I don’t do drugs or drink, and one of the men made a blatant pass at me.”She wrapped her armsaround her body in a defensive posture that betrayed her fear.“I was anxious to get away from the whole mess, luckily for you,” she added with a grin.
“I don’t like parties much, either,” he said.“Getting drunk isn’t my idea of a good time.”
She glanced out the window.Rey had finished pumping gas and was inside the convenience store now.“Does he drink?”she asked.
“Very rarely.I’ve been known to, under provocation, but Rey’s levelheaded and sober.He can be mean, and he’s got the blackest temper of all of us, but he’s a good man to have on your side when the chips are down.”
“He doesn’t like me,” she repeated.
