Page 105 of The Honorable Texan
He looked at their linked fingers.He nodded.“We were pals since grammar school.He wasn’t quite as bright as some of the other boys, but he had a gentle nature.Or so we thought.”He met her eyes.“His mom and dad always had a houseful of other peoples’ kids.They were everybody’s mom and dad.It shattered them when Joey went to prison.Even the children of the old man felt sorry for them.”
“Funny,” she mused.“I never even thought of how it would feel to have a child or a parent or a sibling who broke the law in some terrible way.”She met his eyes.“I guess I’d feel guilty, too.”
“Most kids are raised right.But some of them have a wild streak that nobody can tame, others have poor impulse control.Many are handicapped.Nobody goes to jail because he wants to.”
“I never thought of you as a sensitive man,” she blurted out, and then flushed at the insult.
His eyebrows lifted.“Who, me?I stop to pick worms out of the highway so my tires won’t bruise their little bodies, and you think I’m insensitive?”
It took a minute for the words to make sense, and then she burst out laughing.
“That’s better,” he said.He smiled and squeezed her fingers.“You’re going to be okay.You’ve had a lot of traumatic experiences just lately.No wonder you caved in.”
“Lucky for you,” she shot back.
“Me?Why?”
“Because if we’d unpacked those shotguns, I’d have destroyed your ego,” she said with a smug smile.“At Mike’s gun club, they used to call me ‘dead-eye.’”
“Oh, they did, did they?”he challenged.“Well, we’ll see about that when you step up to my gun range.”
She studied his lean face.He wasn’t handsome, but he had strong, stubborn features.He was familiar to her now, almost necessary.She thought about going back to Houston with real panic.
He touched her cheek where the bruises were a mixture of purple and yellow, much less vivid now.“He really knocked you around,” he said, and his face hardened visibly.“I don’t care if a man is drunk, there’s no excuse for hitting a woman.”
“Shades of primitive man,” she chided with a smile.
“Women are the cradles of life,” he said simply.“What sort of man tries to break a cradle?”
“You have a unique way of putting things.”
“We had Spanish ancestors,” he told her.“They were old-world men, conquerors, adventurers.One of them made his way to Texas and was given a huge tract of land under a Spanish land grant, for services to the crown of Spain.”He noticed a start of surprise on her face.“Do you know the legend of the Cid?”
“Yes!”she exclaimed.“He was a great Spanish hero.Cidis for the ArabicSidiwhich meansLord.”
“Well, our ancestor wasn’t El Cid,” he said on a chuckle.“But he fought his way through hostile neighbors to claim his land, and he held it as long as he lived.Our family still holds it, through our late uncle, who left us this ranch.”
“This is the original grant?”she exclaimed.
He nodded.“It isn’t nearly as big as it was a couple of hundred years ago, but it’s no weekend farm, either.Didn’t you notice the antique silver service in the dining room?”
“Yes, I’ve been afraid to touch it.It looks very old.”
He smiled.“It came from Madrid.It’s over two hundred years old.”
“An heirloom!”she breathed.
“Yes.Like the ranch itself.”He tilted his head and studied her for a long time.“Now I understand.Your father wasn’t violent until the killer’s trial, was he?”
“No, he wasn’t.”She looked down at Rey’s big, warm hand wrapped around her own.It made her feel safe.“He told Mike to drive Mama to the bank,” she added reluctantly.“He had papers to grade.He couldn’t spare the time, he said, and he snapped at her when she protested that Mike was spending his day off, carting her all over Houston.”She glanced at him.“I was called in to work at a clinic my boss holds in the Hispanic community every Saturday.There’s a regular nurse, but she was at home with a sick child.I went to stand in for her.”Her eyes fell to his broad chest.“I could have asked someone to go in my place.I didn’t.So he and I both have our guilt.”
“Because you lived and they didn’t,” Rey said bluntly.
She gasped.“No, that’s not true!”
“It is true.”His black eyes held hers relentlessly.“The same thing happens to people who survive airplane crashes, automobile wrecks, sinking ships.It’s a normal, human reaction to surviving when other people don’t.It’s worse when the victims include close relatives or friends.”
“Where did you learn that?”she asked.
