Page 60 of The Honorable Texan
“Daddy!”Trent struggled away from his mother and made a beeline to the tall man who waited, stooping, with his arms open.The child launched himself into them and hugged the man for all he was worth.“Daddy, I missed you so much!”he wept.“Why didn’t you come to see us in New York?”
Duke looked tormented.He wouldn’t meet his wife’s eyes.He kissed the little boy.“I’m glad you came to see me,” he replied, smiling at the child.He looked up, meeting Beka’s dark eyes evenly.“Hello, Beka.”
“Hello, Duke,” she replied, not quite meeting his accusing gaze.
“I’m sure you have a motel room by now, but I’d love it if you’d let Trent stay here,” he said quietly.“I have a live-in housekeeper, Mrs.Holmes, who loves children.She’s a wonderful cook.”
Beka seemed uncomfortable.“I…there aren’t…well, there isn’t a motel room vacant in Jacobsville…” She looked up at him.
“You’re welcome to stay here, too,” he replied.“I just didn’t think you’d want to,” he added bitterly.
“I can stand it if you can,” she told him.“Our suitcases are in the car.I’ll just go get them,” she said, rising.
“I’ll have one of the boys bring them in for you,” he returned curtly.“If that’s all right,” he added unexpectedly, and without antagonism.
Her thin eyebrows arched and she looked shocked.“Yes.That would be fine.Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”He put Trent down and smiled at him.“Want to come with me?I’m going out to the corral to get one of my cowboys.He’s working a new filly on a leading rein.”
“What’s a filly, Daddy?”he asked.
“A filly is a young female horse,” he replied.“She’s an Appaloosa.She has striped hooves and spots on her back,” he added with a grin.
“I thought you sold all the Appaloosas!”Beka exclaimed.
“Not all of them,” he replied.His eyes went over her red silk blouse and down the black slacks to her small feet in high heels.“You’re welcome to join us.It’s pretty dusty out there,” he added.
She moved toward him, a little hesitantly.“Clothes can be cleaned,” she said.She took Trent’s hand.“I’d like to see her.”
Duke’s eyes softened and he smiled.“She’s a beauty.”
Beka smiled back, following the man and the boy out the door.
Violet watched them go with hopeful feelings.She knew it had been a messy divorce, because she’d been working with Blake at the time.Her personal opinion had been that Duke Wright was an overbearing, unreasonable tyrant.She had no sympathy for him at all.A woman who married a man like Duke could expect to be owned like a horse.He never asked anyone else’s opinion; he gave his.He threw out orders like a military commander, and the first day Violet met him, she’d have liked to see him upside down in a barrel of dirty water.
But he’d mellowed just recently.It was obvious that he was trying to be polite to his ex-wife, even if it was only to help his case with his son.Delene certainly seemed to like him.She grimaced.When Mrs.Wright found out who the new biologist was, she wasn’t going to be smiling.It was going to be an explosion of some magnitude…
* * *
Blake had gonehome in a black mood.Mee and Yow curled up beside him in bed that night and purred while he brooded.He couldn’t get that last vision of Shannon out of his mind, lying so still and beautiful in her white coffin.All the long years, he’d wondered if he could have saved her if he’d just agreed to go to the party with her.She’d asked him to, and he’d wanted to go, because even back then he didn’t trust Julie Merrill.
But he’d had a court case the following Monday and he’d wanted time to work on his defense.While he was writing up gambits for his opening argument, Shannon was drinking a drug that worked like poison.He hadn’t known a thing about it until early the next morning, when her mother had phoned from the hospital to tell him the news.
He’d gone around in a daze for weeks afterward.He hadn’t been able to think, much less work.His reserve unit, like Cag Hart’s, had been called up in 1991 when Operation Desert Storm sent soldiers to Kuwaitto liberate it from invasion.He’d volunteered without a second thought, not at all concerned that he might die.
He’d waded right in with his company, in the thick of the fighting, a captain in a forward unit.During a memorable firefight, he’d propelled a tank into the thick of an enemy position and used it like a battering ram to shut down a machine gun nest that was killing his men.He’d been awarded a Purple Heart, because he’d been wounded in the ensuing firefight, and a Silver Star for gallantry in action.Few people around here knew about it.He didn’t talk about his military service.Well, except to Cag Hart, who understood.Cash Grier was rumored to have been in Iraq during the same period, but it was a subject Cash didn’t encourage.He was even more reticent than Blake, and that was saying something.
He tossed and turned all night, finally giving in around daylight.He got up and made coffee and toast and brooded at the table.Shannon, the war, all that was in the past.He couldn’t go back.For all the wonder he’d felt with her, there had never been the spontaneous rush of passion that he felt when he was with Violet.He and Shannon had loved one another, but with a quieter, less tempestuous love.What he felt with Violet was something else again, a whirlpool of delights that left him breathless even in memory.
He thought about the baby.He wondered if it would look like him or like Violet, if it would be a boy or a girl.He could picture himself with a little girl on his lap, reading her bedtime stories, or with a little boy, showing him the telescope and distant planets, and teaching him about rocks.He loved rocks even more than astronomy.He had samples of crystals and meteorites and fossils and all sorts of minerals.He had a metal detector, andin his spare time he loved wandering around the property with it, looking for metallic meteorites.He’d found several over the years.He’d never told Violet about this odd hobby.He wondered if she liked rocks, too.
He finished his coffee and stretched.The cats sat watching him, puzzled at his change of routine.
“I couldn’t sleep.Don’t you have bad nights?”he asked them.
They blinked.For all the world, they seemed to be listening.Of course, they seemed to watch television, too.Obviously, his lack of sleep was playing tricks on his mind.
“I’m going to marry Violet,” he told them.“And there’s going to be a little tiny human being here in a few months.You’ll both have to adapt.”
