Page 69 of Texas Glory
She scooted up in her chair. “I know so little about you.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Everything.” She averted her gaze as though embarrassed. “Did you know I wanted to build a hotel?”
“I’d heard the rumor.”
She peered at him. “Do you think it will be successful?” “Absolutely.”
She placed her hands on the desk, fear etched within the dark depths of her eyes, but he didn’t think it was fear of him.
“Dallas, I want to do something different with the hotel.”
She stood and began to pace. So graceful. So elegant. He wondered if he’d ever truly watched her walk.
“What do you want to do?” he asked.
She stopped and grabbed the back of her chair. ‘I want to use the hotel to bring women to Leighton.”
He furrowed his brow. “What?”
She scurried around the chair, sat, and leaned forward, an excitement in her eyes, the likes of which he’d never seen. “You mentioned placing an ad to get women to come to Leighton as brides, which seems so unfair to me. A woman has to promise herself to a man she’s never met—just as Amelia promised herself to you. What happens if she falls in love with someone else? Not every man will be as generous as you were. Not every man will give up his claim. Or what happens if she meets the man and doesn’t like him?”
She hopped out of the chair and began pacing again. Dallas was fascinated watching her, as though he could actually see her thoughts forming.
“I want to give women a reason to come to Leighton that has nothing to do with marriage. I want to have a nice restaurant inside the hotel where men will meet to discuss business. I want women to manage the hotel and work in the restaurant. We’ll bring women from all over the country here. Train them. Give them the skills they need to work in our hotel. If they happen to meet a man and get married, it won’t be because they had no choice.”
Her words rammed into him with the force of a stampeding bull. She’d had no choice. He wondered who she might have chosen to marry if she’d been given the choice.
She stopped pacing, placed her palms on his desk, and met his gaze. “What do you think?”
That you should have had a choice.
He held his thoughts, stood, and walked to the window. In the distance, he could hear his windmill. Behind him, he could feel Dee’s tenseness as she waited for his answer.
He had not given her a choice when the decision was made that they would marry, but he could give her a choice now. He would stay out of her bedroom until she wanted him there.
Turning, he captured her gaze. “I think you’re about to build an empire.”
CHAPTER
ELEVEN
Within Dallas’s office, Cordelia shifted in the chair and scribbled more notes across what had once been an unmarred sheet of paper. She was quickly discovering that building an empire was no easy task. Details abounded.
In the morning she worked quickly to clean away any evidence that they had eaten breakfast. She tidied the house and made beds.
It occurred to her one morning that if Dallas would truly become her husband, sleep in her bed, she would only have to spend time making two beds, instead of three, washing sheets for two beds, instead of three.
She’d considered discussing the arrangement with him, but she couldn’t quite gather enough courage. She was certain he would want to do more than sleep in her bed, and she wasn’t altogether ready for what the “more” might entail.
Although with each passing day, she found herself thinking of Dallas with increasing frequency.
After she finished her chores around the house, Austin would escort her to town. She constantly thought about Dallas as she viewed the plans that Mr. Curtiss was drawing up. She would wonder if Dallas was tending his cattle. She would hope that a reason would surface for him to come into town as well.
It seemed their paths continually crossed. She enjoyed walking through the town with him, listening as he explained the strengths and weaknesses in the buildings or discussed the other businesses that were coming to Leighton: the sign maker, the baker, the cobbler, and the barber.
But she anticipated the evenings most of all. She would curl up in the stuffed chair in Dallas’s office and discuss her plans with him: the wording of her advertisements that would bring women to Leighton to work in her hotel, the type of furniture she wanted to place in the hotel rooms, the variety of meals she wanted to serve in the restaurant.
