Page 34 of Texas Splendor
“Did she tell you stories at bedtime?”
He opened his eyes, and it gladdened her heart to see that a small portion of the sadness had melted away.
“She told me stories, but not with words. She used songs. I remember she’d sit on the edge of my bed, and I’d watch her fingers caress the violin strings as she moved the bow and the most beautiful sounds flowed from the wood through the strings. I tried so hard not to fall asleep so I could keep watching her hands. I loved watching her hands.” Turning his head slightly, he smiled warmly. “I remember her hands. She had the longest fingers—”
“Like yours.”
Surprise flitted across his face. He lifted the hand she wasn’t holding, turned it, and studied it from all angles. “I reckon so. I never noticed before.”
“You should learn to play the violin.”
She felt his hand stiffen within hers.
“You have to hear the music in your heart before you can create it with a fiddle. I can’t do that,” he said.
“You could try—”
“I can’t.”
He surged to his feet, pulling her up with him, his fingers tightening around hers as he walked away from the grave. Loree stumbled as she followed. He swung around, caught, and steadied her.
“You all right?” he asked, concern clearly reflected in his eyes.
Her cheeks grew warm, and she suddenly wished she’d spent the last five years practicing to be a lady as her mother had wanted instead of a hoyden thinking no man would ever look at her the way Austin Leigh was looking at her now. She nodded jerkily and gave him a wan smile. “I’m just used to ground beneath my feet instead of leather.”
As though amused, he slowly shook his head and glanced at her scuffed shoes. Unexpectedly he dropped to one knee and slapped his raised thigh. “Put your foot up here.”
“What are you going to do?”
He grabbed her ankle and lifted her foot. Thrown off-balance, she clamped her fingers onto his shoulder to brace herself. She watched in amazement as he freed the buttons on her shoe. She thought about jerking her foot back, insisting the shoes stay where they were, but he dropped his head back and she fell into the depths of his blue, blue eyes. How many times during the past week had she caught herself staring into the flames of a fire, searching for the warmth of his gaze?
He worked her shoe off, and when she would have removed her stockinged foot from his thigh, he covered it with his palm and held it in place. His gaze holding hers, he slowly guided his hands over her ankle, beneath her skirt, up her calf, past her knee, until his fingers grazed the bare flesh of her thigh just above her stockings. Scalding heat shot through her, and she dug her fingers into his shoulders.
Using his thumbs, he rolled her stocking down her leg, while his fingers trailed over her skin, his gaze never leaving hers, the blue darkening until she felt as though he had ignited something within her. Her heart beat so hard that she was certain he’d be able to feel the pounding in her toes. He skimmed her stocking over her foot, and finally lowered his gaze to her bare foot. He rubbed his finger over the top of her foot.
“You’ve got the cutest toes.”
“They’re crooked,” she told him as though he didn’t have a clear view of her toes as he massaged each toe thoroughly before moving onto the next.
Feeling as though every bone in her body was melting, she was surprised she still had the ability to stand.
“Did you break this toe?” he asked when he reached the toe next to her biggest toe.
“No. My pa had toes like that. He called it a hammer toe. See, it looks like a hammer.”
He gave her a grin that very nearly caused all the breath to leave her body. She was too aware of him. Memories of his touching her in the ways that a man touched a woman threatened to turn from cold ashes into a blazing fire. She jerked her foot off his thigh.
As though he knew exactly what she’d been remembering, he patted his thigh and his smile grew. “Other foot.”
She took a deep calming breath. “I can take it off.” To her embarrassment, her voice hitched, but he didn’t laugh. He just turned those blue eyes on her, challenging her. “Come on, Sugar. Give me your other foot before you break your pretty neck.”
She had never been able to resist a challenge. She stomped her foot onto his thigh. He laughed deeply, richly, like a man remembering what it was to enjoy life.
“So you’ve got a bit of a temper,” he said as he attacked the buttons.
“Sometimes.” She watched the deftness with which his fingers worked. “Not often.”
He dropped her shoe to the ground and started gliding his hands over her leg. She wasn’t certain she could survive his removing the other stocking, and when he lifted his gaze to hers, she was certain she wouldn’t.
