Page 36 of Texas Splendor
“I just want to make sure that you understand that.”
“I do.”
“Good.”
His mouth swooped down to cover hers, his arm snaking around her waist, drawing her flush against his body. Hot, moist, and hungry, his lips taunted and teased. Of their own accord, her arms wound around his neck, and she returned his kiss with equal fervor. She knew it was wrong. She had nothing of permanence to offer him.
When he finally drew away, Loree was surprised her legs were able to support her.
“Get inside before I do something we both regret,” he rasped in a ragged voice.
She nodded, slipped inside, and closed the door. She pressed her ear against it. It was long moments before she heard his boots hitting the porch, carrying him away, before she heard the buggy roll into the night.
She sank to the floor and buried her face in her hands, but she couldn’t hide from the truth. Had he asked, she would have invited him to stay.
Chapter 7
Austin stared at the five cards in his hand. The queen of hearts looked damned lonely with no other face cards to keep her company. He understood that feeling. Christ, loneliness had been his companion for most of his life. He loved his brothers, but hanging on to their shirttails, he’d found little affection and when it came, it had been little more than a quick nod of the head for a job well done. He didn’t resent that. A man’s world was decidedly different from a woman’s.
Amelia had taught him that affection deepened with a touch: slender fingers on a clenched fist, a hand rubbing a shoulder, a hug, or a kiss on the cheek. Small things that breached the mighty wall of lonesomeness. But Amelia had belonged first to Dallas, then to Houston, never to Austin. As much as she had eased his forlorn heart, she had also left him wanting. Until he’d first set eyes on Becky.
She had been his: to look at, to smile at, to laugh with—whenever he wanted. But he’d kept his hands and lips to himself, waiting until she was old enough. She had been nearly seventeen, the first time he’d kissed her. And nine months later, he was sitting in a cold barren cell with nothing but the memories. And the loneliness had increased because he had known what it was to live without it.
He told himself that it was loneliness that had him riding out to Loree Grant’s house late into the night. He’d simply sit astride Black Thunder and stare at the shadowed house. More than once he had to stop himself from dismounting and knocking on her door. He didn’t imagine she’d appreciate being disturbed from her slumber at two o’clock in the morning. And what could he have said?
I can’t sleep without holding you, smelling you, listening to your breath whispering into the night.
He’d gone so far as to pull bluebonnets from the fields and stuff them beneath his pillow at the hotel just so he could pretend she was near.
It had been a week since he’d taken her to the old homestead and his loneliness had increased with each passing day. He wasn’t in a position to court her, had nothing to offer her, and even though he’d told her that, he had seen a measure of hope reflected in her golden eyes. He couldn’t bear the thought of disappointing her, and he feared if he spent much more time with her, he might do just that.
“You in or out?”
Austin snapped his gaze up to the detective’s. Wylan had lifted a brow. Austin tossed down his cards. “I feel like we’re wasting our time. Or at least I am. I might as well be spitting in a high wind for all the good I’m doing here.”
Wylan gathered up the cards and began his infuriating silent shuffle. “I finished visiting the last of the brothels last night. Didn’t glean any information.”
“You’ve been visiting brothels?”
“Yep. No telling what a man might say in the heat of passion.”
Austin knew too well the truth of that statement. “I could have saved you the trouble.”
Wylan smiled. “Oh, it was no trouble.”
The man’s easy attitude was beginning to wear thin. Austin planted his elbows on the table and leaned forward. “Boyd McQueen had a preference for boys.”
The cards Wylan had been shuffling went flying out of his hands and disbelief swept over his face. “What?”
Austin rubbed his jaw wondering how much he could say without causing harm. He’d learned of Boyd’s perversions from Rawley. Furious over a past he’d been unable to change, Austin had shot a bullet over Boyd’s head in the saloon and announced that nothing would have brought him greater pleasure than to rid the ground of Boyd’s shadow. Those words had served to condemn him as much as Boyd writing “Austin” in the dirt. Austin sighed deeply. “Boyd took pleasure in hurting boys, among other things.”
“Your brother’s son?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to. The boy has a haunted look in his eyes. I just couldn’t figure out what had put it there.” Wylan poured himself a whiskey and downed it in one swallow. “I gotta tell you, the more I learn about Boyd McQueen the more I hope I don’t find the man who killed him. But then there’s the matter of your innocence.”
Austin fingered his glass of whiskey. “I spent five years thinking someone had killed him and purposely put the blame on me. The thought of getting even burned inside me. Now, I’m beginning to think I just got unlucky. No one set out to hurt me. Someone murdered Boyd, and I got blamed for it. If it hadn’t destroyed my life, I’d be applauding whoever killed him.”
