Wild Texas Rose (12 page)

But Patrick shook his head. “That we are, but Miss Rose, I’m seventy-two years old. I wanted to live to see it happen.” He cast a frightened glance at Thorn. “Now I’m going to hang.”

Thorn sighed. “No, you’re not, you damned idiot. Rose and I are going to get married—”

“What?” Rose interjected.

“—and I can keep your gambling under control, if she can’t.” Remembering that long-ago scene in the stable, Thorn snapped, “You’re not like an uncle to me.”

“Can’t say as you’re like a nephew to me, either,” Patrick snapped back. Then remembering his precarious situation, he said, “But that’s a generous offer, and one I’ll take you up on.”

“Wait a minute,” Sonny said. “If you’re the Texas Ranger you claim you are, why are you going to let a horse thief go?”

“Because I’m a Texas Ranger — a Texas Ranger who’s retiring to get married — and who’s going to argue with me?” Thorn sat on the grass and stared up at the encircling cowboys and enjoyed exerting his authority. “Hm?”

Shuffling their feet, the cowboys shook their heads and muttered various versions of “Not me.”

Thorn nodded, satisfied. “Some of you men might like to pick up Patrick, take him into Fort Davis and find him a doctor.” He looked meaningfully up at the cowboys. “Be real tender with this horse thief. We wouldn’t want him to suffer any
pain
from the
gunshot wound
he suffered in the pursuit of his
crime
.”

The cowboys got Thorn’s message, all right. They none-too-gently hefted the moaning Patrick into the air and carried him away.

Rose stirred from her place on the ground. “I can take care of him.”

“No, you can’t.” Thorn looked straight at her. “You’re going to be busy.”

She got that stubborn, huffy, Miss-Rose-Laura-Corey look about her. “No, I’m not.”

He ignored her and ordered Sonny’s cowboys around some more. “Some of the rest of you might like to gather up Miss Rose’s fine horses and with great care take them back to her place where they belong.”

“I’ll take them back,” she said. But she spoke to the remaining cowboys’ backs as they turned to do as they were told. Clearly exasperated, she pushed some of the hair out of her eyes and appealed to Sonny. “Don’t you have any control over your own men?”

“Not anyone gonna stand between a Ranger and his woman,” Sonny answered, paying grudging homage both to Thorn’s authority and the upcoming marriage.

“I am not his woman.” Rose sounded as if she could keep repeating it forever.

“Bad case of the peadoodles,” Thorn told Sonny.

Sonny shook his head. “Never expected it from Rose.”

“I’ll bring her around.” Thorn pointed his thumb at the exit to the canyon. “As soon as we’re alone.”

Sonny shouted at the cowboys, “You men hurry up,” then turned expectantly back to the couple on the ground.

“As soon as we’re alone.” Thorn spaced out the words, slow and meaningful.

“Huh?” Sonny checked the progress of the cowboys again then, with a start, comprehended Thorn’s none-too-subtle hint. “You mean you want to be alone without
me
.”

“Yeah.” Thorn wished he’d shot Sonny when he had the chance. “Without
you
.”

“Well.” Sonny huffed. “I can take a hint. If I’m not welcome…”

“You don’t have to go.” Rose stood with a wince and brushed at the grass stains on her riding skirt. “If Thorn wants to be alone so badly, I’ll leave.”

“You nincompoop,” Thorn muttered out of the corner of his mouth to Sonny. “Look what you’ve done.”

“I didn’t do anything,” Sonny said, instantly defensive. “How come I always get blamed for everything?”

“Obstructing a Texas Ranger, aiding and abetting a horse thief, getting in the way of a Ranger and his woman—”

Sonny raised his hands in defeat. “I’m going, I’m going.”

“Leave Goliath,” Thorn called to the cowboys. “Rose will want to ride him. And you, Miss Rose Laura Corey, sit down.”

She glared at him, trying to look scandalized.

She only looked hurt, and all over a proposal of marriage.

But he didn’t let her know he knew. She wouldn’t like his compassion.

And he didn’t like her attitude. He was a big man with broad shoulders, but he wasn’t spending the rest of his life being the recipient of her choler — or her forgiveness.

Trouble was, he needed her like a long drink of cool water on a hot Texas day. He needed her forever, and to have her, he had to get this woman figured out. And that meant, oh God, they had to have a conversation.

He’d rather face a riled rattler, but it had to be done, and she had to be here to talk. And listen. So he taunted, “You afraid of me? Afraid you can’t keep your hands off me?”

She planted herself on the grass a good five feet away from him, and she planted herself hard enough that she made him wince in sympathy for her fine, skinny backside. “I can keep my hands off you fine, Mr. Thorndike Samuel Maxwell.”

The use of his full name reminded Thorn of that day in court nine years ago. “You sound like my mother.”

“Have you been to see your mother?” She sounded as snotty as she’d sounded when she was six years old.

And he responded the same way. “Yes.”

“I wondered. I mean, you said you’d been in the county for a while, scouting out the horse thief, and I thought it would be nice if you visited your mother.” She paused for a beat. “Like you never did me.”

He tried to be glad she was speaking to him. “I told you why.”

“Let’s see.” She pressed her index finger into her chin. “Revenge, wasn’t it? Yes, that’s right, revenge for sending you to prison. But that doesn’t explain the last
seven years
.” Her voice got real loud.

“Seven years?” Thorn repeated.

“Isn’t that how long you’ve been out of prison?
Seven years
? Isn’t that how long you’ve been a free man?
Seven years
?” She shook a fist at him, and then caught herself. Looking curiously at her hand as if it were someone else’s, she straightened her fingers. “Seven years, and you never came to see me or even sent me word. I thought you must be an outlaw. I imagined you shot or sick or dying.” Her voice caught. “And all the time you were riding the prairies and the hills as a Texas Ranger.”

“I did come to see you.” Thorn glanced around at the wide-open canyon, at the departing cowboys and at that damned gossip Sonny, still dragging his feet and glancing back. Thorn lowered his voice. “I came to see you as soon as I had served my time. I sat up on that hill above your place — you know, the rocky one where we caught the snake — and I watched you. You were working with your horses, talking to your daddy, and you seemed so happy. All the time in prison, all I could remember was the way you looked as you testified against me. That sad look in your brown eyes, the anguish in your face. After a year, that sorrow was all scrubbed away.”

“You came and saw me.” She repeated it as if she couldn’t believe it.

“Yeah.”

“And sat up on the hill and thought I looked happy.” She looked right at him.

He saw the old lines of strain settled onto her face as if they were familiar friends.

“Maybe you should have taken a closer look.” She pointed to her expression.

“Maybe so, but I wanted you so bad, Rose. So bad.” He pressed his hand to his heart.

“You resisted, I guess.” She stared at his chest as if wondering if he had a heart. “You never even let me know you were there.”

“What did I have to offer you? I wasn’t going to settle down on the family ranch and chase after cows. I wanted adventure and excitement — that’s why I got into trouble in the first place.” He scooted close to her and stroked her cheek. “You know it’s true. Don’t you?”

She didn’t look at him, but she nodded. “I know it’s true.”

“I’d already joined the Texas Rangers, and that was right for me.”

She slapped his hand away. “But you could have told me you were there on that hill.”

“We were going to fight Indians, and I didn’t even know if I’d come out alive. Maybe I did the wrong thing — I was young and pretty stupid.”

“
Pretty
stupid?”

“Okay,
really
stupid.” He owed her that, he supposed. “But I thought that if I got close enough to you, I’d have to have you, and then what would your life have been?”

“It would have been
my
life. I would have chosen it. I wouldn’t be some dried-up old maid waiting for her sweetheart to return from … from gallivanting around the countryside having a whale of a good time.” She came up on her knees and glared into his eyes. “I can’t marry a man who doesn’t trust me to know my own mind.”

“Dang.” Astonished, he scooted over in the grass beside her. “You’re mad because I did the right thing and left you with your parents.”

“You left me
alone
.”

“And I was feeling noble and honorable and trying to ignore all the sniffles and tears.”

“I wasn’t crying,” she snapped.

“No, I was.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Crying? Thorn had been crying the day he’d ridden away from her?

It broke Rose’s heart to think of him — young, with prison pallor, facing his first battle — and crying over her. Over Rose, who, until her parents died, had been comfortable and warm and, yes, happy.

Maybe she understood him a little.

But Thorn didn’t seem to be interested in her compassion. Once more, he looked around the canyon.

It was empty now. Empty except for two people sitting and shivering in the strength of a gathering norther.

He scanned the canyon rim, then cut a glance at Goliath, acting like he was trying to avoid his gaze. At last he asked diffidently, “Why didn’t you inquire about me?”

She foundered. “Who would I ask?”

A stupid question. He knew it. She knew it. But he answered patiently, “You could have inquired of my mama. She knew where I was and what I was doing, and I told her — in a moment of weakness, you understand — that if you ever wanted to know about me, she was to tell you the truth.”

“How could I ask her?” For some reason, Rose thought the wind blew colder on her than on him. For some reason, the guilt that had haunted her for so many years returned. “I couldn’t even look your mother in the eye after sending you to prison.”

He frowned. “Why not? My mama doesn’t approve of stealing, you know that. Why, if she’d caught me, she’d have switched me first and then sent me to prison.”

“I know, but I was so afraid she hated me.” Rose dipped her head, and her voice got soft. “I was afraid she’d ask me why you’d taken it, and everybody in the county had already speculated that you’d taken it because I … didn’t give you what you wanted.”

“You didn’t want my mother to ask you what happened.” He wiped his hand across his mouth as if he tasted something sour. “You were ashamed of what happened?”

“I wasn’t at the time. But after Patrick came in, it seemed … dirty.”

“Dirty.”

She had the feeling she was scrambling to retrieve his good opinion of her, and with more honesty than sense, she added, “Then you went to prison, and I didn’t dare think about it. Then you got out and didn’t come home, and I refused to think about it. Then … oh, Lord … I couldn’t help but think about it. All the time. I was in the hottest part of hell, and I was chained there alone.”

“I was there, too. You couldn’t see me, because I was chained to the back of the same scorching rock that held you.” He took her hand and attempted a facsimile of his devil-may-care grin. “Actually, sending me to prison was the best thing you could have done for me. It knocked some sense into me.” She would have protested, but he continued, “Yes, it did. Knocked me plumb out of my smugness and made me realize what I had to lose. There were men in that prison that didn’t know any other life but crime. Men who had gangrene from bullet wounds and men who had consumption because of the damp and dark. It’s because of you that I met Major Jones and joined the Rangers. I owe you a debt of gratitude for that.”

That seemed so horrible, and yet so funny, that she chuckled a little. “Some debt.”

“But I kinda thought, when you never asked about me, that you didn’t care anymore. I kinda thought you despised me as a thief and hated me for embarrassing you.” He touched her fingers and peered into her face. “That’s what I thought.”

“I didn’t despise you, and I could never hate you.”

“I didn’t know that.” He let go of her hand and stood up. “I’m not some gypsy fortune-teller who can read your mind.”

“Well, no, but—”

His voice got stronger. “I think you were a coward, Miss Rose Laura Corey, and about the most important thing in our lives.”

She still thought he had to be joking.

But he was walking away.

She called, “You wanted me to go to your mother and ask her to send word to you that I wanted you? You wanted me to chase after you?” Scrambling to her feet, she hurried after him. “I couldn’t do that. It would have been too embarrassing for me to … “ She tried to match his long strides. “Surely you didn’t expect that I—”

He kept walking. “I had no reason to despise you. You were the right virtuous Miss Rose Laura Corey.
I
was an ex-convict.
I
was in exile.”

“
I
didn’t put you there.”

“No, but you were the only one who could get me out. If your parents hadn’t died and left you in need, if you hadn’t needed a Texas Ranger” — his stride lengthened as if he couldn’t be bothered with her — “babe, I still wouldn’t be here, because you were too proud to ask for me.”

She stopped and stared after him. The nerve! Acting as if their long separation was her fault.

He rounded the corner into the other canyon and disappeared from sight.

But she couldn’t let him get away with the last word. Running, she caught up with him as he led his horse away from the sheltering pine. “Ladies don’t ask men to … that is … ladies wait until they are asked.”

“Ladies?” He swung himself into the saddle. “What good does it do to quote etiquette to me? I’m nothing but a rough ol’ Texas Ranger. And you’re a” — he looked her over — “lady.” Tipping his hat to her, he rode away, and she heard him call, “If you’d wanted me, you could have had me.”