Long, Tall Texans--Luke Read online

  “It’s the world we live in,” she said quietly. “Fidelity doesn’t seem to mean much, anymore.”

  He turned to face her. “It means the world to me,” he said flatly. “I’m an old-fashioned man. When I give my word, I keep it.”

  She grimaced. “So do I.” She smoothed her fingers carefully over the hard wood of the fence. “He said I was a dinosaur.”

  One eyebrow levered slowly up.

  “I wouldn’t go to bed with him because we weren’t married,” she said simply. “So he found somebody who would.” She shrugged. “I can’t blame him, really. I mean, every woman does it.”

  “Not every woman,” he said coldly. “Virtue is so rare as to be priceless these days.”

  “Show me one virtuous man,” she dared.

  “That would be difficult,” he agreed, “although it’s not impossible. I’ve known a man or two who felt the way you do about it. Still, men can’t get pregnant, can they? Women are the childbearers, the civilizers. I believe that when children are going to be involved, there should be one man, and no others.”

  She stared up at him quietly. “You’re a dinosaur, too.”

  “You got a dinosaur?” one of the boys, overhearing, asked.

  “Don’t be stupid,” another boy answered him, “there’s no such thing!”

  “I read that dinosaurs turned into birds,” another ventured.

  Juanito grinned for the first time. “My grandad used to say he could turn into a bird when he liked. And my mom said no wonder he ate like one.”

  Everybody laughed, but kindly.

  It broke the ice. Luke showed the boys around, and they warmed to his easy, friendly manner. He led them through the barn, where he had two calves being treated for scours and a heifer with a snakebite.

  “They’re all improving,” he said, watching the boys stare at the animals. “They’ll go out into the pasture in a day or two. There were three calves in here, but we lost one of them yesterday.”

  “What’s scours?” Kells asked.

  “It’s a disease calves get that prevents them from keeping anything in their stomachs,” he replied. “They die if they aren’t treated. The vet has been giving them medicine for it. Usually it works. Sometimes, it doesn’t, no matter how hard you try.”

  “I guess you have to use a horse to work cattle,” Kells continued.

  “I’m afraid so. Although,” he added with a chuckle, “I used to know a man who used an all-terrain vehicle to do it.”

  “One of those four-wheeled things like a big lawnmower?”

  “The very thing. He hit a stump unexpectedly and went headfirst, right into the lagoon. I hear he gave the vehicle to his nephew the next day and went back to using horses.” He saw the question in Kells’s eyes and before he could ask it he added, “A lagoon is where animal waste is collected.”

  Kells doubled over laughing. “No wonder he gave the thing away!” He sighed. “I guess I could learn to like horses.”

  “Sure you could,” Luke assured him. “A horse that’s trained right will do what you tell it to, although I’ve seen some bad horses. In fact, a neighbor of mine has a twenty-year-old horse that killed a man in an arena and was about to be destroyed. He saved it.”

  “Must be a nice man.”

  He shook his head. “Not a chance. He’s like a rattlesnake, coiled up and waiting for somebody to come within striking distance.” He grinned. “Most people walk wide around him.”

  “Can we go back out there and look at the bull?” Kells asked.

  “Sure, go ahead.”

  They ran out almost in a unit, leaving Luke and Belinda together at the steel gate that contained the calves in their stall.

  He glanced at Belinda. “That neighbor lives on the other side of your camp, by the way. You’d better make sure nobody trespasses in his direction. I’m a reasonable man. He’s not.”

  “I’ll remember,” she promised.

  He watched her openly, his blue eyes narrow and thorough on her soft oval face. “Do you like your job?”

  “I like kids,” she said. “Especially kids who need something society isn’t giving them.” She jerked her head toward the boys. “There’s not one thing wrong with them that a little love and attention wouldn’t have taken care of. They just want someone to care about them, and they find unorthodox ways to attract attention.”

  “Kells said he stole a CD player.”

  She nodded. “But not because he wanted it,” she murmured. “His mother’s boyfriend had beaten him up that morning. He was getting back at her, for exposing him to that sort of treatment.” She shrugged. “The boyfriend is the reason they’re out here. He sent for her, but he doesn’t want Kells. Neither did his father.”

  “What a shame.”

  She nodded. “The boyfriend’s idea of discipline is a fist to the jaw. I’ve had the D.A.’s office looking into it, but Kells’s mother won’t say a word in Kells’s defense. In fact, she told the investigator that he asked for it, by being sassy.”

  “Nobody asks to be beaten up.” He said it with such ferocity that she turned and looked up at him. His face was hard, set with lines of pain. She had the most terrible urge to reach up and touch it, to make the lines relax. She remembered very well what he’d told her about his father, about the beatings. It would have been worse, to watch his mother taking that sort of abuse and not being able to stop it. It was a sadly familiar story in her circles. She reflected on women she’d worked with who had been victimized by abusive husbands.

  There seemed to be so many women who tolerated the abuse out of fear, a kind of fear that well-meaning outsiders could never understand. Belinda tried to explain that everything would change once the woman was out of the house. It rarely worked until a beating landed her in the hospital, or until the man injured, sometimes killed, one of her children.

  “What are you brooding about?” Luke asked abruptly.

  She smiled sadly. “About women who won’t accept help, feeling they’re better off where they are. I was thinking about why they won’t leave men who hurt them.”

  “Because they’re afraid,” Luke replied curtly. “Everybody says, just get out, you’ll be okay.” He laughed bitterly. “Once, after the police left, my father held a butcher knife to my mother’s throat for ten minutes and described to her, graphically, what he’d do to my sister, Elysia, with it if she ever called the police again.”

  “Dear Lord,” she breathed.

  “He meant it, too,” he added. “He said he’d have nothing to lose if they were going to put him in jail anyway.”

  She put out a hand and touched the back of his, just lightly. “I’m sorry you had to go through that.”

  He turned his hand and caught her fingers in his, tightly. “Why did you become a public defender?”

  She smiled ruefully. “My best friend was raped by her stepfather, and the public defender on her case had such a heavy workload that he plea-bargained the case to get it off his schedule. She was devastated when her stepfather didn’t even have to serve time for what he’d done. She couldn’t go back home, because by then her mother believed she’d invited it.” She shook her head sadly. “I decided then and there that I wanted to make a difference in the world. I studied law and here I am, despite my brother’s assurances that I was wasting my time.”

  He chuckled. “I remember your brother very well,” he mused. “He was the most ruthless businessman I ever met.”

  “Yes, he was. His wife has changed him,” she added. “He’s given up being stone-hearted. Now, he’s my biggest fan.”

  His blue eyes met hers and he smiled slowly. “Maybe, but he’s not your only one.” He leaned closer deliberately, pausing with his lips a breath away from hers. “I like you, too, Miss Public Defender.” And then he kissed her.

  CHAPTER THREE

  He’d meant it to be a brief, teasing kiss. It didn’t work out that way. The touch of that soft mouth under his was explosive. He caught his breath, lifting his
head just enough to see the mutual shock and pleasure in Belinda’s eyes before he bent again.

  This time, it wasn’t brief, or particularly gentle. He lifted her completely against the length of his tall, muscular body and kissed her until he had to come up for air. He looked into her stunned eyes with quiet curiosity, breathing raggedly.

  “You should…put me down,” she whispered.

  “Are you sure?” he murmured while he searched her face.

  “Yes. The boys…”

  He eased her back onto her feet, shooting a glance toward the barn door. The youngsters weren’t in view at all. “Nobody saw,” he said. He traced her swollen lips with his forefinger. “I could get used to this,” he added quietly. “How about you?”

  She swallowed and then swallowed again. She had to move back from contact with him before her mind would work again. “I’m only here on my summer vacation,” she managed in a voice that didn’t sound like her own.

  He smiled slowly. “Houston isn’t that far away.”

  She didn’t know what to say. She was overcome by feelings she’d suppressed, tucked away and forgotten. Her body felt like a rosebud subjected to rain and sun and wind, blooming and lifting its face to the elements. He was very attractive, and he had qualities that she loved. But it was too quick; too soon.

  “I’m rushing you,” he mused, seeing the confused uncertainty in her eyes. “Don’t get uptight. I won’t back you into a corner. But I’m interested. Aren’t you?”

  She took time to catch her breath. She lowered her eyes to his shirt. “Yes.”

  He grinned. His heart felt lighter than it had in years. He curled her fingers into his and led her toward the barn entrance. “Come on. I’ll show you my horses.”

  Belinda went along silently. She couldn’t believe he’d done that, right out in the open, in plain daylight. It had been a passionate kiss, deliciously arousing and hungry. The warm, hard contact left her confused and quiet.

  He had several horses, all Appaloosas. He explained the markings and called their names. “I’m crazy about them,” he remarked. “I belong to an Appaloosa club and we talk on the internet about our passion. This is one special breed.”

  “Everybody says that about whichever breed they like best,” she said with a laughing smile. “But I can see why you like Apps. They really are beautiful.”

  “Cy Parks has Arabians,” he told her. “A small herd, with a glorious stallion herd sire. He’s pure white, like beach sand on the Gulf of Mexico. I think he used to race them, before he moved here.”

  “Is he really such a rough customer?”

  “Yes, he is,” he said bluntly. “Keep your brood well shy of his ranch. He can’t tolerate children at all,” he added, without mentioning why.

  She let out a soft whistle. “Thanks for the warning,” she said. “I started this camp because I wanted to make a difference for these boys, if they could see another sort of life from the one they live in the inner city. Yet I never stopped to consider the potential pitfalls… Still, I’m encouraged by Kells’s interest in ranching. He didn’t seem the kind of teenager who’d fall in love with cattle so quickly, but he’s genuine about it. This will give him something to work toward.”

  “I had an idea about that,” Luke confided. “I thought I might ask him to stay at the ranch and learn the ropes while you take the others back to your camp. Then if he decided to come back here and work after graduation, I’d hire him.”

  She caught her breath. “You’d do that for him?”

  “For myself, too,” he said. “He’s a quick study and he loves the business. A cowboy like that would be an asset anywhere. If I train him, I can hire him when he gets through school.”

  “He’d be over the moon.”

  “Don’t tell him until we can get the details worked out,” he cautioned. “I don’t want to build him up to a big letdown.”

  “I won’t say a word.” She searched his face. “You’re good with children.”

  “I learned on Elysia’s little girl,” he told her with a grin. “I took her to movies and the park and carnivals. Her dad does those things now. I’ve missed her since Elysia remarried.”

  She studied the Appaloosas. “You should get married and have kids of your own.”

  “You know, I’ve just realized that.”

  She didn’t dare look at him. Her heart was leaping around madly in her chest.

  He turned away from the horse pasture and tugged her along with him. “We’d better get back to the boys and make sure they aren’t trying to climb aboard that old bull,” he murmured dryly. “I still remember how I was as a kid.”

  “How did your father make a living?”

  “My grandfather made the living for him,” he replied. “He had this ranch. Dad worked for him, when he was sober enough, and my grandfather protected us as long as he was alive. When he died, everything changed.”

  “But you managed to hang on to the ranch.”

  “I had help,” he said. “Neighbors, friends, relatives…everybody did what they could for us, despite my father. That’s why I’m still here,” he added seriously. “Jacobsville is the sort of place where you’re not a resident, you’re part of a family. Maybe people know your business, but they care about you, as well. I couldn’t think of living anywhere else.”

  “I can understand why,” she murmured. Her hand in his felt small and vulnerable. She felt small. He towered over her, and she liked him very much. Too much. It wasn’t possible to feel so strongly for someone she’d only just met, but she seemed to fit into his life as if she’d been conditioned to it.

  He glanced down at her with a warm smile. She was pretty and feisty and she really did care about these boys of hers. He could see her with children of her own. She’d be a veritable mama lion if her kids were threatened. He found himself wondering about having a child of his own. He loved Elysia’s two, but he had to start thinking about the future, about kids of his own to inherit this place when he was gone. It didn’t really surprise him that he was beginning to see Belinda in a new light. She came from a ranching background, and she had a soft heart. He’d had his fill of women who wanted a good time and no ties of any kind. He was old enough to start looking for a settle-down sort of woman.

  * * *

  The boys left the ranch late that afternoon with Belinda, after a long tour of the ranch on saddle horses that left them all sore but happy.

  “They’ll be uncomfortable tomorrow,” Luke chuckled as he saw Belinda to the van. “They used muscles they didn’t know they had on that trail ride. Kells took to it like a pro, did you notice? For a boy who was afraid of horses, he’s come a long way in a short time.”

  “You were amazing with him,” she said. “He was the one I couldn’t reach, did you know? He was surly and uncommunicative until I started telling him about cattle. I found the door and you found the key. He’s different.”

  “He’s focused,” he told her, glancing toward the van where the boys were conversing animatedly inside. “They’re not bad kids,” he said suddenly, as if the thought surprised him.

  She smiled. “No, they’re not,” she replied. “The world is full of them. Young people get married and two years down the road, they realize they’ve made a mistake, but they’ve got a child. They get divorced and marry somebody else and the kids end up in a family where they’re the outsiders. Sometimes they’re not even wanted. It’s worse in poor neighborhoods, of course.” She nodded toward the van. “Kells could write a book on that. He said that most of the kids in his neighborhood in New York City were either wanted by the law or selling drugs. He thought he’d end up the same way.” She sighed, her eyes seeing far away. “When people live in hopeless poverty, with a poor self-image and no way out, they give up. That’s why they resort to alcohol and drugs, because it eases the pain, just for a little while. But pretty soon, they’re hooked and they can’t quit, and they’ll do anything to get high again, so they can forget where they live and what they’ve
become.” She shook her head. “It occurs to me sometimes that a small percentage of people aren’t constructed to live in a regimented, money-oriented, time-clock-mandated industrial society. These same people, placed on the land where they could work at their own pace, would be happy and useful.”

  “That’s a new theory.”

  She shook her head. “It’s not. I’m only quoting Toffler.” He looked puzzled and she smiled. “Alvin Toffler…Future Shock? Mr. Toffler is a visionary and he sees right inside people. He said that some people will never fit into our fast-paced culture, and I think he’s right.”

  “I’d like to hear more about that.” He pursed his lips. “I don’t suppose you could get away for supper one evening?”

  “I’ve got no one to stay with the boys,” she said regretfully.

  “Then I’ll just have to find an excuse to have them back over again, won’t I?” he said, grinning down at her.

  She chuckled. “You do that. I’d better get them back to camp. Thanks for letting me bring them over.”

  “I enjoyed it,” he returned.

  “So did I.”

  She went back to the van and climbed in with the boys. She couldn’t help a glance into the rearview mirror as they went back the way they’d come, down the winding ranch road. Luke was standing in the yard with his hands in the pockets of his jeans, his wide-brimmed hat covering his head. He looked like part of the land itself, and something warm kindled inside her at just the sight of him.

  * * *

  For the next few days, Belinda found plenty of time to regret her lapse of control with Luke in the barn. She got cold feet and flatly refused the boys’ request for another visit to the ranch.

  She didn’t realize that her refusal was about to have grave consequences. Kells, depressed with little to do and too much time on his hands, wanted another shot at roping cattle.