Texas Loving (The Cowboys) Read online

  “That’s her brother, you fool,” someone said. “She’s allowed to kiss him.”

  “She’s got so many, you can’t blame the man for missing a few,” someone else said, which brought on another wave of laughter.

  “I’m Will Haskins,” the man said, introducing himself to Edward and offering his hand. “I take it you’re the Englishman I’ve heard so much about.”

  Nearly paralyzed from embarrassment, Edward managed to take Will’s hand. “Edward Davenport. Sorry to create a disturbance. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’d better go. I’d be grateful if you could see Eden home.”

  Edward plunged off the dance floor and into the shadows that surrounded it. He didn’t know where he was going or what he was going to do. It didn’t really matter as long as he could get away from those laughing faces. It seemed he didn’t know any more about how to behave in Texas than he did in England.

  “Wait up.”

  Edward didn’t stop. Eden was the last person he wanted to face just now.

  “I’ll keep following you, so you might as well stop.”

  “Why? So you can laugh at me like everybody else?”

  “I’d never laugh at you.”

  He couldn’t see Eden’s expression, but there was no trace of laughter in her voice. “When I said it was okay to give a woman a friendly kiss, I didn’t mean just any woman,” Eden said.

  “How am I supposed to know when it’s okay and when it’s not?”

  Eden averted her gaze. “Why did you kiss her?”

  Edward felt the heat returning. How could he tell Eden how he felt without saying too much or too little?

  The answer seemed to dawn on her because she let out a breathy, “Oh . . .” She ducked her head, to hide a smile no doubt. “It would be okay to give me a friendly kiss because we came to the dance together.” She looked up. “For tonight, at least, people will see us as a couple.”

  “So I really do have to like the woman, she has to be someone special, before I can give her a friendly kiss.” They had walked away from the crowd for a little privacy. Eden sat down at one of the tables set up for couples who weren’t dancing, but Edward was too agitated to sit.

  “Is kissing that important to you?” she asked.

  “That’s not the point. It’s—”

  “If you’ve got to kiss somebody, you can kiss me.”

  Her words weren’t what stopped him in his tracks. It was the look on her face. He couldn’t begin to say what it meant, but it made him extremely uneasy. “Won’t people think I’m a cad to be kissing two different women only minutes apart?”

  “They’ll think we had a lover’s spat and are making up.”

  Lover’s spat. Why had she used that phrase? They were friends, he liked her and thought she was very attractive, but neither one of them had ever said anything about love, and yet he had thought about it. He did want to kiss her. He’d found it very enjoyable before. What kind of kiss did you give a woman when you were making up from a lover’s spat? English couples didn’t have lover’s spats. It sounded like something that would be beneath their dignity. Thoroughly confused, Edward decided to throw caution to the winds and rely on instinct. He took Eden in his arms and kissed her firmly on the mouth.

  He got more than he bargained for. Just the experience of holding Eden in his arms was enough to blow his English cool out of the water. She wasn’t stiff or unyielding; she wasn’t wrapped in yards of thick material and held together by a corset; she didn’t appear to care about her hair or her makeup. Most important of all, she returned his kiss.

  He could see why the English had a rule against this kind of kissing.

  He’d reached the age of twenty-five without having any idea what was lacking from his life. The English weren’t generally a people who went in for much kissing. He decided that was a serious oversight. If every Englishman could experience what he was experiencing right now, there’d be a cultural revolution. It was unfair that Texans got to hold women in their arms while Englishmen were limited to holding hands and an occasional arm around a waist. He’d have to write Patrick and let him know what he was missing. It was his brotherly duty.

  Kissing a hand or cheek was a poor second to kissing a woman on the mouth. Lips were a wonderful thing. They were soft, moist, pliable, and they could kiss back, something not even the most magical hand could do. They tasted wonderful, too. It was hard to say exactly how it worked, but they were warm and inviting and Edward decided this was something he could do all night.

  Apparently Eden wasn’t equally captivated. She broke the kiss and moved out of his embrace. “We should go back to the dance.”

  Edward wasn’t sure his legs were steady enough for anything more than holding him up. He didn’t know why this kiss with Eden was so different from before, but this was like a whole new experience. Was he different, or perhaps Eden? Maybe it was a matter of knowing he was free of the duty to marry for money, that he could marry any woman he wanted . . . or even fall in love?

  “What?” he asked, because Eden was looking at him as if something were wrong. Did his expression tell what he was thinking, what he was feeling?

  “You look upset,” Eden said. “I didn’t mean you had to kiss me. I just thought—”

  “I wanted to kiss you.” The words were out before he could stop them. Now she was looking a bit uneasy.

  “It’s usual to save the friendly kiss for the end of the evening when we’re saying good night. It’s a way to say you had a good time and would like to do it again sometime.” She averted her eyes, watched dancers coming off the dance floor. “A kiss at any other time generally means you and the person have developed a special relationship.”

  “What kind of special relationship?” They needed rules in Texas. Special relationship didn’t tell him enough. He wanted to know what it meant, exactly what he could and couldn’t do.

  “That’s hard to say. It could mean a lot of things.”

  No doubt about it. They needed rules. “What kind of things?”

  “Well, generally it means you like each other enough that you don’t want to go out with anyone else.”

  “What do you mean, go out? Why wouldn’t you want to leave the house?”

  “Oh, Edward.” Eden turned to him with a smile that made him want to kiss her again. “We use the same words, but we might as well be speaking a foreign language.”

  “Try again.” He was afraid she wouldn’t explain and would thereby cut him off from any future kisses. “I’m trying to understand. I really want to understand.”

  “Going out just means going places together like this dance, a picnic, to church, even riding. It means you enjoy spending time with a person and you want to be with that person instead of anyone else.”

  Going out was a strange way to say you’d fixed your interest on a particular woman. It was even more unusual than being sweet on someone. If the rest of Americans talked the way Texans did, he wondered how they ever understood each other.

  “I enjoy dancing and riding with you more than anyone else. Does that mean we’re going out?”

  “Edward, you don’t know anyone else.”

  “I know Carrie, and I know I like kissing you better.”

  Eden turned the color of a plum. He wasn’t sure whether that was good or bad. Daphne had never blushed or showed any emotion at all.

  “I think we’d better leave the rest of this discussion for later,” Eden said. “The band is playing a slow dance.”

  “There’s no point in going back. I can’t dance. Certainly not the way Texans do.”

  “You danced with Carrie.”

  “I just walked around the floor. It was nothing like what you and your brother were doing.”

  “Will is a marvelous dancer. You could be, too, if you would just try.”

  “I’m not going to embarrass myself again.”

  “We don’t have to go back. We could dance right here.”

  No trees stood between them and the dance flo
or, but they were separated from everyone else by the shadows. Feeling less exposed to ridicule, Edward let his desire to hold Eden in his arms overcome his reluctance.

  “Once you get comfortable,” Eden said, “you’ll start dancing without even realizing it.”

  There was little chance that would ever happen. Two left feet would always be two left feet—but he discovered he could dance. He even began to like it. Dancing gave him a chance to hold Eden in his arms. It looked like a lot more dances were in his future. Now if he could just figure out the protocol for kissing.

  “I’ll put the horses up,” Edward said when they drew near the house.

  “I can take care of my own horse.”

  “You’ve already proved that, but allow me the chance to play the English gentleman while I can still remember how.”

  Eden couldn’t decide whether she was relieved or disappointed the evening was coming to a close. It had been far more exhausting than she would ever have imagined, the biggest drain of energy being emotional. She had liked Edward almost from the first, but with the expectation he would soon be married and she would never see him again, the attraction hadn’t gone any further. When Edward turned up in Texas without a wife and determined to win the race in San Antonio, buy his own ranch, and settle down in America, everything had changed.

  It didn’t hurt that his new clothes emphasized his body in a way that his old clothes never could. Except for Will, he was the best-looking man at the dance. Carrie hadn’t been the only woman giving Edward covert, and overt, glances all evening. Eden was certain several women envied Carrie and would have been delighted to have been in her place when Edward had kissed her.

  She wasn’t sure what she’d felt was envy, but she was certain it was pique with a bit of jealousy thrown in. Edward had come to the dance with her. No other woman had a right to try to attract his attention or his interest as long as she was within sight. Eden hadn’t danced with any man more than twice, and she’d only slow-danced with Will. Every woman there understood that was reserved for somebody special. It had never occurred to her that Edward would attempt to kiss anyone; she’d certainly had no inkling that she would react the way she had.

  “This square dance stuff was easier than I thought,” Edward said as their horses came to a halt in front of Zeke and Hawk’s ranch house. “I didn’t think I’d like trying to learn it, but I did. Do you think we could go to the next dance?”

  Eden couldn’t help smiling. “What changed your mind? All the pretty women smiling at you?”

  Edward grinned sheepishly. “You can’t always tell why a person’s smiling, but I’ve made up my mind not to let that bother me. If I’m going to learn to be a Texan, I expect there’ll be a lot of times when I’m laughed at.”

  “Zeke and Hawk must think you’ve got a lot of poten- tial, or they’d never have hired you. It took Finn the better part of six months to convince them he could handle the job.”

  Edward dismounted and tied his horse to the hitching post. Eden decided that since he wanted to play the English gentleman tonight, she’d let him help her out of the saddle. He cast her a questioning look when she didn’t dismount on her own, then burst into a smile when he realized she was waiting for him to help her down.

  Eden was used to men who could lift her from the saddle without any apparent effort, but it felt a lot different when Edward did it. Her breath caught in her throat, leaving her a little breathless when he set her on the ground. She turned to walk toward the porch, but his touch on her shoulder caused her to turn back.

  “You said the end of the evening was the right time for a friendly kiss,” he reminded her. “You said it was a good way to say you enjoyed the evening and would like to do it again.”

  She couldn’t deny her own words, but she could deny that any kiss between them would simply be friendly. There was a lot more between them now. The kiss at the dance had shown her that. “We’ve already had a kiss tonight.”

  “Is there a limit? You only get one a night? Or one a week? Is there also a restriction on how long the kiss can last? You’ll have to forgive me if I’m asking stupid questions, but the rules keep changing.” Sounding more angry than confused, he released her and took a step back. “If you don’t want to kiss me, all you have to do is say so. Even spoiled, arrogant English aristocrats don’t force themselves on unwilling women.”

  “It’s not that.”

  “Then what is it? I don’t understand.”

  “Any kiss between us would be more than friendly.”

  “Is that so bad?”

  “It’s not bad, but it’s not a smart thing to do. It would be very easy to let you kiss me more than once, but that might lead us to imagine there’s more between us than just friendly kisses.”

  “Would that be terribly wrong?”

  Her stupid heart was on the verge of becoming involved, and she couldn’t allow that. There were many reasons why falling in love would be a mistake, the most important one being she was certain Edward wouldn’t stay in Texas. If he won the race, he’d have enough money to go wherever he liked and buy a place of his own. Even if he didn’t win, he’d soon decide Texas wasn’t the place for him. No, she couldn’t allow him to kiss her again.

  “You shouldn’t be more than friendly with a woman like me,” she said to Edward. “I’m bossy, opinionated, determined to do anything I want just because I want to do it, and I don’t give a fig for anyone else’s opinion. You’ve got more than enough to worry about, working for Hawk and Zeke and preparing for the race.”

  “I managed an entire estate from the time I was in my middle teens,” Edward replied. “I oversaw the home farms, all the tenant farms, made arrangements for everything that involved the people of Green Moss, established a new breeding program for all our livestock, and still managed to finish my education. Why do you think I can’t handle riding fence and training just one horse?”

  Why did she keep forgetting Edward had far more life experience than she did? His entire family had respected his talent, with confidence in his ability to manage the many economic elements that supported their lives. Why could she not be equally confident? Because if she did, she might not be able to control her heart.

  “It’s not that. We’re just not right for each other. It wouldn’t work.”

  “In that case, one more kiss won’t hurt.”

  She should have pulled back, pushed him away, but craven coward that she was, she simply gave in and let him take her in his arms. He made no pretense that this was merely a friendly kiss, that there was nothing behind it other than appreciation for a pleasant evening. His arms closed around her like bonds to hold her captive . . . like an invitation to merge with him. His mouth took hers with hard yet inviting lips that tempted her to join him in celebration.

  She couldn’t resist.

  Her arms closed around him and she rose on tiptoe to meet his kiss, to match him in intensity, in an attempt to wring as much emotional fulfillment as she could from the few seconds she would have in his embrace. She knew it was foolish, even futile, but that only made her cling to him more desperately, made her close her mind to the future and concentrate on these few precious seconds.

  What was it about Edward that made him so different from every man who’d held her in his arms, who’d kissed her, who’d tried without success to touch her heart? What was it that, despite their differences in background and culture, despite knowing any future relationship was impossible, made her open her heart to the risk of being hurt? She couldn’t answer that question any more than she could explain why his touch, his smile, his mere presence could make even the most boring moments exciting. She wanted him to hold her so long and so tight she would never forget the feeling of his arms around her.

  He released her much too soon. She didn’t want to let go, to lose the warmth and comfort of his arms, the heat of his body pressed against her, the curling warmth of desire she could feel all the way down to her toes. It was like being torn away from th
e source of life itself.

  “That wasn’t too terrible, was it?” He looked and sounded as shaken as she felt.

  “It wasn’t terrible at all. That’s the problem.”

  She turned and ran inside before he could see her tears.

  Eden didn’t like the jockey the moment Edward introduced him to her.

  “He’s the best one available,” Hawk whispered to her so the young man couldn’t hear.

  “The best jockeys were signed up months ago,” Zeke added, “but the boy has a good reputation.”

  Everybody, including Finn and Brady, had taken time to watch Crusader’s first workout with his jockey, but she was more anxious to see how Crusader would do without Edward’s weight. Unless one of the other owners bought a horse specifically for this race, Crusader was the biggest obstacle to her winning. The only problem she could see was that he had the high-strung temperament so typical of Thoroughbreds.

  Edward had shortened the stirrups because the jockey was about a foot shorter than he was, but the jockey wanted them even shorter. He rode in the style that was becoming increasingly popular in America, standing up and leaning forward in short stirrups. That put the jockey’s weight forward over the horse’s shoulders where it was easier to carry. Edward gave the jockey a leg up into the saddle and stepped back.

  Crusader sidestepped off the trail, then abruptly shied away from a tree. He tossed his head from side to side when the jockey tightened the reins.

  “He seems awfully skittish,” Hawk observed as Edward walked over to join them.

  “He doesn’t like strangers,” Edward said. “I’m the only one who’s ridden him in more than a year.”

  “If you’re going to turn him into a racehorse, he’s got to get used to people,” Hawk said. “You can’t carry your jockey around with you.”

  “He’ll never win anything worthwhile carrying your weight,” Zeke said.

  “That’s the only reason that man is on his back right now,” Edward said.

  It was beginning to look like Crusader and the jockey had taken a dislike to each other. The jockey was trying to teach the horse to stand still with his head pointed straight down the trail. Since all races used a walk-up start, it was crucial that a horse learn to stand headed in the right direction. Otherwise, he could lose many valuable lengths at the beginning of a race.