Texas Loving (The Cowboys) Page 24

  Edward wanted that for himself.

  “What do you want me to do?” he asked when the men had finished discussing possible ways of discovering who was behind the attacks and why.

  “All three of you can help most by doing your jobs. Zeke and Hawk’s property is in as much danger as anyone else’s. I’m going to ask the boys to start riding with their guns. It’s been nearly twenty years since we had to do that on Maxwell land. I never thought it could come to this again.”

  After further discussion, it was decided Chet and Luke would spend the rest of the day studying the layout of the ranch to decide how best to protect Eden. It was only a week before everyone would be leaving for San Antonio. They felt sure they could protect her that long.

  “It’ll be fun telling Eden what to do,” Chet said.

  “You did that the whole time I was growing up,” Eden retaliated.

  “But you never listened.”

  “What makes you think she’ll start now?” Luke asked. “She’s already talked her way into riding that horse.”

  “She’ll listen,” Edward said. “If she insists upon endangering herself, I will withdraw Crusader from the race.”

  “Maybe that’s not such a bad idea after all,” Jake said. “Then Eden could come home because there’d be no reason to stay at the ranch. I’d feel a lot better if you were where I could watch you.”

  “You could come stay with us,” Eden suggested. “Bring Mama, too.”

  Isabelle paused a moment before replying. “I think Jake and I should stay at the Broken Circle. It’s where the family knows to find us if anything goes wrong. You’re a grown woman. You don’t need anyone telling you what to do. I’ll worry, but I’ll still be worrying even when you’re married and have a house full of children to look after.”

  “Two will be enough,” Eden said with feeling.

  “If you can find a man to put up with you that long,” Chet challenged.

  Eden glanced in Edward’s direction. “Who’s to say I haven’t already found one?”

  Edward could feel himself flush. He was certain everyone in the room suspected how he felt about Eden. He’d have felt better if they’d just come out and talked about it. But no one would speak before he did, and he couldn’t until he had enough money to establish himself.

  “If there’s nothing else to discuss, I’d better get in the saddle,” Edward said. “Finn already thinks I’m not doing my share of the work.”

  “If he’s got a problem, tell him to talk to me,” Jake said. “On second thought, maybe I’d better speak to him.”

  “I’d rather take care of my own problems.” Edward glanced at Eden. “I’m told that’s the Texas way.”

  “Independence is fine as long as you don’t carry it too far,” Jake said.

  “You’re a fine one to talk,” Isabelle retorted. “You were trying to round up and brand a whole herd of cattle as well as fight off a bunch of thieves when I met you, and you didn’t have a single person to watch your back.”

  “I knew you and your ragtag band of cutthroats were on the way,” Jake teased. “I only had to hold out until you got there.”

  Isabelle and the boys recounted one incident after another when Jake had acted against advice, and he responded by saying success had proved him right. Even when they argued against his criterion for success, Edward could see the love those brothers had for the man who’d given them a home when everyone else had turned their backs on them.

  It could have been that way for him and the viscount, too. He wouldn’t have expected money. All he’d ever wanted was to feel that he belonged, that he was wanted. He could remember when he’d thought he had both, and how terrifying it had been to have them gradually withdrawn. He’d torn himself apart looking for the flaw, the failure, the unsuspected act that had turned his father against him. He’d jumped at the opportunity to manage the estate, hoping success would mean the return of his father’s favor.

  He understood why the viscount felt he had no choice but to allow an imposter to retain the position that rightfully belonged to his own son, but Edward could have dealt with the truth better than the growing lump of anger and dislike that had come close to hatred. Knowing the secret of his birth would have been a shock, but he wouldn’t have hesitated to renounce the title in favor of Patrick. He would have been content to stay in the background at Worlege.

  No point in thinking about what might have been. Better to concentrate on his chances for a future in Texas. And the best way he could do that was to learn to be an effective ranch hand so he’d have the skills to manage his own place.

  “Abusing Dad is their favorite activity,” Eden said with a laugh as Chet, Luke and her mother continued the verbal attack on Jake. “They won’t stop for at least an hour. You might as well help me fix supper.”

  That was something else about Texas. Edward was fairly certain no heir to an English earldom had ever been asked to help fix supper. What’s more, he didn’t mind doing it. He laughed. He’d always said he’d make a lousy earl.

  “You don’t know how glad I am to be out of the house,” Eden said to Edward. “There were times during the last week that I thought I’d go crazy if I had to stay inside one minute longer.”

  Edward had only agreed to go for a walk with Eden because the moon was hidden by clouds, making it virtually impossible for anyone to see a target in the dark. And first he’d checked the woods around the house to make sure no one was hiding there.

  It had been a difficult week for everyone. Edward had been forced to use all his powers of persuasion to keep Eden from doing something that would have caused her father and brothers to restrict her moments even more. He’d exercised a charm he didn’t know he had to keep her reasonably content with her confinement.

  Luke and Chet had appeared every morning. They had refused to let Eden step outside until they’d made a thorough reconnaissance of the trail. Afterward they’d disappear without explaining where they were going. When Eden chastised them for sleeping out rather than staying at any one of a dozen ranches where they’d have been wel- come, Chet said sleeping in a soft bed was a poor way to guard against intruders. Luke said snuggling down in his bedroll made him feel young again. Edward figured Luke was no more than thirty-six, too young to feel old.

  “I hope Suzette is doing better,” Eden said. “I’ve never heard Hawk so worried.”

  The one letter from San Antonio had told them only that everyone had arrived safely and Suzette was resting comfortably. In England, Edward would have expected daily bulletins, but apparently Texans didn’t bother to write unless something really important happened: birth, death, or the worst tragedy of all—leaving Texas.

  “You’ll soon be able to judge for yourself,” Edward said.

  Eden was irritated she wouldn’t be allowed to accompany Crusader and Edward to San Antonio, but Jake had refused to let her needlessly expose herself to danger. When Isabelle agreed, she had no choice but to give in. She was to travel under the watchful eye of her father and brothers while Edward followed with Crusader in two easy stages.

  “I’ll be glad when this is all over,” she said. “I love walking at night, but it’s much better in the daytime.”

  Edward wasn’t quite so sure. He still hadn’t gotten used to the heat in Texas. The night and early morning were the only times he felt he wasn’t about to melt. The trees didn’t provide much help, either. In England, forests were so thick they blocked out virtually all sunlight. No matter how hot the day—and the days were never as hot as they were in Texas—he could count on finding a shady spot by a woodland stream.

  Nearly every stream in the Hill Country had dried up now and the rivers were barely running. The forested land was thinly covered by trees. While this allowed grass for grazing, it failed to provide much in the way of relief from the heat. Eden might think Texas was perfect, but Edward could think of a few improvements.

  Even now he was able to see through the wide-flung branches of oaks and
maples to the dark clouds that rolled across the sky. Eden said it was a spooky night. She hooked her arm in his and leaned against him.

  “You’ll have to protect me from ghosts and goblins.”

  It seemed incongruous to him that this empty land could contain ghosts and goblins. It was too new.

  “It’s more likely I’ll need to protect you from yourself,” Edward told her. “Your father says you’re foolhardy. He’s worried about you, you know.”

  “Are you worried about me?”

  He didn’t need the moonlight to be aware she was looking up at him with an expectant gaze. Despite her father’s penchant for showing up at any time, Finn’s watchful eyes, and the hours Edward spent in the saddle, they’d spent their few hours together acting like lovers. They’d fixed meals together, talked about their hopes for the future, held hands, kissed. When Edward had told her he couldn’t make any promises until he had a future to offer, she’d told him her mother had married Jake and talked him into adopting eleven orphans before he had a roof to put over their heads. That had led to their only fight, but it hadn’t stopped him from kissing her good night. He might be English, but the Texas sun had heated his blood until it was uncomfortably hot.

  Kissing Eden did nothing to cool him down.

  “Of course I’m worried about you,” he said, knowing that wasn’t what she was really asking. “I still feel guilty about asking you to ride Crusader. It’s selfish of me to let you continue to put yourself in danger.”

  “Nothing has happened all week, and the boys haven’t found any evidence that anyone has been back. There haven’t been any more attacks on the other ranches, either, so maybe it’s over.”

  He hoped it was, but they still hadn’t figured out the reason for the attacks. “Even so, it’s best to continue being careful.”

  “You’ve been careful all your life. Don’t you get tired of it sometimes?”

  He was glad it was dark enough to cover his smile. She wouldn’t understand that he wasn’t laughing at her. He wasn’t laughing at all, just marveling at the immensity of the gulf that separated their lives. How could he explain that being the heir to an earldom meant that he wasn’t so much a person as the representation of an ideal. It wasn’t a life he would have chosen for himself, but he’d been born into it, the rules bred into him even before he was old enough to understand what they meant. While her family had used their resources to make sure she had the freedom to be anything she wanted, do what would make her happy, his family had expected him to order his life for their benefit regardless of his personal feelings. In her eyes that was unbelievable. In England, it was expected.

  “I’m not being careful. I haven’t been since I left my only home with just a horse and little more than pocket change to come to a country and a state where everything is strange and my accent makes half the people think I’m speaking a foreign language. I took a job I know nothing about, and now my whole future is riding on a woman winning a horse-race. For a man like me, that’s sheer insanity.” If he had hoped to make her laugh, he failed.

  “That’s not insanity. You left a situation that was about to destroy you and took with you a great deal less than was rightfully yours. You came to people who you knew would help you achieve the independence you want. As for depending on me to ride Crusader, that was a stroke of brilliant luck. I think you’re a very smart man.”

  “Not smart. Desperate.”

  She stiffened. “Is that why you pretended to like me, because you were desperate?”

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Eden hadn’t wanted to ask that question, but no matter how hard she tried to deny it, she couldn’t rid herself of the vague fear he was using her to help him get the ranch he wanted.

  “I haven’t pretended to like you,” Edward said. “I really do like you.”

  Like was such a pitiful word when what she felt for him reached down to her toes and out to her fingertips. She’d been drawn to him from the time she first saw him, muddy and disheveled from his hurried ride to London, but she hadn’t expected the attraction to grow to this extent. Maybe she had confused her feeling with sympathy for his situation, with admiration for his efforts to rebuild his life. Maybe her desire to help him had masked the true nature of her feelings. Maybe her college should have offered classes in what to do when you fall in love with the wrong man. She’d had the courage to bring her feelings into the open. His not doing so didn’t mean he’d rejected her, but it felt that way.

  “I’m talking about more than like.” She was determined not to talk around the issue. “You can try to hide behind your English reserve, but you can’t hide that you feel something stronger when you kiss me, when you hold me in your arms, even when you look at me.”

  “Eden, I’ve told you—”

  “And I’ve told you I don’t care whether you’re rich or haven’t a dollar to your name. The only thing that counts is what we feel for each other. As long as we have that, we can figure out everything else.”

  She couldn’t understand what was holding him back. Any red-blooded Texan would have been declaring his undying devotion ten minutes ago, not standing here like a fence post trying to figure out how to say he loved her without saying he loved her. Was she crazy to fall in love with a man who was so tied in knots he couldn’t admit to his own feelings, who had so many conflicting emotions from the last twenty-five years that he might never work through all of them? Probably, but the damage was done.

  She wondered if there was something wrong with her, something no one in her family could see but every man noticed immediately. Was she too independent to be lovable? She knew she would be heartbroken if Edward returned to England. She could see her whole life looming before her, always the maiden aunt, the spinster schoolteacher, taking care of others with no one to fill her lonely nights.

  “Eden, I’ve tried to explain—”

  “And I’ve tried to make you understand, I don’t care. What we feel for each other should have nothing to do with money or social class.”

  “It’s not that.”

  “I know.” Eden pulled away from him. “It’s your pride. You couldn’t marry Daphne for her money, so naturally you can’t marry me for mine.”

  Edward took her by the shoulders, turned her to face him even though it was nearly impossible to see in the dark. “It has nothing to do with money.”

  “Can you honestly tell me you’d feel the same way if you had a ranch and all the money you needed to run it?” she demanded.

  “That would be different.”

  She shrugged out of his grasp. “No, it wouldn’t. You’re just using money as an excuse. If you really loved me, nothing could stop you from marrying me.” A stifled sob came out sounding like a hiccup. He didn’t really love her. Her future looked more bleak and lonely than ever. If she had to fall desperately in love, why did it have to be with a man who was incapable of emotion, who’d been taught that emotions were dangerous and unreliable? “I promise to ride your horse so you can win your money. Then you can stop pretending feelings you don’t have. You probably think I’m just another crazy American from Texas, but I’d take a Texan any day over an Englishman who’s as cold as an icicle.”

  She was running before the last words were out of her mouth. She ignored his pleas to stop, shook off the hand that tried to restrain her. She had to get to the house, to her room. She had to be alone. She would not break down in front of him. She stumbled up steps she couldn’t see, through rooms she barely noticed, until she reached the safety of her bedroom. Barely pausing long enough to lock the door behind her, she threw herself on the bed and gave vent to the sobs locked in her chest. She heard Edward pound on the door, call her name, beg her to unlock the door, but she didn’t move. She didn’t want to see him, to talk to him, to—

  A splintering sound brought her up from the bed, her sobs choked off by shock and surprise. She didn’t need a light to know the shadowy figure in the doorway was Edward. What she didn’t know was what had t
ransformed this cool-blooded English aristocrat into a man angry enough to break through a locked door. Hawk was going to kill him.

  “I never pretended to like you,” he said in a voice nearly choked by emotion. “It’s been all I could do to keep from telling you that like doesn’t even begin to touch on what I feel for you. When I first met you, you scared me as much as you fascinated me. Then before I could figure out what I did feel, you told me about my birth. I thought I could never forgive you, but when I followed you to Texas, I knew I was only fooling myself. There were other choices I could have made, but all I could think about was you and the promise of the kind of life I could have in Texas. I’ve never been guilty of pretending more than I feel, only of pretending to feel so much less.”

  He stood there like an exhausted colossus, his shoulders bowed, wrung out by emotions so strong it caused his body to tremble. Feeling a sudden and overwhelming need to see him, Eden lit the lamp on the table next to her bed. The pale yellow flame filled the room with just enough light to allow Eden to see Edward’s tortured expression. Knowing how much exposing himself emotionally meant to such a man, her resentment melted and she hoped anew that he was as deeply in love with her as she was with him.

  “Come here,” she said. “It’s okay,” she assured him when he didn’t move. It seemed ironic she should be the one to say that, but Edward had been hedged in by inflexible rules for so long, he hadn’t yet learned to act on his feelings. She had to know what was right for both of them.

  He approached the bed slowly, reluctantly. “I shouldn’t be in here.”

  “Why?” She was going to make him answer that question, commit himself to some small extent.