Rose
Authors: Leigh Greenwood
Words of Love
“You want me to say I think you’re beautiful,” George said, “that I think of you all the time, that I find myself reaching out to touch you?”
“Yes!” the word was a sigh all the way from Rose’s soul, the fulfillment of a long-held wish, the period to the open-ended sentence of her love. “That’s what any woman wants to hear from the man she…”
“She what?”
“Finish what you were going to say,” Rose said. She couldn’t tell him she loved him.
She wouldn’t.
“I’ve never done anything as difficult as keeping my distance from you. You can’t imagine the number of times I’ve wanted to touch you, wanted to…”
“Tell me,” Rose pleaded. “I never thought you had the least trouble staying away.”
George came a step closer. “You’re a beautiful woman, Rose. I don’t think I could live long enough to tell you everything that has passed through my mind since you’ve been here.”
Leigh Greenwood
Critics Rave About USA Today Bestselling Author Leigh Greenwood and the Seven Brides Series!
Austin, Texas, in the spring of 1866
WANTED
A
WOMAN
T
O COOK, CLEAN AND WASH FOR SEVEN MEN ON A RANCH ABOUT 70 MILES SOUTHWEST OF
A
USTIN
.
“I wouldn’t do for seven men if they was to offer me every cow between here and the Rio Grande.”
“Too many Indians and rustlers in the brush country.”
“There’s a lot of poor widows in Texas since the war. They gotta find some way to live.”
“Seven men! Who’s to say they ain’t got more in mind than housework?”
“He’d be hard-pressed to tell those women from his longhorns.”
“They’d take up with any man as long as he had one arm and a leg.”
“Ought to get himself a squaw.”
Rose Thornton noticed him the minute he walked into the Bon Ton Restaurant. Any woman would notice a man like
that. And not just because he stood over six feet or because he looked so handsome you couldn’t be a female and not notice him. Something about him said here stood a man who was a man.
“I never knowed anybody to be so slow. You got a man back in the kitchen?” Luke Kearney demanded impatiently.
Rose’s gaze never left the stranger. She noticed his pants. Confederate Army gray. She noticed his hat, too, when he hung it on a peg by the door. Cowboys didn’t take off their hats indoors. Ex-Confederate Army officers did. He took a table against the wall across the room. He showed no sign of impatience.
“You going to hang on to that plate the rest of the morning or you going to set it down?” Luke asked.
Rose set the plate before Luke. As she turned to see what the stranger wanted, Luke grabbed her wrist.
“You needn’t run off so fast.” His grip hurt. “How about a little company?”
“I’ve got another customer,” Rose replied. Her quiet, low-pitched voice contrasted sharply with Luke’s tenorish twang.
“Let him wait. I ain’t through talking to you yet.”
Luke’s friends, Jeb and Charlie, stopped eating to watch, smiles of anticipation on their unshaven faces.
“I don’t have time to talk,” Rose said, trying to wrench her wrist from Luke’s grasp. It mortified her to be mauled in front of anybody but especially this stranger. “Dottie didn’t hire me to keep customers waiting.”
“You’ve kept me waiting too damned long,” Luke said, the harsh tone of his voice and the look in his eyes stating clearly what his words hadn’t—not yet. “And I ain’t giving up my claim for no ex-soldier.”
“You have no claim on me, Luke Kearney,” Rose stated, her embarrassment replaced by anger.
“You can’t hold out forever,” Luke said as he attempted to encircle Rose’s waist with his free hand. “One of these days
you’re gonna realize you were made for better things than dishing up grub.”
“Slopping hogs would be better than having anything to do with you,” Rose replied as she pulled away. “Now let me go.”
Jeb and Charlie snickered. That made Luke mad. He jerked Rose’s wrist so hard she nearly fell against him.
“I ain’t letting go till you promise me more than a plate of hot steak.”
“How about some hot grease down your front?”
Jeb and Charlie laughed.
“Watch your tongue. I might take a notion to teach you how a Southern lady ought to behave.”
“How would you know?” Rose shot back. “A real lady would cross the street if she saw you coming.”
Jeb and Charlie’s laughter turned to guffaws.
“I’ve a good mind to…”
“I doubt you have a good mind at all,” the stranger said, speaking quietly, unexpectedly. “It certainly isn’t occupied with good thoughts.”
Spinning around, Rose gaped at the stranger, too astonished at his intervention to remember not to stare. Even leaning against the wall, he made a strong impression. No one could miss the width of his shoulders or the bulge of muscles under his shirt. His large hands and thick, powerful fingers gave the impression of boundless strength.
But his expression affected her even more strongly. His black eyes, utter confidence in their depths, stared at Luke with icy contempt. No muscle quivered in his temple; no muscle emphasized the line of his jaw; no muscle clamped his jaw tight. His face showed no expression at all.
Only his eyes.
“You stay out of this, mister,” Luke warned. “This is between me and the lady.”
“If you treated her like a lady, there’d be nothing between you,” the stranger replied.
The stranger smiled at Rose.
Bemused, she looked away.
“I’ve been patient with you ’cause you were a Johnny Reb,” Luke said, “but I don’t put up with nobody butting into my business.”
“I have no interest in your business,” the stranger assured him. “I’m only concerned with the young lady. She has asked you to let her go.”
“This here ain’t no lady.”
“You just said she was. Are you a liar as well as a bully?”
Rose gulped. Calling Luke a liar was the same as an open challenge.
“Ain’t nobody ever called me a liar,” Luke growled.
“It seems the good people of Austin have been guilty of neglect,” the stranger said, a mocking smile curving his lips.
Luke charged up from his chair.
“Luke, I don’t think you ought to…”
But Luke paid no attention to Rose. As he moved to confront the stranger, he dragged her along, bumping her into chairs, her wrist still in his grip.
“Now you listen up, mister, and you listen good. You’re a stranger in town, so naturally you don’t know I don’t like being messed with.”
“Then you should understand why Miss—I don’t know your name,” the stranger said, turning to Rose, a smile once again on his lips.
Despite the pain, Rose smiled back. “My name’s Rose—”
“It don’t matter what her name is,” Luke broke in. “She ain’t no concern of yours.”
The stranger’s black-eyed gaze returned to Luke. “I spent four years fighting for the Confederate cause, but I didn’t spend so much as one minute fighting for men who mishandle women or interrupt them when they speak.”
Luke flushed red with rage. Pushing Rose from him, he reached for the gun at his hip. But before he could bring it up
to firing level, the stranger brought his hand down so hard across Luke’s wrist he paralyzed every nerve in Luke’s fingers.
The gun fell harmlessly to the floor.
“Let the lady alone.”
Recovering from his shock, Luke shouted, “I’ll be damned if I will.” Then he lunged.
The stranger’s fist struck a blow that sent Luke crashing into the table behind him. As Rose jumped out of the way of a careening chair, Luke staggered to his feet, stunned, but too furious to see he didn’t have a chance against this man.
Head down, Luke charged again.
The stranger merely stepped aside. Luke plowed into the table, and then the wall. He broke the table, a chair, and his collarbone.
A mountain of flesh surmounted by a bulbous face exploded from the kitchen: Dottie, the owner of the Bon Ton. “I won’t have anybody breaking up my place,” she screamed in a shrill voice as she surged toward the cause of the disturbance. “You’ll pay for this.”
“Take it out of his pockets,” the stranger said, indicating the prostrate Luke with an indifferent glance. “And bring this young lady…Rose…a cup of strong coffee.”
Rose didn’t understand why the sound of her name on this man’s lips should render her immobile. Or could it be the smile that still hovered on his lips? How about the warmth in his eyes?
“I don’t pay her to sit down,” Dottie screeched.
“Neither, I imagine, do you pay her to take abuse from your customers,” the stranger countered, giving Dottie a look quite as severe as the one he had directed at Luke only moments before. “She needs a few minutes to regain her composure.”
“And if I refuse?”
He turned his gaze to the broken chair. “I don’t imagine you’d have many customers if all your chairs were reduced to kindling.”
Dottie eyed the stranger with malevolent intent, but much to Rose’s surprise, she apparently decided it would be wiser to deal with a comatose Luke than this imperturbable man. She rifled Luke’s pockets, removing more than enough coins to pay for her broken furniture. “Get rid of him, and I’ll bring the coffee,” she said, and departed without a backward glance.
“Are you his friends?” the stranger asked Jeb and Charlie.
Both men turned back to their eating without answering. A third man dashed through the door, apparently intent on discovering the cause of the ruckus. One look at the stranger’s eyes caused him to slide into a chair on the opposite side of the room.
“You know him?” the stranger asked the new arrival.
“Never saw him in my life.”
The stranger picked Luke up by the back of his pants, dragged him through the open doorway, and dropped him in the middle of the boardwalk. Then he stepped back into the restaurant, closed the door behind him, chose a new table, and pulled out a chair.
“I’d appreciate it if you would join me, ma’am,” he said to Rose. “You seem to be holding up pretty well, but you’ll feel better once you sit down for a little while.”
Rose hesitated.
“My name is George Randolph. I just got into town this morning, but I’d appreciate your company.”
How could Rose tell him her hesitation had nothing to do with his being a stranger? After her dramatic rescue, she had difficulty thinking of him as an ordinary human being.
“I can’t…I shouldn’t,” Rose stumbled, finding her tongue at last. She looked at the litter of broken furniture. “I have to pick this up. People will be coming in soon.”
“Don’t worry about that,” George said. “Luke’s friends will get it.”
Jeb and Charlie looked up from their food, their expressions impossible to decipher.
“No!” Rose protested. She heard the fear in her voice. “They didn’t do anything.”
“I know,” George said. “And now they want to make amends.”
No one could misunderstand his meaning. The gun stuffed in his waist didn’t seem necessary to back up his words. But it wasn’t unimportant either.
Wordlessly, Jeb and Charlie went back to eating.
George still held the chair. Dottie lunged out of the kitchen and slapped two cups of coffee on the table. “You’ve got ten minutes,” she said to Rose. “You meaning to eat, or you just here to cause trouble?” she asked George.
“I’d like some beef and potatoes. Hot. And some scrambled eggs if you have them.”
“Fresh laid this morning. Anything else?”
George turned to Rose. “Have you eaten yet?”
“She don’t have time to eat,” Dottie snapped.
With one hand, George lifted a chair over his head.
“I’ll bring her some eggs,” Dottie offered, giving ground, “but that’ll have to do. I’ve got dinners to cook. I don’t pay her to dilly-dally with the customers.”
“That’ll be fine,” George said before Rose could answer. He put the chair down. “The sooner it gets here, the sooner she can go back to work.”
Dottie turned red in the face, but she rolled from the room like the outgoing tide.
“You’d better sit down,” George said, an apologetic smile softening the lines of his face. “I have a feeling your employer will time your ten minutes to the second.”
His voice—calm, confident, comforting—convinced her to sit.
“Dottie isn’t bad,” Rose explained as she stepped up to the table. “She’s really good to me, but she’s got to feed these men fast if she doesn’t want them to go to the place down the street.”
As she sat down, George’s hand brushed her shoulder. Rose would never have believed anything so slight could cause such an intense reaction. He hadn’t actually touched her, just the folds of her dress, but she felt as if he’d given her an intimate
caress. Her body responded by becoming ramrod stiff. Her mind reacted by losing the thread of the conversation.
“Is their food better?”
“It’s not easy for Dottie to make a go of this place,” Rose replied.
“Do the other restaurants have better food than the Bon Ton?” George asked again.
“No,” Rose said, her mind suddenly grasping the meaning of George’s words. “Dottie’s the best cook in town.”
“Then what’s the attraction?”
“The girls.”
“Am I to judge from Luke’s behavior that they…”
Rose nodded her head.
“And they expect you to…”
“Dottie doesn’t. She knows I won’t.”
“Then why doesn’t she make sure her customers know it?”
“She doesn’t have time, not with all the cooking. Besides, I can take care of myself.”
George raised his eyebrows.
“I know it didn’t look like it, but Luke’s the only one who won’t take no for an answer. Jeb and Charlie would help if I needed it.”
Rose followed George’s gaze as it turned to the two men eating with their heads just inches from their plates, their eyes turning neither right nor left. “I’d hate to have to depend on them,” George observed.
Dottie emerged from the kitchen, two plates of scrambled eggs in her hands. “The steak will be ready when you’re done with this,” she informed George. She slapped the plates down and flowed out again.
“You’d better start,” George said. “Four of your ten minutes are gone already.”
For a few moments they ate in silence.
“How long have you lived in Austin?” George asked.
“Most of my life.”
“Why doesn’t someone in your family take care of men like Luke?”
Rose lowered her gaze. “I don’t have any family.”
“What about your friends? Surely a young woman as attractive as you—”
Rose looked up. “I don’t have any friends, either. The family I used to live with moved to Oregon to escape the war.” Rose pushed her chair back and got to her feet. “I’d better go. Thanks for breakfast. And for Luke.”
George had risen with her. “I don’t expect any thanks. No lady should have to endure such treatment.”
Rose paused in the act of turning away. “What makes you think I’m a lady? You don’t know anything about me.”
“I just know,” George replied. “My mother was a lady.”
Rose’s gaze locked with George’s. That had to be the nicest thing anyone had ever said to her. That a stranger, a man who knew nothing about her would say it—he knocked Luke down so he must mean it—well, it made her want to fling herself at his feet.