Texas Born

'The perfect beach read.' — Library
Journal

'Just the thing to chase away the blues' —
Chicago Tribune

'A romp! A smash success.' — New York Daily
News

'Superb. . . Fantastic reading. . .put this
one at the top of your must-read list.' —Rendezvous

'Gould is a master.' — Kirkus

A Novel of Romantic Suspense

By Judith Gould

Copyright 1992 by Judith Gould.

Published by Vesuvius Media, LLC at Smashwords

All rights reserved. Without limiting the
rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication
may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system
or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the
prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above
publisher of this book.

Publisher's Note: This novel is a work of
fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the
product of the author's imagination or are used ficticiously, and
any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events or locales
is entirely coincidental.

This ebook is licensed for your personal
enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to
other people. All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights
under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system or
transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written
permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of
this book.

Sins*

LOVEMAKERS - The Complete Unabridged Saga:

Texas Born*

LoveMakers

Second Love

Meltemi (Greek Winds of Fury)*

DAZZLE- The Complete Unabridged Trilogy *:

Dazzle The Trilogy Vol. I: Senda

Dazzle The Trilogy Vol. II: Tamara

Dazzle The Trilogy Vol. III: Daliah

Never Too Rich*

Forever*

Too Damn Rich

Second Love

Till the End of Time

Rhapsody*

Time to Say Good-Bye

A Moment in Time*

The Best Is Yet to Come

The Greek Villa

The Parisian Affair*

Dreamboat*

The Secret Heiress*

*(Available as an e-book)

www.judithgould.com

Cover design by Judy Bullard at
[email protected]

PUBLISHER'S NOTE & DEDICATION

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters,
places, and incidents either are the product of the author's
imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual
persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely
coincidental.

For Etta Barritt and Guy Dolen, mother and
son

With sincere gratitude and acknowledgment for
the hours spent opening the book of your lives and letting me plot
and twist and varnish it to the needs of fiction:

Because there really was a Good Eats Café in
southwest Texas.

Because there really was an 'Auntie.'

But most of all, because every book needs a
springboard, and your openhearted tales provided it—after which a
lot of artistic license was taken by me.

Needless to say, any crimes committed, the
Sextons, and a host of other ingredients are entirely the stuff of
fiction and my imagination.

But even fiction finds its roots in the real
world, and this background you have generously provided.

Even before the first light of dawn appeared
in the sky Elizabeth-Anne hitched Bessie, her aging mare, to the
buggy, climbed up on the wooden seat, and sat stiffly erect with
that peculiar brand of dignity which was hers alone. With her
pigskin-gloved hands she jerked the reins, and Bessie clip-clopped
softly down Main Street, the dirt road that ran through the center
of Quebeck and led out through the fields. Turning around,
Elizabeth-Anne glanced back at the receding Good Eats Caf6. The
windows glowed softly from the lamplight and she could see shadows
shifting on the walls inside. That meant her three children were
already up and moving about. Getting things ready to serve the
townsfolk breakfast.

She nodded to herself with satisfaction. Ever
since she had been husbandless, the children had had to pitch in
and help. Young though they were, they had done so without
complaint. At least not to her face.

Expertly she flipped the reins, and Bessie
dutifully picked up speed. The morning air was brisk and fresh
against her face now that she was riding along at a swift trot.

She glanced up at the sky. The pockmarked
moon was full and white, hovering low and bathing the town in an
eerie silvery glow. She loved the chill early air, had learned at a
young age to appreciate it. Later, as the sun began to rise, the
air would become dry and baked and gritty, making it difficult to
breathe, but right now it was wonderfully refreshing. She took a
series of deep breaths, inhaling slowly, savoring the cold in her
lungs.

To either side of her, Main Street was lined
with creaky gingerbread-fronted houses, hulking shadows behind
tiny, dusty front yards. She stayed off-center of the dusty
thoroughfare, avoiding the twin rails of the Quebeck Traction
Company. If the wheels of her buggy hit the steel rails, they would
skid and shimmy. She sighed to herself. Other towns had buses, but
Quebeck still had its antiquated horse-drawn tram—a single
small-gauge railroad car, roofed but open on all sides. The
traction ran from the railroad station down Main Street, and looped
around the northern end of town. What use that was, Elizabeth-Anne
did not know. The northern tip of town was where the wealthier
people lived, in freshly painted houses with stained-glass windows
and porte cocheres—families that owned horses, buggies, and even
motorcars. By all rights, the traction should have looped south,
through Mexican Town; the Mexicans could ill afford to own even a
scrawny mule and mean wagon. They
needed
the traction, not
as a convenience, but a necessity. She herself had brought up the
subject at numerous town meetings, but her efforts had fallen on
deaf ears. Of course, not one Mexican had been present at the town
meetings, or ever had been, for that matter. Quebeck proper and
Mexican Town were treated as two separate entities coexisting in
one small area, but with separate churches, shops, schools,
customs, and laws. The people of Quebeck didn't care what went on
in Mexican Town as long as its poor inhabitants didn't affect their
lives—and the better-off whites wielded control. These injustices,
and others like them, never ceased to rankle Elizabeth-Anne. It was
a sad fact, but true: her efforts thus far had proved
fruitless.

At the eastern end of town, Main Street
petered out into a single lane which led out across the fields,
sparsely dotted with sage and cactuses. Elizabeth-Anne snapped the
reins again, urging Bessie to quicken her pace. She was in a hurry.
She wanted to be at the construction site long before anyone else.
She liked to be able to poke into the corners of her unfinished
buildings in peace and quiet. For that, she had to get there very
early. The Mexican laborers liked to start work at daybreak, long
before it got hot, so they could enjoy a siesta during the height
of the noonday heat. Then, in the cooler late afternoon, the work
would once again continue until nightfall.

The dawn began to pale the blackness on the
flat horizon, and the crystalline stars faded into the sky. By the
time she neared the site, the sun was already starting to slide up
from the east. She pulled on the reins and Bessie dutifully came to
a halt.

From her high perch, Elizabeth-Anne looked
out across the countryside. Southeast lay the direction from which
the new highway was slowly coming, two blue- black asphalt lanes
being laid down from Brownsville, at the mouth of the Rio Grande.
In another three weeks it would reach as far as her property. Then
it would continue on up northwest toward Laredo. She knew that it
would be at least another year before it was entirely completed,
but Elizabeth-Anne was a visionary and had learned to trust her
instincts: cars had become commonplace, even in this sparsely
populated patch of the southwest, and they would soon be using this
new highway. Travelers journeying along it would need a
comfortable, convenient place to stay the night.

Which was why she was building the first
tourist court in southwest Texas.

Her aquamarine eyes narrowed as she nodded
thoughtfully to herself. Then she permitted herself a rare smile.
She was a beautiful woman, but the smile bespoke an inner strength
and purpose strangers might fail to see. She was by necessity
sturdy and strong. Her nose was thin and straight, and her
waist-long wheat-gold hair, though enviously fine and abundant, was
not shown off to advantage. For efficiency's sake she wore it
tightly plaited and pinned up so that it wouldn't get in her way.
Elizabeth-Anne Hale was, above all, a very proud, immensely
practical, eminently capable, woman. She was also a woman Texas
born and bred, with passions, dreams, and ambitions as vast as the
state itself—if not more so.

She felt a stirring within her belly, and she
leaned forward and looked down at herself. Her trim hourglass waist
had always been as tiny and wasplike as that of the most pampered
society girl. But that had been before she had become pregnant
again. Now her belly was majestically swollen and her breasts had
become heavy with milk, soon ready for the suckling of her newest
young.

'Too bad your daddy couldn't have stayed
around just a little bit longer,' she told her unborn child
sadly.

She touched her belly in silent communion.
The baby was due in a couple of months. She closed her eyes and
smiled beatifically as she felt another movement within her womb. A
series of kicks, lively and restless, let her know that all was
well, that the child she was carrying was impatient to greet the
world.

'Hey, settle down in there!' she jokingly
chided. Then she sighed softly. She had stalled long enough. She
snapped the reins tight again and Bessie trotted on. The
construction site was a full two miles from town, yet another
quarter of a mile across the fields. Already she could make out
what was to be the tourist court, long and rambling, the rising
skeletal timbers silhouetted against the sunrise like an ancient
Greek ruin, and the sight of it filled her with an immeasurable
sense of achievement and pride.

She glanced to neither the left nor the
right, but pressed her lips firmly together and kept her bright
eyes focused straight ahead on the building which her ambition was
driving her to erect. All the while, the gears of her mind turned
and clicked as she thought of yet more ways to improve and expand
that which she already had. In Quebeck there were the Good Eats
Café and the Hale Rooming House—no way to make a fortune, mind you,
but with hard work, a decent enough living. And soon, out here
where the highway would pass, would be the tourist court. That, she
realized, could lead to other things. Bigger things. Better
things.

Yes, she had come a long way.

When she reached the site, she pulled in on
the reins and climbed awkwardly down off the buggy, her full-
length gray calico skirt just brushing the ground. She tied Bessie
to a scrub bush and reached into her pocket for a lump of sugar.
She held it out in the palm of her hand. The horse gently nuzzled
it from her, its nostrils flaring appreciatively. She patted its
long muzzle and then began on her rounds.

Involved as she had been since the conception
of her tourist court, she still couldn't help but feel impressed.
Its very proportions dwarfed her. It was nearly two hundred feet
long and fifteen wide. The walls weren't finished yet; the brick
just went a third of the way up, and the rest was still the timber
skeleton she had seen from far across the fields.

The manager's cabin was directly in the
center. It, too, was unfinished, but would consist of three
rooms—an office flanked by a small bedroom and a kitchen. To either
side of it were nine guest cabins— eighteen altogether. Each would
boast a screened-in front porch and a private toilet with running
water and a bathtub, and each cabin was separated from the next by
a roofed parking space. These were virtually unheard- of, but
something she was certain cars necessitated. After all, the
southwest Texas sun burned strongly nearly all year round, and
everyone with cars liked to park them in the shade, just as they
would a horse. So shade she would provide. And she had
intentionally made them much larger than they had to be. With
typical foresight, she had envisioned that in time, not only would
the reliability of cars increase, but their size as well.