Texas Secrets (16 page)

Oh, Grandmother, how I wish I'd known you
.

And that was how Boone found her. He'd come inside since Maddie hadn't appeared at her usual time. He'd intended only to make a quick sandwich and go back to work, but the day was hot and he'd begun to worry. Deciding to check and make sure she hadn't passed out from the heat, he'd mounted the stairs, assuming she'd hear his steps.

When he reached the top, he couldn't speak. Maddie stood in the sunlight holding an ivory gown against her, her eyes closed and tears rolling down her cheeks.

With careful steps, Boone crossed to her. "Maddie?" he spoke softly.

Her eyes opened, showing him a world of such pain and confusion that he reached for her without considering anything but that she needed to be held.

Maddie was always so relentlessly cheerful that he'd come to think nothing could bring her low. To see that he was so very wrong struck him in a way that scattered his resolutions. Maddie needed someone. Right now, it would have to be him.

She nestled into him and sobbed softly. Boone thought at that instant that he would slay dragons to bring back Maddie's smile.

"Why couldn't I know her, Boone? Why did I miss so much?"

He had no answers, no way to change the past. So he just held her while she cried.

After a moment, her face turned up to his. In her eyes he saw such need for comfort, such loneliness and despair, that he did something he knew he would regret.

He kissed her.

He only meant it to comfort, to ease her pain, to let her know she wasn't alone. But one touch was all it took. One brush of lips...and he was lost.

Maddie slid one arm out from between them and gripped his shirt in one fist, lifting herself to her tiptoes, bringing back the hunger that never really left him.

Boone forgot about good intentions, forgot about being the wrong man. Forcing himself to go slowly, he licked softly at her full lower lip and heard her intake of breath. A quick prickling heat flashed through him, raising the hairs on the back of his neck. For one instant, an instinct as old as man warned him away, reminded him of danger.

Then Maddie parted her lips, and her tongue stroked him back, her fingers pressing into his side, her breasts soft against his chest.

He had to get closer. With one hand he gripped the back of her head, sliding his fingers into the thick fall of dark hair and turning her into his kiss. His tongue slid into the sweetness of Maddie's mouth, and he wanted to stay there forever, to drink of her kind heart, her cheerful soul, to soothe her despair and her sorrow.

Maddie knew only that Boone was here sharing his strength when she couldn't find her own, that he warmed the cold corners of her anguish and made her feel, for the first time in years, that she wasn't alone.

His kiss was a balm and a solace, but it was so much more. In his kiss, Maddie found a dark, edgy promise of excitement, of bliss beyond the power of words. Maddie felt the ragged border of Boone's own anguish and she poured herself into soothing him, forgetting her own pain as she touched the raw edges of Boone's grief.

He was so strong that he hid his pain too well, but for a moment Maddie thought she knew his heart's need. She lifted herself higher, sliding her fingers into his hair, murmuring soothing comfort mingled with sharp spikes of need.

Through Boone shot the same fierce need to possess her that had driven him the night of the dance. He dropped his hands lower and gripped her hips. Pulling her hard against him, he wanted to tear off her clothes and his own, to salve this endless ache that was so much more than physical.

Maddie thrilled to his touch, to the power of the wanting she felt from him. As his hand slid upward and cupped her breast, she arched against him, pressing into his fingers.

When they tightened, Maddie bucked against him. Her grandmother's dress slipped from nerveless fingers, and she realized how close she'd danced to the edge of a terrifying precipice.

It was one second of sanity in a world gone mad with longing.

One second of hesitation, facing the point of no return.

Could she do this to him? To herself? For a moment, Maddie flirted with the idea of staying, of yielding to the ever-increasing sense of connection to this place, to the past—

To this man.

The second's pause was fatal to something too new, too fragile. It gave Boone time to feel her doubts. To remember.

He couldn't let himself need Maddie. He couldn't let her in this close. She spoke to him on a level deeper than anyone in his life had ever gone.

Shaken to his boots, he realized that Maddie could break him, when nothing else in his life ever had.

She felt him leave her, felt him pull away just the tiniest bit. It might as well have been the Grand Canyon.

She dangled over the precipice, naked and needy. Alone again for one eternal moment when she thought she'd found home.

Why hadn't she learned from the past? Robert had brought her low, but he had been nothing like Boone, had not wielded a fraction of Boone's power to hurt her. Boone was a thousand times more dangerous to everything she'd been trying to recover.

Boone wanted her, yes. She even thought he needed her.

But he didn't want to want her. And he needed her gone.

Maddie stepped back, her chest heaving.

Boone didn't stop her, though his empty fingers flexed and his chest ached.

Maddie couldn't look at Boone, couldn't bear to see the truth on his face. One hand pressed tightly to her lips, she turned away and stared out the window, still clutching her grandmother's dress to her breast.

She started to speak, but her voice wasn't hers to command. Maddie cleared her throat and tried again.

"I found my grandmother's things."

Behind her, she heard his voice, low and strained. "I see that. Do you want me to carry the trunk downstairs to your room?"

So polite. So distant.

"If it's not too much trouble."

"No trouble."

Maddie didn't turn around. Behind her, she heard Boone close the trunk and lift it, heading for the stairs. With a shaky breath, she turned and carefully folded the dress, wrapping it back in the sheet she had dropped in her haste. Fighting hard to hold inside emotions careening out of control, Maddie carried the dress down the stairs.

When she passed Boone leaving her room, she cast one quick glance at him. If she had seen the slightest sign that he was struggling, too, she might have tried to talk to him, though she had no idea what to say.

There were no words for the power of what had passed between them.

Nor for the impossibility of what kept them apart.

But Maddie didn't have to worry. The man who had kissed her, the man whose heart had lain bare to her own for a few precious seconds...that man lay safely buried behind a mask of stone. That man might have existed only in her very vivid imagination.

For one endless second, every fiber of Maddie's soul cried out for that man's return.

Chapter Nine

Boone closed up the attic and walked out of the house like a man gone blind. He fought an urge to get in his truck and head for the nearest port, to lose himself as an anonymous seaman once again. To hide out somewhere, anywhere, until Maddie left.

He squinted against the scorching sun and lectured the part of him that seemed bent on destruction.

She won't stay.

You haven't asked her
.

Remember how she was with Marlowe. She can't wait to get back.

She wasn't thinking about New York up in the attic
.

For a minute, that was all. Yes, there was heat between them. Boone shook his head. Heat, hell—there was nuclear meltdown when he touched Maddie.

But it wasn't enough. She deserved so much more. What did he have to offer, a man who knew a hundred ways to kill? A man so incapable of love that his only child never had a chance to be born? A life of hard work and loneliness stuck away in the back of beyond? He'd already ruined one woman's life. He would not risk Maddie...bright, beautiful Maddie.

You could go with her. To the city
.

No. He could not.

He would not forsake this place again. Now, more than ever, he was needed to be its guardian. For the sake of the desolation in Maddie's eyes, he would keep this place safe. It was one thing he could do for her, no matter his other shortcomings. He no longer expected to have a family of his own, but if Mitch didn't want the ranch, maybe Maddie's children would.

A hell of a life, Boone ol' buddy
.

It's who I am. It's all I really need.

And with that thought, Boone straightened his hat and headed for the barn. Lunch was the last thing on his mind.

* * *

Maddie spread out the dress on her bed carefully, smoothing its folds. When she'd first held it, she'd been eager to try it on.

Not anymore.

Instead, she sank down on the rug by the bed and reached into the trunk again, her movements lethargic. She looked through framed pictures of unidentified people. Maybe later she'd take them out of the frames and see if anyone had marked them on the back, but not now.

At the bottom of the pile Maddie saw a little red leather book that looked like a diary.

With shaking fingers, she lifted it out and sat back down, cradling it on her lap. With slow strokes, she traced the shabby remains of what might once have been gold leaf. Then she drew in a deep breath and opened the cover.

Rose McCall
, it said in spiky, formal script. Beneath it was added the name
Wheeler
, with a heart drawn beside it.

So now Maddie knew. Her grandmother's maiden name had been McCall. And she had loved Jack Wheeler, the grandfather who had died too soon. Rose might even have been a romantic, Maddie thought. Drawing the heart was something a younger Maddie might have done.

The thought of her grandmother as a hopeful young bride brought a smile. Then Maddie remembered how it had all turned out, and her heart ached for the woman she'd never met.

Reining in her thoughts, Maddie turned the page. The diary seemed to start when Rose had been twelve, and soon Maddie was lost in a life utterly different than anything she'd known. Rose spoke of hard times, and Maddie found a date that pinpointed this as what came to be called the Great Depression. But Rose spoke of girlish dreams and seemed to take the hardships in stride.

Soon Maddie traveled with Rose through teenage years in a world so innocent it was hard to believe. She marveled at the simplicity of life, the lack of cynicism, the focus on a world close at hand.

Until Maddie's stomach growled, she never even registered that she'd forgotten to eat lunch. A quick glance at the shifted sunlight told her that lunch was hours past. Reluctantly, she closed the book and reached for the table to set it down, but she didn't reach far enough and it slipped off the table's edge. As she grabbed for it, a folded sheet of paper fluttered to the floor.

Maddie righted the book and opened the paper. The sheet bore no date. Maddie read the words on the page with growing disbelief.

I do not know what to do. I have just heard that Jenny is marrying Sam Gallagher. My heart cries out to tell her that Dalton is not dead, but what good would it do? I curse the day I cast all of our lives into hell by fighting back when Buster raged. Now I have no son, and Jenny is marrying another. My son is lost to me. He paid too high a price to save me. If I knew where he was, I would turn myself in so that he could reclaim his life, no matter what Ben says.

I am the last of my line. My blood will not inherit this place.

My mind returns, again and again, to Jenny's visit before she left town months ago. She was pale and trembling; she would start to speak as if to confide, then lapse into silence. It was all I could do to cling to the story that Dalton was dead.

She has been gone for seven months. I think back to cues that were there and wonder. Did Jenny bear my grandchild somewhere far away? Is there a piece of my son lost to us all?

And do I have the right to ask her? I could be wrong. It could be wishful thinking. Jenny was always an upright child, but she did love Dalton deeply, as he loved her. They could have yielded to natural urges. But once he vanished, would she not have told me or asked me for help?

Perhaps not. She was always a thoughtful girl, and she knew I was half out of my mind with grief.

Sam is a good young man, Dalton's best friend. I have known for years that he loved Jenny, too, though she never had eyes for anyone but my son. If she had borne Dalton's child, would Sam have taken it to his heart? And what would it do to their fledgling marriage if I bring my questions to light?

I must think on this longer, and pray for guidance. Jenny has suffered greatly. I do not wish to cause her more pain. I cannot offer her the comfort of hearing that Dalton is alive without torturing her with the knowledge that he is lost to us both. Ben told him he had to vanish and make a new life under a new name. Even Ben doesn't know where he is now.

Ben is a good man who has helped me carry a heavy secret. He is happy for his Sam to be marrying Jenny. After all he has done for Dalton and me, do I have the right to destroy Sam's happiness?

I do not know the answers. Dear Lord, guide me in the right path
.

Maddie didn't know what to think, how to feel. She flipped the diary open to the last page. It was dated a year earlier. She had been through the entire trunk. There was nowhere else to look for the answer to Rose's questions.

Then it hit her like a ton of bricks. She might have a brother or sister out there somewhere. She might not be alone, after all. Her pulse scrambled.

Where were the answers? What would Boone say when she told him?

Oh, dear. Boone. If there had been a child of Jenny and Dalton's, it would be his half-sibling, too.