Dedication
For all the wonderful readers who waited patiently for twenty years . . .
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Epilogue
An Excerpt from Texas Destiny Chapter One
Announcement page to Texas Series Titles
About the Author
Also by Lorraine Heath
Copyright
About the Publisher
Chapter One
August 1909
The telegram found him in Cheyenne, the words simple and to the point: I need you home. Love, Ma.
He’d ridden out to the ranch where he’d been working as foreman, given his notice, packed up his few meager belongings, hightailed it to the railway depot, and hopped on the first train going through that would get him to where he needed to be as quickly as possible. Leighton, Texas, a town once described as being on the far side of nowhere, but when he’d left, had been bustling with activity and promise. The railroad had changed its destiny.
No, that wasn’t quite right, he mused as he sat beside a window on the lumbering train and watched the empty vastness rolling by. Dallas Leigh had created the town from nothing, courted the railroad barons to ensure a stretch of track went through his town to increase its chances of thriving, and in so doing had altered the makeup of the land and the lives of a good many people. He, along with his wife, had changed Rawley Cooper’s life as well, had dragged him from the hellhole that had been his boyhood existence and given him more opportunities than he deserved. Which was the reason Rawley hadn’t hesitated to leave everything behind when he received the telegram.
Although if he were honest with himself, he had to admit he was more than ready to return. He’d missed the place, missed the people. Missed Faith.
He’d hoped time and distance would cause her to fade from his memories, but she was as vibrant as ever, and not a night passed that he didn’t dream about her.
Faith Leigh was the most beautiful woman he’d ever laid eyes on, although he hadn’t always viewed her in that light. When she’d been born—wrinkled, red, and caterwauling worse than any bawling calf he’d heard up until that moment—he’d proclaimed her to be butt-ugly. But she’d quickly managed to worm her way into his heart—not that he’d ever been too pleased about that.
He was probably somewhere between a decade and a dozen years older than she was. His true age was anyone’s guess because the man who had called himself Rawley’s pa hadn’t paid much attention to the details of his life. It wasn’t until Rawley went to live with Dallas and Cordelia Leigh that he learned people kept track of the time they spent on this earth. Since they’d taken him in on a cold night in December 1881, that had become the date when they honored his birth. He couldn’t deny it was a good day for a little revelry because it marked the moment his life transformed from a mere existence into actually living.
As for Faith, her arrival had come in May 1884, duly noted and recorded in the family Bible. The last time he’d seen her had been six years earlier on the night she’d turned nineteen, after a celebration that had no doubt left a good many men—and possibly a few women—greeting the following morning with an aching head. He also suspected a number of cowboys had awakened a little heartsore because Faith had a way about her of making a man long for things he could never possess.
In the distance, the town came into view, and although it wasn’t exactly as it had been when he left, he’d recognize it anywhere—the Grand Hotel dominating the skyline. It had been ahead of its time when it had been built in 1881. He’d seen much more of the country since then, but nothing else reminded him of a grand and majestic lady as much as it did, maybe because he’d long worshipped the woman who had envisioned and built it: Cordelia Leigh.
It was odd, all the emotions ricocheting through him. Pride, joy, a bit of remorse, a bit of dread. He had little doubt his abrupt departure had left many a burning question, and some might be wanting the answers with his return—but if he had his way, they’d go to the grave with him.
Faith Leigh stood on the depot platform and watched the smoke billowing from the behemoth in the distance bearing down on them. Her stomach knotted, and she took a deep breath to release the tension that had been building ever since she’d learned Rawley Cooper was on his way home. She’d known this day would come, sooner or later. A reckoning. A chance to prove she was no longer the silly nineteen-year-old girl who had thrown herself at him and humiliated herself in the process.
The last time she’d seen him had been awkward at best. She expected it to be no different this time, especially when he learned all the truths about her—and he would. She’d never been able to hide anything from him. Once he’d been her best friend, her most trusted confidant, but then when she’d needed him the most, he’d ridden out of her life. Not that she blamed him, not deep down inside. But the girl she’d been still held a grudge.
She couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t loved him. She hadn’t learned to walk because her mother and father encouraged her; she’d taken those first steps because they’d provided the opportunity to keep up with Rawley. Not that her memories went back that far, but she knew herself well enough to know what had always motivated her, to know most of her actions had been an effort to tag along with the older boy her parents had taken in.
The train pulled into the station with a bellowing of steam and a screech of brakes. People disembarked in a frenzy as though anxious to get to where they were going or to greet the people they’d come to see.
All except him.
As though in no hurry, as though he had all day and the world would wait for him, Rawley Cooper stepped off the train, holding the saddle slung over his back with one hand at his shoulder. He was a tall drink of water who would quench any woman’s thirst. Damn him. The past six years had served to make him more handsome, and a body that hard work on the range had honed to perfection had somehow managed to become even more pleasing to the eye.
He walked toward her with a lazy, loose-hipped stride that spoke of no rush to be anywhere, his boot heels thudding against the wooden platform, and she could feel it quivering with each step he took, just as she imagined women quivered whenever he gave them that sultry look through eyes so dark as to be almost black, as black as his hair. Just as she quivered now that he was near enough for her to see that he hadn’t shaved recently. The short stubble added a ruggedness to his sharp jawline.
When he reached her, he used the thumb of his free hand to tip his black Stetson back from his brow, and the few shadows that had dared to play over his features retreated. At the corners of his eyes tiny lines fanned out, lines that hadn’t been as deep before. A somberness hovered around him like a well-worn duster designed to protect against the harsh elements, and she wondered if he’d dreaded seeing her as much as she had him.
“Faith.” No smile, no grin that had once brightened her world. Just the one word, spoken flatly, with no emotion, with no hint as to what he was feeling—and that in itself communicated everything.
She’d imagined this meeting a thousand times, hadn’t slept a wink the night before, practicing just the right inflection, just the right words to greet him after all this time. They hovered on the tip of her tongue, but her fist
beat them to the punch—literally—and she felt the jarring pain traveling up her arm before she’d even realized she’d given him a quick jab to the cheek, just below his eye, that had his head snapping back and his saddle hitting the wooden planks with a thud that caused them to shudder.
There was emotion now, rioting on his face, in his eyes. Fury. Shock. Disbelief. “What the hell, Faith?”
“That was for leaving without saying good-bye.”
Chapter Two
Faith Leigh had a habit of speaking her mind and taking him by surprise. Based on the speed and force behind the punch, she’d been saving it up for six long years—suddenly all those months away seemed an eternity and seeing her again was a balm to his soul. His laughter was a bark, filled with pain and a bit of self-loathing. “I deserved that.”
“I wouldn’t have hit you if you didn’t. Why’d you leave, Rawley?”
“You know why, Faith.”
Her cheeks flamed red. “I was drunk.”
Shaking his head, it took everything within him not to drop his gaze to the toes of his boots. “I wasn’t.”
Thank God for that, because otherwise a hell of a lot more friction would exist between them now.
“I hadn’t expected anyone to be meeting me here,” he added. Had he realized she’d greet him, he could have prepared himself a little more, although he’d known eventually they’d cross paths. He’d hoped for later, at the ranch, without witnesses and gawking strangers. For some reason, he’d expected tears, but the woman standing before him now wasn’t the girl he’d walked out on.
She wore a dress of navy blue with a narrow skirt that didn’t leave him guessing at the width of her hips. They’d broadened a bit during the intervening years, but then she had a little more meat on her everywhere. Suddenly the awkwardness was back because he shouldn’t be noticing all that, shouldn’t notice how maturity had added a grace to her features, or how grateful he was that the buttons went clear to her throat and that her puffed sleeves narrowed at her elbow and traveled down to her wrists, so he couldn’t skim his gaze over her bared flesh. At a jaunty angle, she wore a small bonnet with light blue flowers, and he didn’t want to think about removing it and unpinning her ebony hair to see if it was as long as it had been when he’d left.
“The buggy’s over here,” she said, as though acutely aware of the discomfort threatening to resettle between them.
“Let me get my horse. He’s in the cattle car.”
“Trust you to go to the trouble of bringing your horse when Uncle Houston could provide you with one easily enough.”
Houston Leigh had made his living breeding, raising, and selling horses. Rawley figured few in the state didn’t have at least one stallion, mare, or gelding that came from Leigh stock, including the one that was waiting for him. “Why leave good horseflesh behind?” Especially when he and the stallion were comfortable with each other, knew each other’s quirks. He bent down to retrieve his saddle—
“Rawley Cooper!”
He barely had time to plant his feet and prepare himself before Maggie May Leigh had launched herself at him. He caught her and swung her around, relishing the tight band her arms made as they circled his neck, sent his hat flying. Houston’s oldest daughter had taken after her mother, small and petite. If he hadn’t known how stubborn and determined she could be, he might have feared he could break her, towering over her as he did.
“Put me down, you fool. I’m not a little girl anymore.”
She certainly wasn’t, but he’d known that before he left. He did as ordered, then reached down, snatched up his hat, and settled it back on his head, grateful some things never changed. Based on what he thought his age was, she was five years younger than he was, had clung to his shirttails until Faith had come along and become their little shadow.
“Brat,” he groused, teasing her with the pet name he’d bestowed upon her when they were kids, gamely taking the smack to his shoulder she delivered before stepping back.
The hem of her slim black skirt dusted her ankles, and a neat black bow was knotted at the collar of her white shirtwaist. Atop her pinned-up blond hair sat a small, undecorated black hat, that of a woman with a mission. Her green eyes twinkled. “I was afraid I was going to miss you.”
“How’d you even know I was coming in?” A stupid question in retrospect. The members of this family kept no secrets from one another, which was the reason he always held close his own.
“I’m a reporter. It’s my business to know what’s happening around here. The family is going to give you a chance to settle in tonight, then we’ll all be over for dinner tomorrow.”
“I’m looking forward to it.” And he meant it. The Leigh clan was an immense, rowdy, rambunctious group of people who knew how to make a person feel right at home.
Reaching out, her brow furrowed, sadness mirrored in her eyes, she clutched his arm, her fingers creating shallow dents in his jacket. “I’m so sorry about Uncle Dallas.”
His gut clenched as though she delivered the words along with a solid blow to his midsection. A cold shiver of dread skittered up his spine. He hadn’t experienced this level of trepidation since he was a boy and had been unable to defend himself. “Dallas? What happened to Dallas?”
Her eyes widening with alarm, she looked at Faith. “Y’all didn’t tell him?”
“Ma didn’t want him worrying when it wouldn’t change anything,” Faith said, her face a mask of guilt.
“What the hell is going on, Faith?” he demanded, watching as emotions warred over her features—whether to be belligerent because of his tone or sympathetic to it—but he also spotted the worry, the concern, and maybe even a measure of fear. She crossed her arms over her chest as though needing to gird herself against whatever was going to roll off her tongue.
“Pa’s been having some pains in his chest. You know they have to be bad for him to mention them to anyone. Doc thinks it’s his heart. Pa thinks it’s something he ate. But he passed out on the range a few days ago. Doc says he has to take it easy.”
Which was the reason he’d been sent the telegram—because he was well and truly needed here. Suddenly he was hit with guilt for ever leaving in the first place. “I’ll get my horse.”
He said his good-byes to Maggie before reaching down to snag his saddle. With long strides that ate up the distance between him and the rear of the train, he approached the pinto that had already been unloaded for him. He’d always been partial to the spotted ponies ever since the Leigh brothers gave him one the first Christmas he spent with them more than a quarter of a century earlier. This latest, Shadow, he’d gotten from Houston shortly before he left. He flipped two bits to the station attendant before taking hold of the bridle. “Thanks, Charlie.”
“Good to have you home, Rawley.”
“Good to be home.” A bit of a lie as he wished the circumstances were different.
He caught up with Faith, already sitting in the buggy tugging on her gloves, tossed his saddle and saddlebags in the compartment at the back, and secured Shadow there. The vehicle rocked as he climbed up onto the bench seat beside the girl who had constantly trailed after him when he was a boy. Without thinking, he reached for the reins, his hand brushing against hers as she did the same. They both froze. He hated their twin reactions because a time had existed when she’d nestled her hand snugly in his, when all he’d ever wanted was to protect her.
“I can drive,” she said tartly.
“I know you can. I’m just being a gentleman.”
She turned her head and held his gaze. “I’ve gotten used to doing for myself.”
“You’ve always done for yourself, Faith. You’re the most stubborn gal I ever met. You don’t have to prove anything to me.”
Fire darted out of those dark brown eyes and was quickly extinguished. She primly folded her hands in her lap. “Go on then.”
He didn’t argue further, didn’t want to take time for it, but simply snatched up the reins, slapped them against t
he rumps of the two horses, and felt the tension ease a little as they got under way. “I’m anxious to get to the ranch. How bad is Dallas really?”
“Why won’t you call him Pa?”
Because the man he’d known as Pa when he was a boy had been a mean, vindictive son of a bitch who had taken advantage of his mother, abducting her from the Shawnee people and getting a child on her that he hadn’t wanted. Even after all these years, even knowing the man was dead, Rawley would still recoil and feel sick to his stomach when memories of him and that time in his life surfaced. Dallas might have raised him, but Dallas wasn’t his pa. In Rawley’s eyes he’d always been too big, too bold, as majestic as the land. Rawley had never felt worthy of acknowledging the man as his father. “He’s not my pa,” he said simply.
“But you call our mother Ma.”
For the longest he’d simply known her as the pretty lady. When she’d opened her arms and heart to him, he’d gone to her with all that he was, desperate to fill the ache that lingered after his own mother—a kind, gentle soul who had loved him—died. “That’s different.”
“Care to explain how?”
“Not really. How bad off is Dallas?” he asked again.
She sighed heavily, obviously not pleased with his response or dogged determination to get back on topic, and he almost smiled because she’d always had far less patience with him than he’d had with her.
“Mostly he’s just ornery because the doc doesn’t want him doing anything strenuous. You know Pa. I don’t think he’s ever sat still for a moment in his life.”
Except for the time when he’d almost died, but that was before Faith had come along.
“Is he sitting still?”
“Mostly he’s wandering through the house, but at least he’s not riding the range. He was by himself when he toppled from his horse. We don’t know how long it was before someone ran across him.”
Once more his gut tightened. He didn’t want to think about Dallas passing over to the great beyond. As though sensing the direction of his thoughts, Faith patted his knee. “He claimed it was just the heat and maybe it was. To look at him, you wouldn’t know anything had happened.”
Texas Legacy Page 1
