He’d thought of her every moment of every night of every year that they’d been separated. He’d taken her into his dreams, held on to her memory. As a fully grown woman—and she was fully grown now, no doubts there—she didn’t look that much different than he’d expected she would. A little more round, a little more refined. She would have made a nice addition to the house he’d built—the house he’d built with her in mind on the acres of land that he’d bought near Fortune.
How ironic that she’d been waiting for him to come to take her back to Texas, and he’d been planning a homecoming for her. He’d always held out hope that somehow his letters hadn’t gotten here or somehow hers to him had been lost. But he’d never given up on them completely…at least not yet. Not until destiny altered his path, changed his final destination.
Not until he tasted the sweet nectar of her mouth seasoned with the salt from her tears. She’d been miserable in England. What man would condemn the woman who’d once held his heart to a life of misery?
Chapter 5
Ten years earlier
L auren could hardly believe that she was lying with a boy. Lying with Tom. On the cool, green grass beside the creek. In the dark. If it weren’t for the full moon, she wouldn’t be able to see him at all.
She was wearing her nightclothes, but she figured they covered her as much as her dress would. Tom, as always, was in his trousers and shirt. He’d started wearing a vest for carrying around his cigarette makings. She knew they were there, because she could see the bulge in his pocket, but he never smoked around her anymore.
He always came late at night, after her mama had gone to bed. He’d toss rocks at her window until she got up, clambered out the window from her upstairs bedroom, and climbed down the tree to meet him. Then they’d run to the creek and just lie there, talking about everything and nothing. She kept waiting for Tom to ask her to unbutton her buttons. But he never did.
It made her love him more for wanting to be with her while she was still all buttoned up.
“There,” he suddenly said, pointing at the sky. “Did you see it?”
“Yeah.” He was good at looking in the right spot and seeing them before they disappeared. “What do you think makes the stars fall like that?”
“I don’t know. It’s one of those things that can’t be explained, I reckon.”
“Where do you think they fall to?”
“I don’t know. Maybe just another place in the sky, so folks down below can see ’em.”
“Ma says if you make a wish when the star is falling, it’ll come true.”
“I don’t believe in wishing.”
She sat up and looked down on him. His hands were folded beneath his head, his long body stretched out over the ground. He’d only been working for the Texas Lady a little over a week, but he seemed so much bigger. She figured the work and the food were responsible. He wasn’t living on stolen crackers anymore.
“That’s sad, Tom, not to believe in wishing. A person ought to want some things.”
“Didn’t say I don’t believe in wanting. I want plenty. I just don’t believe wishing will get me the things that I want.”
She drew her legs up to her chest, wrapped her arms around them, and pressed her chin to her knees. “But stealing will. Is that what you’re saying? You won’t wish for something, but you’ll steal if you want it?”
“I ain’t stole since I went to work. Told you stealing was bad if you did it when you got money. Now I got a bit of money, so I ain’t stealing no more.”
“I’m glad. I wouldn’t want you to go to jail…or to hell.”
“I ain’t worried about hell. I been there already.”
“You don’t go to hell until you die, and only if you haven’t been good.”
“I was good, and I went to hell while I was alive.”
Reaching out, she touched his elbow. She wanted to touch his chin where a few whiskers had started to grow, but she thought he might object to her actually touching skin, so she settled for the cloth that covered his arm. “On the orphan train?”
“With the family that took me in. Could never please the old man no matter how hard I worked. He’d lock me in a shed at night ’cuz he was afraid I’d run away.”
“And you did.”
“Yep.”
“How’d you escape?” she asked.
“He started beating on me, for no good reason as far as I could tell. Wasn’t the first time, but I’d gotten a little bigger and tired of it, too. So I hit back, knocked him down, and I took off running. I was a lot faster than he was. Just kept running till I got here.”
“I’m glad you stopped here,” she said.
“I wasn’t planning to, least not for good. But then I got hired to work cattle.” He shrugged. “No reason to move on when I got a full belly and a bed.”
She was a little disappointed she wasn’t the reason he’d decided to stay. It was wishful thinking, but unlike Tom she did believe in wishing. She looked out over the water of the creek.
He had such exciting adventures, had been everywhere, while she’d never set foot outside of Fortune. She considered telling him that when that star had fallen she’d wished that she’d get to travel to some exciting place, but her mama had also told her that wishes only came true if she kept them to herself; otherwise, she risked breaking the spell that would make them come true.
“You ever kissed a fella?” Tom asked quietly.
She didn’t look at him, as she shook her head. “You ever kissed anyone?”
“No.”
She heard the rustle of the grass as he sat up. “Been hankering to, though.”
She peered over at him, fighting to hold back her smile. The thing about Tom was that he always pretty much said exactly what he was thinking. “Anybody I know?”
His slow lazy grin became visible in the moonlight. “I got something for you.”
“What?” she asked, even though she figured she knew what he had for her: a kiss.
He reached behind her, took her braid, and draped it over her shoulder. She wondered why she could feel his touch of her hair clear down to her toes. She dug them into the grass, but it didn’t stop them from tingling.
He brought something out of his vest pocket and dangled it in front of her. “A hair ribbon,” he said.
“I can’t tell the color in the dark.”
“Same color as your eyes.”
Her heart was pounding hard as he wrapped it around her braid and tied it into an awkward-looking bow.
“Did you steal it?” she asked.
“Nope, it’s the first thing I bought with my hard-earned money.”
She couldn’t stop herself from smiling this time. “Truly?”
“Yep.”
“What’s the second thing you bought?”
“A penny’s worth of licorice, but I don’t have any of it left.”
“I don’t like licorice anyway,” she said, fingering the bow. She’d never had a fella give her a present. Tom had to like her something fierce to give her a ribbon. Even the funny-talking Englishman who’d started visiting her mother of late had never given her mother a ribbon.
“Think you might want to try that kiss now?” he asked.
She lifted her gaze to his. “Is that why you bought me a ribbon? So I’d kiss you?”
“Nope. I saw it and thought of you. Even if you don’t want to kiss—”
Quickly, she leaned forward, pressed her puckered lips to his, and jerked back. There, she’d done it. Before he could dare her to. He was always daring her: to smoke one of his cigarettes, to drink from not-quite-empty whiskey bottles he found outside the saloon, to meet him there by the creek. Things bound to get her into trouble if her mama ever found out. Kissing was surely the one that would get her a whupping.
She sat there, chewing her bottom lip, waiting for him to react, to say something. Anything.
“Well?” she finally demanded.
“That was like a star shooting across t
he heavens.”
“Is that good or bad?”
“Just means it was quick, gone before I knew it was coming.” He cupped her cheek, and she was acutely aware of how rough his skin felt against hers. His fingers and palm were callused in places. A workingman’s hands. “Let’s try this my way.”
“Didn’t think you had a way. Didn’t think you’d ever done this before,” she said.
“Doesn’t mean I ain’t been thinking about it.”
“Who were you thinking—”
“Shh, gal, sometimes you talk too much.”
Then his lips, warm and sure, yet gentle, were pressed against hers. And she thought she might love this boy until the day she died.
“Oh, Tom, it’s awful! We’re leaving!”
Tom stared at Lauren. She’d been in a panic ever since she’d clambered out her bedroom window, shinnied down the old, gnarled oak tree, grabbed his hand, holding on so tight it hurt, and pulled him into the copse of trees.
“Leaving?”
She nodded, the tears in her eyes capturing the moonlight. “That English fella asked Ma to marry him, and she said yes. We’re moving to England.”
The words stunned him, shook him clear down to his bootheels. She was the best part of living there.
Lunging at him, she wrapped her arms tightly around his neck. “Oh, Tom, I’m never going to see you again.”
He wound his arms around her, holding her close, felt the tears on her cheeks, warm at first, cool against his neck. She couldn’t be leaving. It was too soon. He didn’t have anything to offer her.
She pulled back and looked at him as though she believed he had some sort of power to make everything right. “What are we gonna do?”
He swallowed hard, hating the truth of the words he was gonna have to say. “Lauren, I got nothing to offer you.”
“I thought you loved me.”
He glanced toward her house.
“I know you never said it, but I just thought—”
“I do,” he said, cutting her off. That declaration was as close as he was going to come to stating his feelings on the matter.
“So what are we gonna do?” she asked again.
Hell if he knew. He thought about the fancy clothes that fella wore, the way he talked. As prissy as it sounded, there was an undercurrent of confidence to it, something about it that made a person listen and obey. Commanding, without yelling or beating it into you. He thought if the fella had taken him off the orphan train, Tom would have worked his heart out for him. Maybe that was the reason he was working so hard for the Texas Lady Ventures. Because he didn’t want the man to be disappointed or to discover that he’d misjudged Tom’s abilities. This Englishman would take good care of Lauren until Tom could come for her.
“I think you ought to go with them.” He said it like she had a choice, when he suspected that she really didn’t. If her mama wanted her to go, she was going to be going.
Lauren stared at him, and he could see her struggling with the notion, the truth of his words.
“I’ll come for you, Lauren, soon as I can. I promise it won’t be long. I’ll put all my money toward getting us a place.”
In the nights that followed, he thought he’d die from the dread creeping into his gut whenever he thought about her leaving. By the creek, he had her describe what she wanted her house to look like, all the little things she wanted to have. Their last night together, they slept in each other’s arms, fully clothed, bathed in moonlight.
At dawn, when he walked her back to the house, she whispered, “I’ll miss you so much. Will you write to me?”
“Every day,” he promised.
“And when you come for me, we’ll be together, forever.”
“Forever,” he vowed.
Chapter 6
T om’s long-ago promises echoed through Lauren’s mind. He’d kept the one, but fate would prevent him from keeping the other. Too many years had passed. What did she truly know about this man? What did he know about her?
Only that he had to stay, and she wanted to go.
Standing on the veranda, near the garden, she had no will to resist, but what woman in her right mind would want to resist the tenderness of his kiss. She almost thought she detected an apology. Perhaps it was simply a desire to distract her from her tears. She’d not even realized that they’d trailed down her face until he’d pressed his lips to hers, and the tears pooled and seeped between them, to be lapped up by his questing tongue.
His large hands, roughened from years of hard labor, cradled and stroked her cheeks. Englishmen didn’t touch with bare hands. Tom possessed no such qualms, never had. But even in his youth, he’d possessed an undeniable respectfulness, urging her to the brink of scandalous behavior, but never forcing her to cross over.
She told herself that her affection for him was as her mother had always warned her: misguided, misplaced, misinterpreted. It was impossible for a girl to love a boy and for that love to remain steadfast as they each grew into adulthood.
Yet she couldn’t deny that Tom still managed to stir her feelings. She thought she’d never grow tired of looking at him, never grow weary of listening to his voice, never seek an excuse not to be kissed or held by him. And even as she thought those things, she realized they were all the surface of the man. She didn’t know the road he’d traveled to his success. She didn’t know what other men thought of him. Had he earned their respect, their loyalty? Would they follow him wherever he led?
And what women had found their way into his heart over the years?
She’d entertained the notion of marrying Kimburton, had enjoyed his attentions. Surely at least one woman had gained Tom’s favor. The pang of envy brought on by the thought was almost more than she could bear. To know his kiss, to know his touch, to know his body.
She’d once thought she’d be willing to trade her soul for the privilege. But trading her soul meant trading her dreams.
His place, his home was now and would forever be in England.
She broke off from the kiss, her knees so weak she could barely stand. His breaths were coming as rapid and harsh as hers. She was confused, lost, unsure of her feelings. She’d adopted anger at him to survive his not writing, and yet he’d written. She’d come to hate him, and now she realized the emotion was unjustified. And yet its remnants lingered, not entirely wiped away by the truth. How did she discard ten years of believing he’d abandoned her? Simply because he had not inflicted the wound didn’t mean that it wasn’t still there and scarred. Everything she’d believed, understood, accepted was suddenly unraveling just as he’d said his life was.
“Where does this new discovery leave us?” he asked quietly.
“I honestly don’t know, Tom. What I’ve known all these years…what I’ve felt…I hardly know how to rearrange what I’ve understood to be the truth. I’m overwhelmed. I need time to sort through so very much.”
He nodded, as though he’d known the answer before she’d spoken it. Or perhaps he simply understood better than she what it was to discover the truth of one’s life had been a lie.
“I think it best if I don’t stay for dinner,” he said, his voice sounding like sand rubbed over rock. “Extend my regrets to your family. I’ll show myself out.”
Her heart urged her to call out to him, to stop him, but shattered promises kept her mute while the echo of his bootheels faded as her memories never had.
Long after Tom left, Lauren sat on the stone bench in the garden, surrounded by the roses that her mother loved to nurture. This small corner was her mother’s one indulgence, her one reminder of the farm life she’d left behind—to work in the garden, rooting around in the soil where the roses grew. Gardeners tended the vast majority of the property, but this one perfect spot was her mother’s realm. Lauren had spent many an hour sitting there, finding solace in the beauty her mother created, drawing comfort from the poignant fragrance surrounding her. She would miss this small corner of England when she left, but she still nee
ded to leave and quickly, before she was trapped into once again staying.
Tears burned her eyes. She’d not expected to miss anything about the horrid place. She’d hated it before she’d ever arrived, because it had taken her away from everything that she loved, from so many people she cared about. It had taken her away from Tom. Tom who had promised to come for her…
And was there finally only because England had called him to come.
She couldn’t deny that a part of her was glad to have seen him, to know he was safe and well. A part of her had even considered accepting his ludicrous proposition to teach him, not so much to get out of unbuttoning her bodice, but simply to have the opportunity to spend a bit of time with him. But she had to protect her heart. It was too vulnerable. She didn’t want to place herself in the position of having to leave him again—and she quite simply didn’t think she could stay there much longer without losing the final vestiges of herself.
Oh, she had adapted and adjusted and played the role of an aristocrat’s stepdaughter, but she’d never felt that she’d shown her true self to these people. She’d wanted to be accepted, and so she’d changed. But then so had her mother and her sisters. They would gather in the quiet of the garden, practicing their enunciation. It was more than replacing the drawl. It was learning the proper words, inflections, style.
When her stepfather had stumbled across them one afternoon, exchanging words they’d heard, trying to decipher their meanings, attempting to use them correctly…a look of regret so incredibly profound had crossed his features that Lauren had been certain he would put them all on a ship and send them back to Texas. Instead, he’d hired a series of tutors to teach them diction, etiquette, walking, dancing, riding, dining, piano, singing, painting, and letter writing. No conceivable aspect of their behavior was left unschooled.
Tom wanted her to teach him what he needed to know. The man had no idea what all was involved. It would take months. Dear God, it could take years. He was brash and bold, a man of uncultured habits and wicked temptations.
And a part of her had no desire whatsoever to see him tamed.
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