A Little Time in Texas

by Joan Johnston

  She fidgeted nervously as Mr. Collinsworth continued his silent examination of the drawing.

  At last he said, “I’m not sure exactly what I’m going to be able to teach you in this drawing class, Ms. Taylor. You seem to have an extraordinary grasp of composition and texture, and especially of light and shadow. Once again, your work leaps right off the page, as though you were actually there with this woman in the nineteenth century.”

  That’s because I was! Angel thought. “Thank you, Mr. Collinsworth,” she said.

  “Have you ever exhibited any of your work?”

  Everything Angel had ever drawn had been ruined along with her rucksack. She simply answered, “No.”

  “Would you like to? If you can do pen and ink drawings like this, I know a gallery in Houston that might be interested in presenting a collection of your work.”

  Angel smiled, unaware of the effect her shining eyes were having on Mr. Collinsworth. “Thank you. I would appreciate that.”

  “Fine. We’ll go get a cup of coffee after class tonight and plan your future—artistically speaking, of course,” he added with a teasing wink.

  Angel found his forwardness a contrast to the almost shy, respectful way a man in the past would have treated a respectable woman. However, seeing as how she was supposedly in the market for a husband, having coffee would allow her to give Mr. Collinsworth a good looking over.

  Not that she really intended to marry anybody. She was just humoring Dallas. He had told her at breakfast that if she didn’t start choosing some men on her own, he would pick the gents to court her.

  That had started another argument between them, which she had won when Dallas had to abandon the field to go to work. He had promised—threatened—to pick up where he’d left off when he got home that evening.

  The problem was that of all the men Angel had ever met, past and present, Dallas was the one who fit her image of a man worth marrying. Whenever she got near him she felt tense and excited. Maybe it was the fact he was a Texas Ranger, a breed of men known as much for their ruthlessness as for their sense of honor. The heck of it was, she didn’t want to be attracted to Dallas. He had sworn over eggs and toast that he wasn’t the marrying kind.

  So maybe having a cup of coffee with Mr. Collinsworth wasn’t such a bad idea after all.

  Dallas rubbed the back of his neck, trying to ease the tension. The rustling investigation in Hondo was complicated by the fact that one of the local lawmen was related to one of the complaining parties. That’s where the Texas Rangers usually came in. Their reputation was above reproach.

  Dallas realized to his chagrin that he was looking forward to coming home, not so he could be alone, but because Angel was there. During the past three weeks since he had gone back to work, this new attitude had crept up on him. If he didn’t do something soon to get Angel out of his house and out of his life, he was afraid he would end up asking her to stay forever.

  His lips curled cynically. Not that there was any such thing as forever with a woman. Dallas wondered whether it might not be worth the heartache down the road to have a woman like Angel for a wife. Then he remembered the gray pallor of his father’s face after reading the Dear John letter from his mother, and he sobered. There was no sense fooling himself. No woman was worth enduring that kind of pain.

  He had reconsidered the idea of setting Angel up in an apartment, but realized there were too many pitfalls for her living in the unfamiliar future. Besides, he wanted to make sure some scoundrel didn’t take advantage of her naiveté. She deserved his protection until another man came along to take over the job. Not that Angel appreciated his consideration. She had told him in no uncertain terms, that she could take care of herself! Sometimes she sounded an awful lot like a twentieth-century woman.

  Nonetheless, Dallas had racked his brain trying to think of men with whom he could pair Angel and had come up with only a few choices. Adam Philips was one of them. Dallas planned to approach Adam tonight on the way home to see whether the good doctor might be interested in getting to know Angel Taylor a little better.

  As Dallas drove over the cattle guard onto Lazy S property, he tugged his Stetson down to shadow his worried eyes. With his mouth set in a firm line, he pulled his pickup—Angel had his car—up to the front of the U-shaped adobe house.

  Adam looked surprised to see him, as well he should. Dallas didn’t usually go visiting without an invitation.

  “What can I do for you?” Adam said as he held the screen door so Dallas could come in. “Is Angel all right?”

  Dallas cleared his throat and thrust his hands in the back pockets of his jeans. “She’s fine. But she’s what brought me here.”

  “Have a seat. I’ll get you a drink.” Adam went to a bar in one corner of the living room and poured Dallas a short shot of whiskey, straight up. He poured himself a brandy. When they were both settled in two heavy Mediterranean chairs facing the crackling fire in a stone fireplace, Adam asked, “Want to tell me what this is all about?”

  Dallas took a sip of whiskey and waited for it to warm his insides. He rested his forearms on his thighs and stared into the licking flames. That’s what Angel did to him, licked at his insides like flame that was going to burn him up if he didn’t escape. He rubbed the whiskey glass with his thumbs, took a drink and said, “I was wondering if you might be interested in getting to know Angel Taylor a little better.”

  “Sure,” Adam said. “Why don’t you two come over for dinner on Sunday and—”

  “No.” Dallas leaned back in the massive chair and crossed one boot over the other knee. A flush burned its way up his neck, and he took another sip of whiskey—as if that was going to ease his discomfort. There was nothing to do but blurt it out. “I meant, would you be interested in dating Angel?”

  Adam obviously was caught off guard. “She’s certainly a beautiful woman, but…”

  “But?” Dallas said aggressively.

  “I thought you wanted her for yourself.”

  Dallas grimaced. “Not hardly. Although I do feel responsible for her. I wouldn’t want you taking advantage of her.”

  Adam quirked a brow. “Would that by any chance include not sleeping with her?”

  “You’re damned right, it would! Angel isn’t like that. Besides, she’d probably cut your heart out if you tried,” Dallas added with a boyish grin.

  “What’s the catch?” Adam asked.

  “No catch.”

  “Then why don’t you want her for yourself?”

  “Angel’s the marrying kind,” Dallas said, as though that explained everything. And because Adam knew about his mother, it did.

  Adam pondered for a moment before he said, “I have to admit I find her attractive. Sure. Why not?”

  “When?”

  “I’ll think about it and give Angel a call,” Adam said pointedly.

  Dallas knew he was being told to butt out. He had opened the door, now he had to get out of the way so Adam could come on through it. He rose and set the empty whiskey glass on a nearby table. “I’ll be seeing you.”

  Adam nodded goodbye as Dallas let himself out.

  Dallas had done what he had to do, but he didn’t feel good about it. By the time he got home, he felt sick to his stomach. His agitation got worse when he discovered the house was dark. Angel should have been home from class an hour ago. Where was she?

  As he let himself into the empty house, he realized how lonely it felt. He had never noticed the loneliness before. The place was so quiet. There were signs everywhere of Angel’s absence.

  She wasn’t the neatest roommate he’d ever had.

  An unfinished Monopoly game was spread out on the trestle table. The sweatshirt she had worn last night was draped across the sofa. Copies of every women’s magazine she could find were interspersed with his men’s magazines across the hardwood floor.

  His whole house smelled like her.

  He identified the lingering scent of the perfume she wore. It was a dark, musky
scent, heavier that he would have expected her to choose. Perhaps she had chosen it specifically because it was stronger, more earthy, more primitive. He felt his body tighten. She was getting to him, and she wasn’t even here!

  She disliked using modern mechanical devices.

  Dallas went to the phone answering machine to see if she had left him a message. There was a call from the lawman in Hondo asking him to come early on Monday morning and join him for breakfast, but nothing from Angel. What was keeping her? He was beginning to get concerned.

  But there was nothing wrong with her appreciation of the variety of foods available.

  He went into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator, but realized he wasn’t hungry—not for food, anyway. Signs of Angel were there, too. The more exotic something was, the more she liked it. So he found cranberry instead of orange juice, papayas instead of apples.

  She liked modern country music; it reminded her of the past.

  He wandered into the living room and turned on the radio. A Willie Nelson tune, something woeful about a woman leaving her man, only made him more anxious.

  She said she didn’t intend to date anybody, but what if she had changed her mind? What if she was with some other man right now?

  “You’re being ridiculous,” he told himself. “There are a dozen good reasons why she could be late getting home. Stop worrying like a hen with one chick!”

  He pulled the snaps free on his white-yoked western shirt, intending to take a shower. He had already started the water running when he realized there were also a dozen things that could have gone wrong. Angel might have had a flat tire. Of course he’d taught her how to change it, but what if she forgot something? What if she had run out of gas? What if she’d had engine trouble?

  None of those possibilities were probable. Probably class had just run late. Dallas wasn’t thinking like a rational man. The next “what ifs” that crossed his mind had him shutting off the water and retrieving his shirt from the bathroom rack where he’d flung it.

  What if she had decided to go out for a drink with someone after class? She had no idea how fast the modern American male moved in on a woman. She was a lamb in a den of wolves. He had to find her!

  Her car wasn’t stalled anywhere on the road between the junior college and home. He knew class wasn’t running late, because the art building was black as Hades. That meant she must have gone somewhere—with some man?—after class.

  Dallas ran through the likely places to get an alcoholic drink in Uvalde. There weren’t many. He checked them all and came up blank. Maybe by now she had gone home. He drove to the nearest phone, called home…and got the answering machine.

  Coffee. That’s where she’d gone. To get a cup of coffee. He checked the most likely location, a motel with a café right on the main drag into town.

  He found his car in the parking lot.

  Dallas walked into the Bluebird Café as though he had just stopped by on his way home from Hondo for a cup of coffee and a piece of buttermilk pie. He let the waitress, Mary Jo Williams, seat him by the window in front and pour his coffee. Angel was sitting at the rear of the café with a man whose back was to Dallas, but whom he had already identified as Ray Collinsworth.

  Angel saw Dallas the moment he came in and knew he had seen her, as well. Why hadn’t he come back to greet her? Why was he sitting by the window, pretending she didn’t exist?

  “So my wife and I decided to get a divorce,” Ray Collinsworth said.

  Angel knew from reading how prevalent divorce was in the late 1900s, but it still shocked her. “Wasn’t there any way you could work out your problems?”

  He shrugged. “Bobbie Sue wanted to live in the big city. Uvalde’s growing, but it’s still a small town compared to Dallas.”

  “Why didn’t you just go with her?” Angel asked.

  “My roots are here. So’s my family. There’s nothing in Dallas I want.”

  “Except Bobbie Sue,” Angel said.

  “Yeah, well, she’s history now,” Ray said. “I want to move on with my life. Start dating again. Which is one of the reasons I asked you to have coffee with me. I admire your talent, Angel. Whatever does or doesn’t happen between us, I’ll do whatever I can to make sure you get a gallery showing in Houston. But I’d like to see you outside of class, if you’d be interested.”

  “She wouldn’t.”

  Ray Collinsworth looked over his shoulder and froze at the forbidding sight that greeted him. “What are you doing here, Dallas?”

  “Angel lives with me.”

  Ray swallowed hard. “I didn’t know.”

  “Now you do.”

  “I was just leaving,” Ray said. “Good night, Angel, uh, Ms. Taylor.” He grabbed the check and started to edge past Dallas.

  Dallas took the check from between Ray’s fingers. “I take care of Angel.”

  Ray gulped, nodded and fled.

  The instant the other man was gone, Dallas slid into the booth across from Angel.

  Angel had watched Dallas’s performance with astonishment first and then with growing anger. “Nobody takes care of me, Ranger,” she said in a voice that shook. “I take care of myself!”

  “I could see how well you were taking care of yourself,” Dallas retorted. “Another second and Ray Collinsworth would have had you agreeing to anything he suggested—and we both know what he’d suggest.”

  “That’s my choice to make,” she insisted. “Not yours.”

  “Ray’s wife left him with three kids,” Dallas said. “He’s spent the past year looking for someone to be a mother for them.”

  “He told me about his children. They sounded delightful.”

  Dallas snorted. “Yeah. Delightful little monsters.”

  “Children are what you expect them to be,” she said.

  “Are you speaking with the voice of experience?”

  “Belinda had a daughter, Penny. Before Penny died of pneumonia, I used to take care of her when Belinda was…busy. Children don’t ask for much. And we give them too little.”

  “If you like kids so much, maybe I can talk you into going with me tomorrow to visit Cale’s widow and his two sons.”

  Dallas didn’t hear the anguish in his voice when he mentioned Cale’s family. Angel did. There could be no question of her response. “I’ll be glad to go with you. Do they live nearby?”

  “Cale’s ranch is south of Uvalde. It’s been in his family for generations. His wife, Honey, is having a hard time holding things together. I thought I’d go by and see if there’s anything I can do to help out.”

  “What time do we leave?”

  “Early. We’d best be getting home. I’ll follow you.”

  “What if I’m not ready to leave?” Angel said, irked that he was ordering her around again.

  “I’ll wait until you are,” he said flatly.

  Angel made a face. “Of all the hickory-headed—”

  “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names—”

  Angel laughed. “All right. Let’s go!” As she rose, Dallas put a hand under her elbow to lead her out of the cafe. Even that little touch was enough to sensitize her to his presence—and remind her that while he might want her in bed, he didn’t want any kind of permanent relationship with her.

  When they reached the register, she slipped the check out of his hand and said, “I’ll pay.”

  “But—”

  She raised a brow and said, “Do you, or don’t you want me to be a twentieth-century woman?”

  “Pay the check,” he said.

  Dallas shook his head at the smug look on Angel’s face as she pulled the necessary money out of her pocket—money she’d won from him playing poker—and slapped it on the counter. She didn’t wait for him, simply got into his car and took off toward home.

  By the time he parked his pickup in the driveway and got inside the house, she was already in her bedroom.

  “What time should I set my alarm?” Angel called to him through the door.r />
  “How about 7:00 a.m.?”

  “Fine. I—”

  The jarring ring of the phone interrupted Angel. She let Dallas answer it, since no one she knew would be calling her.

  “It’s for you,” he said a second later. “Adam Philips.”

  Now that Adam had called, Dallas was having all kinds of second thoughts. Maybe he was making a mistake trying to rush Angel into a relationship. Maybe he ought to let things happen in their own good time. He recognized the source of his problem when Angel stepped out of his bedroom wearing one of the shapeless T-shirts he’d bought for her. Jealousy. In fact, he was feeling green as buffalo grass.

  “Here.” He thrust the phone into her hands, anxious to be away from her before he did something he would regret. Like hanging up the damned phone and pulling her into his arms and kissing her the way he’d been wanting to for the past two hours since he’d first seen her sitting across from Ray Collinsworth.

  Angel had no idea why Dallas was so upset. She took the phone, expecting some sort of bad news. “Hello?”

  “Hi, Angel,” Adam said. He laughed. “That has a nice sound to it. Hi, Angel,” he said again. “I wondered if you’d like to go tubing on the Frio River with me tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow?” She looked up and saw Dallas glaring at her from the kitchen. “I’m afraid not. I have plans tomorrow.”

  “How about Sunday, then?”

  “Sunday would be fine. What time?”

  “I’ll pick you up about nine. I’ll bring a picnic and we’ll make a day of it. See you Sunday.”

  Angel held the phone to her ear for a moment before she hung up. “Adam wants to take me tubing on the Frio.”

  “I heard.”

  “I’m going.”

  “I heard.”

  “You don’t have any objections?”

  “Adam Philips is a fine man. You could do worse.”

  “I wonder why he suddenly called up out of the blue like that?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Dallas said.

  The look on his face said otherwise. “Did you say anything to Adam about asking me out?” she asked in a calm, controlled voice.