As usual, I promise NEVER to leave you without an ending!! If I haven't posted for a bit, it's a crazy-life thing, not a lack of commitment. (Shameful confession- I canNOT spell "commitment" without looking the damn thing up.)
REMINDER: I write long stories (and TT2 is longer than average-- 45 chapters, 350-400 pages in regular-people-speak.) Many chapters don't have naughty bits, but those that do will be way more fun if you read the others, too! Also, although TT2 is a stand-alone novel, it takes place in the same family as Texas Trio, so you might want to read that one first! --Stefanie
--:--:--:--:--:--:-- Chapter 17 --:--:--:--:--:--:--
Becky collapsed against the high-backed copper tub in her sister's bathing room, where Catherine insisted she have a long, hot soak. Nanny would be back to check on her soon, but for now she was alone with her troubled thoughts.
She and Brody had arrived at the farmhouse just in time to prevent the departure of a search party twelve men strong. Catherine seemed to have taken Brody's subsequent explanation as gospel, but Becky wondered if Colt and Jem had been as trusting, or if Mr. Easton was being fitted for a coffin at this very minute.
Then again, Becky was beginning to wonder exactly where her brothers stood on the matter of Brody Easton's suit.
When she'd first divined the purpose of Brody's after-dinner visits to their porch, Becky hadn't been at all sure whose intentions she was foiling—if Colt and Jem were merely being overprotective and wary of any man in her vicinity, or if perhaps Brody was unaware of some matchmaking going on behind the scenes. After all, that would explain the looks she'd intercepted between Catherine and Nanny, or Cat and one of her husbands.
Eventually she realized her brother's extreme vigilance and Clancy's extreme hostility toward Brody made much more sense if one assumed Mr. Easton had spoken to Colt and Jeremiah of his intentions.
Becky sighed and sank lower in the tub. After being blackmailed by him earlier in the day, she should be praying for his swift demise, but she couldn't bring herself to hate him. When he'd returned to find her slumped on a rock, her skirt wet and her trousers in a heap, he'd collected them without comment. Expecting him to toss them behind a bush, Becky was surprised and oddly touched when he splashed back into the stream, squatted, and rinsed the sand from them, turning the pockets out to make sure he got it all. She lowered her face as he rose, squeezing the water from them.
Brody stuffed her trousers in one of his own saddlebags, explaining, "I'll keep these until I can get them back to you without drawing someone's attention."
She hadn't answered, and they hadn't spoken at all on the ride back to the house. The sun was sinking, and even with Mr. Easton's slicker, Becky was cold and nearly white with exhaustion by the time they arrived. Mr. Easton was off his horse and at her side before she had a chance to wonder how she'd find the strength to dismount. She'd merely leaned toward him, and he caught her about the waist as she toppled off, lifting her easily to the ground.
She'd forgotten to thank him before she went inside, Becky remembered as the steam penetrated her weary bones, collecting on her cheeks and lashes. She didn't know the proper form for thanking someone who'd blackmailed you, though. Perhaps a formal call to the bunkhouse with a basket of fresh bread. "Mr. Easton, please accept my eternal gratitude for your kind extortion."
Despite her fatigue, a tiny smile rose to Becky's lips, but she sobered almost immediately.
What in God's name was she going to do about Brody Easton?
Becky shifted in discomfort.
She'd always been so certain what she wanted—and what she didn't want.
Since escaping from Uncle Harrison, Becky had only wanted two things: freedom and purpose. She'd found both and was working toward a more concrete, more ambitious goal—confirming her theories about finding petroleum via shale—but Brody Easton was a dangerous distraction. Before his arrival, she'd been entirely focused on her studies and explorations, yet here she was letting a man who wasn't a relative keep her from her search. She might as well get married!
After spending a week sequestered in the house or peering from the windows in a pathetic attempt to avoid the man, she needed peace and quiet to settle her nerves.
She'd told Cat she wouldn't go riding alone anymore, but she'd broken her promise, and made a dozen other bad decisions in a row this morning after she'd woken in a funk.
She'd waited for her brothers to leave, donned her trousers—under a riding skirt, of course—and crept out before Cat and the children were awake, listening to that unseen band of shale calling her name. She'd narrowed her search to just three of the many folds cutting into the edge of the plateau. Today she'd planned to follow one of the streams which created those folds to its source in the hills, searching along the canyon's limestone walls for a band of darker stone.
Cantering across the open prairie made her problems seem tiny, and the steep walls rising around her blocked external worries, as her explorations always did. Except for a few hours around lunchtime, the hot Texas sun didn't make it to the floor of the canyons and arroyos she loved. The shade and whatever water remained in the brooks kept the air cool, alive with the movement of birds and insects as the world outside the canyon dozed.
Intent on finding the origin of the lost fish fossil, Becky was careful to keep an eye out for snakes among the rocks. A bite from a diamondback or cottonmouth might not kill her, but she didn't want to test her mass against the potency of one's poison, and there were more dangerous things out here in the bush than diamondbacks, anyway. Scorpions and coral snakes were much more venomous than rattlesnakes—at least the rattlers found in this part of Texas. She'd once read an article about a rattler found further west that was ten times as poisonous at the ones found here.
When the trail narrowed, she'd dismounted and gone to peek around the bend up ahead, just to see what was there before deciding whether to go on without Pepper or not. She hadn't taken her rifle or her pack because she was coming right back. That was what she planned to do, anyway, but fortune intervened and the path disappeared from under her feet. She'd been winded and stunned by the fall and irked to find herself lying in the sandy creek, but unhurt. She'd clambered to her feet and stumbled. One hurried step and one small splash later, she was trapped in quicksand.
She'd been there for several hours before Brody came upon her. She'd spent most of the time worrying, chiefly about Catherine worrying about her, but also about Catherine's reaction to Becky's broken promise, and Colt and Jem's reactions to what they considered her irresponsible behavior. On top of everything they were going to say about her clothing and her riding out alone, she was sure she'd be subject to a richly deserved lecture on the idiocy of leaving her rifle behind when she dismounted. If she'd had it with her, she could have signaled for help.
Better yet, she could have killed Brody, Becky mused hours later, in a bath which was soothing to her body, if not her mind.
All her window-peeping had been for naught: she hadn't seen Brody once. Nonetheless, she'd spent an inordinate amount of time dwelling on what had passed between them.
She'd been completely bested by one kiss. Becky thought she might have let him do whatever he wanted right there by the hen house—the sensations he caused had so easily supplanted lifelong principles in her besotted brain. And that was the most dangerous prospect of all, because, unlike all the boys she'd frozen into decency over the years, Becky had no natural immunity when it came to Mr. Easton.
She was curious about lying with a man and ached for Brody Easton to be that man, but what came after the bedding? Becky had no intention of giving up her freedom, so she couldn't marry him, but if she became pregnant, she wouldn't have a choice. Even if Brody turned out to be the sort of man who'd run away from his responsibility—which Becky didn't think he was—her older brothers wouldn't allow either of them to evade the matrimonial consequences of their actions.
With her nose nearly touching the water's surface, Becky huffed, her self-recriminations making tiny ripples in the bathwater.
