A Little Time in Texas (10 page)

“They what?” Angel asked, her whole body tensed.

“They do what comes naturally.”

“Are you saying an unmarried woman can kiss…and touch…and even lie with a man, and nobody will think the worst of her.”

Dallas trembled at the thought of Angel’s mouth and hands on him, of the two of them lying naked together. “Yes.”

“What if I want the courting words…and the respectful distance?” she asked soberly.

Dallas muttered an explicit four-letter word. She deserved the courting words and the respectful distance, didn’t she? Was it her fault she’d been flung into a world where virginity until marriage was the exception, rather than the rule? But if that was the way she felt, she was sitting on a keg of dynamite living with him. Because he wasn’t a marrying man, and he was having a helluva time keeping his distance.

He couldn’t move her out into her own apartment; he’d spend too much time worrying about her. The only way he would feel comfortable was if he turned her over to someone else who cared about her welfare as much as he did. Suddenly he realized there was a way to solve both their problems—to give her a courting man and himself a little peace and quiet.

“What we need to do, Angel,” he announced at last, “is find you a husband.”

T
he piece of artists’ charcoal in Angel’s hand moved almost with a will of its own over the paper before her. The junior college art instructor, Mr. Collinsworth, had said, “Choose a subject to draw that’s close to you, something you’ve seen or done.” Over the past three weeks of classes, Angel had done a series of drawings. The latest was a sketch of Belinda as she had appeared the last time Angel had seen her.

The woman taking shape in charcoal looked hard, her eyes disillusioned, her mouth flattened by disappointment, her chin thrust in defiance. Yet it was apparent she was physically young, her skin soft, her lashes long and frilled, her face a sweet, nicely shaped heart. Her hair was coiled up primly on top of her head, but lush tendrils dripped from her temples.

Her striped silk and taffeta dress was straight from the latest
Godey’s Lady’s Book,
but the breasts beneath the fabric strained for freedom. Though you couldn’t tell it in charcoal, Angel re
membered the dress had been a deep red with tiny black pin stripes. The woman held a delicate parasol across her shoulder, with black fringe that the wind moved in a ripple, like a wave. Belinda’s fingerless mesh glove revealed broken and ragged fingernails.

In the background Angel had drawn the exterior of the seedy-looking house where Belinda worked. Where she had met Jake Dillon. Where she had spent the last days of her life.

It was a portrait of opposites: youth and age, constraint and abandonment, propriety and a prostitute. That’s what Angel mentally named the drawing when she was done.

She was aware of the teacher standing behind her, observing her finished sketch on the easel. Angel had done a lot of pencil sketches to fill her spare time as she wandered across Texas, but she had shown them to no one. It was hard to let the teacher see what she had done, because Angel always put a part of herself on paper.

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 look
ing 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 re
alized 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 refrig
erator, 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 butter
milk 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.”