Give Me Tonight(40)

"Hurt Russ?" He looked startled. "God Almighty, no. Of course not. What gave you that idea?"

"He trusts you more than he trusts anyone else. You're closer to him than anyone. You're in a good position to hurt him. "

Ben's face went blank, as if a mask had slipped into place. All his warmth fled in an instant. "I owe him my loyalty. He gave me a new start when I needed one, a chance to work hard and get paid well for it. And honor aside, I have practical reasons to justify his trust in me. Why should I bite the hand that feeds me? I'd be crazy to hurt him." He straightened away from her and tilted his head toward the house. "Come on. I'll walk you back." His lips curved in a humorless smile. "Did anyone ever tell you that you have a talent for spoiling a mood, Addie?"

"What kind of mood?"

Ben laughed, shaking his head, and he took her arm. "Sometimes—not often—Jeff Johnson has my sympa­thy. Come on."

4

THE BUGGY PULLED AWAY FROM THE MAIN HOUSE AS Watts clicked to the horse, and Caroline settled more comfortably in the wicker seat. "Caro, is this going to jolt you too much?" Adeline asked worriedly, fuss­ing with the pillows and sliding another one behind her back. "If it's at all dangerous for you to be going to town with me, I'II-"

"No, I'm not that far along yet. And I just have to get away from the ranch for a little while or I'll scream. Don't you remember how I was with Leah? I could go anywhere and do practically anything up to the last week. No, maybe you don't remember too well. You were just ten years old. Isn't it funny, that Mama had us ten years apart and I'm havin' this one ten years after Leah? She'll probably be a second mother to this baby just like I was to you. "

The two women spoke in near-whispers to keep from embarrassing Watts, the ranch hand who was driving them to town. Babies and childbirth were women's matters, ones that men liked to hear about as little as possible. If Watts heard anything they said, he didn't let on. He was a quiet man, a few years older than Addie, a little less than average height, but stocky and broad-shouldered. His dark blue eyes were often filled with equal parts of mischief and malice. Though he'd been perfectly polite, Addie was vaguely uncomfort­able whenever she spoke to him directly. He treated her with such overdone respect it almost smacked of contempt, and she had no idea why.

"Have you decided on the names for the baby yet?" she asked Caroline.

"If it's a boy, Russell. And if it's a girl, Sarah. After our great-grandmother."

"Yes," Addie said, feeling a lump of pleasure-pain in her throat. "That's a pretty name." That was the right name. Her mother's name. But she won't be my mother anymore. Not if I'm already here. Not if I'm Adeline Warner. What an intriguing thought. Maybe she would be around to see Sarah grow up, come to know her as she never had been able to before.

Every now and then Addie wondered still if she were in the middle of a dream. In this moment, as she looked into Caroline's pretty flushed face, she knew it was real. The sun on her back was real. The jostling of the buggy and the mounted figures of cowboys in the distance weren't the products of a dream. She couldn't deny what was in front of her eyes. But could she ever stop grieving for the loss of the life she had known?

It was difficult to know how she felt about the War­ners. She liked them, she felt a casual sort of affection for them all, but she certainly didn't have the kind of love for May and Russell that a daughter should have for her parents. Cade and Caroline were both likable, but she felt no strong attachment to either of them. She didn't know them.

"As soon as I have the baby, Peter and I are going to move our little family to North Carolina," Caroline said. "And I can hardly wait."

"Do you have to?" Addie protested. "North Car­olina's so far away."

"Mama's people already have a job lined up for him, and we'll get a real nice welcome from them. And I know Leah will love it there."

She won't. She'll come back to Texas someday. "Couldn't Peter do something in Dallas, or some­place closer? I know he doesn't like ranching, but there are other things in Texas he could—"

"It's Texas we want to move away from, Adeline. Oh, you look like Daddy did when I told him that! I'm just not a Texan at heart. I don't see the same things in it that the rest of y' all do, and neither does Peter. This land looks barren to me. It's desolate . . . lonely . . . and sometimes it's so boring I could die for want of something to do. Don't you think of it as a mournful place?"

Addie looked out over the endless plains of summer grass and tried to see it that way. But the sky was brilliant with sunshine, and her eye kept moving from red-orange clusters of Indian paintbrush to cotton­wood and mesquite trees. Further out were fields of yellow-eyed bluebonnets, rippling like a violet ocean when the wind blew. The men were working hard on the land, tending the cattle. This land, this life, held an irresistible attraction for them. Addie hadn't under­stood it before, but she was beginning to.

Any other place in the world would have been too crowded. Here the men had a huge expanse of range to ride, where they worked until they were bone-weary, and when their day was over they came back to the mess-house and the appetizing smells of sourdough bread and meat smoked over mesquite wood. If the night was warm, they brought their bedrolls and mat­tresses outside and slept under the open sky. The cow­boys didn't find this life unbearably lonely. It was as civilized as they could stand. And for the family there were weddings, picnics, barbecues, quiltings, dances, and shooting tournaments, almost no end of excuses to see people and call on neighbors if you got lonely for company.