Lorraine Heath Read Online Free

hadn’t met him.
    Now he was having to think of an apology.
    He just wanted to be back at the ranch, where he could walk alone and think alone. He didn’t want to answer questions, or consider another’s feelings, or remove his hat.
    With a heavy sigh, he removed his hat, knocked lightly on her door, and waited, the apology waiting with him, ready to be spoken as soon as she opened the door.
    Only she didn’t open the door.
    She was either angrier than he figured or she’d left. If she’d left, he’d be the one with four bullets in his hide because Dallas always hit what he aimed at.
    Earlier, without thinking, he’d placed the key to her room in his pocket, leaving her without a way to lock her door. What if someone had stolen her? Women were rare … so rare …
    He knocked a little harder. “Miss Carson?”
    He pressed his good ear to the door. The blast that had torn through the left side of his face had taken his hearing from that side as well. He heard nothing but silence on the other side of the door.
    Gingerly, he opened the door and peered inside. The late-afternoon sun streamed through the window, bathing the woman in its honeyed glow. Curled on the bed, asleep, she looked so young, so innocent, so unworthy of his temper.
    He slipped inside and quietly closed the door. He crossed the room, set his saddlebags on the floor, and sat in the plush velvet chair beside the bed. He dug his elbows into his thighs and leaned forward.
    Dear God, but she was lovely, like a spring sunrise tempting the flowers to unfurl their petals. Her pale lashes rested on her pink-tinged cheeks. Her lips, even in sleep, curved into the barest hint of a smile.
    He had spotted her right off, as soon as she’d arrived at the door of the railway car. Beneath that godawful ugly hat, the sun had glinted off hair that looked as though it had been woven from moonbeams. The smile she had given the porter as he’d helped her down the steps—even at a distance—had knocked the breath out of Houston.
    He still wasn’t breathing right. Every time he looked at her, his gut clenched as though he’d received a quick kick from a wild mustang.
    She wasn’t at all what he’d expected of a heart-and-hand woman. He’d expected her to look like an old shirt, washed so many times that it had lost its color and the strength of its threads. He knew women like that. Women who had traveled rough roads, become hard and coarse themselves, with harsh laughter and smiles that were too bright to be sincere. Women who knew better than to trust.
    But Amelia Carson did trust. She was a heart-in-her-eyes woman. Everything she thought, everything she felt reflected clearly in her eyes. In her green, green eyes.
    The warm depths reminded him of fields of clover he’d run through as a boy. Barefoot. The clover had resembled velvet caressing his rough soles. For a brief moment, he actually relished the thought of holding her gaze.
    His brown eye could serve as the soil in which her green clover took root.
    What an idiotic notion! The next thing he knew he’d be spouting poetry. He shuddered at the thought. Wearing flowers and spouting poetry. His pa would have tanned his hide good for either one of those unmanly actions.
    He watched her sleep until the final rays of the sun gave way to the pale moonlight. He shivered as the chill of the night settled over him. Standing, he reached across the woman and folded the blankets over her. A warmth suffused him, and he imagined drawing the blankets over her every night for the rest of his life.
    Only that privilege belonged to his brother. Houston had witnessed the document Dallas had drawn up, something as close to a marriage contract as he could arrange without the “I do’s.” For all practical purposes, Amelia Carson belonged to Dallas.
    Which was as it should be. Dallas had spent a month thumbing through the tattered magazine he’d found when they’d driven the cattle to Wichita, Kansas, in the spring of