Be My Texas Valentine Read Online Free

She’d lived alone for three years before Samuel, a doctor serving with Terry’s Rangers, was home on leave and asked her to marry him. They’d married a day before he’d left to go back, and he’d laughed, trying to sound like her father as he said she’d have to move to town with him as soon as he returned.
    Only his body was all that came home months later and her father talked of her moving back even as he built Samuel’s coffin.
    “I’m not selling, or moving, Papa.” She wished she could add that she was happy where she was, but they both knew that wasn’t true. What her father didn’t understand was that she would be no happier in town. At least with all the work of the farm, she was usually too tired to even cry herself to sleep most nights, and when she did, there was no one a room away to hear her sorrow.
    As she climbed down, she patted her papa’s hand and said, “Thanks for making me go. I enjoyed the music.”
    “Was everyone nice to you tonight, dear? ’Cause if they weren’t, they’ll be rocking their babies in shoe boxes and be buried in a blanket when they die.”
    “Everyone was fine.”
    “And the cowboy who sat down next to you? He didn’t say nothing wrong, did he?”
    “No.” She thought of adding that he didn’t say anything much, but then she remembered the way he held her and decided it best not to talk about him at all.
    She went inside her little house and crawled into bed trying to remember exactly how it had felt to be held by someone again.

Chapter 3
    Brody Monroe stood in the moonless blackness by the corral for over an hour thinking that if he didn’t move, maybe, just maybe he could keep the memory of how Widow Allen had felt in his arms. Wind whirled around the barn as if trying to blow any feelings away.
    Finally, he turned and headed to the bunkhouse. Within three steps, he tripped over a downed fence post. Like a tumbleweed, he rolled in the dirt until he hit the barn wall.
    Brody swore at himself for being so careless. He was still dusting himself off when he stepped into the bunkhouse five minutes later.
    Most of the men were still up talking about the dance. Earl Timmons glanced at him. “See you survived meeting the widow.”
    Brody nodded once and kept walking.
    “Lucky you didn’t touch her, Yank, or we’d be picking up the pieces of you. I once heard a fellow say he got a blister the size of a silver dollar on his hand from just pointing at her.”
    “He wouldn’t touch her,” one of the men behind Brody commented. “He don’t even shake hands if he can help it. The Yank don’t have a friendly bone in his body.”
    Brody kept walking. They didn’t need him there to continue talking about him. He pulled off his good clothes and crawled into his bunk. For once, it was a long time before sleep found him.
    As the days passed, he tried to stop thinking of the woman he’d met at the dance, but she was never far from his thoughts. In a strange kind of way, she pushed away the loneliness he’d grown so accustomed to. She had a pride about her that he admired. What people said about her didn’t seem too important.
    She wasn’t his, she never would be, but a part of her, for a moment in time, had been his, and one memory was enough to build daydreams on even though he knew there would never be more. It probably would have frightened her to know how few times in his life he’d held a woman. Those experiences had been before the war, and they seemed more a dream than real. After the war the only kind of woman who’d pay a drifter any notice wasn’t the kind of woman Brody wanted to hold.
    Once, months after the war, he’d found a short job that had left him with money in his pocket. He’d thought about buying a three-dollar whore for the night, but he’d elected to build a supply of food instead. Now, thinking about holding Mrs. Allen, he was glad her memory didn’t have to blend with one he’d bought.
    He’d overheard someone mention the