Texas Born. Diana Palmer

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      “Cool.”

      He started the truck and drove down the road to the house he owned. It wasn’t far, just about a half mile. It was a ranch house, set back off the road. There were oceans of flowers blooming around it in the summer, planted by the previous owner, Mrs. Eller, who had died. Of course, it was still just February, and very cold. There were no flowers here now.

      “Mrs. Eller loved flowers.”

      “Excuse me?”

      “She lived here all her life,” she told him, smiling as they drove up to the front porch. “Her husband worked as a deputy sheriff. They had a son in the military, but he was killed overseas. Her husband died soon afterward. She planted so many flowers that you could never even see the house. I used to come over and visit her when I was little, with my grandfather.”

      “Your people are from here?”

      “Oh, yes. For three generations. Daddy went to medical school in Georgia and then he set up a practice in cardiology in San Antonio. We lived there. But I spent every summer here with my grandparents while they were alive. Daddy kept the place up, after, and it was like a vacation home while Mama was alive.” She swallowed. That loss had been harsh. “We still had everything, even the furniture, when Daddy decided to move us down here and take early retirement. She hated it from the first time she saw it.” Her face hardened. “She’s selling it. My stepmother, I mean. She’s already talked about it.”

      He drew in a breath. He knew he was going to regret this. He got out, opened the passenger door and waited for her to get out. He led the way into the house, seated her in the kitchen and pulled out a pitcher of iced tea. When he had it in glasses, he sat down at the table with her.

      “Go ahead,” he invited. “Get it off your chest.”

      “It’s not your problem...”

      “You involved me in an attempted suicide,” he said with a droll look. “That makes it my problem.”

      She grimaced. “I’m really sorry, Mr. Brandon....”

      “Gabriel.”

      She hesitated.

      He raised an eyebrow. “I’m not that old,” he pointed out.

      She managed a shy smile. “Okay.”

      He cocked his head. “Say it,” he said, and his liquid black eyes stared unblinking into hers.

      She felt her heart drop into her shoes. She swallowed down a hot wave of delight and hoped it didn’t show. “Ga...Gabriel,” she obliged.

      His face seemed to soften. Just a little. He smiled, showing beautiful white teeth. “That’s better.”

      She flushed. “I’m not...comfortable with men,” she blurted out.

      His eyes narrowed on her face, her averted eyes. “Does your stepmother have a boyfriend?”

      She swallowed, hard. The glass in her hand trembled.

      He took the glass from her and put it on the table. “Tell me.”

      It all poured out. Finding Roberta in Bert’s arms just after the funeral, finding them on the couch together that day, the way Bert looked and her and tried to touch her, the visit from her minister...

      “And I thought my life was complicated,” he said heavily. He shook his head. “I’d forgotten what it was like to be young and at the mercy of older people.”

      She studied him quietly. The expression on his face was...odd.

      “You know,” she said softly. “You understand.”

      “I had a stepfather,” he said through his teeth. “He was always after my sister. She was very pretty, almost fourteen. I was a few years older, and I was bigger than he was. Our mother loved him, God knew why. We’d moved back to Texas because the international company he worked for promoted him and he had to go to Dallas for the job. One day I heard my sister scream. I went into her room, and there he was. He’d tried to...” He stopped. His face was like stone. “My mother had to get a neighbor to pull me off him. After that, after she knew what had been going on, she still defended him. I was arrested, but the public defender got an earful. He spoke to my sister. My stepfather was arrested, charged, tried. My mother stood by him, the whole time. My sister was victimized by the defense attorney, after what she’d already suffered at our stepfather’s hands. She was so traumatized by the experience that she doesn’t even date.”

      She winced. One small hand went shyly to cover his clenched fist on the table. “I’m so sorry.”

      He seemed to mentally shake himself, as if he’d been locked into the past. He met her soft, concerned gaze. His big hand turned, curled around hers. “I’ve never spoken of it, until now.”

      “Maybe sometimes it’s good to share problems. Dark memories aren’t so bad when you force them into the light.”

      “Seventeen going on thirty?” he mused, smiling at her. It didn’t occur to her to wonder how he knew her age.

      She smiled. “There are always people who are in worse shape than you are. My friend Billy has an alcoholic father who beats him and his mother. The police are over there all the time, but his mother will never press charges. Sheriff Carson says the next time, he’s going to jail, even if he has to press charges himself.”

      “Good for the sheriff.”

      “What happened, after the trial?” she prodded gently.

      He curled his fingers around Michelle’s, as if he enjoyed their soft comfort. She might have been fascinated to know that he’d never shared these memories with any other woman, and that, as a rule, he hated having people touch him.

      “He went to jail for child abuse,” he said. “My mother was there every visiting day.”

      “No, what happened to you and your sister?”

      “My mother refused to have us in the house with her. We were going to be placed in foster homes. The public defender had a maiden aunt, childless, who was suicidal. Her problems weren’t so terrible, but she tended to depression and she let them take her almost over the edge. So he thought we might be able to help each other. We went to live with Aunt Maude.” He chuckled. “She was not what you think of as anybody’s maiden aunt. She drove a Jaguar, smoked like a furnace, could drink any grown man under the table, loved bingo parties and cooked like a gourmet. Oh, and she spoke about twenty languages. In her youth, she was in the army and mustered out as a sergeant.”

      “Wow,” she exclaimed. “She must have been fascinating to live with.”

      “She was. And she was rich. She spoiled us rotten. She got my sister into therapy, for a while at least, and me into the army right after I graduated.” He smiled. “She was nuts about Christmas. We had trees that bent at the ceiling, and the limbs groaned under all the decorations. She’d go out and invite every street person she could find over to eat with us.” His face sobered. “She said she’d seen foreign countries where the poor were treated better than they were here. Ironically, it was one of the same people she invited to Christmas СКАЧАТЬ