Nora. Diana Palmer

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СКАЧАТЬ kissed you,” he reminded her curtly. “How can you still be so formal with me?”

      She cleared her throat and folded her hands at her waist. “You embarrass me.”

      “My name is Callaway,” he persisted. “Usually I’m called Cal.”

      She smiled. “It suits you.”

      “What is Nora short for?”

      “Eleanor,” she replied.

      “Eleanor.” It sounded right on his tongue. He smiled as he studied her in the fading light. “You shouldn’t be here. The Tremaynes are very conventional people, and so, I think, are you.”

      Her blue eyes searched his face. “You are not.”

      He shrugged. “I have been a rake, and in some ways, I still am. I make my own rules.” His eyes narrowed and he spoke involuntarily. “While you are a slave to society’s rules, Eleanor.”

      Her name sounded magical on his lips. She hardly heard what he was saying. She wanted to touch him, to hold him. He made her think of beginnings, of pale green buds on trees in early spring. These were feelings that she had never before experienced, and she coveted them. But he was a cowboy. She couldn’t imagine what her parents would think if she wrote that she had become infatuated with a working man, with a hired hand. They would have a fit. So would her aunt Helen. Just the fact of speaking with him, alone like this, could cost him his job. Why had she not realized it?

      “I must go in,” she said uneasily. “It would not please my people to find me here with you like this.”

      His fingers caught hers and soothed them, eased between them. The contact was shocking. He made a rough sound deep in his throat and had to fight the urge to bring her body into his and kiss her until he made her lips sore. It was in his eyes, that terrible need. It had been a long time since he’d had a woman; surely that was the reason he reacted so violently to her!

      He let go of her hand abruptly and moved back. “It is late.”

      “Yes. Good night, Mr. Barton.”

      He nodded. He turned and walked away, leaving her staring after him.

      Aunt Helen was standing on the porch, looking worried when Nora came up the steps.

      “Nora, you should not be outside so late,” she said gently. “It looks bad.”

      “I was only getting a breath of air,” Nora said, avoiding the older woman’s eyes. “It is so warm….”

      “I see.” Helen smiled. “Indeed it is. My dear, there was the most terrible story in the paper today, about a family of missionaries massacred in China, with their little children. What a terrible world it is becoming!”

      “Yes, indeed,” Nora replied. “How nice that we are safe here in southern Texas.”

      THAT SATURDAY there was a storm. Cal and the other men were out getting the livestock seen to, while the water rose to unbelievable levels and tore down fences. They were kept busy all day, and when they came in late that afternoon, they looked like mud men.

      Cal came up onto the porch, apologizing to Helen and the women for his appearance.

      “Chester wanted you to know that he’s all right,” he said without preamble, wiping a grimy sleeve over his dirty face. “We had to pull cattle out of the mud all afternoon, and we lost a few head in the flood. Chester’s gone with two of the other men over to Potter’s place, to see if he and his wife are all right. Their house is close to the river.”

      “Yes, I know,” Helen said worriedly. “What an odd storm, to come out of nowhere like this. They have said that in Arizona there have been unusual changes in the weather, causing many people to become ill. Imagine, and it is only the tenth of September!”

      Cal looked uneasy. “The weather has been very odd,” he agreed. “I’d like to know if things are this bad along the coast.” He didn’t add that his brother was there and he was concerned.

      “We will know soon enough, I suppose,” Helen said. “Do go and have your meal, Mr. Barton, you look so tired.”

      He smiled wanly, glancing at Nora. “None of us has had much rest. Chester will be home soon, I’m certain.”

      “Thank you for coming to tell us.”

      He nodded wearily and turned toward the bunkhouse. Nora had to bite her lip not to call after him. If she had the right, she would tuck him up in bed and look after him. Imagine, she told herself, how silly it would sound if she voiced such a longing. She moved back into the house without saying a word.

      It wasn’t until Monday that the news reached Tyler Junction about the incredible tragedy in Galveston. A hurricane had come ashore in the seaside city about midmorning the previous Saturday, submerging the entire city underwater. Galveston was almost totally destroyed, and early estimates were that thousands of people had been killed.

      WHEN CAL HEARD THIS, he was on his horse and gone before anyone had a chance to question him. It was assumed that he was going to Galveston to help with rescue efforts. No one knew that he had a brother visiting there or that he was terrified that Alan might be among the dead. He didn’t cable home on the way. If no one in El Paso heard about the tragedy for a few days, he might have something to tell his family before they knew of Alan’s danger.

      He managed to get on a train heading toward Galveston, but when he got to the city, all lines were down and the tracks were destroyed. He had to borrow a horse from a nearby ranch to get into the city. What he saw would give him nightmares for years afterward.

      It wasn’t until he saw the devastation firsthand that he realized how impossible it would be to find his brother among the dead. Among the smashed, piled-up buildings of the city, there were more pitiful broken and mangled bodies than he’d ever seen in his life, even in the Spanish-American War. He took it for a few hours, trying to do what he could to help, and then he couldn’t take it anymore. He couldn’t bear the thought of his brother in that tangle of lifelessness. He rode out of town without looking back, sick at heart and soul. A saint would have a hard time reconciling what he’d just seen with any sort of divine love.

      Disillusioned, shocked, grief-stricken, he couldn’t bring himself to go back to the Tremayne ranch just yet. He rode until he found a depot with a train bound for Baton Rouge, with no clear idea of where he would go after that.

      He booked a room in a hotel where his family usually stayed when they traveled here on business and collapsed on the bed. He lay in bed until dawn and went down to breakfast bleary-eyed and exhausted. He wondered if he would ever sleep again.

      Memories of his brother and their lives together had tormented him. He and Alan had never been as close as he and King had, but Alan was very special to him, just the same. It had been Alan who’d continued to encourage him about the oil business, even as he teased him about dry holes. The boy had inspired him to do the things he wanted to do, and he was going to miss him terribly. He wondered how he would manage….

      Morose, dead-spirited, he didn’t hear the door of his room open and barely felt the hard clap of a hand on his shoulder. “Well, what are you doing here, for God’s sake? I’ve just gotten in from a little town back on the bayous, and saw your name on the register. I was visiting СКАЧАТЬ