The Bluest Eyes in Texas. Marilyn Pappano

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      “Are we stopping for breakfast?” she asked as they settled in their respective seats.

      “I don’t eat breakfast.”

      She did, but she wasn’t about to insist on it. If he wanted to be inconsiderate, let him. Eventually they would have to stop for gas, and when they did, she would stock up on munchies to get her through the quirks of his schedule.

      The morning air was cool enough that they didn’t need the windows down more than a few inches, so she took advantage of the relative calm to French braid her hair. It was a job best done by someone else, in front of a mirror and not in the confines of a small car, but at last she was satisfied with the results, at least from the front. She couldn’t see how the back looked and decided it didn’t matter.

      “You could just cut it,” Logan said when she was finally finished.

      “Or, gee, you could have given me five minutes to dry it.”

      He shrugged. “Thirty minutes is plenty of time to shower and make yourself presentable. It’s not as if you were ugly to start.”

      Her gaze narrowed as she looked at him, then she offered a simpering smile. “Why, thank you for that gracious compliment, Mr. Marshall.”

      Wonder of wonders, he actually shifted uncomfortably and color darkened his face. “I wasn’t offering a compliment—just stating the facts.”

      She dropped the comb in her purse, then tilted her head back. It was a lovely morning. She’d slept well; her store of patience wasn’t dribbling away like sand in an hourglass—yet—and she’d made Logan Marshall blush. Things were going so well at the moment that she might even make an effort to be sociable.

      Another wonder—the same thought had apparently occurred to Logan, because before she could think of anything to say, he spoke. “How’d you wind up with a name like Bailey?”

      “Hey, Bailey is a perfectly respectable name.”

      “Yeah, generally a perfectly respectable last name or man’s name.”

      “Logan is generally a last name, too.” So was Brady, for that matter.

      “Logan’s a family name.”

      “So is Bailey…sort of.” When he glanced her way, she shrugged. “When my mother got pregnant the first time, she knew exactly what she was going to name her son—Lee Aubrey Madison the third. But she had a daughter, so she named her Neely. I came next and got Bailey. Then there’s Hallie and Kylie.”

      “Good thing she stopped before she got to Holly, Molly and Polly.”

      “At least if we all had to be lees, we got unusual lees.” Without pausing, she went right on. “You said Logan’s a family name. Whose?”

      “It’s my paternal grandmother’s maiden name.”

      “And Brady is…your maternal grandmother’s maiden name?”

      His only response was the tightening of his fingers on the steering wheel. “Where do the other lees live?”

      “Neely’s in Heartbreak, Oklahoma. She’s a lawyer and her husband’s the county sheriff. Hallie’s in Buffalo Plains, about twenty miles away. She’s a stay-at-home mom and her husband is—” she caught his warning breath “—not open to discussion. And Kylie lives in Dallas, where she’s happily single and breaking hearts every day.”

      “Why didn’t you call her last night?”

      “Oh, I don’t think that would have been a good idea. She would have asked a lot of questions and she’s not nearly as tactful as I am.” Besides, Kylie would have wanted to do something, and Bailey never could have relaxed with Logan out of her sight. The rat likely carried an extra set of keys to the car and would have been long gone before she returned.

      “You’re the tactful one.” His words were heavy with doubt.

      “No, actually I’m the smart one. People labeled us when we were kids to help keep us straight. Neely’s the determined one, Hallie’s the popular one, Kylie’s the pretty one, and I’m the smart one.”

      “And the hardheaded one,” he muttered.

      “Oh, we’re all pretty hardheaded,” she said easily. “Besides, you’ve got no room to talk. You’re about as stubborn as they come.”

      He treated her to a dry, sarcastic smile and repeated her earlier words to her. “Thank you for that gracious compliment.”

      “Hey, I told you I’d pass on any impressions as they came to mind.” She kicked off her shoes, propped one foot in the narrow space between window glass and door frame, then pressed the stereo on button. “Let’s see if we can agree on good music.”

      Chapter 3

      They couldn’t.

      She liked country; he liked rock. She could listen to classical; he’d rather have a root canal without anesthesia. She couldn’t stand techno; he wasn’t about to sit through unending hours of jazz.

      The radio went back off and stayed that way.

      “God, does this state never end?” she groused. It was mid-afternoon, and the temperature had risen a few degrees past comfortable about sixty miles back. She looked cranky, and Logan felt it.

      “Nope, it goes on forever. When I left home, it took me six months to get from Marshall City to Pineville.”

      That made her look at him—something she’d avoided doing after they’d gone through the entire radio dial, AM and FM, three times without finding anything to agree on. He’d been happy being ignored and he’d done a good job ignoring her in return, though he had stopped for lunch when he heard her stomach growling.

      “You were fifteen,” she commented. “Where did you go?”

      Vaguely he wished he hadn’t mentioned that last part. The last time he’d talked in any detail about running away had been to Sam and Ella, right after he’d gotten caught stealing food from their crops.

      But he’d opened the subject, and nearly twenty years had gone by, and none of it really mattered anymore. “I hitched rides to Dallas and stayed there a while, until I realized I hadn’t gone far enough.” He’d been doing okay. He’d hooked up with some other homeless kids, and they had shown him the ins and outs of living on the street. He’d gone hungry a lot, and home had been a ratty mattress in an abandoned building, but it had been a better life than he’d ever known living in the family mansion in Marshall City.

      Then one day he and his buddies had been hanging out downtown, picking pockets, looking for trouble, and he’d seen a familiar face. Business trips to Dallas weren’t unusual for his father; he’d just never thought he could possibly run into him in a city of that size.

      That afternoon he’d headed east, intending to keep moving until he’d reached the Atlantic Ocean. He’d made it only so far as Pineville. A few years later, when he hadn’t needed to run, he hadn’t stopped at the ocean. Germany, Korea, Afghanistan, Iraq…

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