Page 19 of Trail of Sunflowers (Texas Bloom #3)

Chapter Eighteen

J unior left his empty house and rode Champion back to Sol’s the next day. He was no better than an old cur dog that had been run off but slunk back, tail tucked and hopeful. An excuse for returning to the Williams’ home was ready on his lips, one he’d thought up last night when sleep was impossible. Between the faintly damp, musty sheets of his bed, he’d sweated and worried. Kristy Anne . He’d forgotten all about that nuisance. He’d never kissed the woman. Never even held her hand. That summer, when Mrs. Stone announced what a perfect wife Kristy Anne would be for Junior, he had sarcastically agreed, seeing as the young woman was a miniature of his mother. Wouldn’t that be just perfect? Two women of similar caliber to dictate his every move whenever he had the gumption to be home.

How was he supposed to know his mother would take the caustic acquiescence and run with it?

He’d laughed about it with Ben, Sol, and Lucy before he’d left, brushing off their warnings as silly concerns. Now he was in hot water, and he’d rather face a firing squad than verbally spar with Isa over this calamity.

It was overcast and gray, and the treetops swayed and rustled overhead as he rode along Sol’s property line. To his great relief, Isa was in the yard alone. No children were afoot, and the buckboard was gone. She had settled on the rope swing with her long hair down and floating around her body, snagging on the taut ropes bracketing her.

The moment she saw him, her chin lifted, and she gripped the ropes hard on either side of her face. Junior halted Champion with a low “whoa” and stared at her from his position in the road. When she didn’t move, he dismounted and warily approached her.

“Izzy.” From six feet away, he could see her ribs expand with a deep breath.

“I do not wish to speak to you,” Isa said calmly.

Mouth compressing, he tied his horse to a bush and closed the distance between them. She wore a simple white blouse and a navy skirt that was too short for her, revealing long, slim feet bare in the dirt beneath the swing. With her skeins of rippling hair, clear skin, and baleful gaze, she looked like an angry, beautiful witch.

It was the challenging look that made him speak without thinking

“You’ve got no right to be mad at me. Didn’t you hear a word I said at the table last night? My mother is behind all this. She’s got some fool notion of tying me down no matter how many times I tell her I’m not interested. I am not marrying that woman.”

“It sounds like a whole lot of excuses to me.”

“They’re not excuses, damn you. They’re the truth.” He strained to keep his voice low, mindful of the dark windows facing them from several yards away.

“No, damn you . You do not get to kiss me and…other things while being promised to another woman!”

Her growing anger ignited his. “That’s rich coming from someone who traipses around with a married man!”

“I’m only friends with David.” Isa rubbed her temples. “And even before he married, he asked for my hand.”

“Yeah, that’s right, you’ve got men lined up to be with you. How could I forget?”

“You don’t get to be angry.”

“I’m not!”

“I was trying to say that David never used me!” She checked behind her after this outburst, inspecting the yard for eavesdroppers.

Ears burning, he walked forward until their knees brushed. Isa had to crane her neck to look up at him. “I thought we were friends, too. You think I used you?” he asked, breathing rapidly.

“We are not friends.” She was dodging his question.

“Then what are we?” The question dangled in the silence, broken only by dry leaves rustling on the ground. What are we? They damned sure weren’t friends. Not anymore. It was hard to look at her face, to see the greenish gold eyes burning into his like live coals.

“I don’t know! I just know friends don’t kiss, Junior. I don’t like that you kiss and touch me one day, and the next, I discover you’re to marry another woman—from my ma, of all people.”

A tendril of her hair floated against him, and he caught it, rubbing the silky strands between his rough fingers. “I am not marryin’ anyone, Izzy! I never kept anything from you because I never intended to be with Kristy Anne.”

Her lips thinned. “And yet I still feel lied to.” She stood from the swing, toe to toe with him. “Did it not occur to you in all the times we kissed that I’d find out about her? That I’d feel hurt?”

As though Junior was watching someone else do it, he grabbed her arm and pulled her behind the live oak, shrouding them from the house’s view. “I don’t remember making any promises to you,” he said, his eyes burning into hers. She shrugged his hand off. “Whatever secrets I kept had nothing to do with you.”

Isa’s jaw firmed. “I am aware of that.”

“Then why are you punishing me?”

They were within arm’s reach of each other, the air between them heavy. Full of hurt. It infuriated him. Reaching with his right arm, he cupped the back of her neck to bring her in for a hard kiss.

She angrily shoved him away.

“You don’t get to do this now!” Her eyes flashed sparks. “I used to worship the ground you walked on, but I’ve grown up. I will not be a last resort, a consolation prize!”

Junior raked his fingers through his hair, mussing up the macassar oil he’d applied in the hopes he would see her. “What in God’s name are you talkin’ about?”

“I’m talking about the women you’ve gone through over the years, Junior.” Isa’s face was twisted with emotion, even wilder and prettier in her rage. “Your whores and your widows. The way you discard them once you’ve finished with them. Even this Kristy Anne. I’ll bet half the gold in England that you let her entertain the idea of marriage with you, then you disappeared again before it was set in stone. And she was so desperate for you that she never gave up the hope of being with you one day. And now…now you want to parade me around at the Fall Dance and kiss me without even having spoken to her directly. Tell me if I am incorrect in my assumption.”

His teeth clacked shut. He couldn’t tell Isa anything because she was right. Kristy Anne was his mother’s first choice of a wife for him. His mother was closer to the woman than he was himself, and the young southern belle was present at holidays, weekend suppers, and church socials. Junior had abided by Kristy Anne’s unwelcome appearances because it made his mother happy.

Hearing Isa’s perspective made him distinctly uncomfortable. Censure from this twenty-two-year-old woman with little worldly experience made something stick in his craw. And he couldn’t admit to being wrong. He was always wrong. For once, just once, he’d like to be right.

Her face softened with a different emotion. He didn’t like it.

“Don’t you see?” she whispered. “It’s not right to touch me the way you do while another is out there, pining for you, expecting your loyalty. It doesn’t feel good. In fact, it’s the worst feeling in the world.”

Junior’s teeth slackened from their unbreakable clench. “Is that how you used to feel?”

“Yes.” Isa’s throat worked above her crisp white collar. “I felt that way about you often, too young to have a name for it. You would have laughed in my face if I had ever told you. But seeing you spark other women—it was insuperable, like seeing someone I loved die. I may loathe this Kristy Anne on principle, but I relate to her. No woman should be left wondering.”

His numb lips moved of their own accord. “I’ll tell her, Izzy. I’ll call everything off.”

Isa’s pale hazel eyes were dark and limpid beneath the shadowy tree boughs. “You’ll speak to her?”

Champion snorted nearby, his tail swishing lazily.

In an echo to his Texas Ranger’s oath years before, Junior raised his hand and murmured solemnly, “I swear it. You have my word. First thing tonight during my supper at the big house.”

“And then what?”

“Then you stop bein’ mad at me. And you dance with me at the Fall Dance.”

Not taking her eyes off his, she took a step toward him. And another. His belt buckle brushed her stomach, and the softness of her made him hard. Another lock of her hair blew in the wind, draping across his wrist like a lover begging him not to go. He caught it, made a glossy loop, and pulled his knife from its sheath on his gun belt. They watched breathlessly as he gently sawed the blade through the dark-blonde strand. The hair attached to the root drifted against her breast, quickly lost amidst the forest of its brethren. He tied the tress in his hand into a loop knot and tucked it into his vest pocket.

He wondered if she would reject him again if he bent to kiss her, but the rattle of a buckboard in the distance swept the notion away. A child screamed happily out of sight, and Junior and Isa dispersed. She loped across the yard and into the house while he untied Champion and mounted him. By the time Sol and the children rolled into the empty yard, the only movement was the rope swing swaying in the breeze.

THE RIDE TO his childhood home gave Junior plenty of opportunity to ruminate on all the ways he’d betrayed Sol in the last couple of weeks. The shift in his loyalties concerned him. When had he become more dedicated to Isa than his oldest and best friend?

It was nearing twilight when Champion rode through the gates of the Big Stone Ranch. The farmhouse stood in the center of everything, immense, white, and cold. Despite the constant flow of activity around the outbuildings, many corrals, and barn, the ranch had never felt friendly. Never felt like home. Several ranch hands noticed him and waved their hat or called greetings. He made his way over to a group of them and dismounted to shake hands and shoot the breeze. For half an hour, he stalled, catching up with cowboy gossip. He knew his mother was wringing her hands somewhere inside the house, hoping he would show up.

According to the men, Loretta had let five cowhands go since that spring. It shocked and stymied him that his mother was making important decisions, not his father.

“My pa didn’t mind?” he asked Chuck, a veteran cowhand.

Chuck scratched the back of his neck. None of the men looked Junior in the eye. “Ms. Loretta told us to keep it to ourselves. The big man has enough to worry about.”

A young, eager cowboy let slip that John Stone spent more and more time out of town on business. Then he delicately implied that the depression had provoked the old man into almost constant antagonism.

“Father home now?” Junior asked idly, flicking ash from his cigarette.

“He, er, takes to spending weekends in town.” Chuck’s hangdog eyes shifted away.

Junior shook his head and stubbed out his cigarette. “To think he used to chew my hide for whoring and worrying my ma. Now look at him.”

The men laughed warily, glancing at the house for listening ears of the female variety.

“Guess I better go in.” Junior stifled a sigh and took his horse’s reins.

“Need me to stable him?” Chuck held his hands out for the reins.

“I reckon I’m not so far up on my high horse I can’t put my own mount up.”

The laughter was more genuine this time. They ribbed him as he walked into the barn, and Junior took his time feeding and watering Champion. He kept the gelding saddled; he didn’t plan on staying longer than it took to eat and tell Kristy Anne to look elsewhere for a husband. He pictured Isa’s shrewd eyes watching him, waiting for him to put his money where his mouth was. The words he’d told her by the rope swing remained true. One day she’d learn that he’d always call her bluff.

“JUNIOR, DEAR,” LORETTA Stone cried after the housemaid alerted her of his presence. “You can’t imagine my happiness when Chuck told me you would come for supper.”

Junior stoically accepted his mother’s ecstatic greeting, hugging her with a single arm and pulling away first. “Mother. You doing well?”

“My, yes, we’re just fine.” Loretta Stone laughed, dabbing at the corner of her eyes with a handkerchief. The last few years had aged her a decade. Her blonde hair was a full cap of white, fashioned in one of those fussy hairstyles with a fringe of a bunch of frizzy curls. “Adele, tell Cook we’ll be ready for supper in ten minutes.”

The housemaid gave a little bob and exited the foyer.

“Hello, Mr. Stone,” said a voice from the parlor doorway.

Bracing himself, Junior turned on a heel to face Kristy Anne. “Ma’am.”

The woman his mother had chosen for him was expensively dressed and soft-featured except for a long, sharp nose. Her eyes were watchful, and her thin lips were turned down as though he’d denied her the pleasure of a dance. In the stilted silence following his underwhelming greeting, Loretta fluttered around him to draw the young woman further into the foyer.

“Don’t be shy, dear. It’s only Junior. There’s no need to call him ‘Mr. Stone.’”

Molars grinding, Junior skirted both women to hang his Stetson on the hat rack. His jacket followed, and he heard a disapproving little noise behind him when Loretta saw the six-shooters in his gun belt. For years, she’d striven to get him to leave his guns with the coats. Such a notion was laughable.

“How is your Ranger work?” his mother asked, a slight emphasis on the word “Ranger.” Another thing she disapproved of.

“Good,” he lied. “How’s Father?”

A small pause. “He’s well. Business keeps him restricted to town often.”

I’ll just bet it does. “That’s too bad.”

“Kristy Anne’s mother was elected chairwoman of the Women’s Council in Huntsville, have you heard?”

“Nope.”

Loretta went into an animated account of Kristy Anne’s accomplishments, from volunteering at the local orphanage, to her sewing skills in the quilting circle, to speaking her testimony at church a few months before. He imagined Kristy Anne with a bit in her mouth, his mother holding the reins, showing a disinterested buyer the lines of her flanks and the length of her teeth. If Isa was there, her dismay would be palpable. Junior smiled at the thought.

Emboldened by Junior’s seemingly indulgent mood, Loretta added, “She has also stood in a few times for the teacher when she was out with putrid throat.”

It was hard to imagine this quiet young woman taking over a schoolhouse full of children. When he was a young boy, he would have run circles around any teacher as soft and quiet as she. “Did you like teaching?” he asked to be polite.

Before his mother could speak for her, Kristy Anne vehemently shook her head. “No, I daresay. The children were loud, unkempt creatures. Terrible grammar and manners, and hardly any of them wore shoes.”

Junior’s half-smile disappeared. “Not all families can afford them.”

“I don’t see why not. If you can bear the child, you should be able to decently clothe it.” Her voice was harsh, and distaste twisted her features. He thought of a young Isa, easily the most brilliant student in her schoolhouse, with secondhand bib overalls and dirty bare feet. The sharecropper family she was born to, with their many children, always had welcome, laughing faces. They were a more loving family to him and Ben than the one inhabiting this ranch.

“Many of them are poor in the flesh but rich in love,” he said, striving for patience. “Money isn’t everything.”

It was as though he’d said a particularly nasty word; his mother and Kristy Anne blanched and shared a disquieted look. Patience waning, Junior was grateful when the housemaid chose that moment to announce that supper was served, and asked if they would they like to quit to the dining room?

Halfway through the meal, the two women chattered as happily as a couple of magpies about Kristy Anne’s family and acquaintances. Junior didn’t know of any of the names they lobbed around like little snares, waiting for one tempting enough to snag him. Truthfully, he’d never been so bored in his life. He found the conversation dull and yawned several times behind a fist; each time, his mother’s eyes would flash. As Kristy Anne became more comfortable talking about herself, her opinions revealed a scathing, mean-spirited streak. Blinking tired, itchy eyes, Junior wished Isa was there to properly set the girl down a peg or two.

Without a thought of the consequences, he asked, “You hear Izzy’s back home?”

Silver clinked onto fine china. Movement ceased. “Who?” his mother asked.

Junior leaned back and hooked an arm around the straight-backed dining chair’s top rail. “What do you mean, ‘who?’ Sol’s little sister.”

Kristy Anne sat straighter.

“Ah. No, I did not know she was home. In truth, I was not aware she had left.” Loretta’s words were tipped with frost.

Smiling incredulously, he asked, “You weren’t aware she was in Austin getting her mathematics degree? I thought the whole county knew.”

“I make it a point to not associate with the same rabble as your brother,” she replied stiffly.

The little smile playing around Junior’s lips tightened. His mother wouldn’t look at him, so he slid his eyes to an uncomfortable Kristy Anne. He pulled a cigarette from his vest pocket.

“We do not smoke—” Loretta began but broke off at the flare of Junior’s match.

“Yep, Izzy grew up pretty sophisticated despite being rabble .” Junior’s voice was light. Conversational. “But she’s still got a backbone under all that. Our horses were stolen on the way home, did I tell you? No? Well, she wouldn’t stay behind and tracked the thieves down with me.”

He was deaf to his mother’s squeak.

“That’s what took so long, you see. We were on the trail for about a week,” he added for a white-faced Kristy Anne’s benefit. “Izzy didn’t complain once. She was better company than several of the privates I’ve had in my company. Maybe I can bring her by next Sunday for dinner, Mother. Probably the most well-informed, interesting person you’ve ever had at the table.”

The barb struck his mother harder than it did the young woman.

“Junior,” she breathed. “If this young woman has anything to do with the atrocious manners you are displaying, then I have no shadow of a doubt that she will be unwelcome at this table. And to speak of another woman before your betrothed…I’m speechless. Apologize to her this instant.”

Smoke billowed from his nostrils as he observed the bloodless features of his betrothed. “Did you put our engagement in the papers, Kristy Anne?”

Not a pin drop was heard in the ensuing quiet. The longer the silence stretched, the more sinister it felt.

Loretta dabbed her mouth with her napkin and set it carefully on the table. “I posted that announcement some months back.”

“I don’t recall ever asking for anyone’s hand in marriage,” he said, flicking ashes into his full wine glass. No matter how many times he told his mother he wasn’t a drinking man, she still insisted that wine at supper was different. Tasteful.

“If it were up to you, son, you would grow old alone just to spite me.” Loretta’s voice shook. “I would have no grandchildren to bounce on my knee.”

“You do have grandchildren.” There was an edge to his tone.

“Your brother’s offspring do not signify . I have no grandchildren.”

“If you think I’m going to marry this woman you’ve handpicked and start giving those grandbabies to you, then you’ve lost your damned marbles.” Junior pointed the two fingers holding his half-smoked cigarette at Kristy Anne; she looked close to tears. “I haven’t said more than two sentences to this woman at a time, and frankly, I don’t appreciate coming home to a passel of people asking about upcoming nuptials that are never going to happen.”

“But her whole family expects you to marry,” Loretta whispered.

“And I don’t remember proposing,” he repeated.

The wobble in his mother’s lower lip belied the venom in her words. “Ever since your father’s oldest son came home all those years ago, you have been a man changed. It’s as though I hardly know you anymore, Junior. You used to be so much kinder to me—”

“Mother, before Ben came back, I was pissing all of Father’s money away at the local whorehouses and drinking down what little sense I had left,” Junior countered cruelly. “If I was kind to you, it was because I was hungover and couldn’t hold a thought in my head. Or the old man was standing over me, threatening to beat me within an inch of my life if I upset you. The best thing that ever happened to me was when Ben came home.”

A tear fell from one of her sagging eyes. “How can you possibly say that when he was the one who killed your cousin Leonard?”

“Please,” Junior growled, stubbing the cigarette out on his plate. “That fool rode into floodwaters so drunk he could barely sit a horse.”

“If your brother had not been such an incompetent trail boss, it would never have—”

Junior sat forward from his comfortable recline against his chair and said softly, “I won’t have you talk about my big brother like that. Not in front of me. We’ve discussed this.”

Another tear leaked. That she did not dab it away with her handkerchief, but let them fall silently, dramatically, down her cheeks, set Junior’s teeth on edge. “Considering he almost had you killed alongside your cousin—”

“My cousin was a drunkard with a penchant for whoring and had me down that same path. He went into the river first. Ben’s twice the man your nephew ever could have been. Good riddance, I say.”

“Junior!” She began to cry in earnest now, but he was hardened to it.

“And if you won’t be civil about my family, I’ll see myself out.” He stood.

“No!” Loretta sniffed and finally, blessedly, wiped her face. She rose and made her way to his side of the table. “No, dear. Stay. I hardly see you.”

I wonder why, he thought, exasperated. “I don’t think there’s anything left to say. Kristy Anne, it was nice to see you again. I’m sure you’ll tell your family that our engagement was just one big misunderstanding?”

Small in her seat, her eyes enormous, Kristy Anne nodded.

“Thank you kindly.” He gave her one nod, rounded his mother, and made his way to the front door where his coat and hat waited.

Junior frowned during the journey home. While moonlight lit his way, he pondered his mother’s frantic reaction to him breaking off all ties with Kristy Anne and how it just didn’t fit.