Texas Heroes_ Volume 1(47)

But he didn’t want to want her. And he needed her gone.

Maddie stepped back, her chest heaving.

Boone didn’t stop her, though his empty fingers flexed and his chest ached.

Maddie couldn’t look at Boone, couldn’t bear to see the truth on his face. One hand pressed tightly to her lips, she turned away and stared out the window, still clutching her grandmother’s dress to her breast.

She started to speak, but her voice wasn’t hers to command. Maddie cleared her throat and tried again.

“I found my grandmother’s things.”

Behind her, she heard his voice, low and strained. “I see that. Do you want me to carry the trunk downstairs to your room?”

So polite. So distant.

“If it’s not too much trouble.”

“No trouble.”

Maddie didn’t turn around. Behind her, she heard Boone close the trunk and lift it, heading for the stairs. With a shaky breath, she turned and carefully folded the dress, wrapping it back in the sheet she had dropped in her haste. Fighting hard to hold inside emotions careening out of control, Maddie carried the dress down the stairs.

When she passed Boone leaving her room, she cast one quick glance at him. If she had seen the slightest sign that he was struggling, too, she might have tried to talk to him, though she had no idea what to say.

There were no words for the power of what had passed between them.

Nor for the impossibility of what kept them apart.

But Maddie didn’t have to worry. The man who had kissed her, the man whose heart had lain bare to her own for a few precious seconds…that man lay safely buried behind a mask of stone. That man might have existed only in her very vivid imagination.

For one endless second, every fiber of Maddie’s soul cried out for that man’s return.





Chapter Nine





Boone closed up the attic and walked out of the house like a man gone blind. He fought an urge to get in his truck and head for the nearest port, to lose himself as an anonymous seaman once again. To hide out somewhere, anywhere, until Maddie left.

He squinted against the scorching sun and lectured the part of him that seemed bent on destruction.

She won’t stay.

You haven’t asked her.

Remember how she was with Marlowe. She can’t wait to get back.

She wasn’t thinking about New York up in the attic.

For a minute, that was all. Yes, there was heat between them. Boone shook his head. Heat, hell—there was nuclear meltdown when he touched Maddie.

But it wasn’t enough. She deserved so much more. What did he have to offer, a man who knew a hundred ways to kill? A man so incapable of love that his only child never had a chance to be born? A life of hard work and loneliness stuck away in the back of beyond? He’d already ruined one woman’s life. He would not risk Maddie… bright, beautiful Maddie.

You could go with her. To the city.

No. He could not.

He would not forsake this place again. Now, more than ever, he was needed to be its guardian. For the sake of the desolation in Maddie’s eyes, he would keep this place safe. It was one thing he could do for her, no matter his other shortcomings. He no longer expected to have a family of his own, but if Mitch didn’t want the ranch, maybe Maddie’s children would.

A hell of a life, Boone ol’ buddy.

It’s who I am. It’s all I really need.

And with that thought, Boone straightened his hat and headed for the barn. Lunch was the last thing on his mind.



Maddie spread out the dress on her bed carefully, smoothing its folds. When she’d first held it, she’d been eager to try it on.

Not anymore.

Instead, she sank down on the rug by the bed and reached into the trunk again, her movements lethargic. She looked through framed pictures of unidentified people. Maybe later she’d take them out of the frames and see if anyone had marked them on the back, but not now.

At the bottom of the pile Maddie saw a little red leather book that looked like a diary.

With shaking fingers, she lifted it out and sat back down, cradling it on her lap. With slow strokes, she traced the shabby remains of what might once have been gold leaf. Then she drew in a deep breath and opened the cover.

Rose McCall, it said in spiky, formal script. Beneath it was added the name Wheeler, with a heart drawn beside it.

So now Maddie knew. Her grandmother’s maiden name had been McCall. And she had loved Jack Wheeler, the grandfather who had died too soon. Rose might even have been a romantic, Maddie thought. Drawing the heart was something a younger Maddie might have done.

The thought of her grandmother as a hopeful young bride brought a smile. Then Maddie remembered how it had all turned out, and her heart ached for the woman she’d never met.

Reining in her thoughts, Maddie turned the page. The diary seemed to start when Rose had been twelve, and soon Maddie was lost in a life utterly different than anything she’d known. Rose spoke of hard times, and Maddie found a date that pinpointed this as what came to be called the Great Depression. But Rose spoke of girlish dreams and seemed to take the hardships in stride.