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Tess spoke softly. “Honey, I think there was more to it than that. I think it’s time you started to look at what happened through the eyes of a woman, because you are becoming a woman now, and a fine one. You are no longer that same hurt, confused girl you were then.”
“What are you talking about? You were there. You saw. He did it right out in the yard, with you and Dad and probably Edna and any ranch hand who bothered to look out his trailer window watching while it happened.”
“Starr—”
“No!” She shook her head, hard. “How can you make excuses for him? You know what he did.” Oh, she could still remember it like it was yesterday—a hot day, in June, a day kind of like this one….
Her own heart pounding hard in her ears, Starr came running down the stairs, Tess following after her. She ran straight through the great room and out to the entrance hall, flinging back the front door and racing out to the porch.
Across the yard, the door to Beau’s trailer opened. Her dad came out. He started up the driveway, heading for the back of the house. But when he saw her on the porch, he changed direction and came straight to the foot of the front steps. “What’s the matter?”
Starr leaned on the porch rail, tears pushing at the back of her throat. “Daddy, what happened? Did you talk to him? Did he tell you—?”
“Starr.” Her dad had a tired look, his tanned face drawn and tight-lipped. “I thought you said you’d stay in your room.”
“I couldn’t,” she cried. “I had to know. Did he tell you, how we have something special between us? Do you understand now that he never meant anything wrong to happen, that he—?”
“Starr. Beau is leaving. I’m going to go get his pay and then he’ll be gone.”
She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She gaped at her father. “What? No. You can’t do that. That’s not right, not fair…” She pushed away from the railing and darted to the steps.
Her dad blocked her path. “Go back upstairs.”
Why wouldn’t he understand? Why couldn’t he see? “I have to talk to him.”
“No, you don’t. Just let the damn fool go.”
Hot fury swirled through her, that he would speak of Beau that way. “He is not a fool! He…he cares for me, that’s all. He just wanted to be with me, like I want to be with him.”
It was all there in her dad’s sad eyes: that she was sixteen and Beau was twenty-one, that she was a Bravo and Beau was one of those shiftless, no-good Tisdales….
Unfair. It was so unfair. She’d told him that she’d never had sex with any guy, whatever everybody seemed to think of her—that she and Beau hadn’t done anything but kissing out there in the barn, that, yeah, Beau had unbuttoned her shirt. But that was all. It hadn’t gone any further.
“Starr,” her dad said. “Go upstairs.”
No way. She dodged to slide around him, but he seemed to sense she would do it and stepped in her path once more. She ran square into his chest as he grabbed her by both arms.
“No!” she cried, shouting now. She had to get through him, had to get to Beau. “Let me go!” she screamed. “Let me talk to him!”
“Starr, listen.” Her dad’s big hands held on tight, though she kicked and squirmed and beat on his chest. “Starr. Settle down.”
She was wild by then, twisting and flailing. “No! I won’t! I won’t! Let me go!”
From behind her, Tess said, “He’s coming.”
Her dad swore. Starr froze and craned around him to see. Beau was coming out of his trailer across the yard. “Beau!” she called, all her desperate yearning there in his name. “Beau, he won’t let me talk to you!” She tried again to break free, catching her dad off-guard, sliding around him, almost succeeding that time. But somehow, he managed to catch one arm as she flew by. He hauled her back against his chest, grabbing the other arm, too, holding her like that, with her arms behind her as she yanked and squirmed and tried to kick back at him, to get herself free, to run to Beau.
Beau came at them, fast, long strides stirring the dirt under his boots. He stopped a few feet from where Starr stood, with her father holding her arms and her body yearning toward him.
She saw the bruise then—a big, mean one on Beau’s chin, and she gasped in outrage. “Beau. He hit you!” She turned a hot glare over her shoulder, at her dad.
Beau said, his voice flat with no caring in it, “Forget it. It’s nothing.”
She swung her head front, facing Beau again and she gave him her outrage, her fury for his sake. “No. He had no right to hit you! You didn’t do anything wrong. He can’t—”
“Starr.” His eyes were so cold. She couldn’t see the man she’d thought she loved in them anywhere. “He had a right.”
“No!” It came out all ragged, a cry of pure distress. She’d stopped struggling to get free of her dad’s grip. Now, she just stood there and looked at Beau, at his dead eyes and his expressionless face. Oh, where are you? her heart cried. Where have you gone to? What are you telling me?
Slowly, Beau smiled. A knowing smile—knowing and ugly. And then, very low, he chuckled. It was a dirty, insulting sound.
“Tisdale,” her dad warned in a growl.
“Zach,” Tess said from back on the porch. “Let him tell her.”
For a moment nothing happened, then, with no warning, her dad let go of her. She staggered a little at the sudden lack of restraint and reached out toward Beau. “Beau, please—”
He cut her off, his tone evil with nasty, intimate humor. “You thought you’d heard every line, didn’t you, big-city girl? Heard ’em all and never fell for a one. But the lonesome cowboy routine got you goin’, didn’t it?”
This couldn’t be happening. “Wh—what are you saying?”
He made a low, smug sound. “You know damn well what I’m saying.”
She shook her head, fiercely, as if she could shake his cruel words right out of her head. “No….”
“’Fraid so.” Beau lowered his voice, as if sharing a dirty secret with her. “Come on, you know how guys are.”
Starr kept shaking her head. “No! You wouldn’t. You couldn’t. All those things you said—”
He shrugged. “They didn’t mean squat. I was after one thing. And we both know what that was.”
“No…” She only got it out on a whisper that time.
Beau went on smiling that mean, hurtful smile. “Yeah.”
Her dad cut in then. “Okay, enough. Go on, Tisdale. Around back. I’ll get your money.”
And without another word to her, Beau turned and walked away.
“It hurt, Tess,” Starr said, softly now, head bowed again, shoulders slumped. “I don’t think you know how much it hurt….”
Tess didn’t argue. She only reached out and brushed a hand against Starr’s arm, a gesture that spoke better than words could have—of comfort, of understanding….
Starr faced her stepmother again. “And it…shamed me, so bad. To have him say those terrible things. And right in front of everyone, too.”
“I know it did,” Tess whispered. “And…I am so sorry.”
Starr made a low sound. “Don’t be. It wasn’t your fault.”
Tess pressed her lips together. And then she sighed. “You’re wrong there. It was my fault. At least a little.”
“But how?” Starr blinked. “No. I don’t see how you can say that.”
Tess sat up just a fraction straighter. “I say it because it’s true. Zach would have stopped Beau from saying those things. But I told your father to let Beau go ahead.” She paused, looking deeply into Starr’s eyes. “Don’t you remember?”
Starr looked away. She was back out in the yard again, on that day three years ago, in the process of getting her poor heart broken. “Zach,” Tess had said. “Let him tell her….”
“Yeah.” She turned to Tess again. “I remember. But that doesn’t put you at fault.”
Tess raised a hand. “Yes. In a way, it does. Because I knew what Beau would say. I knew what he was trying to do. And I thought it was the best thing for you, to go ahead and let him do it. Let him hurt and shame you so bad that your powerful feeling for him would sour into hate, that you’d never want to speak to him again, and most important, that you wouldn’t go ruining your life chasing after him….”
“Well, so? You were right. I needed to hear him say what he said. I needed to hear from his own lying mouth what a dirty low-down rat he is. You had it right, that’s all. If he hadn’t said those things, I just might have wrecked my life running after him.”
“But you didn’t run after him,” Tess said with a rueful kind of smile half curving her mouth. “And since then, you’ve pretty much turned your life around, haven’t you?”
“Well, yeah.” She made a humphing sound. She had been flunking school the year before, running pretty wild down in San Diego, with the money her mother threw at her to keep her out of her hair—and no supervision at all. “Okay,” she admitted. “I guess in a twisted sort of way, Beau did me a favor. Those rotten things he said made me want nothing to do with him. And since he landed himself in jail not long after that, it was the best thing that could have happened to me. I set my mind on making my life something better than it was then. So, okay. If you look it that way, he did me a big favor.”
Tess’s smile stretched a little wider. “He did, didn’t he?”
“But it doesn’t make him any less of a creep. Yeah, he helped me, in a backhanded way. But it wasn’t like he said those things for my sake or anything.”
Tess wasn’t smiling by then. “But Starr. What if that’s exactly what he did? What if he hurt you because he knew it would set you free?”
Starr blinked and scooted back a little. She had a shivery feeling down inside, a kind of giddy strangeness in her stomach. “No. You don’t really think…”
“Yes, I do. I suspected it then. But now, after seeing the way he’s managed to make something of his own life against near-impossible odds, I’m pretty much positive he said what he said for your sake. He knew he was in big trouble, Starr. His brothers were up to no good, and they’d been battering and abusing him for so long, he had a real hard time standing up to them. He was headed for trouble with the law, and he knew it—and he didn’t want to drag you down with him.”
The hurt, cold place at the center of her heart felt somehow a little bit warmer right then. “You think?”
“I do.” Tess reached out and pressed a loving hand against the side of Starr’s face. “So. Maybe you can find it in your heart to forgive the guy a little?”
Starr took Tess’s cradling hand and gave it a squeeze before letting go. “You know, you are…a real mom to me.”
Tess’s lower lip trembled just a little. “Why, honey. What a beautiful thing to say.”
“It’s only the truth—and I know how you are. So respectful of my mother’s place in my life. So I want you to know it’s nothing against my mother’s memory, I promise.” Starr’s natural mother had lived in San Diego with her much-older, very wealthy second husband—until she’d died in a freeway pileup two years before. When Starr thought of Leila Wickerston Bravo Marks, it was always with a feeling of sad regret—that they’d never shared the kind of closeness that Starr had with Tess, that her mother had never understood her and never had much time for her. Leila had lavished money on Starr, but love and attention were always in short supply.
“My mother was my mother,” Starr said, trying not to sound as grim as the subject always made her feel. “I know that—and about Beau…”
“Umm?”
“I’ll think about what you said. I can kind of see the sense in it. And I do know that Beau has worked hard to make a life for himself after the mess he started out with. I guess he doesn’t need to have me staring daggers at his back every time he comes around.”
Tess leaned close enough to brush a kiss right between Starr’s eyes. When she pulled back, a tear was trailing down her soft cheek. She swiped it away with the back of a hand. “I am so proud of you. And so is your dad.” She reached out again and smoothed a hank of Starr’s hair, guiding it back behind her ear. Then she grinned. “But I have to say, I kind of miss that rhinestone you used wear in your nose.”
Starr gave her a sideways look. “Hey. I’ve still got the navel ring—and a tiny ladybug tattoo right on my—”
“Don’t—” Tess put up a hand “—mention that to your dad.”
Starr wiggled her eyebrows. “He doesn’t ask, I don’t tell…”
Tess laughed at that, a happy, trilling laugh. Starr thought how good it was to know her, that Tess was not only the mother she’d always needed, Tess was also a true friend. Tess jumped off the bed. “Come on.” She brushed at the front of her jeans, as if they’d managed to get wrinkles in them somehow. “There are beans to snap, potatoes to peel—and tonight, if you’re lucky, you, Jobeth, Edna and I will fight to the death in a brutal game of Scrabble.” Jobeth was Tess’s daughter by her first husband. She was eleven now, and right where she wanted to be—out with Zach, who had adopted her that first year he and Tess got together. Jobeth loved every aspect of ranching, from pulling calves to branding to gathering day.
Starr groaned. “It’s a thrill a minute around this place.”
Tess was already at the door. “Coming?”
Starr smiled then. “You know what? It’s great to be home.”
Chapter One
Three years later…
Blame it on that sliver of moon hanging from a star in the summer sky. Blame it on the two beers he had that he probably shouldn’t have. Blame it on the sight of her—that black hair shining like a crow’s wing by the light of the paper lanterns strung overhead, those eyes that unforgettable heart-stopping amethyst-blue. Blame it on the yearning inside him, the yearning that, after all those years, still remained with him, tender as an old wound that never did heal quite right.
Blame it on…
Hell. Blame it on whatever you damn well please.
At the annual Medicine Creek Merchant Society’s Independence Day dance, out under the stars in Patriot Park, after six endless years of keeping strictly away from her, Beau Tisdale decided he would ask Starr Bravo for a dance.
It was no picnic mustering the courage to do it. He stood for a while under the night-shadowed branches of a cottonwood a ways from the bunting-draped temporary dance floor, nursing a third longneck, watching her as he worked up his nerve.
Twice, she danced with Barnaby Cotes, the sneaky weasel who ran Cotes Clothing and Gift on Main Street and was too old for her by half. Then Tim Cally, a hand on the Rising Sun for decades, led her out on the floor. Beau smiled at that. Tim was nearing sixty and a little stiff in the joints, but he could still do a fair two-step. He held Starr lightly and not too close. Beau didn’t mind watching that—not that he had any right to mind or not to mind where Starr was concerned.
He tipped up the longneck and took a deep drink. Just one damn dance, he was thinking. What can it hurt?
Stupid question. It’d hurt plenty if those violet eyes went to ice on him, if she turned him down flat. A man does have his pride, after all.
But he didn’t guess she’d begrudge him a dance. She’d seemed civil enough to him in the last few years. When he’d pass her on the street or see her on the Rising Sun, she’d give him a cool smile and a nod, anyway. If he was lucky, he’d even get a plain, politely spoken, “Hi, Beau.”
She never seemed overjoyed to set eyes on him, but it wasn’t near as bad as it had been those first couple of years after he got off the honor farm. In those years, when she looked at him, he felt knee-high to a skunk and twice as foul-smelling. She’d hated him then, pure and simple, for the hard and heartless things he’d said to her that day in the yard at the Rising Sun.
But she didn’t seem to hate him anymore. Maybe she’d figured out a few things. Or maybe it was just a long time down a dusty road and what some cowboy had said to her six years ago when she was still a girl didn’t mean a thing to her now.
No, he couldn’t say she was exactly falling all over herself to get next to him in recent years. But if he asked for a dance, he figured he had at least a fifty-fifty chance she’d say yes….
She sat out the next dance, another two-step, strolling instead over to one of the picnic tables not far from the bandstand to take her place with Tess and Zach and Jobeth. Zach’s cousin Nate Bravo sat with them, along with his wife Meggie May, who was round as a corn-fed hen with their third child. Zach had told him the other day that Tess was pregnant, too. “Three months along,” Zach had said quietly, pride and happiness glowing in his eyes.
As Beau watched, Jobeth ducked low, hunching her shoulders to the table, as if she’d like to melt right on through the rough wood planks. And Starr, sitting next to her, threw back her shining head and laughed.
Beau stood transfixed at the free, joyous sound. The band played on, a fast one, but Starr Bravo’s laugh was a whole other kind of music, the very sweetest kind. Jobeth elbowed her stepsister in the side and Starr made a show of composing herself. Jobeth straightened. In the light of the red, white and blue lanterns overhead, Jobeth’s face looked more than a little bit flushed. She said something snappish to Starr, who leaned sideways enough to bump her shoulder in the affectionate way that a sister will do. Jobeth still looked mulish, but Beau could see the reluctant smile that twitched the corners of her mouth.
About then, Beau caught sight of Nick Collerby lurking near the Bravo table. The dark-haired kid was about Jobeth’s age and had teased and tormented Starr’s sister from elementary school onward. Maybe Jobeth was worried he might ask her to dance.
And the toe-tapping song was ending. If he didn’t hustle his butt over there, some other lucky cowhand would be getting the next dance with Starr. Beau drained the last of his beer and chucked the empty in a recycling can as he went by. He walked fast, hoping speed would get him where he was going before he lost his nerve. As a result, in no time at all, he found himself standing right there by the table full of Bravos.
Tess and Meggie beamed up at him.
