Jodi Thomas: Texas Rain

Rainey laughed at herself. Even being near him was like juggling fire. Yet she realized that if this were another time, another place, Travis could be a man she'd find worth knowing. But for the moment she could pretend she didn't have to disappear in a few hours and she had the time to dance.

A few minutes later she decided that if Travis McMurray had ever had a dance lesson, he should demand his money back, as he apologized for stepping on her foot. Either his feet were too big, or her arms too short, because they didn't seem to go together at all. When he wasn't bumping into her, they were trying to go opposite directions, looking as if they were in some kind of strange tug-of-war set to music. She decided watching his boots was her only defense as the music played on.

He was busy apologizing for the third time when the torture finally ended and she looked up. To her surprise, the man of oak was smiling.

"Where'd you learn to dance?" she asked before thinking.

"I didn't," he answered, "but it didn't look all that hard."

His words were so honest, so true, she had to laugh. His eyes turned warm, and she knew without a doubt that she'd discovered one of very few things in this world that Travis McMurray couldn't do.

A pretty girl appeared at the oak's side. "If you're going to dance, Brother, you'll have to dance with me next."

Rainey felt his grip on her hand tighten as though he didn't want to let her go.

His sister insisted.

Travis's fingers squeezed Rainey's hand once more before stepping away.

She looked up and saw a promise in his brown eyes. A promise she knew he'd never be able to keep.

Rainey watched as the young woman in lace and ribbons pulled him away. Though he argued, he gave in. While they tried to dance, Rainey Adams slipped away. She hadn't come here to dance, or for that matter, to kiss a stranger. She had a mission. It was time to get to work.

He might suspect her if she took a horse from the line, but Travis McMurray would never know if she borrowed one from the wagons.

Travis handed Sage the blanket from beneath the buckboard seat and climbed up beside her for the ride home. Thin wisps of clouds floated in the night sky, but any threat of rain had vanished.

She cuddled into the wool and asked, "Now, explain to me how you could possibly give away one of Tobin's matched bays to a total stranger?"

"It's not important." Travis stared at the pale lines of dirt marking the wagon tracks and hoped the night stayed clear enough to see them until he reached the bridge. From there, he could drive home in total blackness; he knew his ranchland well even after being gone most of ten years.

Sage would not drop the question. "I'm glad you see it that way, because I promise you, Tobin won't. He raised the two from colts, training them together from the beginning. You know a matched set like that is worth five times what just two horses would be. And, if I know Tobin, he's got buyers waiting for them."

"Tobin has trained a hundred others exactly like them over the years." Travis tried to make light of the fact that when he went to get the wagon, one horse had vanished. "You ever figure maybe Little Brother spends too much time with the horses?"

Sage refused to be distracted. "But how, without saying a word to me about it, could you give away one of the McMurray horses? I could understand if you lost it in a bet, or sold the set. After all, we are in the business of raising and selling horses."

Travis didn't want to talk about it. How could he explain that the first girl, besides his sister, he'd ever danced with had stolen the bay? Or at least he thought it was the green-eyed girl who'd kissed him.

He didn't know for a fact that she did it. Maybe someone else decided the best horse at the annual bam dance to take would be the one that belonged to a Texas Ranger. It had to be her, whatever her name was; no one else would have been so brave. Most of the people around here knew the horses belonged to the McMurrays, and no one would ever be fool enough to try and steal anything from a McMurray again.

As they moved through the night, Travis remembered what it had been like those first weeks after his father died. His mother took to her bed, pregnant and heartbroken. Teagen and Travis must have read their father's letter a hundred times. Every night they prepared, reloading guns, setting traps. Every morning they rode the land looking for any sign that someone had stepped foot on McMurray property. Tobin had only been six and was wounded in an ambush the first day. He'd looked so tiny propped into a chair on the front porch with a rifle on either side of him. Of the three brothers, he'd been the best shot even then, but his job in those weeks was simple… to fire a warning if anyone rode toward the ranch house.

He'd handled his pain and his mission like a man, leaving his brothers one less thing to worry about while they rode guard and tried to keep their father's stock alive. The only time Tobin fired was the day their mother gave birth to Sage. Autumn McMurray had been inside the house and hadn't made a sound during the delivery, then she called Tobin's name softly and told him to come get the baby.

Tobin tried to wrap Sage in a blanket, but with his bandaged arm and her wiggling it wasn't easy. He carried her to the porch and fired one shot in the air. By the time Teagen and Travis rode in, Sage was yelling up a storm and their mother had bled out from childbirth. They kept Sage alive and fat on goat's milk until Martha arrived. Three weeks after Sage was born, a marshal left word at the trading post, where they picked up supplies, that a housekeeper had arrived and was waiting at the stage station fifty miles south. Travis collected his supplies from the post and hurried home as always. He then rode alone to the south and collected Martha. She went with him without question, as if having a half-grown kid, fully armed, slip into her room before sunup was nothing unusual in her life. Two days later, when they made it back to the ranch, she'd been shocked at how healthy Sage looked considering three little boys were taking care of her. Martha bonded with the baby at first sight.

Tobin healed slowly during those early weeks, with a scar that seemed to run straight across his heart. For months he talked little, somehow blaming himself for his mother's death since he'd been the one with her. Finally he began to work with the horses his father bred so carefully with stock from Kentucky. As the colts were born, so was his mission. Travis couldn't count the times he'd found Tobin asleep in the barn near a horse about to foal. The funny thing was, the horses seemed to understand Tobin and welcome him among them.

"He's going to thump you a good one." Sage pulled Travis back to the present as she repeated one of Martha's sayings. "Tobin will never understand."

Travis nodded, realizing he'd better think of a better story. In theory a fourth of the horses belonged to him. But he'd never taken more than a fresh mount now and then when he returned home. More often than not, Tobin had one already picked out. He'd say, "This one's got the heart of a Ranger. He'll keep up with you."

Sage leaned her head against his arm, and Travis hummed softly as she fell asleep. She might be all grown up now, but she hadn't changed. The only time she wasn't talking was when she slept. He thought of asking if she enjoyed the dance, but he already knew. He'd seen it in her eyes. She hadn't met the man who'd win her heart. From the unshed tears he'd seen sparkling in her eyes as they said their good nights to the neighbors, no man had even come close to being right.

A few hours later Travis carried Sage into the house. His brothers stood, nodding their greetings as he crossed to his little sister's room and put her to bed as he'd done all her life. He tugged off her shoes and covered her with a blanket before returning to the fire where Teagen and Tobin waited.