Lass Small - The Best Husband In Texas

Austin took Iris back to her mother and was pleasant and cordial to her hovering parents. Of course, he’d gotten there when it was almost suppertime and so he accepted the hospitable offer of something to wet his whistle. He sat and sipped his drink and visited so that no one could hustle him out of there.

Since he had settled in so well, there was nothing for the Smiths to do but suggest that he might stay for supper. It was so weak an offer that he should have declined, but he looked at his watch. He acted surprised as he saw the time it was, and he said, “Why...thank you. I will.”

At the table were the middle daughters and the young son. And there was Iris who was silent. She moved the food on her plate and didn’t join in on the conversations that eased around the table.

Her sister Emily was animated and flirty with Austin. She was twenty-two and worked at the telephone company office. Her animation was frowned on by her mother, but Emily ignored her mother’s squinted eyes and chatted and laughed.

Sixteen-year-old Andy just ate. He was in that growing period in which he whipped down his food like a plague of locusts.

Jennifer and Frances were simply amused observers, and at times they shared hilarious glances.

Austin knew they were simply amused and not being nasty. Their daddy wasn’t as certain. He eyed the two whose shared humor was especially sharp.

When dinner was over, they all cleared the table, and Austin did his share. But he didn’t leave. He amused Jennifer and Frances so that their eyes sparkled.

The time went past and the parents exchanged glances. Austin gave no sign of leaving.

Edwina raised her eyebrows in question to her husband, but he shrugged.

However, at about nine-thirty, Austin did begin to leave. As he got up he said, “will....” in prelude.

Iris, too, rose and said, “Good night.” And she just left the room and went off up the stairs and was...gone.

So it was her family who saw Austin out to his truck.

Three

In the two days that followed, Austin paced and thought and groaned. He didn’t for one minute think there was any way, at all, to get through the invisible, steel shield that surrounded Iris Smith Osburn Dallas Alden.

However, he felt the urgent need to see her. Why? Well, he...just...needed to see her. She was vulnerable. She’d already had three husbands. What if some other man got to her and convinced her to take him! Austin needed to be close to her so that she remembered him first.

But he seriously doubted that Iris thought anything at all about poor old Austin Farrell. She was oblivious of anyone. She was not in touch with the rest of the world. She endured the time that passed so slowly.

She was... Well, when Austin had escorted her to the play, she had watched, and she had absorbed it. Had she agreed with it? Now, that would be interesting.

Austin got his Stetson and went back to his pickup to go over to Iris’s house to see her. Well, the house actually belonged to her parents and her siblings. How droll that he thought of it as being hers.

After he knocked once on the door, it was her mother who opened the door and smiled. She called to her daughter upstairs. Austin declined going into the living room and finding someplace to sit. He waited at the bottom of the stairs.

Mrs. Osburn Dallas Alden came down the stairs. She had on a different loose, long, carelessly wrinkled dress and her hair was not tidy. She had used no makeup at all. Even so, she was the woman he wanted to be with for the rest of his life.

Austin smiled.

Iris glanced at him in an uninterested manner. The time passed. She said nothing, so he didn’t, either. They stood there. She finally asked, “What is it?”

“Come see the calf. He’s steadier.”

Without any response—at all—she walked on past him.

His mouth opened in shock because he thought she was snubbing him entirely. However, at the front door, she turned to it, reached over and opened it, went through the door and on outside toward his truck.

Recovering from his shock, and by striding with some push, Austin got to the truck before she did, and he opened the truck door for her. He stood there with the door opened for her and he watched her.

Again, Iris got into the vehicle without paying any attention to Austin.

He was transportation. That was obvious.

He went around the back of the pickup and got in on the driver’s side. He glanced over at her as he put in the key, started the motor, and eased along, saying nothing. But using the car phone, he called her mother and told her where Iris was and where she wanted to go.

Her mother said, “Thank you” in a very tender, relieved manner.

Now...why did her family want her with him? Or were they just grateful that they’d know now where she was and with whom? He was the “whom.” It was better to be with her, albeit silently, than to pace his empty house all by himself, just wondering where she was.

Iris said no word, at all, on the entire way to Austin’s place.

When the two arrived there, at the barn, she was out of the pickup before he’d rightly stopped and gotten out to help her.

She just did everything on her own and without any courtesy to the male with her.

She was an independent cuss.

Austin hurried and followed Iris close enough so that he seemed to be with her. He hesitated when they got to the cow’s slot in the barn. The momma cow had more room than any local human. She watched the calf and mooed if he was too curious. And her calf was steadier.

The new little creature was so curious. The threeday-old calf they’d named Bull’s Eye still lost his footing a shade, but he could regain his equilibrium and was mostly frisky and alert and very nosy. He looked at everything. He smelled everything, and fortunately, no crawfish was around to snap a claw on his nose.

His big momma cow was tolerant and watchful. She mooed when the new calf was out of line. He stopped what he was doing wrong, but he did trip again when he thought he could fool his mother.

How typically male.

But he made even lris laugh. He ate from Iris’s hand. He nibbled the grain perfectly. His mother mooed softly once.

What had the cow said?

The calf stopped crowding Iris and looked at her curiously with jerking movements of its head. It was as if his mother had indicated that the clothcovered creature was not one of them.

Iris laughed.

She did! It was she whom Austin watched. Not the calf. Calves were a dime a dozen. It was this woman who kept Austin’s attention. He watched her, smiling, and a tear came from one of his eyes. She just might make it, after all.

Instantly, Austin tackled the problem of who all would eagerly help her to heal? Besides being a beautiful woman, it was the money she had from her dead husbands that lured the men. Men sought money, however it was found.

But Austin didn’t need her money. He had his own. The problem was: How would Austin keep the eager mob of men away from her until she realized Austin Farrell was the one for her?

Then the little kitten wobbled out from under one side of the barn. It came to Iris and said, “Mew” in a very fragile manner.

Iris scooped it up and held it to her. She asked Austin, “Has the momma cat fed him? He’s hungry.”

She’d spoken! She had!

Austin replied, “I’ll look.”

But he didn’t find the momma cat. Knew she might never be found. And the new little kitten was hungry.

So they went to Austin’s house and the kitten was given a dish of milk. Being as little as it was, it had trouble licking the milk as it was supposed to.

But Austin got an eyedropper—emergency feeder for hurt creatures—and it worked!

Iris asked another question, which startled Austin so much that he had to look at her to be sure it was she who had spoken. He then had to ask, “What did you say?”