Rose Read Free Page A

Besides, she did everything she could to make herself look ordinary. Her dresses were dark and loose-fitting. She parted her rich, brown hair in the middle, pulled it back from her face until all traces of natural curl were gone, and captured it in a braid at the base of her head.
    Did he think desperation would force her to yield? She tried to smile, but nothing could hide the fear in the back of her eyes, the lines at the corners of her eyes, or the tightness of her mouth.
    Luke wouldn’t be thinking about lust now. He’d be thinking about revenge. And what about Jeb and Charlie? Mr. Randolph would go back to his ranch in the middle of nowhere, and she’d be left here with three men determined to ruin her.
    Unless she answered Mr. Randolph’s ad.
    Rose could hardly credit the thrill that electrified her body.She had never met a man she liked as much or one as kind, but he was a stranger. How could she be thrilled by the idea of keeping house for him?
    She couldn’t deny that her whole body trembled at the thought of being near him, but she didn’t know anything about him. Any woman who rode off with a man gambled with her fate. A woman who rode off with a stranger gambled with her life.
    But it was different with George.
    She remembered how she felt while she sat with him at the table. Safe. She hadn’t felt that way since the Robinsons left for Oregon. If he would protect a woman he didn’t know, wouldn’t he be even more ready to defend someone who worked for him?
    She remembered the Confederate gray of his trousers and felt her body tense, her hopes dim. He had been an officer, too. No such man would hire her, not once he found out her father had fought for the Union.
    But she couldn’t stay in Austin, not without a job. She’d soon be forced to beg.
    Or…
    She was desperate enough to grasp at straws.
    She would write her uncle’s wife again, even though she hadn’t answered any letters in five years, not even when Rose had written them of her father’s death.
    Maybe one of her father’s army friends would help. If she went through his letters again, maybe she would find some names. She only needed one.
    But even if someone decided to help her, she knew it wouldn’t work. It was foolish to expect it—she couldn’t wait two or three months for a reply. She needed help right now. Her twenty-five dollars wouldn’t last long. She had to do something immediately.
    Today.
    “Don’t know what kind of response you’ll get,” Sheriff Blocker was saying to George later that afternoon. “Lots ofpeople come by, but they don’t cotton to the idea of living in the brush. Too much trouble with rustlers and Mexican bandits.”
    “We don’t have much trouble around our place,” George told him. “The boys don’t allow it.”
    “Maybe not, but you ain’t likely to convince people around here of that. Not a month goes by they don’t hear of a raid by Cortina or the men he protects.”
    “I’m not asking anyone to go who’s afraid.”
    The sheriff gave him a good looking over. “I imagine you could do a pretty good job of taking care of your own. What about your boys?”
    “They’re my brothers. We’re all pretty much alike.”
    “That might make it better with the ladies. They attach a lot of importance to family.”
    Several male spectators had gathered outside the sheriff’s office. One of them, an ancient coot with a scraggly growth of beard and a sunken mouth which ejected a stream of tobacco juice every few minutes, climbed up on the boardwalk next to the sheriff. He looked too old and thin to stand by himself, but George could see plenty of life dancing in his eyes and in the wicked expression on his face.
    The old man laboriously read the sign, looked at George, cackled merrily, then spat a stream of tobacco juice over the head of the nearest spectator.
    “Ain’t going to get nobody worth having,” he said.
    “Go on, Sulphur Tom, clear off,” the sheriff said. “We don’t need you