Chapter Six
T ris had had a bad week, and it was only Wednesday.
No, she told herself, not bad, just…distracted. It was her own focus that had caused the problems. Or rather, her lack of focus. She’d been spending an inordinate amount of time trying to decide where to go this weekend. Usually, she’d simply head for whatever was next on her list, this time the Mustangs of Las Colinas in Irving. It had made the top of the list because she’d been reading about the brilliant sculptor of the herd of wild horses running through a fountain cleverly designed to splash around their hooves. The man had died fairly recently, which had reminded her how much she loved both the sculptures and the entire concept. But the nearly five-hour drive one way seemed a bit daunting at the moment, so she’d put it off.
Maybe she’d skip down the list to someplace closer. She’d been meaning to get to the French Legation historic site, at the outpost for the French diplomat Alphonse Dubois de Saligny, who first recommended that France recognize Texas as an independent nation. Opened as the legation in 1841, it was one of the oldest houses in Austin, and close enough that she could easily do it in a day and perhaps accomplish a couple of other tasks, too.
When she found herself wondering if Logan Fox had ever visited the place, she knew what her real problem was. She was trying to guess where he might be going this weekend.
So you can avoid him? Or see him again?
That she wasn’t certain which was the right answer was the most unsettling thing of all.
She tried to focus on the bunch of essays she had yet to grade. She was about halfway through, and while there had been the usual array of results, from ho-hum efforts to surprisingly interesting takes on the assignment, she was, unusually for her, having trouble staying focused on the task. Her mind kept wanting to drift, and to a place she did not want to go.
Finally she resorted to self-bribery, telling herself if she got through this she could go into town and peruse the bookstore for anything new that reached out to her. That was a bigger temptation than just buying another e-book, because she could stop at Char-pie for a slice of her absolute favorite dessert, their lemon meringue pie.
Although that peach cobbler is a very close second.
“Stop it,” she muttered out loud, irritated that her brain kept wanting to go there.
Eventually it worked—as the temptation of new reading material usually did—and she marked the last piece, a skillful intertwining of the assigned story with the student’s favorite superhero, in a clever way that made it work, with an A for content and approach, which she explained in a note of encouragement, and a B– for grammar, punctuation, and spelling. She added a second note telling him to keep his focus on the story for now, but eventually he was going to have to learn the nuts and bolts.
Then, the files saved and closed, she stood up and stretched before taking her now empty coffee mug out to the kitchen. She felt a little pang at the silence. It wasn’t just that the unit adjoining her half of the duplex was empty and quiet, awaiting new residents. It was that her place had seemed so much fuller, so much more…alive, when Jackson and Jeremy had been staying here. She hadn’t really realized until then just how quiet her life had become. But she was still certain it would have been worse had she stayed in their home, where the memory of David’s hearty laugh seemed to have become part of the walls, and where the images from his agonizing battle were etched into her mind as if with acid.
If she didn’t have this lifelong passion for history, if she hadn’t been determined to know as much about this state she now claimed as home as she had the one where she’d been born, she didn’t know how she would fill these weekends. But these treks she loved gave her a reason to look forward instead of ever backward, and that they had the capacity to completely distract her was a bonus.
The mug now in the dishwasher, she headed for her bedroom to change into something more suitable than the worn, comfy sweats she’d donned for this morning’s task. She went with her favorite jeans and a soft, blue cotton sweater that would be just right for this sunny spring day. So sunny, in fact, that as she headed for the garage she grabbed the sunglasses hanging on the rack near the door. And her mood brightened correspondingly along the way, so that by the time she was walking through the door of the Last Stand bookstore, she was considerably more cheerful.
She stopped to chat for a few minutes with Lauren, the clerk working today, who happened to also be reading the same book she’d just finished.
“—is beginning to get on my nerves,” Lauren was saying about one of the main characters.
“Oh, she got on mine as well,” Tris agreed with a smile. “I kept yelling at her, ‘Wake up, you idiot!’”
“Exactly! But the hero’s pretty cool, the way he’s going after that crooked judge.”
“Anybody who takes on scum like that is pretty cool in my view,” Tris said with a nod.
“I want to ask you how it ends, but I know you won’t tell me,” Lauren said, pretending to mope.
“Nope,” Tris said. “Although I could tell you and you’d still be surprised at how he does it.”
Lauren laughed, then waved her toward the new releases as the store phone rang and she had to go. Tris turned, scanning the small but well-stocked store, and wondered what she was in the mood for. And then her gaze stopped, locked, and for a moment she didn’t breathe. Of all the things she hadn’t expected… But there he was, barely a yard away, as tall and powerful as she remembered, a couple of books in his strong, long-fingered hands.
Logan Fox. Again.
And he was smiling as if he’d enjoyed her conversation with Lauren, which he couldn’t have helped but hear. Or more likely, at the idea of her, so educated in the classics and teaching English and composition, with a weakness for full-on thrillers. People did seem to find that amusing. But it was one of the many changes she’d made, trying to adjust her life so that every second that ticked off wasn’t a reminder of what she’d lost.
Wallowing in your misery, you mean?
“This one’s pretty good,” he said, picking up a new release from the table Lauren had aimed her at. She saw it was the newest from one of her regular authors to read, one who put layers upon layers, both in plot and character. “Had me guessing to the end.”
She laughed before she realized she was doing so. Maybe at the idea the quiet, often impassive man shared her taste in reading for fun?
“I love that about her work,” she said. “You’re stunned at who the villain is, but at the same time sitting there thinking ‘Of course, why didn’t I see it?’”
“Exactly,” he agreed, smiling again.
“I think I’d be a little afraid to meet her in person,” she said, unable, apparently, to stop smiling. “That devious mind!”
“I’d be watching my back,” he agreed, one corner of his mouth twitching upward.
Not for the first time Tris had the thought that that slight, crooked, one-corner smile was charming. And when they had checked out—he’d bought one of the thrillers she’d been considering, but also a nonfiction book that appeared to be about the King Ranch.
“Been there?” he asked when he saw her noticing the title as they went out the door.
“Not yet. It’s on the list, though.” And being the largest ranch in the entire country, it was near the top.
“It’s a longer trip,” he said, hitting on the exact reason it wasn’t in that number-one slot. “You could combine it with a run down to Brownsville. Ever heard of the Palmito Ranch Battlefield?”
“No.” Although the name rang a vague bell, it wasn’t enough, in her mind, to say yes. And that piqued her interest enough to make her ask, “Would you tell me about it?” She gestured across the street to the pie shop. “I’ll pay you in pie,” she said, smiling. “I was going anyway. I love their lemon meringue.”
He hesitated, giving her an odd but intent look, and it suddenly hit her he might be thinking this was some kind of…of pickup line or something. Heat rushed to her cheeks, and she started to turn away, muttering, “Sorry, I’m sure you have better things—”
“Cherry.”
She blinked, looked back at him. “What?”
“Cherry’s my favorite.”
About the color of my cheeks right now. She drew in a deep breath, steadied herself, and managed a smile. “Cherry it is.”
And so she found herself a few minutes later sitting across a small—almost too small—table in Char-pie, her slice of lemon meringue in contrast to his bright cherry, an analogy she decided it would be best to stop right there.
The table really was small. Or maybe he was just so tall and broad it seemed that way, since she’d never noticed it before.
“So tell me about this battlefield,” she said rather hastily.
“Some say it was the last battle of the Civil War, although it happened over a month after the surrender at Appomattox.” His mouth quirked. “As it happened, the Confederates won. Thanks to Rip Ford.”
She swallowed her bite of pie before saying, “Rip Ford? As in the two-time senator, mayor of Austin, former Texas Ranger?”
He nodded. “He was the Confederate commander at Palmito Ranch. Ironic, that he won the battle weeks after his war was lost.”
“That’s why the name of the battle rang a bell,” she said, pleased to have the fuller story now.
He gave her a considering look. “You did know?”
Did he think she’d said no just to…what? Get him to talk to her longer? She felt a bit of a churning in her stomach as she realized that she might well have, if she’d thought of it. But she shook her head. “Ringing a bell isn’t the same as knowing, to me. I know of him, of course, but not that specific battle. He accomplished so much else.”
“Know where he got the nickname ‘Rip’?”
She shook her head again. And had to acknowledge that this time she might have denied knowledge even if she had it, just because of the glint in those green eyes.
“When he served in the Mexican war, he started writing ‘rest in peace’ on his casualty lists, after every name of a soldier killed in battle.”
“I like that,” she said.
“He was an honorable man, even if he didn’t get here in time to fight in The Revolution.”
He spoke the last two words as if they were capitalized, and it made her smile again. “I’m definitely putting it on my list. For a weekender, obviously.”
“It’s pretty close to South Padre, if you wanted to combine it with an actual vacation.” He raised a brow at her. “You do get those, don’t you?”
She laughed, startling herself at how at ease she felt. “I haven’t even thought about them for a while, but I may have to start.”
And if her imagination just plopped the two of them on a South Padre Island beach together, well, he didn’t need to know that.