A Love to Call Her Own Read Online Free PDF Page B

and nudged Oz from the middle of the bed. If Mom didn’t like dogs in the house, she really didn’t like them on the beds, but she hadn’t said anything. Maybe she’d finally begun to think of this house as their former home. More likely, David had warned her again not to fuss.
    Moonlight came through the curtains, bright enough to cast deep shadows, to glint off the silver frame on the dresser. Every week he dusted the frame, but he never looked at the picture it held. He didn’t need a photograph to remind him of that moment immediately after he and Sandra had gotten married in Las Vegas, when they’d both been happy and hopeful, with no worries other than how quickly they could get back to the hotel to celebrate. Life had had such potential that day. He’d never imagined just how damn wrong it could go.
    He stared at the frame until his eyes got gritty, then he rolled onto his other side, where there were only shadows. As he resettled, he realized the tension that usually gripped him when he thought about Sandra wasn’t there. It still hurt. It still made him angry, but not so much as before. Was he finally putting it behind him? Was there some potential for a normal life for him again?
    He had this suspicion that of course the potential was there. He just had to be smart enough to recognize it and willing enough to accept it. He’d dug himself into such a bleak hole after Sandra died. He’d lost touch with all his friends, did his best to keep her family at arm’s length and to avoid any but short, superficial visits with his own family. He’d forgotten how to live, how to be sociable or, hell, be just plain civil.
    He’d felt like shit and acted like it so long that he was sick of it.
    Behind him Oz began to snore, low rattling sounds. Dalton hadn’t wanted a dog until the mutt showed up and showed him he did. Oz had been starved, lost, or more likely, dumped by an idiot owner who assumed all country people wanted everyone else’s throwaways. He’d had an awfully tough time of life, but he hadn’t dwelled on it. Once he’d made himself at home here, he’d forgotten the rough times and focused on appreciating the good life.
    There wasn’t one thing special or unique about the miseries in Dalton’s life, and he had a lot to be thankful for. He was healthy. He was making a go of the ranch he’d loved for as long as he could remember. His parents were alive and happy, and Noah was exactly where he should be in his life, with no major mistakes hanging over him and all those possibilities ahead. Dalton was feeling the need, just kind of simmering but there all the same, to get himself to exactly where he should be in his life.
    And part of it had to do with the pretty little redhead he’d met two months ago who wouldn’t get out of his head.
    That March Saturday hadn’t been his proudest moment. Dalton, who’d never once hooked up casually, had done just that with the redhead, and in a cemetery, no less. A few words, a trip to a bar, too much to drink, crossing the parking lot to the shabbiest motel in the county, then sneaking out while she was asleep and pretending not to know her the next time he saw her.
    She was the first woman—the only woman—he’d been with since Sandra. She’d given him a few hours of passion, of feeling something besides sorrow, and he’d thanked her by treating her exactly the way Dillon would have. For the first time in his life, he’d acted like Dillon’s twin and not in a good way.
    But Jessy Lawrence, like her red hair implied, was stubborn. She was always there in the back of his mind: pretty, emotionally worn like him, dealing with her own sorrows. Images of her that March day, so sharp and alive, echoes of her Southern drawl that had lured him from his bleak life for an afternoon. Every time he went into town, any flash of red hair made his gut tighten. He’d