Wild Texas Rose Read Online Free PDF Page A

and testified at the trial that sent him to jail.
    The fact that his mother had testified that she’d found the saddle in his room — that his own mother had helped send him to prison — meant nothing to Rose. Rose felt totally responsible for his incarceration, and she hadn’t been able to look the woman in the eye since.
    She’d done what was right, but at a cost that sometimes seemed too great. When she was alone at night, or when she saw her friends’ children, or when she caught sight of a man who stood with a kind of insolence …
    No, she wouldn’t think about Thorn now. No strange horse stood in the empty stall. No strong male body waited to renew acquaintances in the hay.
    Odd, that she’d let Thorn spook her so.
    She turned to hang up the brushes, and jerked back from the broad male figure that blocked the entrance of the stall. The blood raced in her veins, and if she’d been the screaming type, she’d have let loose a loud one.
    Then he spoke, and she felt only foolish.
    “Miss Rose? Did I startle ye?”
    “Patrick.” She half-laughed, half-gasped. “Yes, you did! You should have made some noise.”
    “Same as normal, Miss Rose, but ye were muttering something about spooks and didn’t hear me.”
    Rose blushed, glad of the darkness. But she didn’t need light to see the bandy-legged son of Ireland who tended her ranch. She knew every line and angle of Patrick O’Brien, keeper of her horses, foreman of the ranch, gambler par excellence. As a man of fifty, he had left Ireland and everything he had there and taken a ship to Galveston. From there he’d found his way to the Corey Ranch where he’d worked for the last twenty years.
    Now, as Patrick pulled a lucifer from his shirt pocket and scraped it across the sandpaper, she said, “I sold Starbright tonight.”
    The lucifer flared with fire, and its rotten-egg smell filled the air. Patrick stared at her, his sagging, hound-dog face astonished. When the match had burned down to his fingers, he gave a pithy oath, blew it out, and stomped it into the floor. “Ye sold me darlin’ filly?”
    “To Sonny for Sue Ellen.” Lighting the lantern herself, Rose fixed him in the beam. “For four hundred and fifty dollars.”
    She gloated as Patrick staggered back, clasping his hands at his breast. “Four hundred and fifty dollars? From that skinflint?”
    “There’s one way around Sonny, and that’s to tell him Royal Lewis bought a horse for his wife.”
    “But he didn’t!” Realizing he might not know the whole story, Patrick asked, “Did he?”
    “No, but when Ana Marie Lewis gets done with him, he will.”
    Patrick cackled. “Ye’re a wicked one, ye are, and I’ve long tried to teach ye the way of such dealing.” He cocked his head, his bright eyes gleaming. “But I thought ye’d said ‘twas dishonest to tempt people by appealing to their envy.”
    Feeling abashed and uncomfortable, she confessed, “Actually, it was Sue Ellen who did it. I tried — I really did, but I couldn’t think of a story to tell Sonny that would make him buy that horse.”
    “No, ye’ll never get the way of it. Ye’re too honest for yer own good, ye are.” He grinned. “But I’ll raise a glass to Sue Ellen when next I’m in Fort Davis.”
    “You do that, for now we can put up the stable before the first norther comes through,” she said with satisfaction. “I’ll order the lumber and call the neighbors, and we’ll have a barn raising. Nobody can steal those horses once they’re padlocked inside.”
    “Mother of God. That’s the truth. I hadn’t realized.” Patrick scrubbed his fingers through his thick, gray hair and tugged the ends. The pain seemed to wake him, for he gave her a hug. “That’ll be a relief, for sure, for sure. Think we’ll be for doing it by Christmas?”
    “I think we’ll be doing it next week. Now that the train comes through, we can get the lumber right away.”
    Patrick nodded sagely. “Ye’ve been looking tired