“Lord, it’s hot in here,” Shula said now, fanning herself with her hand as she picked her way toward the window. “I’m fairly dripping, Libby. I don’t remember Texas being so hellishly hot, do you?”
“It’s no worse than Saint Louis,” Libby said softly. Andy seemed to have drifted off to sleep and she didn’t want to wake her. She angled off the cot as delicately as she could. “If you’d sit a minute, Shula, maybe you’d cool off.”
Shula was peering out the window now. “I can see the gulf.”
“Well, that should make you feel cooler.”
“No,” Shula said with a sniff. “Looks to me like it’s boiling.”
Libby sighed. It would be a miracle, she thought, if she survived this day, let alone the several weeks she planned to remain in Texas. It wasn’t a trip she wanted to make, but all her resolve had evaporated that afternoon last week when John Rowan had nearly broken down their front door in his attempt to get his daughter back. Damn that man anyway. Libby had felt she’d had no choice but to spirit the child away—far away—for a while at least. With any luck, the man would commit other crimes for which the police could successfully put him away permanently.
In the meantime, she merely hoped she could endure her sister’s theatrics. Sharing such close quarters with Shula was like being strapped to a front-row seat at a melodrama. The woman could go on for hours about everything and nothing. Complaining, it seemed, had become Shula’s favorite pastime. And she never just talked. She exclaimed!
At the moment she was flapping her arms in an effort to dry the damp fabric of her dress. “I’ll be dehydrated in a few hours,” Shula muttered now. “How can anybody stand this? It’s like a steam bath.”
Libby went to the window and gazed out at the sparkling gulf. Funny she didn’t recall it, she thought. Her memories of Texas were land, not water. Land and nothing else, as far as the eye could see. Her father’s land. Paradise. She wondered if it would seem as vast, as purely magical now that she was grown.
When she turned from the window, she was greeted with the sight of Shula’s draped and ruffled backside as she bent to rummage through a valise.
“Aha!” Shula straightened up, holding a tin of talc. “Help me undo my dress, will you, Libby?”
Libby sighed and crossed the little room to assist her, more aware than ever that her own dress felt clammy and uncomfortable. After unfastening a myriad of tiny buttons, she went back to the window while Shula slapped powder under her arms.
“I want to look good for Daddy,” Shula proclaimed. “What if he’s disappointed, Libby? What if he just plain doesn’t like us?”
“If he doesn’t, he doesn’t.” Libby shrugged, continuing to gaze out at the water.
“Well, that’s a fine attitude. Are you telling me it makes no difference to you whether you wind up filthy rich or as poor as a piddling church mouse?”
“We’re not poor, Shula.” Libby turned to discover her sister wreathed in a cloud of talcum powder, waving a ringed hand to clear the air. Shula appeared flustered by more than mere talc dust, however.
“We’re not poor, Shula,” Libby said again.
“I meant relatively speaking,” Shula insisted.
Libby angled one hip onto the windowsill now and crossed her arms. Her lips firmed as her gaze narrowed on her sister. “Sometimes I think money’s all you care about.”
“It isn’t all.”
“Name something else then.” Libby’s chin lifted and her arms crossed tighter. “I dare you.”
Shula’s brow wrinkled a moment, then she made a little clucking sound and bent to brush powder from the drapes of her overskirt. “I care about how I’m going to keep from looking like a dowdy catfish in all this humidity.”
“Ah,” crowed Libby. “Money and appearances.”
Shula glared at her. “I’m sure our daddy doesn’t want two ragtag, mop-headed women descending on the ranch. Gracious! I want to look nice for him, that’s all. Who knows? We might be the last human beings he’ll ever see. It’s our duty to make his final moments as pleasurable as possible.”
“Foolish,” Libby muttered under her breath.
“I heard that,” her sister shot back. “It’s all right with me if you want to look like a frump. But men take great pleasure in the way a woman presents herself. And maybe if you spent a little more time worrying about your appearance, you might not be Miss Kingsland all your life, Miss Kingsland.”
It was an ancient argument. Their surroundings may have changed, but their differences remained. And it was an argument that Libby knew she would never win, so she was relieved when a soft knock sounded on their door.
“Now who do you suppose that is?” Shula did up a few fast buttons, then bustled to the door. She opened it a fraction.
Libby could hear a deep Texas drawl coming from the opposite side of the door. In a flash, it brought back the music of Paradise. A shiver rippled up and down the length of her spine.
Then, a moment later, Shula closed the door and just stood there, looking a little addled, breathing as if she had only just mastered that most difficult task.
“Who was it?” Libby inquired
Shula sucked in a full breath then, and waved a dismissive hand. “Oh, I don’t know. Just some big, dirty cowboy who says he’s supposed to take us to supper. I told him we had made other arrangements.”
“Shula!” Libby strode through the trunks, kicked a hat box out of her path and opened the door herself. Then, like her sister, she suddenly couldn’t remember how to breathe. And when she did remember, Libby was overwhelmed.
The big, dusty cowboy was halfway down the hall, but still the fragrance of Paradise lingered where he had stood. Leather and lye soap and dust. Sunshine and something more. Something purely and gloriously male. Libby cleared her throat and called out to him.
“Sir. Just a moment, please.”
Hell and damnation. Shadrach Jones stopped dead in his tracks. Another couple yards of carpet and he would have been trotting down the stairs, whistling, then pushing through the hotel’s fancy front door toward freedom. And Rosa and Nona and—bless her—Carmela.
Now he shook his head slightly, then scraped off his hat again and pressed it over his heart as he turned to get a look at the lady who’d just put the capper on his escape.
This one looked every bit the lady, too. The redheaded sister who had answered his knock on the door had been as painted and powdered as any whore he’d ever seen. This one, though, had lady written on every stiff pleat, every rigid bone, and every square inch of her prim little face. Tiny, this one. Pretty, too. For a lady.
“Ma’am,” he drawled, moving toward her.
She reached out a small, pale hand. “I’m Elizabeth Kingsland.”
Even though he’d just washed up and his hands were probably cleaner than they’d been in weeks, Shad still felt compelled to run his palm along his pant leg before he took her hand. Her grip was firmer than he anticipated. Even so, her bones felt delicate and breakable as a newborn kitten in the depths of his hand. He let her go after one quick pump.