Thank God for that, because otherwise a hell of a lot more friction would exist between them now.
“I hadn’t expected anyone to be meeting me here,” he added. Had he realized she’d greet him, he could have prepared himself a little more, although he’d known eventually they’d cross paths. He’d hoped for later, at the ranch, without witnesses and gawking strangers. For some reason, he’d expected tears, but the woman standing before him now wasn’t the girl he’d walked out on.
She wore a dress of navy blue with a narrow skirt that didn’t leave him guessing at the width of her hips. They’d broadened a bit during the intervening years, but then she had a little more meat on her everywhere. Suddenly the awkwardness was back because he shouldn’t be noticing all that, shouldn’t notice how maturity had added a grace to her features, or how grateful he was that the buttons went clear to her throat and that her puffed sleeves narrowed at her elbow and traveled down to her wrists, so he couldn’t skim his gaze over her bared flesh. At a jaunty angle, she wore a small bonnet with light blue flowers, and he didn’t want to think about removing it and unpinning her ebony hair to see if it was as long as it had been when he’d left.
“The buggy’s over here,” she said, as though acutely aware of the discomfort threatening to resettle between them.
“Let me get my horse. He’s in the cattle car.”
“Trust you to go to the trouble of bringing your horse when Uncle Houston could provide you with one easily enough.”
Houston Leigh had made his living breeding, raising, and selling horses. Rawley figured few in the state didn’t have at least one stallion, mare, or gelding that came from Leigh stock, including the one that was waiting for him. “Why leave good horseflesh behind?” Especially when he and the stallion were comfortable with each other, knew each other’s quirks. He bent down to retrieve his saddle—
“Rawley Cooper!”
He barely had time to plant his feet and prepare himself before Maggie May Leigh had launched herself at him. He caught her and swung her around, relishing the tight band her arms made as they circled his neck, sent his hat flying. Houston’s oldest daughter had taken after her mother, small and petite. If he hadn’t known how stubborn and determined she could be, he might have feared he could break her, towering over her as he did.
“Put me down, you fool. I’m not a little girl anymore.”
She certainly wasn’t, but he’d known that before he left. He did as ordered, then reached down, snatched up his hat, and settled it back on his head, grateful some things never changed. Based on what he thought his age was, she was five years younger than he was, had clung to his shirttails until Faith had come along and become their little shadow.
“Brat,” he groused, teasing her with the pet name he’d bestowed upon her when they were kids, gamely taking the smack to his shoulder she delivered before stepping back.
The hem of her slim black skirt dusted her ankles, and a neat black bow was knotted at the collar of her white shirtwaist. Atop her pinned-up blond hair sat a small, undecorated black hat, that of a woman with a mission. Her green eyes twinkled. “I was afraid I was going to miss you.”
“How’d you even know I was coming in?” A stupid question in retrospect. The members of this family kept no secrets from one another, which was the reason he always held close his own.
“I’m a reporter. It’s my business to know what’s happening around here. The family is going to give you a chance to settle in tonight, then we’ll all be over for dinner tomorrow.”
“I’m looking forward to it.” And he meant it. The Leigh clan was an immense, rowdy, rambunctious group of people who knew how to make a person feel right at home.
Reaching out, her brow furrowed, sadness mirrored in her eyes, she clutched his arm, her fingers creating shallow dents in his jacket. “I’m so sorry about Uncle Dallas.”
His gut clenched as though she delivered the words along with a solid blow to his midsection. A cold shiver of dread skittered up his spine. He hadn’t experienced this level of trepidation since he was a boy and had been unable to defend himself. “Dallas? What happened to Dallas?”
Her eyes widening with alarm, she looked at Faith. “Y’all didn’t tell him?”
“Ma didn’t want him worrying when it wouldn’t change anything,” Faith said, her face a mask of guilt.
“What the hell is going on, Faith?” he demanded, watching as emotions warred over her features—whether to be belligerent because of his tone or sympathetic to it—but he also spotted the worry, the concern, and maybe even a measure of fear. She crossed her arms over her chest as though needing to gird herself against whatever was going to roll off her tongue.
“Pa’s been having some pains in his chest. You know they have to be bad for him to mention them to anyone. Doc thinks it’s his heart. Pa thinks it’s something he ate. But he passed out on the range a few days ago. Doc says he has to take it easy.”
Which was the reason he’d been sent the telegram—because he was well and truly needed here. Suddenly he was hit with guilt for ever leaving in the first place. “I’ll get my horse.”
He said his good-byes to Maggie before reaching down to snag his saddle. With long strides that ate up the distance between him and the rear of the train, he approached the pinto that had already been unloaded for him. He’d always been partial to the spotted ponies ever since the Leigh brothers gave him one the first Christmas he spent with them more than a quarter of a century earlier. This latest, Shadow, he’d gotten from Houston shortly before he left. He flipped two bits to the station attendant before taking hold of the bridle. “Thanks, Charlie.”
“Good to have you home, Rawley.”
“Good to be home.” A bit of a lie as he wished the circumstances were different.
He caught up with Faith, already sitting in the buggy tugging on her gloves, tossed his saddle and saddlebags in the compartment at the back, and secured Shadow there. The vehicle rocked as he climbed up onto the bench seat beside the girl who had constantly trailed after him when he was a boy. Without thinking, he reached for the reins, his hand brushing against hers as she did the same. They both froze. He hated their twin reactions because a time had existed when she’d nestled her hand snugly in his, when all he’d ever wanted was to protect her.
“I can drive,” she said tartly.
“I know you can. I’m just being a gentleman.”
She turned her head and held his gaze. “I’ve gotten used to doing for myself.”
