Beautiful Bandit (Lone Star Legends) by Loree Lough Page B

until she’d wheedled that promise out of him. “All right,” he’d finally agreed. “If love comes along again, I’ll welcome it.”
    If he’d had children to raise, he might have understood why almost every female in his life—aunts and cousins and sisters alike—seemed driven to match him up with the second Mrs. Josh Neville. Riding home from a church social last fall, his youngest sister, Susan, had scolded him, saying, “Priscilla is a lovely girl. I declare, Josh Neville, it’s as if you’re not even trying!”
    He hadn’t needed to try with Sadie, but Josh hadn’t wanted to rile his sister further by pointing it out.
    Months later, Josh had had a similar set-to with his eldest sister, who’d confessed that she’d gone to a lot of trouble rigging the boxed lunch auction to ensure he’d end up with her best friend’s cousin. “Did you ever stop to think that if you looked harder, you might just find something close to what you shared with Sadie?” she’d asked him.
    Why should he settle for close when he’d had it? “I’m content living alone,” he’d said. And he had been, too, right up until the moment he’d gotten an eyeful of the battered bundle of nerves cowering behind a boulder in the dead of night.
    Almost from the start, something in Dinah had called to something in him, and, more and more, his heart wanted to answer. He didn’t understand it, he couldn’t give it a name, but the sensation had grabbed hold and refused to let go.
    Maybe it boiled down to a man’s need to protect a woman.
    Maybe he was just overtired from being on the road for so long.
    He could hear her in the cabin, humming and clattering as she “threw something together” for their supper. “Better get ahold of yourself, Neville,” he grumbled. What if the abusive beast she’d escaped was searching for her? An important question. So, why hadn’t he asked it earlier, along with dozens of others? Were his sisters right? Was he the least inquisitive man in Texas?
    Frowning, Josh pocketed both hands and stared up at the charcoal sky, where a million stars winked around the snow-white moon. A gentle wind riffled his hair, and he took a deep drink of it. The stifling heat had departed with the storm, but nature was fickle and undependable. Tomorrow might be a good day to travel south, but it just as easily might be a repeat of eye-smarting sun and skin-puckering temperatures. Riding in the rain definitely had its benefits when compared to certain, other conditions.
    Experience told him they wouldn’t see a repeat of today’s weather, but he had the uneasy feeling he hadn’t seen the last of life’s storms.

    12
    They rode in silence during the early morning, and Kate couldn’t help but wonder what was going on in that handsome head of his. Even in profile, she could see the taut set of his jaw, his brows dipping low in the middle of his forehead.
    He’d been quiet at supper last night and at breakfast this morning, too. That hadn’t surprised her, considering the recent oppressive heat, which had stifled even her energies for conversation. When the warmth had faded with the storm, she’d blamed his silence on the clammy stench of damp leather and wet blankets left behind by the Rangers. But after the cool breeze had cleared the cabin of foul odors, she’d run out of excuses and explanations for his distant behavior.
    Until the lawmen’s arrival, Josh had been unrelenting in his need to hold her gaze when they spoke, to the point of dipping his head to maintain eye contact. It had been unnerving, at first, but in time, she’d grown more comfortable with it. But he’d barely met her eyes since the Rangers had disappeared over the horizon the previous morning.
    When they’d bedded down for the second night—Josh on a pallet on the floor, she on the rickety cot against the wall—he’d said, “Peaceful dreams, Dinah, and may God’s angels watch over you.” His simple, soft-spoken words had rocked her