Lorraine Heath by Texas Destiny

silence.
    “Miss Carson, I’d do anything on God’s green earth to make this up to you. I’d pluck out my eye—”
    A light flared inside the tent, and the flap flew open. She stood before him, her eyes rimmed in red, and he could see the faintest trail of tears along her cheeks. In all his life, he’d never loathed himself more.
    She sniffed. “Do you mean it? Would you do anything?”
    He glanced at her hands, expecting to see the knife she no doubt planned to use to remove his remaining eye. But her hands held nothing but the cool night air.
    He swallowed hard. “Yes, ma’am. Anything.”
    She folded her arms beneath her breasts and swept out of the tent like a queen granting her least favorite subject an audience. She held her chin high with a dignity unlike any he’d ever seen. Dallas had been right to refer to her as the Queen of the Prairie.
    She spun about and looked down her nose at him—as much as she was able, considering the top of her head didn’t reach the height of his shoulder.
    “You may sleep in the tent tonight.”
    Although her words had come softly, she’d spoken them with the force of a hissing snake. His gut clenched. He wasn’t exactly sure where she was headed with this train of thought, and he wasn’t certain that he wanted to know, but she appeared to be waiting on him to respond.
    “Excuse me?”
    “You may sleep in the tent,” she repeated slowly as though he hadn’t a lick of sense, and he was beginning to think that he might not have any sense at all. “Undress. Wash up. Do whatever it is men do before they go to sleep.” She dropped to the log, placed her elbows on her thighs, cupped her chin, and smiled sweetly. “And I’ll watch.”
    “Are you out of your mind?” he roared.
    “You said you’d do anything. Well, Mr. Leigh, you have just heard my idea of anything.”
    He glared at the tent. The goddamn moth was still flying around. If he stepped into that tent, his first order of business would be to murder that pesky critter. He glanced at the woman sitting on the log. “No, ma’am, I can’t do it.”
    “Why not? What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.”
    “It ain’t the same at all. I’ll know you’re watching.”
    She came off the log like vengeance sweeping through hell. “And you think my
not
knowing made what you did acceptable?”
    No, it didn’t make it acceptable at all. “What if I gave you a real pretty apology with some fancy words—” “No.”
    “If I don’t do this, you’re gonna stay mad, aren’t you?”
    “Yes.”
    Good Lord, based on the delivery of that one simple word, she’d stay angry until they reached the ranch … and maybe beyond that. He’d be traveling through hell when he was just getting used to being near heaven.
    His stomach was knotted so tightly that he didn’t know if he could even walk into the tent. But it was the tear shimmering in the corner of her eye that decided him. The firelight caught it, and he could see himself as she must see him: a man who had shattered her trust.
    Without another word, he flung back the tent flap and stormed inside, allowing the flap to fall behind him, encasing him in the golden haze that filled the tent.
    He could smell her sweetness surrounding him. He couldn’t identify the scent. It wasn’t horses, or leather, or sweat. It was soft, reminding him of something so far back in his memory that he didn’t know if he could pull it forward. His mother, perhaps, leaning over him, brushing the hair off his brow, telling him not to be afraid.
    “You can’t just stand there, Mr. Leigh. You have to wash up!”
    Her voice penetrated his memories, reminding him more of his father than his mother. “Don’t just stand there, boy! When the battle starts, you march into the thick of it.”
    And he’d marched, while everything inside him had screamed for him to run.
    He took a step toward the small bucket and glanced at the water. With no steam rising up, it looked cold, but