Excerpt Letter to Reader About the Author Title Page Dedication Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Copyright

He Could Wait.

Austin needed Iris to get used to him, to be comfortable with him. Then they could talk. He was older than she, and more worldly.

Worldly? She’d had three husbands!

Well, they’d all been kids. And she hadn’t had any of them long enough to really be tested. She needed permanence and maturity.

She needed...him.

He looked over at Iris. Her cold little hand was warming in his big hot hand. Hers was lax and...trusting? Did she trust him?

Would she ever trust him enough to love him?

Dear Reader,

Spring is in the air—and all thoughts turn toward love. With six provocative romances from Silhouette Desire, you too can enjoy a season of new beginnings ... and happy endings! Our March MAN OF THE MONTH is Lass Small’s

The Best Husband in Texas. This sexy rancher is determined to win over the beautiful widow he’s loved for years! Next, Joan Elliott Pickart returns with a wonderful love story—Just My Joe. Watch sparks fly between handsome, wealthy Joe Dillon and the woman he loves.

Don’t miss Beverly Barton’s new miniseries, 3 BABIES FOR 3 BROTHELS, which begins with His Secret Child The town golden boy is reunited with a former flame—and their child. Popular Anne Marie Winston offers the third title in her BUTLER COUNTY BRIDES series, as a sexy heroine forms a partnership with her lost love in The Bride Means Business. Then an expectant mom matches wits with a brooding rancher in Carol Grace’s Expecting.... And Virginia Dove debuts explosively with The Bridal Promise, when star-crossed lovers marry for convenience.

This spring, please write and tell us why you read Silhouette Desire books. As part of our 20th anniversary celebration in the year 2000, we’d like to publish some of this fan mail in the books—so drop us a line, tell us how long you’ve been reading Desire books and what you love about the series. And enjoy our March titles!

Regards,

Joan Marlow Golan

Senior Editor, Silhouette Desire

Please address questions and book requests to: Silhouette Reader Service

U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269 Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3

About the Author

LASS SMALL finds living on this planet at this time a fascinating experience. People are amazing. She thinks that to be a teller of tales of people, places and things is absolutely marvelous.

The Best Husband In Texas

Lass Small

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To Debra Robertson

One

At the age of nineteen, Iris Smith Osburn lost her first husband to Desert Storm. A U.S. tank ran over Jake’s foxhole. Since the tank was one of ours, the government—with some earnest coaxing in court—paid up.

There in San Antonio, TEXAS, the grieving Iris voluntarily split the award with her late husband’s hostile family. They thought she was selfish, but sourly they took the lawyer-settled half of the money. The attorney’s fees came from her half.

Iris Smith Osburn Dallas’s second husband was her first husband’s best friend. He was a fine man, and like her first husband, he was very gentle and kind. Tom died of some strange Gulf disease that’s still being studied. He, too, had been in Desert Storm and there was government insurance. He had no family who wanted to share.

Her third husband was a friend to the second. Peter Alden was charming. Iris was reluctant to try marriage again, but Peter was adamant, and he convinced her to become his wife. While a spectator at a rodeo, he was trampled by a nasty bull that had gotten loose between the fences. Peter’s death had been quick. It had been a shock that had shaken Iris to the core.

The female mourners who were at Peter Alden’s funeral whispered that, each time, Iris’s grief had been quite practiced. They whispered that with her hands over her face that way, she was probably looking through her fingers to see who would be her next?

Iris Smith Osburn Dallas Alden not only was awarded the life insurance of her third husband, but her brother-in-law was an attorney. He proved the rodeo proprietors were responsible. He gently refused his fee.

Iris offered Peter’s family half of the compensation awarded by the Court’s judgment. The family declined. They discouraged their lawyer son’s attentions to the blond, blue-eyed Iris. Obviously, she was dangerous to men.

She moved back home to Fuquay, about eighty miles north and west of San Antonio near Kerrville. Iris was, by then, twenty-four years old and three times a widow. All of her marriages had been brief. She felt she was a scourge and knew she would never marry again.

It was February of that year when Iris was welcomed back among her relatives and friends with varying reactions. Her extended family was mostly compassionate. There were those who considered her a threat. There was just something about a young, good-looking, grieving widow that lured men. Then, too, she was financially well-off... another very strong lure to most men.

Eldest of the children in her family, it was very strange for Iris to be back in Fuquay, TEXAS, to live at home again. But she could not deal with curiosity. She needed her family’s protection.

The house was very familiar because it hadn’t changed much over the years. It was filled with family hand-me-down furniture and hand-crocheted curtains. Even to strangers, it was a comfortable house.

Iris knew that her own room had not been used because there were so many unoccupied rooms. She could go into her old room, close the door and be alone. The house was silent. It felt as if it was frozen in time. Just about the way Iris was. Both were on hold. Waiting? For what?

Iris looked with dead eyes at the pictures still on her bulletin board. Who was that long-ago child who’d saved those curled pictures? Who was that laughing woman? She’d had a good laugh, which hadn’t been heard in some time.

She could not recall when she had last laughed. About what?

On that board, there were no pictures of any of her husbands. It was as if her life had stopped when she’d left this silent, still house. And she’d come back to it as a ghost.

Iris opened one of the room’s windows to TEXAS’s February-fresh mildness. They were due a norther. Maybe if she opened all the windows, the house would be refreshed and shake itself back to ‘life?

What about her? Could she then begin to breathe and again be the woman who had left here to move to San Antonio to go to Incarnate Word College? That was...several lifetimes ago.

No.

She could not go back in time. But she couldn’t find the motivation to get herself to go forward. She was lost. She would never marry again. It was too awful to have a partner who failed in the sworn commitment of “from this day forward.” Why had she buried three such good young men?

At twenty-four, she was older now than either of her first two husbands. Iris and her husbands’ families would never know what sort of men they would have become, what careers they would have chosen or what their children could have been.

Her tears welled.

She knew she would never again marry. She could not stand to be another man’s widow. She was a curse. The realization, the clarity of their unfulfilled lives had caught up with her and overwhelmed her to the point that she didn’t know how to cope. Therefore she withdrew. She was in a capsule of her own making. In there she was alone, and it was silent.

With chidings and scoldings, people tried to drag her out. She endured. But she would withdraw as soon as she could manage it in a careful, subtle way.

Her mother watched her. Her daddy was impatient with her and scolded...her mother. But her mother said, “Leave her be for a while. This has been the straw.” She was referring to the straw piled on the straw that finally broke the camel’s back.

How could her mother realize so exactly the burden of grief Iris carried?

Her sisters’ reactions were split between compassion and irritation. They would scold her and try to bring her out of her shell. They weren’t successful.

Despite his busy life, her young brother would sit with her in silence, demanding nothing of her. He was there. He fixed a car part. He wrote a letter. He watched TV. He studied. He was there for her.

She really didn’t notice.

Their friends in Fuquay were very kind and thoughtful of Iris. They were also nosy, but they were reasonably subtle about it. Just that Iris had had three husbands was enough to irritate any number of her unmarried female friends.

Iris’s high school chum Marla’s response was simple. She had twins and she’d hand one of them to Iris—to distract her.

Holding the wiggly baby only made Iris think that none of her three husbands had left her a part of him. “We got time,” they each had said. They’d be logical. “What’s the rush?” “Let’s spend this time with it being just us.”

And it was. Except that, now, she was alone. Alone in the midst of her ordinary, busy family. So alone was Iris in her silence, she could hear the air pop. And she watched the clock. That baffled everyone. If she couldn’t see her watch or the clock, she asked, “What time is it?”

They’d inquire with puzzled interest, “You going somewheres?”

Her glance would come to theirs and she’d say, “No.”

“You waiting for a program on TV?”

“No.”

She confused them.

She wanted time to get on past. She had nothing to do that was important enough to help with it. So she depended on a clock to get it done...to get the time past.

Their neighbor at the ranch down the road, Austin Farrell, wanted to be Iris’s fourth husband. He’d been named for Stephen F. Austin who had brought settlers to TEXAS long, long ago. Well, in TEXAS history, it was a long time. Actually it wasn’t yet two hundred years.

Austin Farrell was a heel-dug, obstinate, good man almost thirty. He was about six feet tall and had land that was productive; and it was all paid for, even the taxes. His eyes were a gray that was strangely blue, and his face was tanned under his Stetson. He wanted Iris. He was a TEXAN. He’d get her.

However, Iris had come to feel like the poisonous Lucrezia Borgia, duchess of Ferrara. That title was shockingly close to Austin’s last name. The Duchess had lived in Italy from 1480-1519. In that time, Lucrezia had dispatched any number of lovers.

Iris Smith Osburn Dallas Alden felt similarly deadly. However, she hadn’t even needed the poison. She herself was the curse. And she didn’t want another dead husband.

Not knowing her mother was a party to Austin’s plans, Iris declined his invitation to go to a play when he arrived at the house one day to visit.

He said, “The play has a funny story, and it’ll make you laugh.”

The idea of laughing at anything was so incredible that Iris gave Austin a glance to see if he was serious.

He was.

So Iris replied bitterly, “I’m the TEXAS version of Lucrezia Borgia. Look what I’ve done to three good husbands.”

Although his eyes squinted just a little bit in compassion, Austin was gently, rather aloofly chiding. “I just asked if you’d like to go with me over to San Antone to the play at the Majestic Theatre. I haven’t yet asked to marry you.”

Iris looked at Austin suspiciously.

He smiled a little and suggested, “Who would you like along as chaperone?”

Iris was distracted. But her mother was leaning in the doorway, listening, and she told Iris, “You really ought to go to the play.” Edwina Smith was a smart woman. She understood Iris’s baffled reaction, and she had offered Iris an opinion.

Iris considered Austin. He’d told her to pick a chaperone. She mentally shuffled through her acquaintances. She chose Violet who was too shy to flirt. This would be good practice for her friend Violet.

Iris told Austin, “Violet. And teach her to flirt. Help her.”

Austin’s heart faltered and he glanced over at Edwina Smith for courage. Iris’s mother smiled the tiniest bit. But it was a sad smile.

Austin became staunch. He’d explain the circumstances to Violet and help her to meet any male she might cotton to.

Iris did go to the play. They doubled. Austin and his friend, Bud, escorted the two...flowers, Iris and Violet. That they were so named was cause for drollness. The women had grown up together and were used to it.

To Austin’s displeasure, Bud made a move for Iris!

Austin growled, “It’s to Violet that you’re supposed to be paying attention. You leave Iris alone.”

Bud smiled.

Austin spent the first part of the evening switching Iris to his other side and blocking Bud’s advances. Austin told Bud that old hack, “You’ve got great teeth.”

Bud smiled toothily.

And gently Austin added, “I’d hate for anything to happen to them.”

The twenty-six-year-old Bud’s eyes narrowed as he considered how much of a threat a mature man, who was almost thirty, would be.

Austin smiled rather widely.

Bud noted the chipped tooth in Austin’s smile and remembered how he’d gotten it. He happened to notice all the scars on Austin’s bare, sunbrowned knuckles, and he came to the conclusion that it wasn’t worth the effort to tangle with such a man.

The play was a road show of You Can’t Take it with You. And no matter how many times the cast had performed it, they made it appear fresh.

The theme of You Can’t Take it with You was to live your life. A good comment. It was the reason Austin had taken Iris to see it. Only twenty-four years old, she still had a long life ahead of her. She shouldn’t waste it. And while she didn’t yet realize it, she had Austin to consider.

Watching the play, Iris only understood that her husbands hadn’t had the chance to live out their lives. Instead of stimulating her, the play only made her excruciatingly aware of how young her husbands had been when they died. How much they’d missed. How short were their lives. How they’d been...cheated. She grieved for them.

It hadn’t occurred to Austin that Iris would take such a route of thinking. Amid the laughter of the audience, he uneasily monitored her withdrawn silence.

He wondered, for which one did she grieve?

How could he ask?

When the play was over, they moved with the cheerful crowd to leave the preserved theatre, and they walked to the car over by Travis Park Square. Bud drove. He watched the pair in the back seat in the rearview mirror.

They sat apart.

Each looked out a different side window.

In the back seat, in a low voice, Austin asked Iris, “You okay?”

She slowly blinked, then turned her head to look at him. He had to repeat his question. Then she nodded.

Austin was struck by that. How unlike a woman to neglect an opportunity to expound on such a question. To think of all the nothing replies she could have given him. She could have said, As compared to what? Or, Under what condition? Or even just, Why? Or she could explain to him why she was in such doldrums. He would like to know.

Dead in the water, she was.

Austin again looked at Iris. He moved his mouth in thought. Dead in the water described Iris very well. No response. No animation. No flirting. No laughter.

She moved, but it wasn’t animation. It was by rote in response to the need to shift or walk or eat. With her, it wasn’t ever choice. It was response. Austin wondered, was there enough life left in that luscious body? How could he reach in to rouse her enough to see him as a man she was interested in. One she could want.

She sat looking out the car window and was silent. He considered that she, too, was dead. Just about as dead as those three ex-husbands of hers. What good was her life now? She was as removed from life as if she now actually shared their graves.

So then Austin wondered which of the three graves she’d choose to share?

Austin was appalled to find he would wish to be one of the three with that claim on her. Each of those dead men had loved her enough to marry her. To be with her. To listen to her. They’d made love with her. Had she ever laughed with them?

Compassion for the three men licked through Austin, but he didn’t back off. Instead, he took Iris’s hand and held it in his. Their hands were linked between them, her cold little hand lying in his big hot one on the back seat as they sat apart.

His hand holding hers was very comforting to the freshly stirred grief that her conscience had awakened in Iris.

Would she ever be free of the guilt she suffered because her husbands were all dead, and she was still alive? All three had been especially good men.

Austin moved his hand as his warm, briefly tightening fingers assured her he was there.

He had the good, square, warm, rough hand of a man who worked physically. It was emotional for Iris to be given that comfort, right then. Her eyes teared.

Austin saw her tears in the glow of the passing streetlamps. Tears? Why...tears? He considered her particular situation and the teaching of the play.

Austin knew that Iris had understood the play, but instead of looking ahead to life, he realized that she was looking back at her abandonment. Was she alone? She could hardly be alone in her noisy, busy family. If she noticed who all was actually there with her.

Was she thinking of the loss of her husbands? The waste of their lives. How could anyone tell her that what had happened, had happened, and it was all past?

The play gave him the courage to open a discussion. “It was a good play.”

After a pause, she replied, “Yes.”

“Live for the day.”

She did not respond. But she didn’t move her cold little hand from the shelter of his hot one.

Austin wasn’t sure if he could say anything else. It might be too emotional for her. It was the first time they’d been out together—with Bud and Violet, of course—and this might not be the time to start her talking.

He could wait. He needed her to get used to him, to be comfortable with him. Then they could talk. He was older than she, and he was more worldly.

Worldly? She’d had three husbands!

Well, they’d all been kids. They’d been young and raw. And she hadn’t had any of them long enough to really be tested. She needed permanence and maturity.

She needed...him.

He again looked over at her. Her cold little hand was warming in his big hot hand. Hers was lax and...trustful? Did she trust him? She was looking at the passing suburbs of San Antonio as they drove through town toward the highway that went to Fuquay.

In the front seat, Bud was regaling Violet with all the old jokes that had obviously been stacked up inside him. Violet never once said, “Not that old one.” She either had a compassionate heart or no one had ever subjected her to all those old, stale jokes. Actually—and it was a surprise—Bud was a pretty good jokester. His timing was good. And here and there even Austin had to smile.

Iris did not. She simply gazed out the car window and was silent.

Austin just sat holding her hand and he, too, was silent.

It was rather late when Iris got home. Her mother heard Iris’s light step on the porch followed more slowly by the reverberation of Austin’s shoes on the porch.

The screen opened and closed almost immediately. On the porch the male steps were silent. Then Austin turned slowly and finally went off down the steps as he left.

When Iris went upstairs to her room in her parents’ house, her mind was not in charge. It was off somewhere. She moved by rote. She undressed and crawled into bed without brushing her teeth.

Emotionally exhausted, she slept. She dreamed of looking for her husbands. She searched for them. She was the only stronger in all the places she searched. But she couldn’t contact them at all.

Where were they?

Her dead husbands were good, young men. Would they be together? Jake and Tom were friends, and Peter had known Tom. Would they have met? Would they have talked about her with each other? When she died, would they all greet her? Or would they be...in the beyond?

Iris wakened, and found her eyes wet with tears. She still grieved for those husbands.

Her life was over. How long would she have to wait to get past this life and find them again?

The play had chided the audience to use their lives while they had them. Ah, but what if the use was gone? What if there was no reason to go on?

She had married three men. None was now with her. And none had left her with a child. They had all left her...alone.

Iris went about the morning as usual. She was drained. She looked at the day with disinterested, cold eyes. It was just another day to get through.

At breakfast, as she sipped tea, Iris’s mother came into the kitchen and said her usual, “Good morning, darling.”

Iris asked, “Which am I?”

Her mother poured some tea into a cup before she replied, “The wounded one.”

Iris considered that response. “Yeah. I suppose that covers it I have three deep slashes in my heart.”

Tears in her eyes, her mother replied, “That describes it well.”

“Austin took me to see You Can’t Take it with You last night.”

“Yes.”

“Do you know the play?”

“Very well.”

With her voice’s rough shattering, Iris asked, “How can I find any reason to enjoy this life?”

It took a while for her mother to reply. “You can look at the day and the people who live in it. You can look forward instead of backward.”

Her voice trembling with tears, Iris guessed, “I discard each one and forget them all?”

“No. You...release them...and let them go.”

Her voice husky and bitter, Iris asked, “I tell them to just run along and get lost?”

And her mother replied gently, “You must let them go.”

“They’re in my mind!”

“You’ve trapped them there.”

“No!” Iris got up and left the room with her breakfast almost untouched.

Not eating was one of Iris’s problems. Not eating, and not caring what happened. She was afraid to be close to anyone, so she was gruff and distancing to all those around her. It was selfprotection. She didn’t want to love and lose anyone else.

Edwina wondered when the time would come that Iris would reach out? To whom? For what reason? What would it take for this fragile, wounded child of hers to see the world...and to be a part of it again?

Two

Iris came down the stairs in a soft, long, rumpled dress and her hair hadn’t been brushed very well. She’d probably just clawed her fingers through her hair.

Without any greeting, Austin told her of his cow as Iris came down the last steps. “You remember Fanny? She has a new calf. Come see it.” He didn’t smile or coax. He gave her the unadorned option.

Iris questioned, “New?”

Austin agreed. “Joe just called in on the CB. The momma was licking the sack from her baby just before I got here. I really thought I’d get you back there in time for the birth.”

Austin watched Ires. She just moved on past him slowly but she went on out the door. With a quiet glance at the riveted Edwina, the silent Austin followed the silent Iris.

Since Iris moved slowly, Austin got to the truck ahead of her and opened the door for her.

She just got up into the pickup and sat there with her hands clasped on her lap.

Austin hurried around the truck and got in real quick and started the motor. He was very aware that if Iris could get in that easily, she could get out just as quick.

He noted that her seat belt wasn’t on her. But he couldn’t stay there to correct it because she could change her mind, get out of the truck—and leave. So he drove carefully to the edge of Fuquay before he said, “Hey, our seat belts aren’t on.”

And he helped with hers... Ah, for his own arms to be given the job of protecting her body! His eyes squinched and his mouth opened a little bit so that he could breathe.

She made no move to help with the belt and didn’t even watch him fix it. She just moved her arm and allowed herself to be safeguarded.

Only after she was secure did he buckle his own belt. She made no comment.

While his mind noted the weather, his neighbor’s livestock and other vehicles on the road, he also noted every breath and move Iris made as she sat silently in the cab of his pickup.

Finally he said, “Violet and Bud had another date.”

Iris made a sound in reply that meant only that she’d heard him.

He said, “Marla’s twins have the croup.”

He’d spent time that morning talking to Iris’s friend Maria and getting the gossip so that he’d have something to say to such a silent woman. Even if she didn’t reply or discuss each item, she would know the current gossip.

Thoughtfully. Austin looked over at Iris. And he wondered, would she?

She just turned her head to look out the car window and said nothing. Was her mind gone? Would her eyes ever see him? Why had she gone into the decline? Since she came home, it seemed to Austin that she just got worse.

If she didn’t have all the money from her dead husbands, she’d have to get out and work. She’d have to have some contact with other people. Edwina said Iris prowled the dark house at night.

So Austin asked Iris, “Do you sleep during the day?”

“No.”

Then why did she...prowl...at night?

The day was balmy and the fresh air came over .the land from the Gulf and into the pickup.

Austin told his passenger, “Breathe that TEXAS air. It’s good for your vitals.”

Very softly, she replied, “I can breathe.” None of her dead husbands could.

Austin blinked. He knew she could breathe. What did she mean? He frowned at the road, wondering if he should ask. But he bit his lip and commented, “Look at the sky. How wide and blue it is.”

At her silence he looked over and saw she was still peering out the car window. She was responding by looking? Or was she already aware the sky was blue, and it was obvious, so she felt no need to confirm his observation?

They drove the rest of the way in silence. He rode over the grid between the gateposts. The grid discouraged cattle from going over onto the roadway. And it eliminated the need to get out of the truck, open the gate, get back into the truck, drive through, then get out and close the damned gate before getting back inside the waiting truck.

Of course, driving in thataway on the grid, a man always has to peel off any woman who might be stuck to his chest. And she ought to be reasonably dressed.

There were cameras, which were triggered by any weight on the grid. A man, a horse, a beeve or a vehicle could trigger a picture. If anything went over the grid, it was filmed.

The film was evidence. The tape would show the truck, the driver and the license number. The cameras were cleverly hidden, but often stolen from their places. They were worth replacing even if it was a hell of a nuisance.

The cameras were for rustlers who could drive over the grid just like anybody else. And they could take out a cow or two and carry them off.

Austin looked over at his silent passenger as they exited the grid. He looked down her body. It was skinny. But there was potential. She was so nicely female. He lusted for her. He always had.

She’d gone away to college. He’d been twenty-four and thought he had plenty of time. Since she was then eighteen, if she wanted to be that educated, he could wait. Who could believe she’d be married—to another man—in just six months?

That was the first time.

Married and widowed three times, and she was now the age he had been when she’d left Fuquay to go to college! He’d thought she’d be safe there in Incarnate Word College. No men. The teachers were nuns. How did those three guys get to her so fast?

He’d find out.

Austin parked at his house, which he knew was now spotless. “Want to freshen up? Coffee?”

She didn’t even look at him. She told him, “No, thank you. You can take me home.”

Take her home! That jolted him. He looked at her and she was still looking out the window. Was she sick? “Don’t you want to see the new baby calf that’s just been born today?”

She turned big eyes to him and said, “Oh. Yes.” And she looked out the windshield. “Where is it?”

“Down at the cattle barn. It isn’t far.”

“Okay.”

They spent the entire rest of the morning at the barn. She smiled. She held a kitten on her lap. The barn dog loved Iris and quietly sat next to her, very alert and interested.

Since he had to do it in front of her, Austin was trying to think of a kind way to evict the dog and take its place. Austin knew he was too large to replace the kitten on her lap.

Austin asked one of the show-offy hands, “How’d you find the kitten?” Barn cats never allowed people to see their litters until the kittens could fend for themselves.

He heard another man tell Iris, “We heard them mewing. Their momma didn’t come back. Something musta happened to her. We—” he moved his hand and changed his wording “—this one is the only...survivor.”

The little ball of fur curled on Iris’s lap and purred. The men exchanged glances. Any male allowed that close to her would purr.

And they looked at her. She’d been married three times. Their eyes narrowed and they watched her as they thought all sorts of things, but mostly how much money she’d have by then.

It took them a while, but they gradually realized that she was suffering. She was grieving. Then they looked at Austin. He was gentle to her. He wasn’t just watching her, he was watching over her. She was his.

They frowned at Austin for being so obvious. He wanted that woman. That was what he was doing today. He was getting a toehold. He was watching over her and distracting her from those three dead husbands.

He was showing her a new calf, and a kitten was curled on her lap right where a man’s hand wanted to be. Damn.

The momma cow was a milk cow and a pet anyway, so she didn’t mind the audience. She licked her baby and it brawled and staggered and stumbled.

Iris smiled. She sat discreetly on the straw, out of the way, and held the purring kitten on her lap. Her hands soothed and protected the kitten. It purred louder than any discreet cat would. Its purr rattled. It was safe there on her lap.

Austin watched his woman. When would she know that he was her next husband? How long would it be before he could put his face in her lap and purr?

The momma cow chewed on the fresh wheat grass they’d cut for her as a congratulations for having such a fine little bull calf. She watched as the new one staggered around quite well, and its bawl made a series of noises.

The spectators were all entertained...by Iris’s reactions. She watched the calf. She occasionally petted the kitten. She offered no comment at all. She was simply there.

That was plenty for the men. More were there than were needed. It seemed to Austin that the barn was crammed with curious men.

Austin didn’t object. It was a good time for them to view Iris and learn she belonged to their boss. -To him. To Austin Farrell. She was his.

Of course, she had to learn that little fact herself. How was he to go about that?

Over on the back porch of the main house, the cook rattled the iron stick around the iron triangle to announce lunch.

Austin had expected the men to vanish. They always vanished to the house when the cook rattled the iron triangle. However, while they were aware of the sound, the men watched Iris to see what she would do. If she stayed in the barn, some of the men would skip lunch, Austin knew.

Austin went to her and held out his hand. “That’s the signal for lunch. Please sit with us.”

As she started to decline, the men said things like, “Yeah.” “Stay.” “The eats are good here.” “Try it,” and “We don’t mind.”

She heard it all. She took Austin’s proffered hand and rose effortlessly. Even with the help to rise, she appeared unknowing of the rest who were there. She kept the kitten in her other hand. She curled it against her skinny chest and smoothed its fur.

The men’s faces were vulnerable.

The barn dog followed along as though he was one of the group. Since he would make the house dog get hostile, Austin told the barn dog to stay.

The dog obeyed. But the dog stood in the barn door watching after those leaving as if he’d been abandoned on a raft that was going farther out to the sea.

Lunch was family style at the long plank table. The cook watched the crowd come in and his squint lines got pale when he realized a lady was going to share their food.

That should have rattled the man, but he was a cook. A real one. And without obvious panic, he made her plate dainty and attractive.

Some of the men mentioned they had their food slopped onto their plates. How come the lady got all that attention and they didn’t?

While they ate, everybody competed for Iris’s attention. They told stories. They ribbed one another and cleaned up jokes. The jokes weren’t quite so funny that way, but they made her smile.

Her little smile was like winning a laurel.

Everybody there knew who Iris was and exactly what were her circumstances. Isolated people found out things and shared whatever they discovered. Gossip was paramount.

Lunch took a little longer than usual. Austin allowed it. Even the cook got a cup of coffee and sat down to listen. The story competition was a delight. Too bad somebody didn’t tape it all. Some of the older hands told stories of long ago, which had been handed down the line. How accurate were they now? How much had they honed?

Austin was patient because Iris did listen. She moved her eyes to the one talking, and she listened. She never did laugh out loud, but here and there, she did smile at the stories they told.

It was like a gift, that smile. She was so fragile.

Austin knew that being here was good for Iris. She needed to listen, not to respond. Right now, she could not. But she could hear. And she did.

He was especially pleased with his bunch. They were bent on distracting her. While calling attention to themselves, nobody mentioned loss or grief, but there was humor in everything if you just looked for it.

They told stories of hardship that were hilarious. They told about rescues that caused guffaws.

They didn’t speak of love. Not at all. There were no quarrels mentioned. No deaths were allowed to be touched upon. She’d had enough of that for some time to come.

Austin wondered how they’d all known to censor their chatter and their jokes so well. He looked over his crew and knew yet again that they were superior men.

Well, for now, they were.

Actually, they were ornery, hardheaded, obstinate deadbeats. How could they be so moxie now with such a fragile flower?

How could they not?

With her carrying the purring kitten, whose head must be getting dizzy with its vibrating sounds, Austin finally took Iris home. She had given no indication of being ready to leave his place.

He’d wrestled with just keeping her there until she said something about leaving. But how would her parents feel about him just...keeping their daughter?

Well, three other men had. She’d probably never even had a fling. They’d all just courted her and married her.

What about the second one? Had he just moved in on her? It hadn’t been long after the first one was buried that she’d married the second.

It had been almost a year.

On the other side of his truck, with the cat on her lap in exhausted sleep, Iris sat as though she’d always sat there. She didn’t talk to him at all.

He asked her, “Want to name the little bull calf?”

She looked over at Austin. “What would I name him.

“Not Spots. That sounds too much like a dog.”

She lifted her chin then lowered it to indicate she agreed.

Austin waited for her to say something. But she just sat there. So he asked, “What would be a good name for a grown bull?”

She silently considered. But she gave no names. She looked out the car window.

He said, “How about Bull’s Eye?”

She slowly looked over to him. He saw the movement from the corner of his eye. When she was actually looking at him, he glanced over and smiled before he looked back at the road.

She said, “Okay.”

Austin had been pushing for her to counter with another name. Now the new little calf would carry that name all the rest of his days. Bull’s Eye. She’d never know how many jokes there’d be that Austin would have to listen to again and again. Endlessly. For the bull it wouldn’t make no never mind, but for Austin... Good gravy!

Austin took Iris back to her mother and was pleasant and cordial to her hovering parents. Of course, he’d gotten there when it was almost suppertime and so he accepted the hospitable offer of something to wet his whistle. He sat and sipped his drink and visited so that no one could hustle him out of there.

Since he had settled in so well, there was nothing for the Smiths to do but suggest that he might stay for supper. It was so weak an offer that he should have declined, but he looked at his watch. He acted surprised as he saw the time it was, and he said, “Why...thank you. I will.”

At the table were the middle daughters and the young son. And there was Iris who was silent. She moved the food on her plate and didn’t join in on the conversations that eased around the table.

Her sister Emily was animated and flirty with Austin. She was twenty-two and worked at the telephone company office. Her animation was frowned on by her mother, but Emily ignored her mother’s squinted eyes and chatted and laughed.

Sixteen-year-old Andy just ate. He was in that growing period in which he whipped down his food like a plague of locusts.

Jennifer and Frances were simply amused observers, and at times they shared hilarious glances.

Austin knew they were simply amused and not being nasty. Their daddy wasn’t as certain. He eyed the two whose shared humor was especially sharp.

When dinner was over, they all cleared the table, and Austin did his share. But he didn’t leave. He amused Jennifer and Frances so that their eyes sparkled.

The time went past and the parents exchanged glances. Austin gave no sign of leaving.

Edwina raised her eyebrows in question to her husband, but he shrugged.

However, at about nine-thirty, Austin did begin to leave. As he got up he said, “will....” in prelude.

Iris, too, rose and said, “Good night.” And she just left the room and went off up the stairs and was...gone.

So it was her family who saw Austin out to his truck.

Three

In the two days that followed, Austin paced and thought and groaned. He didn’t for one minute think there was any way, at all, to get through the invisible, steel shield that surrounded Iris Smith Osburn Dallas Alden.

However, he felt the urgent need to see her. Why? Well, he...just...needed to see her. She was vulnerable. She’d already had three husbands. What if some other man got to her and convinced her to take him! Austin needed to be close to her so that she remembered him first.

But he seriously doubted that Iris thought anything at all about poor old Austin Farrell. She was oblivious of anyone. She was not in touch with the rest of the world. She endured the time that passed so slowly.

She was... Well, when Austin had escorted her to the play, she had watched, and she had absorbed it. Had she agreed with it? Now, that would be interesting.

Austin got his Stetson and went back to his pickup to go over to Iris’s house to see her. Well, the house actually belonged to her parents and her siblings. How droll that he thought of it as being hers.

After he knocked once on the door, it was her mother who opened the door and smiled. She called to her daughter upstairs. Austin declined going into the living room and finding someplace to sit. He waited at the bottom of the stairs.

Mrs. Osburn Dallas Alden came down the stairs. She had on a different loose, long, carelessly wrinkled dress and her hair was not tidy. She had used no makeup at all. Even so, she was the woman he wanted to be with for the rest of his life.

Austin smiled.

Iris glanced at him in an uninterested manner. The time passed. She said nothing, so he didn’t, either. They stood there. She finally asked, “What is it?”

“Come see the calf. He’s steadier.”

Without any response—at all—she walked on past him.

His mouth opened in shock because he thought she was snubbing him entirely. However, at the front door, she turned to it, reached over and opened it, went through the door and on outside toward his truck.

Recovering from his shock, and by striding with some push, Austin got to the truck before she did, and he opened the truck door for her. He stood there with the door opened for her and he watched her.

Again, Iris got into the vehicle without paying any attention to Austin.

He was transportation. That was obvious.

He went around the back of the pickup and got in on the driver’s side. He glanced over at her as he put in the key, started the motor, and eased along, saying nothing. But using the car phone, he called her mother and told her where Iris was and where she wanted to go.

Her mother said, “Thank you” in a very tender, relieved manner.

Now...why did her family want her with him? Or were they just grateful that they’d know now where she was and with whom? He was the “whom.” It was better to be with her, albeit silently, than to pace his empty house all by himself, just wondering where she was.

Iris said no word, at all, on the entire way to Austin’s place.

When the two arrived there, at the barn, she was out of the pickup before he’d rightly stopped and gotten out to help her.

She just did everything on her own and without any courtesy to the male with her.

She was an independent cuss.

Austin hurried and followed Iris close enough so that he seemed to be with her. He hesitated when they got to the cow’s slot in the barn. The momma cow had more room than any local human. She watched the calf and mooed if he was too curious. And her calf was steadier.

The new little creature was so curious. The threeday-old calf they’d named Bull’s Eye still lost his footing a shade, but he could regain his equilibrium and was mostly frisky and alert and very nosy. He looked at everything. He smelled everything, and fortunately, no crawfish was around to snap a claw on his nose.

His big momma cow was tolerant and watchful. She mooed when the new calf was out of line. He stopped what he was doing wrong, but he did trip again when he thought he could fool his mother.

How typically male.

But he made even lris laugh. He ate from Iris’s hand. He nibbled the grain perfectly. His mother mooed softly once.

What had the cow said?

The calf stopped crowding Iris and looked at her curiously with jerking movements of its head. It was as if his mother had indicated that the clothcovered creature was not one of them.

Iris laughed.

She did! It was she whom Austin watched. Not the calf. Calves were a dime a dozen. It was this woman who kept Austin’s attention. He watched her, smiling, and a tear came from one of his eyes. She just might make it, after all.

Instantly, Austin tackled the problem of who all would eagerly help her to heal? Besides being a beautiful woman, it was the money she had from her dead husbands that lured the men. Men sought money, however it was found.

But Austin didn’t need her money. He had his own. The problem was: How would Austin keep the eager mob of men away from her until she realized Austin Farrell was the one for her?

Then the little kitten wobbled out from under one side of the barn. It came to Iris and said, “Mew” in a very fragile manner.

Iris scooped it up and held it to her. She asked Austin, “Has the momma cat fed him? He’s hungry.”

She’d spoken! She had!

Austin replied, “I’ll look.”

But he didn’t find the momma cat. Knew she might never be found. And the new little kitten was hungry.

So they went to Austin’s house and the kitten was given a dish of milk. Being as little as it was, it had trouble licking the milk as it was supposed to.

But Austin got an eyedropper—emergency feeder for hurt creatures—and it worked!

Iris asked another question, which startled Austin so much that he had to look at her to be sure it was she who had spoken. He then had to ask, “What did you say?”

Iris repeated, “Where is his mother?”

So they went out and searched the area for the momma cat. With the kitten starving, Austin had figured something had happened to the momma cat. The search was time taking, but it was a pleasure for him to be with Iris.

Then Iris spoke again! She said in regular conversation to him, “I’ll take the kitten home with me and see to it being fed for you.”

That whole, entire sentence!

He looked at Iris in astonishment, and nodded rather vapidly.

So then she asked, “Perhaps I should go on back now and begin to feed the kitten?”

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