“Help yourself to the strawberries,” she said as she tossed another one to the dog before taking one for herself.
Austin brought a strawberry to his lips and bit into the succulent fruit. The sweetness filled his mouth. It didn’t need sugar. It amused him to watch Loree carefully coat each strawberry with sugar before she ate it. He grew warm as her tongue darted out to slowly, meticulously capture each errant grain of sugar that clung to her lips. He imagined her kiss would taste of strawberries and sugar.
He’d been too long without a woman, and he was having one hell of a time taming his thoughts. Watching the wind whip strands of her hair around her face, he wanted to play with it as well. He wanted to touch her rounded cheeks with his fingers and the upturned tip of her nose with his lips. He’d known too few women in his life, and even though one had torn out his heart and shredded it to pieces, he couldn’t bring himself to hate women.
He figured women were like men. Some good. Some bad. Some fickle. He’d latched onto a fickle one the first time and it had cost him dearly. But in spite of the steep price he’d paid, he couldn’t see himself spending his remaining days without the comfort of a woman. Once he’d cleared his name, he’d take a wife. He wanted what his older brothers had. Neither had gained their wives without paying a price.
The comforting silence eased in around them as the shadows lengthened. The dog loped to the edge of the clearing, barked, and raced back to catch another strawberry. Austin was beginning to doubt the dog’s ability to protect Loree. Other than last evening when the dog had growled at him, he had seen no signs of aggressiveness. The dog reminded him of an overgrown puppy.
“Why are you out here, Miss Grant?”
She jerked her head around to stare at him. “I like watching the sunset, I enjoy eating strawberries—”
“No. I mean why do you live out here alone? Why not move into town? I can’t see that this is a working farm. What keeps you here?”
“Memories. We were happy here. I guess I feel that if I left, I’d be abandoning my family.”
In the distance, he saw a white picket fence surrounding three granite headstones. “How old were you?”
“Seventeen. How old were you when you went to prison?”
“Twenty-one.”
“That sounds so young.”
“Not as young as seventeen.”
She dug another strawberry into the sugar. “You mentioned a brother …”
He nodded. “Houston.”
Her eyes widened as she bit into the strawberry. She laughed as the red juice dribbled down her chin. He clenched his hands to stop his fingers from gathering the juice and carrying it back to her lips, or better yet to his own. She wiped her face with her apron. “Another town?”
“Yep. My parents lived there for a while.”
“Have you been to Houston?”
“Nah, they lived there before I was born.”
She sighed wistfully and gazed toward the trees. “I used to dream of traveling the world and looking at the stars from different cities.” She shifted her gaze to him. “Do you think the stars look different on the other side of the world?”
“I don’t know. Never thought about it. Never dreamed that big.”
“What did you dream of?”
Marrying Becky. Raising a family. But before that … a distant memory flickered at the back of his mind of standing at the edge of a gorge, yelling out his dream … and listening as the echo carried it back to him. Then the memory died like a flame snuffed out because there wasn’t enough air to keep it burning. “I don’t recall.”
“My father used to tell me that I had to put my heart into my dream if I wanted it to come true. How do you put your heart into something?”
Austin hadn’t a clue. He’d watched his brothers pour their hearts into the women they loved, thought he’d done the same with Becky, but if he had, she would have waited for him. He was convinced of that. Whatever their love had been, it hadn’t been strong enough to endure separation, and he couldn’t help but wonder what else it might not have endured.
The dog came charging back from the edge of twilight, dropped low to the ground, and growled, baring his teeth. Worry etched over her face, Loree rose to her knees. “Digger, what is it?”
The dog barked and bounded back for the trees, disappearing in the brush. A high-pitched shriek rented the air.
“Bobcat!” Loree cried as she jumped to her feet. “Digger!”
The dog barked and the ear-splitting feline cry came again, followed by a yelp echoing pain.
