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Her free hand ran a soft circle over her stomach. Would Cord arrest her?
A faint hissing sound, like someone gasping for air, had her looking up.
Cord stood in the doorway. The mirror slipped from her fingers. Florie reached for it, but the end of the handle hit the table, sending the whole thing over the edge. It landed on the floor with a shattering crash.
Chapter Five
“No harm done,” Della insisted. She led Florie around the table, to where Cord was still trying to make his legs move. It was as if they were stuck in a mud bog. And his heart, well, it didn’t know if it should beat, sing, or just give up and stop all together. Florie looked like a picture in Harper’s Weekly. An etching of what all women strived to resemble.
“Here, Cord, take her out to the porch while I clean up the glass,” Della said.
It was as if he was in a dream. He moved, took Florie’s arm and led her through the door, yet it felt as if he floated, his feet barely touched the floor, and the air around seemed misty and surreal.
He paused near the set of wicker chairs on the porch, but then his senses arrived, and he guided Florie out the back door.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“To my house,” he told her. Along with his senses came clear thinking. “We need to talk.”
She stumbled slightly. Cord released her arm to hook her around the hips. Her waist was so thin and fragile it was like catching a butterfly. Cord waited for her to nod. He kept his hand around her back, guiding her directly toward the gate and then the back door.
He didn’t stop there. Steering her around the table and through the doorway, he didn’t pause until he nodded for her to take a seat on the red velvet couch his mother loved so much and he and his father scoffed about.
Once Florie was seated, he didn’t have a clue what to do. Tingles raced over his scalp, and he scratched at them, shuffled his feet, and glanced at the seating options. A rocker, two armchairs, plenty of space beside her on the big couch. He rubbed his chin. The bed upstairs is where he’d like to take her, and spend the rest of the day forgetting all about her husband…the Winter brothers…his duties. Everything except her and him. But he couldn’t do that. Any of it.
His heart hung as if full of thick mud.
“You have a very nice home,” she said, somewhat anxious.
Cord released the dead air in his chest, and sat in one of the armchairs. “Thanks,” he huffed, but quickly added, “It’s not really mine.”
“Oh?” Her eyes were hesitant as they moved around the room, not stopping on him. “Whose is it?”
The urge to kiss her wouldn’t quell. Sitting here, catching a whiff of her sweet scent and unable to draw his eyes from how picture perfect she looked, his lips burned to touch hers. It was about the toughest fight he’d ever fought—this one going on inside him right now.
He stood and walked to the fireplace, leaned a hand on the wide mantel. “It’s my parents’ house. Or one of them anyway.”
“One of your parents?”
“My parents have several homes. They built this one right after the tracks crossed the state line.” He wasn’t embarrassed by his father’s station, but it wasn’t something he bragged about, either. Practically everyone in the state knew Weston Donavon was a railroad baron.
The frown drawing her brows together said she didn’t know.
The mantel held several little crystal figurines, and he pushed one, lining it up with the others. “My father is one of the owners of the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad. About a dozen years ago Congress passed acts promising rewards to the first railroad to cross the Kansas state line. It was a tough race, but the Missouri-Kansas-Texas, or MKT, as its known, was the winner.” He straightened another figurine, taking refuge in sharing the simple tale. “Right now my folks live down in Dallas. The line is almost to there. My father’s goal is to have MKT hit the Port of Galveston and give the United States access to the shipping traffic on the Gulf of Mexico.”
“Your father owns the railroad?” Her frown had grown, now covering her entire face.
“The MKT. There are lots of other lines.”
“But the MKT is the one the Winter gang robbed.”
“Yes, as well as several others.”
She had a hand pressed to her forehead. Her beauty had made the fact she was ill slip his mind. When her eyes met his, the sorrow they held wrenched his heart. He went to her side. “Come on, you should be in bed.”
She shook her head. “No, I—” A ragged sigh echoed between them. “I need to leave.”
Chills raced through his veins. “Leave?”
