Page 27 of His Texas Claim

“You can’t be that old.”

“Forty-five.”

“And how old do you think I am?”

I peered at her. “...is this a trick question.”

“Most of my questions are.”

I laughed and shook my head. “Twenty-one.”

“Jesus,” she burst out laughing, that accent coming through strong. “I’m thirty-two, genius. You know I have a doctorate, right?”

“I ain’t an educated man.”

She was still laughing when she said, “Thirteen years. That’s not exactly a scandal, Stetson.”

“Didn’t say scandal.”

“You said half my age. I’m doing the math for you.”

“Math’s not the point.”

“Then what is?”

I peered at her, my smile fading. “Point is I don’t take advantage of people,” I said. “Never have. Wasn’t gonna start with you.”

She got serious too, watching me carefully.

Then: “In that case, I guess I need to prove it.”

“What?”

Her eyes darted down. “Take off your pants.”

“Here?” We were out in the open a little more now; I knew Gage was headed this way. “But⁠—”

Her hands were already on my belt, and whatever objections I had left went quiet the second her hands found what she was after. Buck had the decency to ignore us completely. Gage had the decency not to show up too fast.

Then Bryn took advantage of me instead.

TEN

Bryn

Almost to the aquifer.

I’d been out this way quite a few times…but it had taken me a long time to actually find the source of my unique little frogs. This specific spring was hidden well enough that I’d not been able to find it on maps, feeding only a few properties in a remote corner of the Hill Country.

The land had leveled out into a shallow basin ringed by limestone outcrops, cedar giving way to bald cypress and sycamore. Bald cypress was a classic tell—the sign for permanent water in Central Texas, like a gateway to spring-fed creeks, showing you a place where the water never dries up even in severe drought. I’d been chasing this exact growth pattern in my head for weeks, and there it finally was: a stand of cypress knees poking up out of the shallow water on either bank, roots gnarled and pale against the dark mud.

The air had changed too—cooler and damp, a mineral smell underneath the green. Maidenhair fern clung to the wet limestone where water seeped straight out of the rock face, delicate and impossible anywhere drier. That was the real tell, more than the cypress: ferns needed constant humidity, not just occasional wet feet.

Wherever this water came from, it never stopped.

Stetson moved ahead of me, scanning the rock face.

“Cave system’s gotta be feeding this,” he said. “Water’s too cold and too clean to just be seepin’ through dirt.”