Summer Moon by Jill Marie Landis

Author:Jill Marie Landis
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780307416766
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2007-12-17T16:00:00+00:00

25

Frontier Forces, Texas Rangers. Company J. Summer Camp on the Brazos River.

It was early morning and already far too hot when Reed walked through camp in no mood to talk to anyone. A week ago Jonah moved them all farther up the Brazos, strategically placing scouts along the river in hopes of intercepting raiding parties forced to stop for water on their way across the prairie. Last night they had recovered over fifty stolen horses and pushed the renegade warriors back with no casualties on their side.

Reed rubbed his hand over his eyes, ducked through the opening of his tent, seeking relief from the sun. In the shadowed interior, he sat on the edge of his cot, rested his arms on his knees, and stared down at his dust-coated boots. His silver spurs from Chihuahua caught the sunlight that oozed between the edges of the opening.

He had tried for weeks to forget about Kate Whittington, but she haunted his thoughts day and night. His shoulder ached, he was short-tempered and testy, and he knew it, but he couldn’t seem to do a damn thing about it. It was easiest to blame Kate for his being out of sorts and downright discontented: Not only was he haunted by bits and pieces of memory of the night they had spent together, but he kept wondering how he would have felt about her if he had met her in some way other than through his father’s scheme.

On his way back to camp, he had stopped in Lone Star to leave Jeb Cooley a letter of explanation instructing the lawyer to clear up the legal ramifications of the forged proxy papers and ask Jeb to contact him when he returned from Europe. So far he hadn’t heard from the man.

While he was in town, he had left credit for Kate at Lone Star Mercantile and Dry Goods; then, as he was walking out of the store, the image of her face had unexpectedly come to him. He remembered the troubled way her dark trusting eyes had looked the morning he had ridden away, the way she had stood there at the veranda rail and waved good-bye. As time passed, he found himself feeling more and more like an ass for the way he had treated her and Daniel.

He had brought her letters with him, worn them around the edges by reading them so many times that he had memorized almost all of them. Reading about her life and her dreams and expectations in her own words kept him dwelling on her and the unsettled situation at the ranch, which did nothing to improve his disposition. He never took himself for a man who would walk out on responsibility, and it didn’t sit well with him now.

He heard riders coming, stretched, and left the tent. Across the campground, two new recruits dismounted and then hobbled and sidelined their mounts. Laughing and talking, they crossed the campground. It was hard to miss the excitement and pride on their faces, not to mention the relief.

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