town that had only ever seemed to bring her unhappiness. Now she lived in Dallas in one of those “active adult” neighborhoods where she played bridge and tennis. She had a circle of friends she liked, and she was happy.
Not Quinn. The moment he could, he’d headed back to Horseback Hollow and the fallen-down, barren Rocking-U. He’d had a few years of college under his belt—gained only through scholarships and part-time jobs doing anything and everything he could pick up—and a new bride on his arm.
He was going to do what his father had never been able to do. Make the Rocking-U a real success.
At least one goal had been achieved.
He’d built the small house, though it had cost him two years and a wife along the way. He’d had his grandmother’s piano restored and the dregs of the old, burned house hauled away. He’d shored up broken down fences and a decrepit barn. He’d built a herd. It was small, but it was prime Texas Longhorn.
He’d made something he could be proud of. Something his father had never achieved but still would have been proud of and something his father’s father could choke on every time he thought about the people he liked to pretend never existed.
And when Quinn had danced with Amelia at a wedding reception six weeks ago, he’d let himself believe that there was a woman who could love his life the same way that he did.
All he’d succeeded in doing, though, was proving that he was Judd Drummond’s son, through and through. A damn stupid dreamer.
He went back into the silent house. He had a couch in the living room. Too short and too hard to make much of a bed, but it was that or the floor. He turned off the light and sat down and worked off his boots, dropping them on the floor.
He couldn’t hear anything from upstairs.
He stretched out as well as he could. Dropped his forearm over his eyes.
Listened to the rhythmic tick of the antique clock sitting on the fireplace mantel across the room.
What if she really was sick?
“Dammit,” he muttered, and jackknifed to his feet. Moving comfortably in the darkness, he went to the stairs and started up. At the top, he headed to the end of the hall and closed his hand around the doorknob leading into his bedroom.
But he hesitated.
Called himself a damned fool. He ought to go back downstairs and try to redeem what little he could of the night in sleep.
Only sleeping was a laughable notion.
He’d just glance inside the room. Make sure she was sleeping okay.
He turned the knob. Nudged open the door.
He could see the dark bump of her lying, unmoving, on his bed. He stepped closer and his stockinged toes knocked into something on the floor. They bumped and thumped.
Her shoes.
It was a good thing he’d never aspired to a life of crime when he couldn’t even sneak into his own bedroom without making a commotion. He’d probably been quieter when he’d found her in his damn barn.
Despite the seemingly loud noise, though, the form on the bed didn’t move. He ignored the sound of his pulse throbbing in his ears until he was able to hear her soft breathing.
Fine. All good.
He had no excuse to linger. Not in a dark room in the middle of the night with another man’s fiancée. There were lines a man didn’t cross, and that was one of them.
It should have been easy to leave the room. And because it wasn’t, he grimaced and turned.
Avoiding her shoes on the floor, he left the room more quietly than he’d entered. He returned to the couch. Threw himself down on it again.
He’d take her to her aunt’s in the morning. After she woke.
And what Amelia did after that wasn’t anything he was going to let himself care about.
Chapter Three
Quinn stared at the empty bed.
Amelia was gone.
It was only nine in the morning, and sometime between when he’d left the house at dawn and when he’d returned again just now, she’d disappeared.
If not for the wig that he’d found on the ground inside his barn door, he might have wondered if he’d hallucinated the entire thing.
It didn’t take a genius to figure out she’d beat him to the punch in calling her aunt. One phone call to Jeanne, or to any one of the newfound cousins, and rescue would have easily arrived within an hour.
He walked into the bedroom.
The bed looked exactly the way it had when he’d tossed the quilt on top of it, before she’d gone to bed. Maybe a little neater. Maybe a lot neater.
He’d also thought her presence would linger after she was gone. But it didn’t.
The room—hell, the entire house—felt deathly still. Empty.
That was the legacy she’d left that he’d have to live with.
He tossed the wig on the foot of the bed and rubbed the back of his neck. He had a crick in it from sleeping—or pretending to—on the too-short couch.
It shouldn’t matter that she’d left without a word. Snuck out while his back was essentially turned. He hadn’t wanted her there in the first place. And obviously, her need to “talk” hadn’t been so strong, after all.
“Gone and good riddance,” he muttered.
Then, because he smelled more like cow than man and Jess would give him a rash of crap about it when he showed up at his nephew’s baseball game in Vicker’s Corners that afternoon, he grabbed a shower and changed into clean jeans and T-shirt.
In the kitchen, the paper towel that he’d given Amelia was still sitting on the table where she’d left it, all folded up. He grabbed it to toss it in the trash, but hesitated.
She hadn’t just folded the paper into a bunch of complicated triangles. She’d fashioned it into a sort of bird. As if the cheap paper towel was some fancy origami.
I have lots of useless talents.
The memory of her words swam in his head.
She’d told him that, and more, when they’d lain under the stars. How she had a degree in literature that she didn’t think she’d ever use. How she spoke several languages even though she didn’t much care for traveling. How she could play the piano and the harp well enough to play at some of the family’s royal functions, but suffered stage fright badly enough that having to do so was agonizing.
He pinched the bridge of his nose where a pain was forming in his head and dropped the paper bird on the table again, before grabbing his Resistol hat off the peg by the back door and heading out.
