style="font-size:15px;"> “But I—”
“Uh-uh. No.” They stared at each other, and then Starr allowed, “Okay. I know it wasn’t really his fault, that thing with his awful brothers making him sit point for them while they rustled our cattle. I know he turned it around there at the end, went against his brothers and helped you take them in. I can understand, I really can, why you and Dad stood up for him at court over that. And why Dad set him up with old man Hart. But the other…what happened the day before you and Dad caught Beau and his brothers out by the Farley breaks. What happened…with Beau and me…” The old hurt felt so new and fresh at that moment, it closed off her throat and stole the rest of the words right out of her mouth. She hung her head and blinked back tears—stupid, pointless tears, for a man who didn’t deserve them.
Light as warm breeze, Tess’s hand stroked her hair. Starr lifted her head. “Tess, I trusted him—and three years ago, you know how I was. I didn’t trust anyone then. But I did trust Beau. And he took my trust and threw it back in my face.”
Tess spoke softly. “Honey, I think there was more to it than that. I think it’s time you started to look at what happened through the eyes of a woman, because you are becoming a woman now, and a fine one. You are no longer that same hurt, confused girl you were then.”
“What are you talking about? You were there. You saw. He did it right out in the yard, with you and Dad and probably Edna and any ranch hand who bothered to look out his trailer window watching while it happened.”
“Starr—”
“No!” She shook her head, hard. “How can you make excuses for him? You know what he did.” Oh, she could still remember it like it was yesterday—a hot day, in June, a day kind of like this one….
Her own heart pounding hard in her ears, Starr came running down the stairs, Tess following after her. She ran straight through the great room and out to the entrance hall, flinging back the front door and racing out to the porch.
Across the yard, the door to Beau’s trailer opened. Her dad came out. He started up the driveway, heading for the back of the house. But when he saw her on the porch, he changed direction and came straight to the foot of the front steps. “What’s the matter?”
Starr leaned on the porch rail, tears pushing at the back of her throat. “Daddy, what happened? Did you talk to him? Did he tell you—?”
“Starr.” Her dad had a tired look, his tanned face drawn and tight-lipped. “I thought you said you’d stay in your room.”
“I couldn’t,” she cried. “I had to know. Did he tell you, how we have something special between us? Do you understand now that he never meant anything wrong to happen, that he—?”
“Starr. Beau is leaving. I’m going to go get his pay and then he’ll be gone.”
She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She gaped at her father. “What? No. You can’t do that. That’s not right, not fair…” She pushed away from the railing and darted to the steps.
Her dad blocked her path. “Go back upstairs.”
Why wouldn’t he understand? Why couldn’t he see? “I have to talk to him.”
“No, you don’t. Just let the damn fool go.”
Hot fury swirled through her, that he would speak of Beau that way. “He is not a fool! He…he cares for me, that’s all. He just wanted to be with me, like I want to be with him.”
It was all there in her dad’s sad eyes: that she was sixteen and Beau was twenty-one, that she was a Bravo and Beau was one of those shiftless, no-good Tisdales….
Unfair. It was so unfair. She’d told him that she’d never had sex with any guy, whatever everybody seemed to think of her—that she and Beau hadn’t done anything but kissing out there in the barn, that, yeah, Beau had unbuttoned her shirt. But that was all. It hadn’t gone any further.
“Starr,” her dad said. “Go upstairs.”
No way. She dodged to slide around him, but he seemed to sense she would do it and stepped in her path once more. She ran square into his chest as he grabbed her by both arms.
“No!” she cried, shouting now. She had to get through him, had to get to Beau. “Let me go!” she screamed. “Let me talk to him!”
“Starr, listen.” Her dad’s big hands held on tight, though she kicked and squirmed and beat on his chest. “Starr. Settle down.”
She was wild by then, twisting and flailing. “No! I won’t! I won’t! Let me go!”
From behind her, Tess said, “He’s coming.”
Her dad swore. Starr froze and craned around him to see. Beau was coming out of his trailer across the yard. “Beau!” she called, all her desperate yearning there in his name. “Beau, he won’t let me talk to you!” She tried again to break free, catching her dad off-guard, sliding around him, almost succeeding that time. But somehow, he managed to catch one arm as she flew by. He hauled her back against his chest, grabbing the other arm, too, holding her like that, with her arms behind her as she yanked and squirmed and tried to kick back at him, to get herself free, to run to Beau.
Beau came at them, fast, long strides stirring the dirt under his boots. He stopped a few feet from where Starr stood, with her father holding her arms and her body yearning toward him.
She saw the bruise then—a big, mean one on Beau’s chin, and she gasped in outrage. “Beau. He hit you!” She turned a hot glare over her shoulder, at her dad.
Beau said, his voice flat with no caring in it, “Forget it. It’s nothing.”
She swung her head front, facing Beau again and she gave him her outrage, her fury for his sake. “No. He had no right to hit you! You didn’t do anything wrong. He can’t—”
“Starr.” His eyes were so cold. She couldn’t see the man she’d thought she loved in them anywhere. “He had a right.”
“No!” It came out all ragged, a cry of pure distress. She’d stopped struggling to get free of her dad’s grip. Now, she just stood there and looked at Beau, at his dead eyes and his expressionless face. Oh, where are you? her heart cried. Where have you gone to? What are you telling me?
Slowly, Beau smiled. A knowing smile—knowing and ugly. And then, very low, he chuckled. It was a dirty, insulting sound.
“Tisdale,” her dad warned in a growl.
“Zach,” Tess said from back on the porch. “Let him tell her.”
For a moment nothing happened, then, with no warning, her dad let go of her. She staggered a little at the sudden lack of restraint and reached out toward Beau. “Beau, please—”
He cut her off, his tone evil with nasty, intimate humor. “You thought you’d heard every line, didn’t you, big-city girl? Heard ’em all and never fell for a one. But the lonesome cowboy routine got you goin’, didn’t it?”
This couldn’t be happening. “Wh—what are you saying?”
He
