Texas Trio Pt. 02 - Becky's Debt Ch. 03-04

She was tall and lean, with fewer curves up front than the women Brody usually favored, but he found nothing about her lacking. She bore a passing resemblance to Mrs. Connor, but she was younger, her skin was darker, her hair and eyes lighter. In fact, from head to toe, excepting the dress, she shone of bronze and copper. In the sun, he bet she'd shimmer like dark gold.

"I'm Rebecca Connor. I believe you met my family last night."

Getting his sense back as the words filtered slowly through the lingering fog of his stupor, Brody realized he was seated with a lady in the room.

"Yes, Miss-" he answered, rising with a nod.

Becky only had about half a second to be astonished by his height before he fell on her, throwing them both to the floor. Topper, misreading Brody's faint as aggression, attacked.

Becky got her breath back just in time to yell, "NO, Topper!"

She inserted her hand between his teeth and the back of Mr. Easton's neck as she tried- and failed- to wrestle her other arm from between their bodies.

After a fruitless struggle, she paused to catch her breath, which wasn't easy with Mr. Easton atop her. It was like being pinned under Big Bob, Becky thought, grinning despite her predicament.

Topper began lapping Becky's face when he realized the threat was gone, and she turned her head away, giggling. "Topper! No!"

He nuzzled her ear instead, turning her giggles into outright laughter. "Topper!"

She pushed his head in the direction of the couch and grabbed hold of Mr. Easton's shirt collar. "Here, help me with him."

With a few gestures, Topper caught on. Taking a mouthful of Mr. Easton's shirt, the dog pulled as he backed away, allowing Becky to wriggle out on the other side.

"Whew!" She sat up, pushing her hair away from her face as she studied the body on the floor alongside her.

Out from under, Becky could see Mr. Easton wasn't quite as big as Bob, their prize Hereford bull, but he was considerably larger than she. His face was turned away, but she could see from the side that the swelling had gone down some, baring a sharp ridge of cheekbone which hadn't seen a razor in some time. His hair was dark brown, almost black, but unlike Colt and Lily's hair, Mr. Easton's had some curl to it.

She shook herself out of her reverie and rose to her feet, planting her hands on her hips as she looked down.

"Goodness," she said.

His legs looked a lot longer from this angle, she mused, though she supposed they'd look long standing up, too. Her eyes rose from his stocking-clad feet, tracing the curve of his calves to where the worn fabric of his trousers clung to muscular thighs.

Becky swallowed and turned her eyes away, letting them flit around the room until they landed on the ceiling. She fanned herself with one hand. What was the matter with her? Embarrassed, she said as much aloud. "Topper, what is the matter with me? I should be trying to get him back on the couch, instead of-" She waved a slender hand at Mr. Easton's prone form, not finishing her sentence.

Fortunately, Catherine and Nanny arrived before she had a chance to try moving Mr. Easton anywhere. Because she certainly would have failed, she thought ten minutes later, as all three women stood sweating and laughing alongside the couch, studying the lanky body that had been so surprisingly difficult to handle.

"He don't look like much, do he?" Nanny observed. "But them britches might as well be packed with rocks as cowboy."

Cat and Becky laughed, doing what they could to straighten their clothing and hair without mirror or comb. Catherine wound a long, stray lock around one of the combs keeping Becky's tresses pinned atop her head.

Nanny hadn't budged- her hair wouldn't dare be out of place- but when Cat turned to leave the room, Nanny caught her eye.

"Matter of fact-" She tipped her head toward the cowboy on the sofa.

"-it looks like them britches are packed with somethin'."

Cat barely glanced at Mr. Easton. Her eyes and mouth rounded, then she covered her mouth and broke, sputtering with laughter as she ran for the kitchen door.

Nanny snickered and followed, assuming Becky was right behind, but Becky couldn't move.

Nanny had lowered her voice, but not enough so Becky would miss the comment. Normally, no one would say such a thing in front of an unwed woman, but Nanny had been "talkin' straight" to Cat and Becky since their monthlies began. She was a firm believer in girls going to the marriage bed with some idea of what awaited them there. Even so, she wasn't usually bawdy.

That wasn't why Becky was blushing, though.

Unwillingly, she'd looked where Nanny's eyes had pointed. Mr. Easton was lean, but some parts of him were apparently thicker than others, and the worn fabric of his trousers left little to the feminine imagination.

This was one of the few times in Becky's life when she wished she knew less about a subject, rather than more. If it hadn't been for Nanny and that darned book of Catherine's . . .!

Anxious because she hadn't conceived since losing baby Andrew, Catherine had ordered a book from England which had caused a national scandal there upon its publication. Whether it helped Catherine or not remained to be seen, but the household was finding a great deal of amusement in "The Book." Such literature should have been strictly off-limits for Becky but, again, Nanny hadn't reared the girls that way.

At the moment, she almost wished she hadn't read it.

A flush traveled from her cheeks to her chest and faded, leaving her almost chilled in its wake. She shivered, and her nipples hardened. Becky might not want to get married, but some of those fine-looking cowboys on the ranch had made her think twice about the other things she'd be missing. She'd never looked at a cowboy there, though!

Becky tore her eyes away from the fine-looking legs of Mr. Easton, staring at the ceiling as she tried to slow her heart rate. If she went in the kitchen looking like she felt, Nanny would have her in bed with cold compresses and chicken soup in a wink. She smiled at the thought.

She was still there, breathing deeply, when Brody awoke for the second time that day. He didn't move. What the hell had happened? He remembered standing, then he remembered why, and his eyes snapped open.

Even with her dress rumpled, her hair mussed, and her face turned aside, Brody thought Miss Rebecca Connor was not only the most beautiful woman in Texas, but probably the most beautiful woman in the world, and he was almost positive he'd just fainted on her.

Why was she just standing there like that?

Brody glanced at the ceiling overhead, then back to Miss Connor. As his head cleared, so did his vision, and he couldn't help but notice the enticing curves leading from her narrow waist into hips cruelly hidden by full, flowing skirts. Brody's fingers twitched involuntarily.

Becky lowered her eyes, and Brody lifted his just in time. Her quiet laughter tapered off when she saw his eyes were open, but the smile stayed put. "Mr. Easton, perhaps you'd like to stay seated this time?"

Brody smiled back at her for the millisecond it took to realize that nothing on his face felt like making the expression. What the hell had that evil midget done to him? He swung his feet to the floor and sat up slowly, lifting both hands to explore his face again. He stayed away from his nose, but the skin around his eyes surely looked like lumps of coal. So much for first impressions.

Brody dropped his hands. "Miss Connor, I don't quite remember, but I believe I may owe you an apology."

Becky's smile faded slightly. The polite words coming from the bruised, swollen lips didn't have the tang she'd expect to hear from a crude ranch hand on her sister's sofa. Though the "crude" part was an assumption, since Clancy wouldn't tell anyone what Mr. Easton had said to earn his punishment, and Becky's brothers-in-law wouldn't have told her even if they'd known.

Catherine didn't know, either, and likely wouldn't have cared if she did. She never cared. She took the occasional insult in stride, saying she expected a certain amount of talk, having had the nerve to wed and bed two men. A shortage of available women meant they weren't the first family in the county to live this way, but Catherine was the first real lady to do so, and the first to do it openly, acting as though the rest of the parish ought to approve. The rest of the parish was divided.

Becky tipped her head, studying the man. With his features blown up that way, you couldn't tell much about him, but his clothes were regular old range wear, no better nor worse than what every other ranch hand wore. Becky herself wore the same serge trousers when she rode. Her thighs didn't look anything like this man's though. She shivered, lifting her eyes back to his face, terrified that he'd seen her examining him.

But no, Mr. Easton hadn't caught her perusing his body, because he was too busy doing the same to hers. Having presumably moved southward from her face, Brody's eyes were now climbing Becky's torso. Unreasonably, as he skimmed her slim ribcage, Becky wished she'd laced her corset more snugly this morning. When his scrutiny rose to her breasts, her skin began to tingle, and the sensation migrated to all the spots his eyes had touched.

Becky's audible intake of breath drew Mr. Easton's attention to her face. The glitter in his pale grey eyes told Becky the fire she was feeling had touched him too. Which didn't help at all. Her face erupted in a blazing scarlet blush flowing from her hairline to the buttons of her blouse.

She had virtually no experience with romance or sex, but Becky knew what this man was thinking. Torn between embarrassment and fury, she lifted her hand to slap him, but stopped halfway. No matter where she chose to hit him, the pain she caused would be far worse than the insult occasioned. Without a word, she spun and fled the room, leaving Brody equally embarrassed.

Astonishingly, he'd somehow managed to make yet another heinous blunder.

Brody had eaten at castles and chateaux from Granada to Glasgow with nary a single gaffe, but two days in Liberty Falls, Texas, were enough to turn him into a social pariah.

"Well," he thought numbly, "at least I didn't piss my pants."

-:-:-:-:-:-:- Chapter 4 -:-:-:-:-:-:-

Becky hid in her room for the rest of the morning, pleading a headache when Catherine came to find her. She stayed huddled on the loveseat until she heard the wagon pull up to the front of the house. Peeking out from behind the curtains, she watched her brother-in-law help Mr. Easton into the back.

Her sister's voice drifted upstairs, directing Jeremiah from the porch. Begrudgingly, he settled Mr. Easton gently onto a layer of empty grain sacks, instead of dumping him on his head or towing him behind the horses as Becky suspected Jem would prefer.

A tiny smile touched her lips. Knowing Catherine, she probably wouldn't even let her husbands fire him. Becky stood in the window long enough to see which direction they went and, sure enough, the wagon passed right by the road to town, heading toward the bunk houses half a mile down-valley.

She sighed, the tension fleeing her shoulders with the cowboy's departure.

What in the world was the matter with her?

It wasn't the first time a man had looked at her that way. Becky shivered, remembering the way her nipples tightened under the pale gaze. That had never happened when anyone looked at her, though, and God knew, she'd never looked back the same way- drinking in his legs, his chest . . . .

Maybe this was why Colt and Jeremiah objected so strenuously to her wearing trousers about the ranch. Was this what men felt when they ogled a woman?

She straightened her spine and squared her shoulders, telling herself to forget it. It was an aberration.

Becky's plans didn't include cowboys.

Her plans involved coal oil, shale, and fossils . . . . Science, in other words: that was Becky's true love, and she'd never have the opportunity to continue her quest if some man took control of her life. Her short-term goal was to to locate the presumptive band of shale which had housed her best discovery ever- the foot-long fossil of a mysterious fish. Unfortunately, she'd found it in the middle of a Biblical deluge, after she'd already been wandering for hours. And there hadn't been a single cloud in the sky when she left the house that morning!

Cat was right on that count- losing track of time was one of Becky's worst habits, and a companion would be able to keep track of that, so she'd no longer be in danger of getting lost in the canyons after dark. Becky kept a rifle on her saddle, of course, and there was an old line cabin on the plateau above, but that didn't mean she fancied being stuck out there all night, worrying about her family, who would also be worrying about her.

Although her enthusiasm for science often defeated her noblest intentions, the most important thing in Becky's life was her family. Five years earlier, Colt and Jeremiah had rescued her and Cat from their previous guardian, an uncle who would have sold them like chattel in order to steal their inheritance. Although no one else would ever see it the same way, Becky felt beholden to them for the loving home they'd provided. She wanted to pay them back, and she had a plan which might allow her to do so.

Despite the inroads gas and electricity was making on cities back east, Liberty Falls, like other small towns, had always been limited to using coal or wood for heat and beeswax or whale oil for light. But with the big mammals becoming scarce, coal oil, or kerosene distilled from petroleum, had taken over the market. In Pennsylvania and Kentucky, drillers were using riverbeds to locate petroleum with only sporadic success, but Becky had a theory of her own. She thought there might be a way to use surface geology to discover what was going on beneath the ground, and she was determined to prove it.

Shale was part of that theory, and her gorgeous, unidentified fish had been fossilized in shale. Unfortunately, Becky had no idea where she was when she found it. She'd barely escaped with her life, and she'd lost her beautiful fossil in a torrential flash-flood. Thus Becky's current search was focused on finding the band of shale, which she hoped might then lead to oil and the confirmation of her theory.

The idea was a near-constant presence in the center of her mind. She fed it a steady diet of scientific articles, examined it from one angle after another, and nurtured it in silence. The secret wasn't difficult to keep: she'd been exploring almost from the moment she moved to Liberty Falls with Catherine and her husbands.

With an impatient twitch, she straightened her cotton skirts. No; there was absolutely no chance of some flirtatious cowboy coming between Becky and her dreams.

-:-:-:-:-:-:-

Writing-related TIDBIT: I'm in the process of outlining TT3, and the other day I told my sister, "I can't wait to see what everyone's doing now!" She already knows I'm nuts, but there was still an extra-long pause in the conversation after I made that particular comment.

I call the characters I create "my people" because they really do come alive in my head. They often surprise me even when I'm working from a thorough outline. While I know what happens between the end of Becky's story and the beginning of Lily's, and most of what happens during TT3, I'm looking forward to actually writing it. I feel like I'm getting ready to go visit some old friends.

Thanks for reading, commenting, and emailing, as usual. You guys are truly the best. - Stefanie