The Texan's Reward

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s

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THE TEXAN’S REWARD

A Berkley Book / published by arrangement with the author

PRINTING HISTORY Berkley edition / November 2005

Copyright © 2005 by Jodi Koumalats.

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JACOB DALTON BRACED HIS BROAD SHOULDERS against the blast of wind howling through Lone River Canyon

and urged his horse forward. Dusty, a stallion he had trained from a colt, knew the shortcut across the canyon as

wel as he did, but unlike Jacob, the horse didn’t seem to share his urgency to brave the treacherous path in

order to get home a day earlier.

Jacob knew he needed to concentrate while crossing Lone River after dark, but he couldn’t clear his mind of the

words he’d seen on a telegram four days ago. He read it only once, but once had been enough. He’d hardly

stopped to eat or sleep since.

When he checked in at the Texas Ranger office in El Paso to pick up his mail, he hadn’t even opened the

message from the sheriff in Clarendon until he walked across the street, ordered a whiskey, and relaxed into a

chair by the window. Jacob had no relatives and, due to his occupation, few friends. Most correspondence he

received came under the heading of business. But he opened Sheriff Parker Smith’s note first, knowing the old

man cared about the same people Jacob did, and he hoped for news among the sheriff ’s correspondence.

He’d expected Sheriff Parker’s usual report: All quiet. Nell still recovering. But Jacob ripped the envelope in

haste, just in case Nell had taken a turn for the worse. If so, he’d ask for leave and catch the next train east,

whether she liked him worrying about her or not.

But the news had left him no time to wait a day for the train. He’d departed without finishing his drink.

Dusty’s front hooves slid over an icy rock, jarring Jacob back to the present. He leaned forward, shifting his

weight, working with the animal with practiced ease. One wrong step could land them both at the bottom of the

canyon with little chance of being found before spring.

Jacob forced his attention to the slow progress, but he couldn’t rid his thoughts of the hundred images of the kid

he’d called Two Bits until she came home from school all grown up and decided her name was Nel . She’d been

the orneriest brat ever picked up out of the gutter. Mean, foul-mouthed, stubborn.

An old madam who owned a house near the tracks in Clarendon took her in, claiming Two Bits was the daughter

of one of her girls. Two Bits said her mother willed her to Fat Alice, and the old soiled dove took her

responsibility to heart. She saw that Nell was fed and cared for until she was old enough to go back East to a fine

school that wouldn’t have let Fat Alice on the grounds.

Jacob remembered the first time he saw the kid. He’d been seventeen, a month into being a Texas Ranger, when

she appeared one morning, fol owing him around like a lost puppy, al big brown eyes and skinny legs. She didn’t

look more than eight, but she stood proud when she told him she had dreams. She planned to be the highest-

paid lady of the evening in Texas when she grew up. He swore he’d marry her first and make an honest woman

out of her.

Jacob laughed, remembering how she’d cal ed him every name she could think of for trying to interfere with her

dreams and yel ed that she’d charge him double when he came begging to her bed.

From that day on, he’d been cursed with the need to watch over her.

He smiled. She’d been nothing but trouble for almost a dozen years. He’d washed her mouth out with soap so

many times that first year, he thought his hands would chap and bleed long before she stopped swearing. Every

time Fat Alice tried to make her behave, Two Bits ran away, and the next thing he knew, Jacob would get a

telegram asking him to come back to Clarendon to straighten out the hellion.

When he’d been twice her height, he’d managed to get his bluff in on her. But as she grew, it didn’t take long for

her to wrap him around her finger. She thought he was her own private guardian. When Nel was in trouble,

she’d cal him and, like an idiot, he came running, if for no other reason than that she needed him. He’d always

managed to keep her out of serious trouble.

Except the last time. She’d been hurt bad, maybe even crippled for life, in an ambush. She held onto his hand

through those first days of pain, depending on him, needing him. Then as soon as she’d recovered enough to

hire a nurse, she’d told him she never wanted to see him again.

Jacob had spent three days drunk and angry, trying to figure out why. They’d been in each other’s lives for years,

fighting, caring. Now suddenly she wanted no part of him. Maybe she’d seen the pain in his eyes when he

watched her try to move. Maybe he reminded her of happier days and lost dreams. The more he’d argued that

she needed him, the more she’d insisted he leave.

Dusty reached the far wall of the canyon, and Jacob relaxed. He’d be within sight of Clarendon by dawn. And

he’d better be on time.

Sheriff Parker’s telegram echoed through his thoughts. “Two Bits plans to buy herself a husband.” Fat Alice had

left her enough money to do just that.

“Like hell,” he mumbled to himself. He had to get home in time to stop her. No sorry, money-hungry, worthless

excuse for a man was going to take advantage of her while she was down.

If he missed the wedding, Jacob decided, he’d be making her a widow before nightfal .

NELL LEANED BACK IN HER CHAIR AND WATCHED A wel -dressed man in his late twenties climb from the best

horse the livery in town loaned. He was tal er than most, a few inches under six feet, she’d guess. His jaw

square. His carriage proud. His dark hair had been cut short. Everything about him seemed to be in place. Fat

Alice, Nel ’s adopted guardian, would have said he looked like a man who had generations of breeding flowing

through his blood.

“This one just might do, Miss Nell.” Mary Ruth, her nurse, leaned over the back of Nell’s wheelchair. “Nice-

looking man, I’d say, and cleaner than most who come to call.” Mary Ruth’s eyebrow lifted almost to her salt-

and-pepper gray hair as she emphasized her point. “In Number Twelve we might just have husband material. At

least his clothes look tailor-made, which is more than I could say about the past eleven men who’ve come to

call.”

“I don’t care about the cut of his clothes,” Nell said more to herself than anyone. “I hate him already.” She

watched the stranger move down the long path toward her front door below. Hadn’t Mary Ruth seen the way

he climbed from the horse? Like a man who hadn’t ridden in a long while. Couldn’t the nurse see how he

walked, slow and careful as though fearing he might step in something on the way to her door that he might

have to wipe off? “I could probably outride him, even crippled up.” She lifted the curtain slightly. “And thin. He

seems walking bones inside that suit.”

Mary Ruth, as usual, paid no notice to Nel ’s grumbling. She rushed to tidy the room. The nurse had been with

Nel for three months, and she’d organized everything upstairs a hundred times. She would have liked to work

on the downstairs, but that was Gypsy, the housekeeper’s, territory. Mary Ruth considered herself so far above

Gypsy’s station that she only talked to the old woman through Nel .

At first Nel had found it interesting being the interpreter between the second floor and the first, but she’d long

ago tired of the game. As she’d tired of everything within the wal s of her home, her prison. The porch was as far

as her wheelchair would allow her to roam.

She looked down from the window once more. The man walking toward her front door had shoulders that

weren’t wide enough. His smile seemed forced. She didn’t trust a man who smiled with so many teeth showing.

What did he have to grin about anyway? He must be on hard times if he was knocking at her door.

Dropping the lace curtain, she decided to cut the man some slack. “Who knows? He might be the one.” Nell

tried to smile at Mary Ruth, who hoped for Nell with every visitor who knocked.

Nel shrugged. “He doesn’t look all that bad. A little thin.” At least she could think positive until he proved her

wrong. He’d been smart enough to pick a good horse to rent. “I’l get dressed before going down. I don’t want to

meet what might be my future husband in a robe and gown.”

The nurse let out a long breath as she headed for the closet. “I’ve only been with you a few months, Miss Nell,

but one thing I’ve learned is that you’re particular. When you told the sheriff to post a notice for a husband, I

thought you’d lost your mind. I was sure that within a week you’d be swindled out of all that woman named Fat

Alice left you.”

Nell only half listened as she carefully stood long enough to pull a dress over her head. Six months ago the dress

would have fit her curves; now it hung like a hand-me-down.

Mary Ruth tied the band of the dress, then moved the wheelchair back in place. A few weeks back, Nell couldn’t

have stood for so long. She wasn’t sure if she was getting better or simply getting used to the pain. To take her

mind off it, Nel planned what she’d say to this, her twelfth cal er. She’d grown used to Mary Ruth’s chatter and

knew she wouldn’t have to respond. The woman rarely had anything important to say. In the months since the

accident, Nell had adjusted to never being al owed to be alone. First, there had been her three mothering

friends, hovering around her out of concern and maybe a little out of guilt. The bul et that crippled Nel had

been meant for one of them.

Once she recovered enough to move back to Clarendon, her friend, a Texas Ranger named Jacob Dalton, had

stayed by her side night and day. After a month, she could no longer stand the sorrow in his eyes when he saw

her struggle to move. She’d final y ordered him to leave. Then a stream of nurses smothered her. Most of the

hired nurses returned to Dal as on the train within a week, but Mary Ruth had managed to stay. She didn’t

mother, only bossed and lectured, while Nel ignored. In her mid-thirties, the nurse bore the height and strength

of a man. She could carry Nel ’s tal body down the stairs when needed, as if Nel weighed no more than a rag

dol . The nurse’s one ability had doubled Nel ’s prison, but little more.

“I’l go put him in the study.” The nurse moved toward the door. “If the last heart you broke isn’t still in there

whining. I’ve never seen a man take rejection so hard. He must have felt deeply for you.”

“He hardly knew my name.” Nel combed her hair with the brush Mary Ruth always left on the nightstand. “It