The Queen of Honduras Came to Texas to Buy Bulls, and Fell for the Shortest Cowboy in the Arena novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: Not for Sale

I was still holding the letter when the kitchen door opened.

Clyde stopped on the mat.

He looked at the coat on the hook. He looked at the paper in my hand.

Loretta, at the sink, turned off the water.

"That's mine," Clyde said.

"I know whose it is."

"Then put it back."

"Clyde, I can pay this today. I can make a call and it's done. Three hundred and eighty thousand dollars is nothing."

"It's not nothing to me." He came in and took the letter out of my hand, gently, and folded it. "It's every dollar my granddad and my daddy ever made out here."

"Then let me keep it out here."

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because I told you why not." His voice stayed low. "I'm not for sale, Isabella. Not to Roscoe, and not to you."

"I'm not trying to buy you!"

"Then what's it called?"

I opened my mouth.

I didn't have an answer.

Loretta dried her hands on a towel.

"He's his daddy's son," she said to me. "His daddy wouldn't take a dime off the government in the drought of '11. We ate beans for a year."

"Mama."

"I'm only saying." She hung up the towel. "Pride's a fine thing until it's a camper in Alpine."

She went out the back door and let it bang.

Clyde stood in the middle of the kitchen with the letter in his fist.

"He wrote that you could make it go away," I said. "If I sign on Tuesday."

"I read it."

"Then let me sign."

He looked up at me fast.

"You'd sign that thief's contract? After what you did on that stage?"

"For you I would."

"Don't," he said. "Don't you dare. Those bulls of mine go to your ranchers at five times what they're worth so I can keep a house? I'd never look you in the eye again."

He put the letter on the table.

"Thirty days is thirty days. I'll figure it out."

"How?"

"I don't know yet."

The ice was still dripping off the eaves.

I could hear Elena's voice out in the yard, talking to the pilot about the weather.

Tomorrow the roads would be open.

Tomorrow I'd be gone.

That night, the power held, and Loretta went to bed early, and said so loudly.

Clyde built a fire in the front room, in a stone fireplace his granddad had built.

I sat on the rug in front of it in his father's flannel shirt.

He sat down beside me.

For a while neither of us said anything.

The fire popped. The windmill creaked.

"I'm sorry I went in your coat," I said.

"I'm sorry I yelled."

"You didn't yell."

"I yelled on the inside." He poked the fire. "Isabella. When you leave tomorrow, I'm not going to stand in the road and wave. I want you to know that ahead of time."

"Why not?"

"Because I won't be able to stand it, and I don't want you to see that."

I looked at him in the firelight.

His sandy hair was flattened from his hat. There was a small scar on his chin I hadn't noticed before.

His gray-blue eyes were on the fire, not on me.

"Clyde," I said. "Look at me."

He looked.

I put my hand on his jaw and kissed him.

He didn't hesitate this time.

He turned into it with his whole body, and his hand went into my hair, and he kissed me back.

I lay back on the rug and pulled him down with me.

He came down on top of me, and for a second he went still, propped on his arms, looking at me.

"I could feel you shaking," I said, before I could stop myself.

It was something I'd held back all week.

He looked at me.

"Isabella," he said. "You're the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. I've been trying not to say it since that horse."

"Say it again."

"You're beautiful." He kissed my throat, below my ear. "You're beautiful." He kissed the hollow of my collarbone. "I'd climb you like a windmill."

I laughed so hard he had to stop and laugh too.

Then he stood up and held out his hand.

I took it.

He led me down the hall, past his mother's closed door, to his room at the end.

He opened the door for me, the way he'd opened every door since the arena.

I went in.

He followed.

The door closed behind us, and the latch clicked.

His room was narrow, with a quilt on an iron bed and his hat on the bedpost.

The fire's heat hadn't reached it.

He didn't turn on the lamp.

He stood in front of me in the dark and put his hands on the top button of his father's flannel shirt.

He didn't undo it.

"I said I'd wait until nobody was knocking," he said. "Nobody's knocking."

"No."

His knuckles brushed my throat as his gaze dropped to my mouth.

"Tell me what you want, Isabella. Say it plain."

"I want you, Clyde. Tonight. In this bed."

"Every inch of me."

"Every inch."

His jaw tightened.

Then he undid the first button.

He undid the first button.

Then the next.

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