Read Paxton and the Lone Star for Free Online Page B

turned Tory to the right and rode through the fairgrounds. A short stop at the stables and he’d head home. It would be a long, lonely ride, but at least he could nurse his humiliation in private.
    Feeling better than he had for the last month, True rode back through the crowd to the pile of boulders where his brothers waited for him. Andrew looked perplexed. Joseph stared in slack-jawed disbelief. “What’s the matter, Joseph?” True asked. “You look like you just lost your best friend.”
    Joseph’s mouth snapped shut and his shoulders hunched dangerously.
    â€œYour best friend’s wife, then?”
    â€œDo you know what you just did?” Joseph groaned in a strangled voice.
    â€œYup,” True said, all innocence. He patted Firetail on the neck and, obviously pleased with himself, grinned hugely. “I won.”

Chapter II
    Thomas Gunn Paxton had been a privateer during the War of 1812, and still looked the part. Tall and rangy, his raffish good looks were marred only by the patch covering the scar that cut across his blinded left eye and lent him a devilishly cruel appearance that his frequent, merry smiles did little to mitigate. At fifty-one, he looked fit to venture to sea again, and in truth, there were times when the seafaring blood of his great-grandparents, the pirates Jason and Marie, stirred his soul and left him yearning for a deck beneath his feet once more.
    Such thoughts were not on his mind this August morning as he stood on the bedroom balcony that overlooked the drive leading to Solitary. Behind him the door closed, as Adriana entered to dress after the morning ritual of getting the household started. Thomas had met and wooed Adriana and taken her from the French Quarter in New Orleans to be his wife after the death of his first spouse, and he hadn’t regretted a single moment of their twenty-four years together. “You are shameless,” Adriana said, walking to his side and placing her hand on his where it rested on the balcony railing. “Only a shameless man stands naked where all the world can see him.”
    â€œIt’s my house,” Thomas growled, stretching in the morning sun. “Nobody has to look.” He glanced sideways at her. “Well?”
    Adriana shook her head. “No word,” she said, “except that they were seen at the fair yesterday morning, which you knew already.” Her longing the equal of her husband’s, she looked down the road for her sons.
    â€œHunh,” Thomas grunted. “Is Hogjaw awake?”
    â€œI don’t know. Vestal says he slept outside under a tree last night, with the excuse that roofs make him restless. We have such a friend.”
    â€œA good friend,” Thomas added.
    â€œYes.”
    He turned and pulled her to him. “Did you know,” he asked, his voice deepening, “that I dreamt last night of the first time I saw you dance? It was real as real can be. My blood was boiling and my throat was as dry as last year’s kindling when I went to talk to you.”
    â€œAnd did you continue this dream to see what happened next?” she asked coyly, looking up at him.
    â€œWell …” Thomas grinned impishly. “My memory sort of dims, but I think …” He frowned in mock concentration. “No, that was—”
    â€œMon Dieu! I am insulted, and by a brigand!” Adriana’s green eyes flashed and her fingers clawed at him as Thomas ducked inside.
    â€œNow, now,” he said laughing and putting a chair between them.
    Adriana’s cheeks colored and her auburn hair whipped wildly about her face. Thomas caught her and, still laughing, wrapped his arms around her and kissed her until she stopped struggling. “That was a horrid thing to say,” Adriana whispered in his ear.
    â€œI was teasing you. What came next was …” The sentence unfinished, Thomas carried her to the broad, white expanse of bed that