Read Online Texas Rose by Marie Ferrarella - Free Book Online Page A

went for some of its residents, too.
    Because he wasn’t familiar with all of her married names and didn’t know which one she went by, he called her by the one he knew she’d once answered to. “I’m going back home, Miz Wainwright.”
    Not without my niece you’re not, Beth thought.
    She placed her hand over his on the suitcase, her intention clear.
    â€œGive me the suitcase, boy.” She saw the resistance in his eyes. “I don’t want to wrestle you for it, but I will if I have to. And don’t look at me like that.I’m not some weird old woman. And I’m a lot stronger than I look.”
    Matt laughed. “I wasn’t thinking of you as weird, or old,” he added. He knew vanity when he saw it and although hers had a strange sort of endearing quality about it, he sensed her feelings could be hurt when it came to her age.
    Beth smiled broadly at him, patting his cheek. Such a dear boy. “I knew there was a reason I took to you so fast. Put the suitcase down, boy, and sit for a minute.”
    He didn’t like refusing her, but there was no point in his staying a minute longer. Rose wanted him gone and he wasn’t about to beg her to reconsider. A man had his pride, after all.
    â€œIt’s best if I go.”
    She wasn’t taking that as his final answer. “You young people, you’re all in such a hurry to go someplace and then when you get there, it’s never what you thought you wanted. Stay awhile. Just give things a chance.”
    He had given things a chance, had taken a chance and come out here to coax Rose back. If she’d had any true feelings for him, she wouldn’t have needed much convincing. That kiss on the terrace would have been enough. It had been for him. But maybe Rose was right, maybe it was all strictly physical. People got over physical attraction in time.
    â€œI was wrong to come here.”
    She shook her head adamantly. “No, you’re wrong to give up.”
    She sounded so convinced. Had Rose said anything to her? “What makes you so sure?”
    Sitting on the sofa, she patted the place beside her. He had no choice but to take the seat—and hope she would say something to convince him.
    â€œI’m old—Well, older at any rate,” she corrected. “And I’ve been around the block more times than you’ve got fingers and toes, boy. Besides that, I’ve become a great judge of people. I wasn’t watching the two of you for a whole minute before I got hit by the force of what’s between you.”
    She was an actress and given to drama and exaggeration, he reminded himself, refusing to get his hopes up without some kind of real proof. There was no polite way to tell her, so he kept his peace.
    â€œShe told me it was over, Miz Wainwright.”
    â€œBeth,” she corrected. “Calling me Miz Wainwright makes me think of my mother and I am nothing like my mother,” she assured him.
    Her mother was conservative and straitlaced. She’d stood beside one man all of her life and even as her mother took her dying breath, Beth had never been sure that she had loved her father, but she had stood by him, borne his children and his verbal abuse stoically. At her mother’s deathbed, Beth had vowed that that kind of life would never be for her.
    â€œGo on, I didn’t mean to interrupt you.” She smiled at him encouragingly.
    He cited the evidence he’d gone over in his mind more than a dozen times tonight. “Rose said it was over. She said it here, she said it in Mission Creek. I’ve got no choice but to believe her.”
    Beth countered simply. “What did her eyes say?”
    He stared at her, confused. He’d expected her to make an impassioned plea on the side of romance, not this. “Her eyes?”
    â€œYes, her eyes. A body can say whatever they want. Words are cheap, boy. You’ll come to know that if you don’t