Texas Love Song
Praise for National Bestselling,
Two Time RITA Award-Winning Author
JODI THOMAS
“Jodi Thomas will render you breathless!”
—Romantic Times
“Ms. Thomas never disappoints…she comes up with characters worthy of the title ‘friend’ and plots that sparkle with originality.”
—Heartland Critiques
FOREVER IN TEXAS
“A winner from an author who knows how to make the West tough but tender. Jodi Thomas’s earthy characters, feisty dialogue and sweet love story will steal your heart.”
—Romantic Times
“A great Western romance filled with suspense and plenty of action. It is the two tremendous lead characters…who will have the audience forever reading Forever in Texas.”
—Affaire de Coeur
TO TAME A TEXAN’S HEART
Winner of the Romance Writers of America Best Historical Series Romance Award of 1994
“Earthy, vibrant, funny and poignant…a wonderful, colorful love story.”
—Romantic Times
“Breathtaking…heart-stopping romance and riproaring action.”
—Affaire de Coeur
“Interesting characters, a bit of mystery, humor and danger…enjoyable and hard to put down.”
—Rendezvous
THE TEXAN AND THE LADY
“The woman who made Texans tender…Jodi Thomas shows us hard-living men with grit and guts, and the determined young women who soften their hearts.”
—Pamela Morsi, bestselling author of Something Shady and Simple Jess
PRAIRIE SONG
“A thoroughly entertaining romance.”
—Gothic Journal
THE TENDER TEXAN
Winner of the Romance Writers of America Best Historical Series Romance Award of 1991
“Excellent…Have the tissues ready; this tender story will tug at your heart. Memorable reading.”
—Rendezvous
“This marvelous, sensitive, emotional romance is destined to be cherished by readers…a spellbinding story…filled with the special magic that makes a book a treasure.”
—Romantic Times
Titles by Jodi Thomas
Betting the Rainbow
Can't Stop Believing
Chance of a Lifetime
Just Down the Road
The Comforts of Home
Somewhere Along the Way
Welcome to Harmony
Rewriting Monday
Twisted Creek
***
Promise Me Texas
Wild Texas Rose
Texas Blue
The Lone Texan
Tall, Dark, and Texan
Texas Princess
Texas Rain
The Texan's Reward
A Texan's Luck
When a Texan Gambles
The Texan's Wager
To Wed in Texas
To Kiss a Texan
The Tender Texan
Prairie Song
The Texan and the Lady
To Tame a Texan's Heart
Forever in Texas
Texas Love Song
Two Texas Hearts
The Texan's Touch
Twilight in Texas
The Texan's Dream
eSpecials
In a Heartbeat
A Husband for Holly
Heart on His Sleeve
Easy on the Heart
Texas Love Song
Jodi Thomas
THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) LLC
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014
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TEXAS LOVE SONG
A Jove Book / published by arrangement with the author
Copyright © 1996 by Jodi Koumalats.
Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.
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eBook ISBN: 978-1-101-64515-4
PUBLISHING HISTORY
Jove mass-market edition / October 1996
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
I dedicate this book to
Jimmy and Dorothy Teague.
Thank you for listening to
my stories since childhood.
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Epilogue
One
THUNDER RUMBLED THROUGH the low hill country of Texas, rattling against the walls of the isolated stagecoach station like the fists of a rebuffed intruder. A winter storm, promising hail and snow before it finished, howled into the frosty night. As icy rain began a second violent assault on the roof, travelers huddled inside the log building. Dustlayered cowhands who’d brought a herd in just before dark ate their first meal of the day at a long table running the length of the north wall. German farmers spoke in a low foreign tone as they waited for even a slight letup in the weather so they could get back to their land. Weary travelers, passing through this sparsely settled country, were suddenly stuck in a place that would never have been a destination of choice.
Sloan Alexander also waited. He was trapped with them all, but part of no group. Unlike the other wayfarers, Sloan wasn’t going to anywhere, only away from everywhere he’d ever been. He had no home and no one waiting for him. His wealth was barely enough to buy him a ticket west, and his only dreams were nightmares.
“Want another?” The station manager lifted a half-empty bottle toward Sloan’s glass.
Sloan tipped his hat slightly in a nod and leaned into the counter, his slim body seeming as solid as the mahogany. He laid worn buckskin gauntlets beside his drink. The gloves were the only part he’d kept of his last uniform. A reminder of his days fighting on the frontier.
The manager didn’t meet Sloan’s eyes as whiskey filled the glass to the brim. The spidery-thin
man wearing a dirty butcher’s apron looked tired, Sloan thought. As out of sorts as most of his guests, he was obviously ready for the storm to stop and everyone to leave.
Scanning the crowd, Sloan carefully sized up each of the men for trouble. The back of the large room was filled with mostly locals who’d been Confederate soldiers. They were busy reliving their days of glory and drinking enough to forget their losses. With each passing hour their voices grew louder. The farmers sat along the wide stairs leading to the second floor. For the most part they were unarmed and more concerned with their families than in causing any trouble. Two Union officers drank at a table by the door and openly flirted with the stage station manager’s daughter. The soldiers were making a grand effort to appear relaxed, but a Yankee this far into the South, even three years after the war, would be a fool if he relaxed too much.
A woman, dressed in black traveling clothes, sat alone at a table near the kitchen, looking out of place in this menagerie of humanity. Distant from the others, even though the manager’s wife and daughter stopped by her table-with each passing, she seemed to watch the crowd as a bystander watches a play. Sloan briefly wished it were another time, another place, and he were the sort of man such a lady would allow to just come over and talk to her.
He could almost see himself walking up and lifting his glass slightly in salute. She would smile and fan her hand toward the empty seat. Sloan shook his head and took another drink. It would never happen, so why was he wasting his time daydreaming of such a thing?
He had been little more than a boy when the war broke out and he left Kansas City. Sloan had never even kissed a girl when he’d killed his first man in battle. During the war there was never time to talk to women, and the kind he’d met hadn’t been proper ladies like the one sitting alone. After the war ended, he had to finish his duty on the frontier before he could try to look for the pieces of his life to pick up and start over. Now, he felt too old to even try to learn the subtleties of flirting. He had nothing to offer, not even in conversation.
Leave the flirting to young station girls and Yankee officers. They had dreams of the future; all he had were enemies from the past haunting his nights.
“That’s him!” one of the rebels from the end of the bar shouted in a half-drunken slur. “That’s the man I was telling you about. We made him haul out of the stage and ride up with the driver as soon as we knew who he was. It’ll take more than three years to clear the smell of a traitor away.”
Sloan felt his muscles harden to granite as he swore beneath his breath. He’d let his guard down a moment too long. The folly of staring at the woman might cost him dearly now.
The band of rebels moved toward him, their courage heightened by their number and abundant whiskey. These were not fresh young boys going to war, but hardened, broken men who’d returned home full of hate and despair.
A large redheaded man toward the front of the crowd pushed several travelers aside and headed directly toward Sloan. He was close enough for Sloan to smell his whiskeyed breath when he finally stopped and swelled like a toad. “My friend here tells me you’re one of them Galvanized Yankees.” The man’s voice rose with each word until the final two spat from his mouth in an eruption of hate.
Sloan knew he should run or deny the accusation, but he’d been running for years and this seemed as good a place as any to stop. Maybe he’d chosen Texas because there he knew he’d face his fears one nightmare at a time.
“You a southern boy?” The redhead poked at Sloan’s ribs with huge, dirty fingers.
“I’m a southern man,” Sloan corrected.
“And you wore blue during the war after you’d already sworn allegiance to the Confederacy?” The local was staring at Sloan as if he’d seen his first true freak. “Forgot your loyalties to the South and helped the damn Yankees?”
Several of the others wearing parts of tattered gray uniforms moved closer and mumbled words Sloan had heard before, like traitor, and yellow-belly, and turncoat.
Glancing at the two Union officers by the door, Sloan saw the hate in their eyes as well. A Confederate soldier who changed sides was hated by southerners for what he’d done after he joined the Union and hated by northerners for what he’d done before he changed. Old Pete in the prison had tried to warn him when the soldiers came in to recruit their Galvanized Yankees from among the southern prisoners of war. Pete said that a man don’t change seats in the middle of a poker game unless he’s playing the devil for his soul.
A gang in prison who’d called themselves Satan’s Seven had shown their hatred of the idea from the beginning. They’d voiced a final oath when the Galvanized Yankees left camp that the seven would find them, no matter how long it took, and kill every last traitor.
Sloan had had his reasons for changing sides, but these men before him now would never allow him to answer. He’d known this confrontation would come since the day he’d left the Northern Territory and headed to Texas. Sloan straightened the buckskin fingers of his gloves lying on the bar, and shook his head. If he’d had any sense, he would have changed his name and identity and gone to California like most of the other Galvanized soldiers. Not even Satan’s Seven could find him then. There was nothing for him in Texas. There was nothing for him anywhere, north or south. No one would ever take the time to hear of the filth in prison and how staying alive in Union blue was better than rotting among the thousands with dysentery and fever.
Thunder rattled the walls and hail rifled the roof. Suddenly, men came at him from all directions like hungry wolves on a winter-thin rabbit. Gray-sleeved arms grabbed from both sides. Sloan fought to free himself, but was pinned against the bar, his arms pulled behind him before he could deliver his first swing.
“We don’t want your kind in Texas,” someone behind him mumbled. “My guess is no one wants traitors around. You’re worse than the damn Yankees. You traded sides.”
Sloan strained at the human chains, but he couldn’t free either arm.
The redheaded man took the first blow. Sloan didn’t try to dodge. He felt the man’s knuckles plow into his ribs, shattering bone.
The station manager’s daughter screamed and ran beneath the protective arm of one of the officers. The families nesting on the stairs moved away, wanting neither to interfere nor witness.
As the rain pounded outside, Sloan took another blow, and another and another, until he could no longer stand erect to face his attackers. His left eye swelled and closed in pain and he tasted his own blood along his lip, but Sloan didn’t make a sound. Just as all happiness had long passed from him, so had all sorrow. The only feeling that told him he was still alive was pain.
The Rebs took turns, laughing at the impact of each blow on his body, needing to release the anger they felt.
Just before the welcomed blackness of unconsciousness reached him, Sloan felt the hands holding him slip slightly.
Forcing his head up, Sloan saw his attackers back away one by one, lowering their heads like guilty children. He tried to reason. The manager of the station would never interfere, not with this. The Yankees would have stopped the fight earlier, if they’d planned to help. Only a fool would hold a gun on the Rebs to force them to stop a beating in such a crowded room. Yet the men were backing away as if he were diseased and they didn’t want to be too close.
“Turn loose of him,” one man behind Sloan grumbled to the other, “and come to attention, Brady.”
“Why?” a second voice asked in almost a child’s cry of disappointment.
Sloan looked around, trying to focus on who demanded such respect. He saw only the woman wearing mourning black moving nearer. Her hair was combed back in perfect order and a white lace handkerchief slipped from beneath her cuffed sleeve. She wasn’t the kind of woman to draw closer during a fight.
“That’s Major Harrison’s widow,” the first man whispered and let go of his captive. “There weren’t a braver man who fought under Lee.”
Sloan slumped to the floor while all the
ragged Confederates around him strained to attention. Pulling himself up on an elbow, Sloan wiped the blood from his lip with his own worn coat sleeve. When he looked up, the woman was standing above him like a statue. She had hair the color of her dress and eyes as blue as a winter twilight. Her skin told Sloan she was young, but her sorrow seemed ages old.
Without a word, she knelt and touched his chin with two fingers. Her pale face was lined with worry. Her eyes filled with a heartache caused by far more than witnessing a beating.
The redhead removed his tattered hat and began twisting it in his huge scraped-knuckled hands. “Meaning no disrespect, Mrs. Harrison, but a lady like you shouldn’t oughta have to see the likes of this man. It ain’t fitting. Me and the boys shoulda taken this to the barn and not gone and done such a thing in fronta you.”
Sloan thought any woman in her right mind would have shrunk from these men with only pieces of uniforms left. They were bone mean and hard. But this woman, this widow, walked past them as if they were no more than trees or neighbors she’d known all her life and had no need to fear.
The woman brushed the hair from Sloan’s face as though she hadn’t heard the man’s warning. “You’re bleeding,” she whispered. “That cut right at your hairline needs attention.”
“Don’t touch the likes of him.” The redhead’s frustration flavored his words. “He ain’t nothing but scum.”
Sloan couldn’t take his gaze off the pale woman with midnight hair. Though she looked like an angel, he had to still be alive or he couldn’t hear the Rebs mumbling around him.
The widow pulled the spotless handkerchief from her cuff and touched his lip. “Are you hurt bad, soldier?”
There was no disgust in her voice, only concern. She’d called him soldier as though she’d called every man that for so many years it came natural.
Sloan bit back the pain and shook his head.
“Can you stand?” She offered her help.
“Mrs. Harrison,” a clipped northern voice interrupted before Sloan could answer. “I’m Lieutenant Murry from the fort.” The young Union officer looked nervous, but clearly saw this as his duty. “We’ve all heard how brave your late husband was and there’s not a man in this room, northern or southern, who doesn’t respect you for what you did when your man died.” He glanced at the Rebs. “But I think you should stay out of this discussion between these Texans.”