The Best Husband In Texas

Excerpt Letter to Reader About the Author Title Page Dedication Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Copyright

He Could Wait.

Austin needed Iris to get used to him, to be comfortable with him. Then they could talk. He was older than she, and more worldly.

Worldly? She’d had three husbands!

Well, they’d all been kids. And she hadn’t had any of them long enough to really be tested. She needed permanence and maturity.

She needed...him.

He looked over at Iris. Her cold little hand was warming in his big hot hand. Hers was lax and...trusting? Did she trust him?

Would she ever trust him enough to love him?

Dear Reader,

Spring is in the air—and all thoughts turn toward love. With six provocative romances from Silhouette Desire, you too can enjoy a season of new beginnings ... and happy endings! Our March MAN OF THE MONTH is Lass Small’s

The Best Husband in Texas. This sexy rancher is determined to win over the beautiful widow he’s loved for years! Next, Joan Elliott Pickart returns with a wonderful love story—Just My Joe. Watch sparks fly between handsome, wealthy Joe Dillon and the woman he loves.

Don’t miss Beverly Barton’s new miniseries, 3 BABIES FOR 3 BROTHELS, which begins with His Secret Child The town golden boy is reunited with a former flame—and their child. Popular Anne Marie Winston offers the third title in her BUTLER COUNTY BRIDES series, as a sexy heroine forms a partnership with her lost love in The Bride Means Business. Then an expectant mom matches wits with a brooding rancher in Carol Grace’s Expecting.... And Virginia Dove debuts explosively with The Bridal Promise, when star-crossed lovers marry for convenience.

This spring, please write and tell us why you read Silhouette Desire books. As part of our 20th anniversary celebration in the year 2000, we’d like to publish some of this fan mail in the books—so drop us a line, tell us how long you’ve been reading Desire books and what you love about the series. And enjoy our March titles!

Regards,

Joan Marlow Golan

Senior Editor, Silhouette Desire

Please address questions and book requests to: Silhouette Reader Service

U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269 Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3

About the Author

LASS SMALL finds living on this planet at this time a fascinating experience. People are amazing. She thinks that to be a teller of tales of people, places and things is absolutely marvelous.

The Best Husband In Texas

Lass Small

To Debra Robertson

One

At the age of nineteen, Iris Smith Osburn lost her first husband to Desert Storm. A U.S. tank ran over Jake’s foxhole. Since the tank was one of ours, the government—with some earnest coaxing in court—paid up.

There in San Antonio, TEXAS, the grieving Iris voluntarily split the award with her late husband’s hostile family. They thought she was selfish, but sourly they took the lawyer-settled half of the money. The attorney’s fees came from her half.

Iris Smith Osburn Dallas’s second husband was her first husband’s best friend. He was a fine man, and like her first husband, he was very gentle and kind. Tom died of some strange Gulf disease that’s still being studied. He, too, had been in Desert Storm and there was government insurance. He had no family who wanted to share.

Her third husband was a friend to the second. Peter Alden was charming. Iris was reluctant to try marriage again, but Peter was adamant, and he convinced her to become his wife. While a spectator at a rodeo, he was trampled by a nasty bull that had gotten loose between the fences. Peter’s death had been quick. It had been a shock that had shaken Iris to the core.

The female mourners who were at Peter Alden’s funeral whispered that, each time, Iris’s grief had been quite practiced. They whispered that with her hands over her face that way, she was probably looking through her fingers to see who would be her next?

Iris Smith Osburn Dallas Alden not only was awarded the life insurance of her third husband, but her brother-in-law was an attorney. He proved the rodeo proprietors were responsible. He gently refused his fee.

Iris offered Peter’s family half of the compensation awarded by the Court’s judgment. The family declined. They discouraged their lawyer son’s attentions to the blond, blue-eyed Iris. Obviously, she was dangerous to men.

She moved back home to Fuquay, about eighty miles north and west of San Antonio near Kerrville. Iris was, by then, twenty-four years old and three times a widow. All of her marriages had been brief. She felt she was a scourge and knew she would never marry again.

It was February of that year when Iris was welcomed back among her relatives and friends with varying reactions. Her extended family was mostly compassionate. There were those who considered her a threat. There was just something about a young, good-looking, grieving widow that lured men. Then, too, she was financially well-off... another very strong lure to most men.

Eldest of the children in her family, it was very strange for Iris to be back in Fuquay, TEXAS, to live at home again. But she could not deal with curiosity. She needed her family’s protection.

The house was very familiar because it hadn’t changed much over the years. It was filled with family hand-me-down furniture and hand-crocheted curtains. Even to strangers, it was a comfortable house.

Iris knew that her own room had not been used because there were so many unoccupied rooms. She could go into her old room, close the door and be alone. The house was silent. It felt as if it was frozen in time. Just about the way Iris was. Both were on hold. Waiting? For what?

Iris looked with dead eyes at the pictures still on her bulletin board. Who was that long-ago child who’d saved those curled pictures? Who was that laughing woman? She’d had a good laugh, which hadn’t been heard in some time.

She could not recall when she had last laughed. About what?

On that board, there were no pictures of any of her husbands. It was as if her life had stopped when she’d left this silent, still house. And she’d come back to it as a ghost.

Iris opened one of the room’s windows to TEXAS’s February-fresh mildness. They were due a norther. Maybe if she opened all the windows, the house would be refreshed and shake itself back to ‘life?

What about her? Could she then begin to breathe and again be the woman who had left here to move to San Antonio to go to Incarnate Word College? That was...several lifetimes ago.

No.

She could not go back in time. But she couldn’t find the motivation to get herself to go forward. She was lost. She would never marry again. It was too awful to have a partner who failed in the sworn commitment of “from this day forward.” Why had she buried three such good young men?

At twenty-four, she was older now than either of her first two husbands. Iris and her husbands’ families would never know what sort of men they would have become, what careers they would have chosen or what their children could have been.

Her tears welled.

She knew she would never again marry. She could not stand to be another man’s widow. She was a curse. The realization, the clarity of their unfulfilled lives had caught up with her and overwhelmed her to the point that she didn’t know how to cope. Therefore she withdrew. She was in a capsule of her own making. In there she was alone, and it was silent.

With chidings and scoldings, people tried to drag her out. She endured. But she would withdraw as soon as she could manage it in a careful, subtle way.

Her mother watched her. Her daddy was impatient with her and scolded...her mother. But her mother said, “Leave her be for a while. This has been the straw.” She was referring to the straw piled on the straw that finally broke the camel’s back.

How could her mother realize so exactly the burden of grief Iris carried?

Her sisters’ reactions were split between compassion and irritation. They would scold her and try to bring her out of her shell. They weren’t successful.

Despite his busy life, her young brother would sit with her in silence, demanding nothing of her. He was there. He fixed a car part. He wrote a letter. He watched TV. He studied. He was there for her.

She really didn’t notice.

Their friends in Fuquay were very kind and thoughtful of Iris. They were also nosy, but they were reasonably subtle about it. Just that Iris had had three husbands was enough to irritate any number of her unmarried female friends.

Iris’s high school chum Marla’s response was simple. She had twins and she’d hand one of them to Iris—to distract her.

Holding the wiggly baby only made Iris think that none of her three husbands had left her a part of him. “We got time,” they each had said. They’d be logical. “What’s the rush?” “Let’s spend this time with it being just us.”

And it was. Except that, now, she was alone. Alone in the midst of her ordinary, busy family. So alone was Iris in her silence, she could hear the air pop. And she watched the clock. That baffled everyone. If she couldn’t see her watch or the clock, she asked, “What time is it?”

They’d inquire with puzzled interest, “You going somewheres?”

Her glance would come to theirs and she’d say, “No.”

“You waiting for a program on TV?”

“No.”

She confused them.

She wanted time to get on past. She had nothing to do that was important enough to help with it. So she depended on a clock to get it done...to get the time past.

Their neighbor at the ranch down the road, Austin Farrell, wanted to be Iris’s fourth husband. He’d been named for Stephen F. Austin who had brought settlers to TEXAS long, long ago. Well, in TEXAS history, it was a long time. Actually it wasn’t yet two hundred years.

Austin Farrell was a heel-dug, obstinate, good man almost thirty. He was about six feet tall and had land that was productive; and it was all paid for, even the taxes. His eyes were a gray that was strangely blue, and his face was tanned under his Stetson. He wanted Iris. He was a TEXAN. He’d get her.

However, Iris had come to feel like the poisonous Lucrezia Borgia, duchess of Ferrara. That title was shockingly close to Austin’s last name. The Duchess had lived in Italy from 1480-1519. In that time, Lucrezia had dispatched any number of lovers.

Iris Smith Osburn Dallas Alden felt similarly deadly. However, she hadn’t even needed the poison. She herself was the curse. And she didn’t want another dead husband.

Not knowing her mother was a party to Austin’s plans, Iris declined his invitation to go to a play when he arrived at the house one day to visit.

He said, “The play has a funny story, and it’ll make you laugh.”

The idea of laughing at anything was so incredible that Iris gave Austin a glance to see if he was serious.

He was.

So Iris replied bitterly, “I’m the TEXAS version of Lucrezia Borgia. Look what I’ve done to three good husbands.”

Although his eyes squinted just a little bit in compassion, Austin was gently, rather aloofly chiding. “I just asked if you’d like to go with me over to San Antone to the play at the Majestic Theatre. I haven’t yet asked to marry you.”

Iris looked at Austin suspiciously.

He smiled a little and suggested, “Who would you like along as chaperone?”

Iris was distracted. But her mother was leaning in the doorway, listening, and she told Iris, “You really ought to go to the play.” Edwina Smith was a smart woman. She understood Iris’s baffled reaction, and she had offered Iris an opinion.

Iris considered Austin. He’d told her to pick a chaperone. She mentally shuffled through her acquaintances. She chose Violet who was too shy to flirt. This would be good practice for her friend Violet.

Iris told Austin, “Violet. And teach her to flirt. Help her.”

Austin’s heart faltered and he glanced over at Edwina Smith for courage. Iris’s mother smiled the tiniest bit. But it was a sad smile.

Austin became staunch. He’d explain the circumstances to Violet and help her to meet any male she might cotton to.

Iris did go to the play. They doubled. Austin and his friend, Bud, escorted the two...flowers, Iris and Violet. That they were so named was cause for drollness. The women had grown up together and were used to it.

To Austin’s displeasure, Bud made a move for Iris!

Austin growled, “It’s to Violet that you’re supposed to be paying attention. You leave Iris alone.”

Bud smiled.

Austin spent the first part of the evening switching Iris to his other side and blocking Bud’s advances. Austin told Bud that old hack, “You’ve got great teeth.”

Bud smiled toothily.

And gently Austin added, “I’d hate for anything to happen to them.”

The twenty-six-year-old Bud’s eyes narrowed as he considered how much of a threat a mature man, who was almost thirty, would be.

Austin smiled rather widely.

Bud noted the chipped tooth in Austin’s smile and remembered how he’d gotten it. He happened to notice all the scars on Austin’s bare, sunbrowned knuckles, and he came to the conclusion that it wasn’t worth the effort to tangle with such a man.

The play was a road show of You Can’t Take it with You. And no matter how many times the cast had performed it, they made it appear fresh.

The theme of You Can’t Take it with You was to live your life. A good comment. It was the reason Austin had taken Iris to see it. Only twenty-four years old, she still had a long life ahead of her. She shouldn’t waste it. And while she didn’t yet realize it, she had Austin to consider.

Watching the play, Iris only understood that her husbands hadn’t had the chance to live out their lives. Instead of stimulating her, the play only made her excruciatingly aware of how young her husbands had been when they died. How much they’d missed. How short were their lives. How they’d been...cheated. She grieved for them.

It hadn’t occurred to Austin that Iris would take such a route of thinking. Amid the laughter of the audience, he uneasily monitored her withdrawn silence.

He wondered, for which one did she grieve?

How could he ask?

When the play was over, they moved with the cheerful crowd to leave the preserved theatre, and they walked to the car over by Travis Park Square. Bud drove. He watched the pair in the back seat in the rearview mirror.

They sat apart.

Each looked out a different side window.

In the back seat, in a low voice, Austin asked Iris, “You okay?”

She slowly blinked, then turned her head to look at him. He had to repeat his question. Then she nodded.

Austin was struck by that. How unlike a woman to neglect an opportunity to expound on such a question. To think of all the nothing replies she could have given him. She could have said, As compared to what? Or, Under what condition? Or even just, Why? Or she could explain to him why she was in such doldrums. He would like to know.

Dead in the water, she was.

Austin again looked at Iris. He moved his mouth in thought. Dead in the water described Iris very well. No response. No animation. No flirting. No laughter.

She moved, but it wasn’t animation. It was by rote in response to the need to shift or walk or eat. With her, it wasn’t ever choice. It was response. Austin wondered, was there enough life left in that luscious body? How could he reach in to rouse her enough to see him as a man she was interested in. One she could want.

She sat looking out the car window and was silent. He considered that she, too, was dead. Just about as dead as those three ex-husbands of hers. What good was her life now? She was as removed from life as if she now actually shared their graves.

So then Austin wondered which of the three graves she’d choose to share?

Austin was appalled to find he would wish to be one of the three with that claim on her. Each of those dead men had loved her enough to marry her. To be with her. To listen to her. They’d made love with her. Had she ever laughed with them?

Compassion for the three men licked through Austin, but he didn’t back off. Instead, he took Iris’s hand and held it in his. Their hands were linked between them, her cold little hand lying in his big hot one on the back seat as they sat apart.

His hand holding hers was very comforting to the freshly stirred grief that her conscience had awakened in Iris.

Would she ever be free of the guilt she suffered because her husbands were all dead, and she was still alive? All three had been especially good men.

Austin moved his hand as his warm, briefly tightening fingers assured her he was there.

He had the good, square, warm, rough hand of a man who worked physically. It was emotional for Iris to be given that comfort, right then. Her eyes teared.

Austin saw her tears in the glow of the passing streetlamps. Tears? Why...tears? He considered her particular situation and the teaching of the play.

Austin knew that Iris had understood the play, but instead of looking ahead to life, he realized that she was looking back at her abandonment. Was she alone? She could hardly be alone in her noisy, busy family. If she noticed who all was actually there with her.

Was she thinking of the loss of her husbands? The waste of their lives. How could anyone tell her that what had happened, had happened, and it was all past?

The play gave him the courage to open a discussion. “It was a good play.”

After a pause, she replied, “Yes.”

“Live for the day.”

She did not respond. But she didn’t move her cold little hand from the shelter of his hot one.

Austin wasn’t sure if he could say anything else. It might be too emotional for her. It was the first time they’d been out together—with Bud and Violet, of course—and this might not be the time to start her talking.

He could wait. He needed her to get used to him, to be comfortable with him. Then they could talk. He was older than she, and he was more worldly.

Worldly? She’d had three husbands!

Well, they’d all been kids. They’d been young and raw. And she hadn’t had any of them long enough to really be tested. She needed permanence and maturity.

She needed...him.

He again looked over at her. Her cold little hand was warming in his big hot hand. Hers was lax and...trustful? Did she trust him? She was looking at the passing suburbs of San Antonio as they drove through town toward the highway that went to Fuquay.

In the front seat, Bud was regaling Violet with all the old jokes that had obviously been stacked up inside him. Violet never once said, “Not that old one.” She either had a compassionate heart or no one had ever subjected her to all those old, stale jokes. Actually—and it was a surprise—Bud was a pretty good jokester. His timing was good. And here and there even Austin had to smile.

Iris did not. She simply gazed out the car window and was silent.

Austin just sat holding her hand and he, too, was silent.

It was rather late when Iris got home. Her mother heard Iris’s light step on the porch followed more slowly by the reverberation of Austin’s shoes on the porch.

The screen opened and closed almost immediately. On the porch the male steps were silent. Then Austin turned slowly and finally went off down the steps as he left.

When Iris went upstairs to her room in her parents’ house, her mind was not in charge. It was off somewhere. She moved by rote. She undressed and crawled into bed without brushing her teeth.

Emotionally exhausted, she slept. She dreamed of looking for her husbands. She searched for them. She was the only stronger in all the places she searched. But she couldn’t contact them at all.

Where were they?

Her dead husbands were good, young men. Would they be together? Jake and Tom were friends, and Peter had known Tom. Would they have met? Would they have talked about her with each other? When she died, would they all greet her? Or would they be...in the beyond?

Iris wakened, and found her eyes wet with tears. She still grieved for those husbands.

Her life was over. How long would she have to wait to get past this life and find them again?

The play had chided the audience to use their lives while they had them. Ah, but what if the use was gone? What if there was no reason to go on?

She had married three men. None was now with her. And none had left her with a child. They had all left her...alone.

Iris went about the morning as usual. She was drained. She looked at the day with disinterested, cold eyes. It was just another day to get through.

At breakfast, as she sipped tea, Iris’s mother came into the kitchen and said her usual, “Good morning, darling.”

Iris asked, “Which am I?”

Her mother poured some tea into a cup before she replied, “The wounded one.”

Iris considered that response. “Yeah. I suppose that covers it I have three deep slashes in my heart.”

Tears in her eyes, her mother replied, “That describes it well.”

“Austin took me to see You Can’t Take it with You last night.”

“Yes.”

“Do you know the play?”

“Very well.”

With her voice’s rough shattering, Iris asked, “How can I find any reason to enjoy this life?”

It took a while for her mother to reply. “You can look at the day and the people who live in it. You can look forward instead of backward.”

Her voice trembling with tears, Iris guessed, “I discard each one and forget them all?”

“No. You...release them...and let them go.”

Her voice husky and bitter, Iris asked, “I tell them to just run along and get lost?”

And her mother replied gently, “You must let them go.”

“They’re in my mind!”

“You’ve trapped them there.”

“No!” Iris got up and left the room with her breakfast almost untouched.

Not eating was one of Iris’s problems. Not eating, and not caring what happened. She was afraid to be close to anyone, so she was gruff and distancing to all those around her. It was selfprotection. She didn’t want to love and lose anyone else.

Edwina wondered when the time would come that Iris would reach out? To whom? For what reason? What would it take for this fragile, wounded child of hers to see the world...and to be a part of it again?

Two

Iris came down the stairs in a soft, long, rumpled dress and her hair hadn’t been brushed very well. She’d probably just clawed her fingers through her hair.

Without any greeting, Austin told her of his cow as Iris came down the last steps. “You remember Fanny? She has a new calf. Come see it.” He didn’t smile or coax. He gave her the unadorned option.

Iris questioned, “New?”

Austin agreed. “Joe just called in on the CB. The momma was licking the sack from her baby just before I got here. I really thought I’d get you back there in time for the birth.”

Austin watched Ires. She just moved on past him slowly but she went on out the door. With a quiet glance at the riveted Edwina, the silent Austin followed the silent Iris.

Since Iris moved slowly, Austin got to the truck ahead of her and opened the door for her.

She just got up into the pickup and sat there with her hands clasped on her lap.