Cowboy Heart (Historical Western Romance) (Longren Family series #3, Kitty and Lukes story) by Amelia Rose Read Free Book Online Page A

Robert McLeod sat some distance away from me down the table, talking to a pair of Vaquero cowboys, lean dark men with moustaches who spoke part English, part Spanish, and didn't say much at all. 
                  I tried to help Sarah because, even after we set copious amounts of food on the table, biscuits and corn on the cob and chicken and gravy, she continued to rise from her seat every few minutes to fetch something else she'd thought of or seen one of the men needed.  I thought most of them would have been willing to serve themselves but maybe Sarah didn't want them to move freely about her kitchen.
                  I hadn't thought about conversation during the meal and it wasn't so much like any of the dinner parties I'd been roped into attending in Gold Hill and, worse, in Virginia City, where everyone acted a lot more cosmopolitan and my shyness was increased.  It was more like the dinner parties my mother occasionally threw at The Faro Queen, big table, lots of people, and everyone expected to hold their own.
                  I wasn't holding my own.  Around me, a small pocket of silence existed.  Probably no one knew how to talk to me anymore than I knew how to talk to them.  It wasn't a dinner party; it was supper at a ranch.  Even knowing that, I remained uncomfortably aware of my every move.
                  Sarah is the garrulous one of us.  Sarah can talk the ears off a donkey.  My mother isn't reticent.  My uncles are friendly and forthcoming.
                  At home, I can spend an entire day sitting in a tree or following a family of beavers as they build a dam and not hold a conversation with another human until nightfall.  Here, I felt unwieldy and obvious in my silence, and all the more afraid of breaking it because of that.
                  Given that the meal lasted less than 30 minutes from the time the boisterous cowboys arrived until the moment I realized Sarah was stuck with a load of dishes like this at least twice a day, I still had far too much time to contemplate my social ineptitude and that I was in danger of spending my remaining visit with Sarah dreading the daily food ritual, or making everyone else even more uncomfortable by excusing myself and eating miserably in the pantry by myself.
                  I had just started to wonder if going home might be the lesser of two evils, when Luke Michaels introduced himself.
                  He'd been sitting to my left for the entire meal, but his ear was being bent by Tiny on his other side and he hadn't had the chance to turn to his uncommunicative right hand neighbor.
                  He might not have been someone I would have noticed had we passed each other on the street.  When we stood at the end of the meal, I discovered he was medium height, taller than my five-six but not overly, not like Tiny, David Lord, or Robert McLeod.  He had dark hair and brown eyes and, tanned by the recent trail ride, he was the same color as the desert. 
                  I might not have noticed him in passing.  When I met him at my sister's table, I was face to face.  Looking into his eyes, I recognized a spark there.  My father had the same look to him, the same inquisitive, looking-for-trouble, ‘what-shall-we-do-next?’ look. 
                  The same look my father said I had. The same look, truly, my father often said I had right before I did something truly inquisitive and horribly ill-advised, like the time I tested exactly how much cats didn't like bathwater and the time I proved to a young girlfriend that, yes, I could climb the oak she pointed out—I just couldn't get down again.
                  "Are you from Redding, Mr. Michaels?"  Now he'd discover I had no talent for conversation and politely answer a few questions before returning to a conversation with Tiny about branding or animal