Lone Star Loving by Martha Hix Read Free Book Online Page B

as Margaret and Olga. “You’re smart and clever,” he’d say as they made mud pies together. And, most of all, he would like Charity for Charity.
    Maybe it wouldn’t be so awful to go live on a reservation north of the Red River.
    Gee, she wished she knew what Fierce Hawk looked like.
    It was on that Christmas Eve that Charity decided to wed the Osage boy. And she waited years for him, though she never told a soul about her decision. She didn’t dare. She knew her papa wouldn’t allow one of his daughters to marry a redskin, which only added to Fierce Hawk’s allure.
    But Fierce Hawk never materialized.
    As the years passed and the family divided its time between Texas and Washington, the arguments between Charity and Margaret grew less and less. Margaret became more patient with age, and more compassionate as she saw how Charity was shuffled to the rear because of her impetuous behavior; they formed a sisterly alliance.
    Margaret stayed closer to Olga, nevertheless. At seventeen, the demure Olga had married the highborn son of the Spanish ambassador to the United States, had gone away with her husband to live in his homeland. The Countess of Granada’s letters divulged a wellspring of details to the naive sisters, giving advice on married love and proper behavior both in and out of the marital bed.
    By that time, though, college was in the offing for the unmarried triplets. Charity demanded to be sent to the same university as Margaret, and Papa and Mutti had agreed. But the dean of the college had expelled Charity upon catching her puffing on the one and only cigarette of her life. Then Ian Blyer had come along, and his silver-tongued lies had made her cast aside her girlish dreams of tom-toms and wigwams and a black-haired savage.
    It’s time I stopped dreaming of happily ever after.
    This pragmatic thought thrust Charity into the present. Hers was a despicable situation. This wasn’t some Indian village turned Valhalla. Nor was it Paris or Madrid, Charity’s favorite cities. This was some hovel in south Texas that Hawk had—
    Hawk?
    A crazy notion filled her head. Could Hawk and Fierce Hawk be one and the same? she wondered as she huddled–as much as her shackled hands would allow–into the bed. Of course, her abductor held no resemblance to the Indian of her many dreams.
    Fierce Hawk was a hero.
    Hawk was surely an outlaw.
    Fierce Hawk had reached for respectability in white society and had gotten it. In a letter penned last spring, Mutti had said he was now an attorney and lobbyist in Washington, dedicated to serving his people. In her mind–she still wasn’t good in sums–Charity couldn’t quite equate the Fierce Hawk of her dreams with the gentleman he had turned out to be.
    But she knew one thing for certain. David Fierce Hawk wouldn’t lower himself to abduction. That was a savage’s game.
    Â 
    Â 
    Sunlight was streaming through a crack in the single, oiled-paper window when the redskin entered the room again. Immediately, Charity noticed the blotch of fiery scarlet that covered his left cheekbone, evidence of their struggle. Good gravy, she’d hurt him! She gawked at the purple bruise at his throat, plus the red outline of her teeth on his wide, wide shoulder. She immediately squelched any feelings of remorse.
    Instead, she glared at Hawk. “Have you forgotten something? Where are your feathers and war paint?”
    Today he’d dressed as one of his kind. Gone was the Stetson; a leather strap banded his head of straight hair that trailed to his shoulders. Hair black as a raven’s wing. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, but a silver pendant studded with turquoise dangled on his smooth, hairless chest. She swallowed, perusing the prominent veins exposed on his strong arms. Once more he wore buckskin britches, but these were Indian style; a breechclout covered his private parts. Again, a long knife was strapped to his