Читать книгу The Best Husband In Texas - Lass Small, Lass Small - Страница 10

Three

In the two days that followed, Austin paced and thought and groaned. He didn’t for one minute think there was any way, at all, to get through the invisible, steel shield that surrounded Iris Smith Osburn Dallas Alden.

However, he felt the urgent need to see her. Why? Well, he...just...needed to see her. She was vulnerable. She’d already had three husbands. What if some other man got to her and convinced her to take him! Austin needed to be close to her so that she remembered him first.

But he seriously doubted that Iris thought anything at all about poor old Austin Farrell. She was oblivious of anyone. She was not in touch with the rest of the world. She endured the time that passed so slowly.

She was... Well, when Austin had escorted her to the play, she had watched, and she had absorbed it. Had she agreed with it? Now, that would be interesting.

Austin got his Stetson and went back to his pickup to go over to Iris’s house to see her. Well, the house actually belonged to her parents and her siblings. How droll that he thought of it as being hers.

After he knocked once on the door, it was her mother who opened the door and smiled. She called to her daughter upstairs. Austin declined going into the living room and finding someplace to sit. He waited at the bottom of the stairs.

Mrs. Osburn Dallas Alden came down the stairs. She had on a different loose, long, carelessly wrinkled dress and her hair was not tidy. She had used no makeup at all. Even so, she was the woman he wanted to be with for the rest of his life.

Austin smiled.

Iris glanced at him in an uninterested manner. The time passed. She said nothing, so he didn’t, either. They stood there. She finally asked, “What is it?”

“Come see the calf. He’s steadier.”

Without any response—at all—she walked on past him.

His mouth opened in shock because he thought she was snubbing him entirely. However, at the front door, she turned to it, reached over and opened it, went through the door and on outside toward his truck.

Recovering from his shock, and by striding with some push, Austin got to the truck before she did, and he opened the truck door for her. He stood there with the door opened for her and he watched her.

Again, Iris got into the vehicle without paying any attention to Austin.

He was transportation. That was obvious.

He went around the back of the pickup and got in on the driver’s side. He glanced over at her as he put in the key, started the motor, and eased along, saying nothing. But using the car phone, he called her mother and told her where Iris was and where she wanted to go.

Her mother said, “Thank you” in a very tender, relieved manner.

Now...why did her family want her with him? Or were they just grateful that they’d know now where she was and with whom? He was the “whom.” It was better to be with her, albeit silently, than to pace his empty house all by himself, just wondering where she was.

Iris said no word, at all, on the entire way to Austin’s place.

When the two arrived there, at the barn, she was out of the pickup before he’d rightly stopped and gotten out to help her.

She just did everything on her own and without any courtesy to the male with her.

She was an independent cuss.

Austin hurried and followed Iris close enough so that he seemed to be with her. He hesitated when they got to the cow’s slot in the barn. The momma cow had more room than any local human. She watched the calf and mooed if he was too curious. And her calf was steadier.

The new little creature was so curious. The threeday-old calf they’d named Bull’s Eye still lost his footing a shade, but he could regain his equilibrium and was mostly frisky and alert and very nosy. He looked at everything. He smelled everything, and fortunately, no crawfish was around to snap a claw on his nose.

His big momma cow was tolerant and watchful. She mooed when the new calf was out of line. He stopped what he was doing wrong, but he did trip again when he thought he could fool his mother.

How typically male.

But he made even lris laugh. He ate from Iris’s hand. He nibbled the grain perfectly. His mother mooed softly once.

What had the cow said?

The calf stopped crowding Iris and looked at her curiously with jerking movements of its head. It was as if his mother had indicated that the clothcovered creature was not one of them.

Iris laughed.

She did! It was she whom Austin watched. Not the calf. Calves were a dime a dozen. It was this woman who kept Austin’s attention. He watched her, smiling, and a tear came from one of his eyes. She just might make it, after all.

Instantly, Austin tackled the problem of who all would eagerly help her to heal? Besides being a beautiful woman, it was the money she had from her dead husbands that lured the men. Men sought money, however it was found.

But Austin didn’t need her money. He had his own. The problem was: How would Austin keep the eager mob of men away from her until she realized Austin Farrell was the one for her?

Then the little kitten wobbled out from under one side of the barn. It came to Iris and said, “Mew” in a very fragile manner.

Iris scooped it up and held it to her. She asked Austin, “Has the momma cat fed him? He’s hungry.”

She’d spoken! She had!

Austin replied, “I’ll look.”

But he didn’t find the momma cat. Knew she might never be found. And the new little kitten was hungry.

So they went to Austin’s house and the kitten was given a dish of milk. Being as little as it was, it had trouble licking the milk as it was supposed to.

But Austin got an eyedropper—emergency feeder for hurt creatures—and it worked!

Iris asked another question, which startled Austin so much that he had to look at her to be sure it was she who had spoken. He then had to ask, “What did you say?”

Iris repeated, “Where is his mother?”

So they went out and searched the area for the momma cat. With the kitten starving, Austin had figured something had happened to the momma cat. The search was time taking, but it was a pleasure for him to be with Iris.

Then Iris spoke again! She said in regular conversation to him, “I’ll take the kitten home with me and see to it being fed for you.”

That whole, entire sentence!

He looked at Iris in astonishment, and nodded rather vapidly.

So then she asked, “Perhaps I should go on back now and begin to feed the kitten?”