straight through the great room and out to the entrance hall, flinging back the front door and racing out to the porch.
Across the yard, the door to Beau’s trailer opened. Her dad came out. He started up the driveway, heading for the back of the house. But when he saw her on the porch, he changed direction and came straight to the foot of the front steps. “What’s the matter?”
Starr leaned on the porch rail, tears pushing at the back of her throat. “Daddy, what happened? Did you talk to him? Did he tell you—?”
“Starr.” Her dad had a tired look, his tanned face drawn and tight-lipped. “I thought you said you’d stay in your room.”
“I couldn’t,” she cried. “I had to know. Did he tell you, how we have something special between us? Do you understand now that he never meant anything wrong to happen, that he—?”
“Starr. Beau is leaving. I’m going to go get his pay and then he’ll be gone.”
She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She gaped at her father. “What? No. You can’t do that. That’s not right, not fair…” She pushed away from the railing and darted to the steps.
Her dad blocked her path. “Go back upstairs.”
Why wouldn’t he understand? Why couldn’t he see? “I have to talk to him.”
“No, you don’t. Just let the damn fool go.”
Hot fury swirled through her, that he would speak of Beau that way. “He is not a fool! He…he cares for me, that’s all. He just wanted to be with me, like I want to be with him.”
It was all there in her dad’s sad eyes: that she was sixteen and Beau was twenty-one, that she was a Bravo and Beau was one of those shiftless, no-good Tisdales….
Unfair. It was so unfair. She’d told him that she’d never had sex with any guy, whatever everybody seemed to think of her—that she and Beau hadn’t done anything but kissing out there in the barn, that, yeah, Beau had unbuttoned her shirt. But that was all. It hadn’t gone any further.
“Starr,” her dad said. “Go upstairs.”
No way. She dodged to slide around him, but he seemed to sense she would do it and stepped in her path once more. She ran square into his chest as he grabbed her by both arms.
“No!” she cried, shouting now. She had to get through him, had to get to Beau. “Let me go!” she screamed. “Let me talk to him!”
“Starr, listen.” Her dad’s big hands held on tight, though she kicked and squirmed and beat on his chest. “Starr. Settle down.”
She was wild by then, twisting and flailing. “No! I won’t! I won’t! Let me go!”
From behind her, Tess said, “He’s coming.”
Her dad swore. Starr froze and craned around him to see. Beau was coming out of his trailer across the yard. “Beau!” she called, all her desperate yearning there in his name. “Beau, he won’t let me talk to you!” She tried again to break free, catching her dad off-guard, sliding around him, almost succeeding that time. But somehow, he managed to catch one arm as she flew by. He hauled her back against his chest, grabbing the other arm, too, holding her like that, with her arms behind her as she yanked and squirmed and tried to kick back at him, to get herself free, to run to Beau.
Beau came at them, fast, long strides stirring the dirt under his boots. He stopped a few feet from where Starr stood, with her father holding her arms and her body yearning toward him.
She saw the bruise then—a big, mean one on Beau’s chin, and she gasped in outrage. “Beau. He hit you!” She turned a hot glare over her shoulder, at her dad.
Beau said, his voice flat with no caring in it, “Forget it. It’s nothing.”
She swung her head front, facing Beau again and she gave him her outrage, her fury for his sake. “No. He had no right to hit you! You didn’t do anything wrong. He can’t—”
“Starr.” His eyes were so cold. She couldn’t see the man she’d thought she loved in them anywhere. “He had a right.”
“No!” It came out all ragged, a cry of pure distress. She’d stopped struggling to get free of her dad’s grip. Now, she just stood there and looked at Beau, at his dead eyes and his expressionless face. Oh, where are you? her heart cried. Where have you gone to? What are you telling me?
Slowly, Beau smiled. A knowing smile—knowing and ugly. And then, very low, he chuckled. It was a dirty, insulting sound.
“Tisdale,” her dad warned in a growl.
“Zach,” Tess said from back on the porch. “Let him tell her.”
For a moment nothing happened, then, with no warning, her dad let go of her. She staggered a little at the sudden lack of restraint and reached out toward Beau. “Beau, please—”
He cut her off, his tone evil with nasty, intimate humor. “You thought you’d heard every line, didn’t you, big-city girl? Heard ’em all and never fell for a one. But the lonesome cowboy routine got you goin’, didn’t it?”
This couldn’t be happening. “Wh—what are you saying?”
He made a low, smug sound. “You know damn well what I’m saying.”
She shook her head, fiercely, as if she could shake his cruel words right out of her head. “No….”
“’Fraid so.” Beau lowered his voice, as if sharing a dirty secret with her. “Come on, you know how guys are.”
Starr kept shaking her head. “No! You wouldn’t. You couldn’t. All those things you said—”
He shrugged. “They didn’t mean squat. I was after one thing. And we both know what that was.”
“No…” She only got it out on a whisper that time.
Beau went on smiling that mean, hurtful smile. “Yeah.”
Her dad cut in then. “Okay, enough. Go on, Tisdale. Around back. I’ll get your money.”
And without another word to her, Beau turned and walked away.
“It hurt, Tess,” Starr said, softly now, head bowed again, shoulders slumped. “I don’t think you know how much it hurt….”
Tess didn’t argue. She only reached out and brushed a hand against Starr’s arm, a gesture that spoke better than words could have—of comfort, of understanding….
Starr faced her stepmother again. “And it…shamed me, so bad. To have him say those terrible things. And right in front of everyone, too.”
“I know it did,” Tess whispered. “And…I am so sorry.”
Starr made a low sound. “Don’t be. It wasn’t your fault.”
Tess pressed her lips together. And then she sighed. “You’re wrong there. It was my fault. At least a little.”
“But how?” Starr blinked. “No. I don’t see how you can say that.”
Tess sat up just a fraction straighter. “I say it because it’s true. Zach would have stopped Beau from saying those things. But I told your father to let Beau go ahead.” She paused, looking deeply into Starr’s eyes. “Don’t you remember?”
Starr looked away. She was back out in the yard again, on that day three years ago, in the process of getting her poor heart broken. “Zach,” Tess had said. “Let him tell her….”
“Yeah.” She turned to Tess again. “I remember. But that doesn’t put you at fault.”
Tess raised a hand. “Yes. In a way, it does. Because I knew what Beau would say. I knew what he was trying to do. And I thought it was the best thing for you, to go ahead and