Free Texas Homecoming by Leigh Greenwood

turned, and headed for the house. Would she ever stop getting riled when Earl referred to her as
the help
? He did it just to provoke her. And she did cook, clean, and wash—the usual tasks for
hired help.
She scolded herself for her pride. She had watched pride turn her grandmother into a dissatisfied old woman who spent her life trying to recapture a past that had ceased to exist. Laveau was too proud to work, to acquire the knowledge necessary to rebuild the family fortune. A man should take pride in his own accomplishments, not look to the past to provide him with respect. The past would not help her now.
    Broc said he had come to Texas to help Cade hang a traitor. Pilar had the terrifying suspicion that traitor might be her brother.
    Pilar couldn’t sleep. The uneasy feeling that had settled over her when Broc arrived wouldn’t go away. Broc had stayed outside until it was time for supper, then left the kitchen immediately afterward. He had talked easily with Earl and Jessie during the meal, but the whole time he keptglancing at Pilar as though she were a coiled snake about to strike.
    His string of jokes and stories had put Earl in such a good mood he’d invited Broc to bed down in the bunkhouse. Broc said he was so used to sleeping outdoors he expected it would take him some time to get used to sleeping under a roof again. He then proceeded to tell more stories, but he never again mentioned the traitor or what they planned to do to him.
    Pilar grew even more suspicious when Broc pretended to have had only a slight acquaintance with Laveau and no interest in his present whereabouts. He’d asked if she knew when he was coming home but appeared to be unaffected when she said she hadn’t heard from him in more than a month.
    “Something is going on,” she had said to her grandmother. “I need to find out what it is.”
    “How do you propose to do that?” her grandmother asked, uninterested in the appearance of another of Cade’s fellow soldiers.
    “I’ll have to try to get friendly with one of them.”
    Her grandmother’s attention became sharply focused then. “I order you to stay away from Cade.”
    “I didn’t mean Cade. He and Holt are too clever, Rafe doesn’t say anything, and Broc watches me with suspicion. I was thinking of Owen.”
    “That one is not serious about anything.”
    “I don’t know about that, but he is interested in me.”
    “He’s interested in a
woman.
Besides, he is more clever than he looks. You will never get him to talk about anything but women.”
    “Then maybe I should try Cade.”
    “I do not trust him.”
    “I don’t trust him either, but they know something about Laveau. I think they believe he betrayed them. If so, they mean to hang him.”
    That had set her grandmother off on a long tirade about the unfairness of a world where people like the Wheelers were allowed to take land from a family like the diVieres. She had ended with a pronouncement that Laveau was smarter than Cade and all his friends put together, that Pilar was not to think of getting friendly with Cade. He would see through her immediately.
    Pilar was too used to having her abilities underrated to be upset. She spent several hours that night trying to decide which of the men might be the most susceptible to her.
    She kept coming back to Cade.
    The fact that they had known each other since childhood might cause him to be more relaxed around her than men who didn’t know her and were suspicious. Cade had gone out of his way to be helpful. Maybe he felt guilty that a Wheeler had had to depend on a diViere. That ought to make him more anxious to please her, maybe anxious enough to tell her what she needed to know.
    But there was the fact that he was extremely attractive. From what her grandmother said, all handsome men—unless they were diVieres or Cordobas—were untrustworthy, a veritable collection of snakes in the grass who specialized in using their looks and charm to dupe unwary females. Her