Free A Texan's Luck by Jodi Thomas

until now."
    The cat moved on down the counter, looking bored with his rambling.
    Walker collected an armful of firewood and headed back up the stairs. No sense putting off talking to Lacy. If he had any hope of understanding her, they had to start somewhere.
    He wasn't surprised to find her huddled at the kitchen table with a notepad in one hand and a pencil in the other. A tiny pair of reading glasses perched on her nose. Blankets still wrapped around her shoulders like armor. Neither of them spoke as he dropped the firewood in the bin.
    He couldn't understand why getting along with Lacy was so hard. Somewhere there had to be a middle ground. She needed him, and he'd been ordered to protect her. He'd always thought of himself as a reasonable man. He doubted one man who'd ever served under him would hesitate if asked to do so again. Dealing with a woman couldn't be that much different. He just needed to find a common place they could start from.
    He reached into the storage drawer and pulled out a jar of milk and two apples, then sat down across the table from her. While she wrote, he poured them each a cup of milk and sliced the apples onto a plate. When she didn't look at him, he collected cheese and bread and added both to the meal spread between them. He was a man used to fending for himself and hoped she might accept the light supper as a peace offering.
    Finally she stopped writing and propped the notebook between them. She'd printed the number twenty-four boldly on the first page.
    He waited, guessing it safer to let her make the first move.
    She removed her glasses and folded them into her pocket. Her brown eyes were huge in the lamp's light as she stared at him. "One month," she said calmly. "It took you three days to get here, and it will take you three days to return to your post. That leaves twenty-four."
    He agreed, thinking this an odd start to a conversation, but at least they were communicating.
    She ripped the first sheet from her pad and crumpled the page marked with the twenty-four. "Twenty-three now."
    Walker didn't bother to look at the pad. He knew what would be written on the next page. He sliced a piece of bread and handed it to her, then lifted his cup of milk. "To the countdown," he said.
    She tapped her cup on his and drank.
    They ate in silence. The kitchen warmed. She tried to put up an act, but he could sense her fright. He leaned back, allowing as much room between them as the small space permitted. "We really don't need the notebook, Lacy. Neither of us is likely to forget."
    Dark walnut eyes met his. "I learned when I was a child moving around from job to job, sometimes only earning my keep, that I could endure anything if I knew it would end."
    "I swear to you that in twenty-three days I'll ride out of here. This will end."
    She nodded, accepting his word.
    "I didn't mean to frighten you." A half-wit could have seen that what he did after the gunfire scared her more than the shooting. The woman needed to wear a sign that said, Touch at Your Own Peril.
    She took a long breath. "I know."
    "Maybe it would help if we understood each other a little better." He wasn't sure anything would help, but they couldn't go around yelling for three more weeks. "In prison camps during the war, there would always be a line, sometimes it was a trench, sometimes nothing more than a rope, but every soldier knew that was the point of no return. The kill line."
    She raised an eyebrow in question.
    "Any prisoner who crossed that point was shot, no questions, no warning. That's what I need with you. I need to know where I'm not to cross."
    She watched him closely.
    "Help me out a little, Lacy. We're living in such close quarters I need to know where the kill line is."
    Her eyes closed. She shrank into the blanket. For a moment he thought she might not answer. If she didn't give him some guidelines, he guessed he'd just have to go around making her mad or angry until she finally turned that old Colt the sheriff gave