Free Liz Ireland by Ceciliaand the Stranger Page B

possibility occurred to Cecilia, cutting her sentence short. She felt herself go pale as the blood drained from her cheeks. “Dolly, you can’t mean...”
    Fresh tears spilled freely down Dolly’s face, and she nodded miserably. “Yes!” she cried.
    “But you can’t possibly...” She hardly knew how to put it into words.
    Dolly did it for her. “It’s Buck! I love him terribly!”
    How else? Cecilia stared at her friend in horror. And disbelief. “Buck?” she asked, unable to keep the amazement out of her voice. “Buck McDeere?”
    “When I saw you two together, Cecilia, I felt something die inside me,” Dolly said, wiping her eyes with a wrinkled soggy handkerchief.
    “But, Dolly,” Cecilia said, still trying to cope with her friend’s initial pronouncement, “Buck?”
    “You’re just a snob, Cecilia,” Dolly said harshly. “You think he’s unsuitable because he works for your father!” Cecilia took offense at those words. True, she had her faults, but this wasn’t one of them. “You’re wrong, Dolly. I wouldn’t condemn a man for doing honest work. But, think. When you saw him last night, he was passed-out drunk!”
    Dolly shot her an accusing glare. “That obviously didn’t deter you from playing fast and loose with him while he was vulnerable.”
    Cecilia’s mouth popped open in astonishment. “He fell on top of me!” she defended. “Truly, Dolly, that’s absolutely all there was to it.”
    Suddenly, Dolly’s eyes cleared. For a moment she gazed doubtfully at Cecilia, as if the news was too good to be true. “Honestly?” she asked, blinking.
    “I swear it,” Cecilia said. “But nevertheless...Buck? Dolly, he drinks, and goodness knows what else. He spends half his life at Grady’s.”
    Dolly smiled radiantly, as if Cecilia’s words had conjured the image of a saint for her. “You’re wrong, Cecilia. No one is a lost cause. I’m sure, deep inside, Buck McDeere has it in him to be a great man, if someone would just set him straight.”
    Cecilia released a frustrated breath. “I’m not certain about that....”
    “I know what you’re really thinking.” Dolly looked at her sharply and sniffed. “You think I’m too old.”
    “The thought never entered my mind.” Which was the truth. Cecilia had been too stunned to think things through even that far. “But now that you mention it, wouldn’t you prefer someone more...mature?”
    Dolly lifted her chin proudly. “I’m not yet thirty, after all, and Buck is nearly twenty-four. If our sexes were reversed, no one would blink an eye at the difference.”
    Everything she said was true. Still, Cecilia had serious misgivings. She was so used to thinking of Buck as a clown, or a pest, like a fly persistently buzzing around that needed to be swatted away. Considering him as a serious marriage partner—for anyone—was a stretch. But especially one for Dolly, who always seemed overly concerned with appearances and having things done properly.
    What couldn’t be denied was that Dolly was still young, and pretty, and had endured four lonely years of widowhood. She deserved love in her life, but men, good ones, were scarce—at least in Annsboro, which hadn’t become the boomtown people like Lysander Beasley had hoped. And so Buck had become a serious prospect by default, especially since lately he was coming by more often to see Cecilia.
    “I suppose I can see where he might be molded into marriage material,” Cecilia allowed grudgingly, feeling half-responsible for the catastrophe.
    Dolly shook her head emphatically. “I wouldn’t want to change him.”
    “You’d take him as he is?” If so, Dolly had gone bug crazy.
    “Well...”
    Cecilia breathed a sigh of relief. At least her friend hadn’t gone completely over the edge. Oh, but what a mess. She had no idea what Buck thought of Dolly—if he thought of her at all. But what difference did any of this make to her? She was about to be packed off to the ranch, never to