Texas Brides: The Rancher and the Runaway Bride & The Bluest Eyes in Texas. Joan Johnston

      “Now, Tate,” Faron began. “Any man who won’t stand up to the two of us isn’t worth having for a beau.”

      “Don’t patronize me!” she raged. “I won’t be placated like a baby with a rattle. I’m not three. I’m not even thirteen. I’m twenty-three. I’m a woman, and I have a woman’s needs.”

      “You don’t need to be manhandled,” Garth said. “And I won’t stand by and let it happen.”

      “Me neither,” Faron said.

      Tate hung her head. When she raised it again, her eyes were glistening with tears that blurred her vision. “I could have handled Hank myself,” she said in a quiet voice. “You have to trust me to make my own decisions, my own mistakes.”

      “We don’t want to see you hurt,” Faron said, laying a hand on Tate’s shoulder.

      Tate stiffened. “And you think I wasn’t hurt by what happened here tonight?”

      Garth and Faron exchanged another look. Then Faron said, “Maybe your pride was pricked a little, but—”

      “A little!” Tate jerked herself from Faron’s grasp. “You’re impossible! Both of you! You don’t know the first thing about what I want or need. You can’t imagine what it’s like to have every step you take watched to make sure you don’t fall down. Maybe it made sense when I was a baby, but I’m grown-up now. I don’t need you standing guard over me.”

      “Like you didn’t need our help tonight?” Garth asked in a cold voice.

      “I didn’t!” Tate insisted.

      Garth grabbed her chin and forced her face up to his. “You have no idea what a man’s passions can lead him to do, little sister. I have no intention of letting you find out. Until the right man comes along—”

      “There’s no man who’ll come within a hundred miles of this place now,” Tate retorted bitterly. “My loving brothers have seen to that! You’re going to keep me a virgin until I dry up and—”

      Garth’s fingers tightened painfully on her jaw, forcing her to silence. She saw the flash of fury in his dark eyes. A muscle flexed in his jaw. At last he said, “You’d better go to your room and think about what happened here tonight. We’ll talk more about this tomorrow.”

      “You’re not my father!” Tate spat. “I won’t be sent to my room like a naughty child!”

      “You’ll go, or I’ll take you there,” Garth threatened.

      “She can’t go anywhere until you let go of her chin,” Faron pointed out.

      Garth shot a rueful look at his brother, then released Tate. “Good night, Tate,” he said.

      Tate had learned there were only two sides to Garth’s arguments: his and the wrong one. Her stomach was churning. Her chest felt so tight it was hard to breathe, and her throat had a lump in it that made swallowing painful. Her eyes burned with tears that she would be damned if she’d shed!

      She looked from Garth to Faron and back again. Garth’s face was a granite mask of disapproval, while Faron’s bore a look of sympathetic understanding. Tate knew they loved her. It was hard to fight their good intentions. Yet their love was smothering her. They would not let her live!

      Her mother had died when she was born, and she had been raised by her father and her three brothers, Garth, Faron and Jesse. Their father had died when Tate was eight. Jesse had left home then, and Garth and Faron had been responsible for her ever since. It was a responsibility they had taken very seriously. She had been kept cloistered at Hawk’s Way, more closely guarded than a novice in a convent. If she went anywhere off the ranch, one of her brothers came along.

      When Tate was younger she’d had girlfriends to share her troubles with. As she got older, she discovered that the females she met were more interested in getting an introduction to her brothers than in being her friend. Eventually, she had simply stopped inviting them.

      Tate hadn’t even been allowed to go away to college. Instead she had taken correspondence courses to get her degree in business. She had missed the social interaction with her peers, the experience of being out on her own, that would have prepared her to deal with the Hanks of the world.

      However, Garth and Faron had taught her every job that had to be done on a ranch, from branding and castrating to vaccinating and breeding. She wasn’t naive. No one could be raised on a ranch and remain totally innocent. She had seen the quarter horse stallions they raised at Hawk’s Way mount mares. But she could not translate that violent act into what happened between a man and a woman in bed.

      So far, she had found the fumbling kisses of her swains more annoying than anything else. Yet Tate had read enough to know there was more to the male-female relationship than she had experienced so far. If her brothers had their way, she would never unravel the mysteries of love.

      She had come to the dire conclusion over the past few months that no man would ever pass muster with her brothers. If she continued living with them, she would die an old maid. They had given her no choice. In order to escape her brothers’ overprotectiveness, she would have to leave Hawk’s Way.

      This latest incident was the final straw. But then, kicking a man when he’s down is sometimes the only way to make him get up. Tate took one long, last look at each of her brothers. She would be gone from Hawk’s Way before morning.

      When the front door closed behind Tate, Faron settled a hip on the porch rail, and Garth leaned his shoulder against the doorjamb.

      “She’s too damn beautiful for her own good,” Garth muttered.

      “Hard to believe a woman can look so sexy in a man’s T-shirt and a pair of jeans,” Faron agreed with a shake of his head.

      Garth’s eyes were bleak. “Wha’re we going to do about her?”

      “Don’t know that there’s anything we can do except what we’re already doing.”

      “I don’t want to see her get hurt,” Garth said.

      Faron felt a tightness in his chest. “Yeah, I know. But she’s all grown up, Garth. We’re going to have to let go sometime.”

      Garth frowned. “Not yet.”

      “When?”

      “I don’t know. Just not yet.”

      THE NEXT MORNING, Garth and Faron met in the kitchen, as they always did, just before dawn. Charlie One Horse, the part-Indian codger who had been chief cook and bottle washer at Hawk’s Way since their mother had died, had coffee perking and breakfast on the table. Only this morning there was something—someone—missing.

      “Where’s Tate?” Garth asked as he sat down at the head of the table.

      “Ain’t seen her,” Charlie said.

      Garth grimaced. “I suppose she’s sulking in her room.”

      “You drink your coffee, and I’ll go upstairs and check on her,” Faron offered.

      A moment later Faron came bounding into the kitchen. “She’s not there! She’s gone!”

      Garth sprang up from his chair so fast it fell over backward. “What? Gone where?”

      Faron grabbed Garth by the shoulders and said in a fierce voice, “She’s not in her room. Her bed hasn’t been slept in!”

      Garth freed himself and took the stairs two at a time to see for himself. Sure enough, the antique brass double bed was made up with its nubby-weave spread. That alone was an ominous sign. Tate wasn’t known for her neatness, and if she had made up the bed, she had done it to make a statement.

      Garth headed for the closet, his heart in his throat. He heaved a sigh of relief when he saw Tate’s few dresses still hanging there. Surely she wouldn’t have left Hawk’s