The Sunstone Brooch : Time Travel Romance Katherine Logan (no david read aloud TXT) 📖

He fixed her with a stern gaze. “Did two men ride in with you?” He didn’t say hello or even ask about the trip but went straight to Austin and Remy’s identities.

“News travels fast around here.”

“A rancher knew Norman was working for me and asked about the three cowboys coming in with the chuckwagon.”

“Three? There were only two.”

“He said one was huge, and another was so small a cow would be chasing him instead of the other way around. He didn’t realize you were a woman.”

“The big man is JC’s cousin, and the other is a family friend. They heard JC was here to hunt, so they came out to join him.”

That was one of the lies she, Remy, and Austin had dreamed up shortly before they arrived at the meetup place.

I’m stacking up lies like firewood, and I hate it!

“Where are they now?” TR asked.

As if on cue, Austin came out of the early evening shadows and campfire smoke like a wraith walking the desolate landscape one final time before descending into hell. Loud gasps circled the camp like a stadium wave at an athletic event.

“That’s Austin, his cousin,” she said.

“Man, you’re tall,” a cowboy said.

The crowd laughed.

“How’s the weather up there?” another one asked.

A third cowboy strutted up to him. “Hey, can you see tomorrow? What’s gonna happen? Tell me so I can sleep all day.”

The crowd continued laughing, with many of them forming a semicircle around Austin. If Ensley had been wearing a gun, she would have pointed toward the sky and fired a couple of rounds. Even though Austin pissed her off most of the time, she hated the jerks for taunting him.

Another one said, “Let’s set him up on a hill so he can spot all the roamin’ cattle. Then we’ll know where to go get ’em.”

They treated Austin like he was a freak, and all she could do was stand there helplessly.

What could she do?

Something. Anything.

She adjusted her stance and prepared for action, legs apart with one foot back, shoulders back, arms free. She didn’t know what she’d do if given a chance, but she readied herself anyway and watched. Austin didn’t toss out threats or instigate a fight.

“You know… It doesn’t seem to bother him,” she said.

“I agree,” TR said. “He doesn’t seem daunted by their jeering.”

Show those assholes the superstar still exists.

Austin went over to the line of bedrolls nearby and snatched up a pillow from one of them.

“What’s he doing?” TR asked.

Austin squashed the pillow into a ball, and even the cowboys around him looked confused.

“Hey, that’s my pillow. Leave it alone,” one of the cowboys yelled.

Austin took three steps, and she knew what was coming.

“Oh, my God,” she said.

Austin levitated into the stratosphere in an impressive display of power and skill and stuffed the pillow into a tree crotch about ten feet off the ground.

“Whoa!” She expected an updraft to catch him in midglide and carry him up and over the top of the cottonwood, like an eagle soaring into the night sky. Then, as if a parachute had opened, his feet descended slowly to touch the ground. If she hadn’t been looking at his face, she would have missed his tense jaw. The landing must have hurt like hell.

It was one of the most graceful exhibitions of athleticism she’d ever seen outside of a performance by the New York City Ballet. The leap was an art form that showcased his power and made mincemeat of the human body’s perceived limits.

There was a chapter in Austin’s book about how he spent hours as a teenager perfecting his dunk, playing in the driveway long after the sun went down and the stars came out. While reading the manuscript, she thought it was such a waste of time. He could have been studying or reading a book that would have given life meaning.

Damn. I’m such a snob.

Is this what Harvard and New York City had done to the rodeo queen from North Dakota? A deep sadness welled up inside her. It was partly because of what she’d given up, another part because of what she’d run from, and the rest for what she could never replace.

The man whose pillow Austin had stuffed into the pocket at the connecting point of two limbs yelled, “Hey. You can’t leave my pillow up there.”

The rest of the cowboys laughed until they were rolling on the ground. A couple of them tried to imitate Austin’s move but fell way, way short, literally falling on their asses, and the men all laughed harder.

And Austin O’Grady, the jerk she’d met hours earlier, became an instant hero.

“I’ve never seen anyone do that. I’ve got to find out how he did it,” TR said.

“Years of practice, but I think he’d prefer to throw a ball into a basket than stuff a pillow into a tree crotch.”

Austin jogged through a gauntlet of cheering, back-slapping cowboys, and he headed toward her with a slight limp that she noticed because she was looking for it. With the problems she had with her hip, she knew his landing after the pillow dunk must have sent a razor-sharp pain up his entire left side.

He reached TR first and extended his hand. “Sir, I’m Austin O’Grady. And it’s an honor to meet Theodore Roosevelt.”

“That was an amazing stunt, Mr. O’Grady. Can you teach me?” TR asked.

“Throwing down a one-handed dunk takes a great deal of skill, sir. I started practicing as a kid, and it took a lot of time. I can teach you the dynamics, but the execution requires strength, coordination, and a thirty-five-inch vertical jump, for starters. The rest is finesse.”

“How high can you jump?”

“Two years ago, forty-four inches on a good night. Now it’s about thirty-eight.”

TR gave Austin a head-to-toe appraisal. “Abraham Lincoln was tall like you.”

“He was six four, sir. So am I. But he wore that stovetop hat, which made him about seven feet tall. I’ve played against seven-footers—”

Ensley’s first reaction to his comment was