"I don't want a hero, Uncle Amos, just a real man like you or Rafe or Emile." She glanced around her. "You know I absolutely hate this room, this house. It's so pretentious, so needlessly big and fussy." She was beginning to feel confused as she didn’t have any reason to think Phillip would want a place like that either. His apartment was nothing like it although he had made all the decisions for what their home would be like. She had reached the end of being able to think.
She looked at her uncle. "Did you mean it when you said I could come stay with you?"
"Your dad'll shoot me."
“So much of my life has been programmed by somebody else. Eastern riding instead of Western, a trip to Europe instead of one to the Grand Canyon. A foreign film when I preferred a comedy. I guess I ought to feel lucky for the luxuries, but I'm suddenly beginning to realize I'm not living my own life. I'm living everybody else's idea of what it should be. I don't want to grow old and realize I missed my chance. I want to do work that matters. I'm not even sure what that's going to be, but I need to find out, and I'd like to start in Montana."
"I'd like having you. With Emile married and Rafe off rodeoing, the house is plumb lonely, but you know how your folks are going to feel about this."
"If it's going to be my life, I have to start sometime, don't I?"
"I reckon so. What about your job?"
"I only got my cushy little editing job because the publisher is a friend of my father's. I have to find something that's mine, Uncle Amos. I want my next job to be because I earned it."
"I doubt any publisher worth their salt would have hired you just because of family."
She looked at him dubiously. "I was so sure, you of everybody would understand what I'm feeling."
He looked thoughtfully at her. "I already said you could come, but I want you to know that I don't know how long I can offer you a home at the ranch. I've been having some problems."
"What kind?" she asked her concern shifting to him and the Rocking H.
"I don't need to worry you about it. Just I didn't want you to come out figuring I was going to be there forever. I don't know about the future, but... maybe none of us do. So, you come to Montana. Maybe you can find some of those answers you're looking for out there, but, girl, sometimes the best answers are inside us all the time."
She smiled at him. "Maybe though it's going to take a little digging to work them out, and I can't think of a better place to dig than the Rocking H. How soon can we go?"
"Whenever you get yourself packed up."
Helene rose from the bed and stared out into the dark night toward the west. She didn't know how, but somehow she sensed the answers she sought would be found there.
#
Sprawled across the sofa, a pair of well worn jeans his only attire, two days growth of beard covering his square jaw, Phillip Drummond looked like anything but the financial mastermind behind an investment counseling and development firm that had grown from nothing to a multimillion dollar operation. His clients would have had little faith that the disheveled looking man could save their failing companies. He looked more like what he had been born to be--a street tough. A cigarette dangled from his lips, a glass of whiskey rested on the glass table in front of him. The modern living room had acquired a look of upheaval that matched the turmoil in the long, lean man who lay morosely staring at the ceiling.
Everything for nothing. When it was all said and done, he could look at the things he'd accomplished in his thirty-four years and know none of it mattered. For all intents and purposes, he was back where he started--in the gutter. He knew in a week or two maybe he’d look at this more positively. Maybe.
He tried to picture Helene and found her face blurring in his mind. Maybe with any luck, he could someday forget she existed. Forget his dreams of marrying a woman who would be everything a man could desire. She would have been a hostess to grace his table, to entertain his clients. He hadn't thought beyond that until she rejected him. Until then he'd convinced himself Helene was a beautiful ornament. Suddenly the ornament had reached up and bit him.
Anger had made him kiss her in a way he'd held back through the courtship. He had wanted everything to be perfect for her, but in the limousine, he'd wanted to teach her a lesson. Unfortunately, he was the one who learned the lesson, and it had come too late. He desired the woman he'd married. He felt an ache in his body that whiskey couldn't take away and a yearning he'd never known until he'd realized he couldn't have Helene Lamont. He didn't know that he would call it love, but then, he'd never been that certain love existed or if it did what it was.
The buzzer from the doorman downstairs interrupted his bitter musings. He considered ignoring the summons. There was no one he wanted to see or talk to. He'd have to face friends and associates all too soon as it was.
Reluctantly he got up and flipped the switch on the intercom. "Yeah?" he asked, irritation shading the words.
"A Mister Hartz is in the lobby, Mr. Drummond."
For a moment, the name didn't register in Phillip's liquor dulled brain and then, "Okay, send him up."
A few moments later, Amos Hartz walked into Phillip's living room, his eyes roving around the room, doubtless taking in the glasses and clothing thrown over chairs, the generally unkempt state.
"I let my help go when I figured I'd be on a honeymoon," Phillip explained. He poured himself another whiskey. "Want one?"
"No thanks." Amos threw his hat onto a side table and walked to the window. "I like the view from up here. I got a pretty fair one myself, no lights or nothing, just mountains."
Phillip sat back on the couch, smoking, in no mood for idle chitchat, and wondered with only faint curiosity what the older man wanted of him. Had Helene sent him? Not likely.
Amos looked down at him, then plopped into another chair. "So, the marriage is over before it's begun," he drawled.
"Not much for small talk, are we?"
"Waste a lot of time that way. I figure if I got something to say, might as well say it."
"Then you are right. The marriage, for what it was worth, is over." Phillip took a swig of whiskey.
"What are you goin' to do about it?"
Phillip looked up at him with surprise. "Do about it? What can I do about it? This was Helene’s choice and she has made it."
The older man grinned at him, watching silently as Phillip rose to pace the room. "If I wanted a woman," Amos said, after a moment, "I'd go after her."
Phillip's eyes narrowed as he studied him. "Caveman tactics? That's not my style."
"What is your style, son?"
"All self-created," Phillip said with self-derision. "It's looking a little ineffectual just now but don't worry, I'll pick myself up. I have before. I can do it again."
"You love my niece?"
"Is that any of your business?"
"Nope, not a bit."
Phillip snubbed out his cigarette, then lit another one, taking a deep draw on it as he considered the older man. "It took me five years to quit the weed, and your niece sent me back to it in a day. Doesn't say much for my self-control, does it?"
"Oh, I don't know. Them little vices are the kind a man can spend a lifetime fightin'. I used to chew tobacco myself 'til I convinced myself to quit. It ain't admirable, but folks are full of vices. Maybe the ones we inflict on ourselves are the best ones to have."
"A cowboy philosopher," Phillip quipped. He took a deep drag on the cigarette, letting the nicotine soothe him, that was a laugh, before he asked "So, what do you really want, old man?"
Amos laughed. "You aren't much for beating around the bush either, are you? Well in a minute or so, I'll tell you what I want—for now anyways, but first, I got a couple of questions. Where do you come from, Phillip Drummond?"
Phillip smiled wolfishly. "You don't buy my slick style?"
"Nope. I seen something under the surface, and I want to know what it is."
"You smell the street, old man. I'm a gutter rat, and your niece did well to throw me back."
"You've slicked up your background pretty good."
"Obviously not good enough. Top university, money, and etiquette books
can only carry a man so far."
"Maybe I'll take one of them whiskeys now." Phillip poured him a generous shot. Amos sat and looked at the drink a moment, then met Phillip's hard gaze. "Helene don't figure you for a tough man."
Phillip snorted with derision. "Ironic, isn't it? I spend my life trying to acquire style, polish and class and get rejected for just those things."
Amos laughed as he shook his head. "Who can ever figure women? She doesn't figure you for a tough man, but I do."
"Tough or low class?" Phillip asked, taking a sip of his drink and looking at Amos over the rim of the glass.
"I don't judge men by the social class they come from. I figured you for a man who'd made it his own way. You want to tell me about it?"
"Not much." Phillip walked to the window, staring out at the city below him. The smoke drifted above him.
"Sometimes talking is good for a man."
"Why should I trust you?"
"What can you lose?"
Phillip laughed at that. "You've got a point. Well, I'll give you the dirt if that's what you've come for. I grew up in Philadelphia--in the inner city. I've had two brothers and three sisters and none of us by the same man. I barely know my probable father. Met him once when I was ten, didn't care if I ever saw him again, and haven't.
"Our mother----she tried, I guess. Life didn't deal her any easy hand. She made money however she could.” His tone darkened. “But she wanted us to get better than she had. My older brother is under the ground. Jim played a little too loose with the numbers game and bought an early ticket out. My little brother, Derek, went to college, like me, lives in San Francisco, and I guess he's getting along okay, except I never see him. My sisters still live in Philly. The oldest, Rickie, has a good marriage--if there is such a thing. Three kids and a fourth on the way. Rita has made her life a mess, one guy after another and nobody full-time, and Laurie's in high school and still up for grabs. Does that give you the picture?"
"Why weren't your people at the wedding?"
Phillip smiled sarcastically. "Can you see Robert or Florence greeting my mother, who looks seventy, even though she's fifty-five? A woman who would have no more idea how to behave at a country club reception than at a ball for the Queen of England." He shrugged and looked away. "Anyway, I asked her, and she got scared just thinking about it, then she got drunk. Something she hasn't done for over ten years. As it turns out, I'm just as glad she wasn't here. The day was hard enough as it was."
Amos nodded. "So, you got just about everything you have the hard way, didn't you? Probably put yourself through college."
"Along with a scholarship."
"How'd Derek go to school?"
Phillip stared at him and then back out the window. "I haven't forgotten my family, if that's what you were wondering. I helped my brother, but I don't want you making this out like a sob story. My family wasn't the Cleavers, but my mom did the best she could. You grow up in a ghetto though, and it leaves a mark on you. I thought I'd washed it off, but maybe the stain never leaves."
Abruptly changing the subject, Amos said, "Helene's been sheltered, but I figure you knew that. She was raised with money, and beautiful like she is, everything came pretty easy for her, but she's not soft. If she had been, she'd of slid into marriage with you, accepted the world of her folks and let it go at that."