Million Dollar Road (11 page)

“Me either.” Emma's tanned face was almost comically perplexed, but then it brightened. “Maybe you're supposed to use it to clean the bottom of his feet somehow.”

“How am I supposed to do that?” Lireinne looked at the horse's hooves, unsure. “Do I just tell him to pick 'em up? Like, ‘Stand on three legs, boy—it's good for you'?”

“You've got to know more than I do,” Emma said, her mouth wry. “Why don't you try touching one and see if he knows the rest? He used to be a racehorse, didn't he?”

And sure enough, as soon as Lireinne ran her hand down the back of Mose's front leg and touched his heel, the old horse lifted his hoof off the ground as though he'd been doing it every day. “I guess I better hold on to it so he won't put it back down.” The packed mud came out in a big chunk, and when she let go, Mose rested his foot again, looking over his shoulder at Lireinne as if asking her to get on with it. His hind feet were a little trickier, but in no time she got them picked out, too.

“He seems like an old pro at this,” Emma observed with a short laugh. The morning had quickly warmed up and she'd taken off her cream-colored sweater, tying it around her waist over her white T-shirt. She ran her fingers through her shoulder-length silver hair and stretched her arms upward in the brilliant sunlight filtering through the live oak leaves. “What a lovely day. I'm so glad it finally rained. Aren't you?”

Ignoring the question, Lireinne straightened and shot Emma a direct glance. “Why'd you do this? I mean . . . okay, it's cool, but you didn't have to.”

Emma blushed under her tan, lowering her shy gray eyes to the mud on her Top-Siders. “I thought . . . I'd like to get to know you and Mose, that's all,” she said, a hint of the old nervousness returning. She paused. “We're neighbors, you know, since I live just a few miles from here. But that's only if you don't mind—me getting to know y'all, I mean.” Emma raised her gaze then, her expression uncertain and earnest, as though she was afraid Lireinne would say that she did indeed mind—minded a lot, in fact.

But as she crawled back through the barbed wire, Lireinne said, “Sure. It's okay, I guess. I can't pay you for the feed and all this stuff, though, not right away. I think I'm gonna lose my job.” She stood and stuffed the brushes in the paper bag. “I could sign a paper or something, promising to pay you back,” Lireinne said, wanting to make sure she went about this in the right way. Lireinne was adamantly opposed to owing anybody anything, ever. Life was hard enough, Bud always said, and debt was the worst way to make a hard life even harder.

Emma's gold-flecked eyes were wide with sympathy. “I'm sorry to hear that—you losing your job, I mean. Please don't worry about paying me. I'm happy to help,” she said softly. “Really. And I can bring Mose's oats out here next week, too. You're sort of on my way home from the feed store. I've got, um . . . plenty of time.”

Lireinne bit her lip, thinking this offer over. She hated counting on anybody but herself and Bud because, sooner or later, people always let you down. She was remembering the teachers and their intrusive questions, of how before she'd wised up, they'd called the Parish on Bud when she'd answered their questions like the trusting little dumb-ass she'd been back in grammar school. Then there was Miss Cooper, who was supposed to be on her side, only to have turned out to be no help at all. Her mother's family, turning their backs on their own kin, was no better. Except for Bud and maybe Miss Penny, nobody had ever wanted to give her a hand when she needed it. Even Miss Penny had never come by to see her again, not after she'd moved back to town.

But Emma had
said
she wanted to help with hauling feed. Lireinne looked at Mose. Fed and groomed, he was parked under his tree, resting a hind leg in contentment. Already the prominences of his hip bones had become less like stark, rocky outcrops under his faded brown coat, and his long neck seemed less sunken and thin. His eyes were bright, his ears pricked at the sound of their voices. He even smelled healthier after his grooming.

Yes, Lireinne thought, Mose was worth taking the chance. For sure.

“Just the same, I'll pay you back one day,” she said briefly. “Thanks.”

“You're very welcome,” Emma said, sounding as though she meant it. “I'm happy to help with Mose.” A brief silence fell between them, broken only by the muttering calls of the crows high in the top of the live oak tree, and the rumble of tires as a car sped past on the road at the front of the property.

Emma sighed, but it didn't sound like a sad one, not like before. It sounded almost happy—satisfied, even. “I should get on home,” she said. “It was great meeting you and Mose. I'll be sure to come back next week, but if anything comes up before then, just let me know. I'll give you my number.”

They were walking around the trailer, back to Emma's shiny truck. As soon as they reached it, she grabbed her fancy leather purse off the passenger seat, found a pen, and wrote her name and phone number on a piece of paper, just like she'd said she would.

“Here,” Emma said. “Please call if you need me, for any reason. I'm just down the road.”

In spite of the disaster Lireinne was sure she'd be facing on Monday morning, in spite of Wolf's lame dropping-out idea, the day now seemed bright and fine. Emma-whoever didn't act like some nosy bitch, not really. You couldn't ever be sure, but she was probably a nice person, maybe even a good one—like Sarah.

After what seemed like a lifetime of disappointments, maybe,
maybe
this Emma might be for real. As random and as out-of-the-blue as her promise might appear, she'd sounded like she was really planning to help. These were thoughts that triggered Lireinne's usual suspicions about the untrustworthiness of do-gooders, but at the same time they offered something else, something that felt like . . . well, hope.

What if?

“Hey—you ever go to Walmart?” Lireinne asked.

“M
r. Costello?”

In the logy aftermath of the farm's usual Monday calorie-bomb of a lunch—'Cille's fried ham steaks, hot sausage, and white beans—Con was alone in his office this afternoon. Back from France at last, the boss, Roger Hannigan, was currently away from the farm and meeting with his personal CPA in town. Con was standing at the window with his hands shoved in his pockets, deep in thought.

He was staring out at the expanse of the wastewater retention pond, a great tear-shaped body of aggravation sited down the hill from the house. Discharging was a never-ending problem for the farm. The barns consumed tens of thousands of gallons a day emptying and filling the deep-water tanks. Whenever the twenty-acre pond was full and threatened to climb over its banks—which it was now doing after Friday night's big rain—there was no option: they'd have to discharge into the branch on the edge of the property, one ultimately emptying into the Bogue Falaya River. Con was waiting on a call from the farm's D.C. lobbyist for an update on the looming EPA litigation, but as he gazed at the deceptively innocent water's brown surface, his thoughts were elsewhere.

Lireinne.

In spite of the headache of discharge issues and a desk piled high with other pressing business, just as he had been for the past nine days, Con was thinking about Lireinne, daydreams of the extraordinary girl that were as seductive as the remembered fragrance of her scent.

“Excuse me, Mr. Costello?”

“Yes?” Con answered, returning to the here and now with a jolt. He rubbed his head in an effort to clear it. Lireinne considerately retreated to the background with a “Later, baby” flash of her green eyes, a toss of her hair, and a private smile.

“Harlan Baham's in the kitchen, asking for a word with you.” Jackie, the farm's bookkeeper, waited in the doorway of Con's office. Her brown, pleasant face was expectant.

“What's he want?” Con said. He turned away from the window, his tone short at the mention of Baham, that goldbricking bastard. Although he was a fair hand at bossing the crew, in every other way that mattered, the man was an unmitigated, lazy waste of a human being. Con was still disgusted with himself for having made Harlan a five-hundred-dollar loan last year to help him buy a used truck. The loan had yet to be repaid.

Jackie lifted her shoulders under her neat blue blazer, letting them fall with a noncommittal expression. “It's something about the hoser. Harlan says she's being careless, doing structural damage to some of the barns. Apparently, he tried to talk to her about it last Friday, but he says she cussed him out, turned the hose on him, and somehow he ended up falling down. He says his back hasn't been right since and he wants her fired. I can handle it, if you want.”

The scumbag probably got himself hosed for hitting on her, Con thought in disdain.

“No, I'll look into this,” he said, stifling a grimace at the thought of the man anywhere near Lireinne. Poor kid.

But wait—hold on a minute, Con thought, struck by a happy realization. Here was the answer to the question he'd been pondering for better than a week, the way to create an opportunity to get closer to Lireinne. “In fact,” he said quickly, “tell him to send her up to the house so I can talk to her.”

Jackie turned to go. “Sure thing, Mr. Costello.”

“Oh, and Jackie? Bring me Lireinne's employment file and pay records, will you?”

As soon as she'd shut the door, Con hustled into the attached bathroom to check out his reflection in the mirror. Unzipping his khakis, he straightened his polo shirt, tucked it in again, and buckled his alligator belt. He ran a comb through his red hair, drew his lips back from his teeth to make sure he wasn't wearing an errant speck of lunch on an incisor, and examined his nails. Then he began to pace the office, anticipation sparking like a lit bottle rocket inside his chest.

Distracted with his evolving plan, Con couldn't pretend to work, not even when Jackie brought the files he'd asked her to get for him. He roamed restlessly around his office instead, straightening the Audubon prints on the cypress-paneled walls, shuffling papers, moving his chair from behind his desk around to the front, putting it back again. Normally, he'd have been relaxed and at ease as he waited to do what he did best. Con was almost amused at his excitement, wondering if even Lireinne was worth all this attention to detail.

She was. A long twenty minutes later Lireinne had answered his summons and was standing in front of Con's big antique partners' desk, her shrimp boots shedding mud on the Oriental carpet. She glared at him in sullen defiance.

“Hell yes, I hosed him.” Lireinne spit the words from her lovely mouth. “Harlan's a pervy creep who doesn't freaking get it—like he never heard that
no means no
?” She tossed her black hair over the shoulder of her faded Saints jersey. “Bet he left out the part where he grabbed me, how he told me that if I didn't ‘give ol' Harlan some sugar,' he'd see me fired. Isn't that the way this bullshit is gonna go down?”

Her low voice was rough with hostility, but her eyes gleamed with unshed tears.

Con came out from behind his desk smiling his very best smile, the one that radiated good will and good feeling. If you're gonna take a swing at this, Obi-Wan, don't miss, he reminded himself. His own motives were one thing, but if Lireinne filed a sexual harassment suit against the farm because of Harlan Baham, Hannigan wouldn't be pleased. Not at all.

“I'm sure we can work this out, Lireinne.” Con gestured at one of the leather club chairs arranged around the conference table. “Please, sit down. How've you been lately?”

“How've
I
been?” Lireinne raised a wary eyebrow, but after a moment's hesitation, she clomped over to the chair and perched on the edge of it like an elegant waterbird in shrimp boots, poised to take flight.

“I've been okay, I guess,” she muttered. “Except for Harlan.” Lireinne crossed her amazing legs, one white-rubber-covered foot swinging in nervous arcs. Con pulled up another conference chair and sat down across from her, smiling still.

“I'm sure that . . . incident gave you a bad turn, but ever since we met the other day I've been thinking that a bright girl like you is wasted as a hoser here at SGE.” Con looked deep into her guarded, still-water eyes, his voice reassuring and confident as he said, “You could be so much more useful to the company in another position. What do you think about becoming my personal assistant?”

Lireinne frowned, her brow knit in confusion. “Your personal assistant?”

“I'm offering you a promotion,” Con said, bright and warm as a host of candle flames. “A girl like you—so smart, so . . . attractive—would be a big help in the front office.”

“Me?” Her expression disbelieving, Lireinne folded her arms and collapsed against the back of the chair in a graceful slouch. “I mean, why me? I'm, like, a
hoser
.”

With a deliberate calculation, Con angled his broad shoulders toward her in a subtle invasion of her space. He rested his elbows on his knees and, wearing a thoughtful frown, nodded as though she'd said something rather more intelligent.

“I think you could be more than that, obviously. It would mean additional responsibility, of course, but there'd be a commensurate raise in pay.”

At the mention of a raise, Lireinne's exquisite face was immediately alight with interest. “A raise? I'd get a raise?” She uncrossed her legs, her hands clenched the arms of the chair. Lireinne sat up, straightening her back, and her breasts lifted under the shapeless Saints jersey.

Con's breath caught, his pulse racing. Holy shit, Obi-Wan, he thought. He reached to the desk behind him, picking up a manila folder to cover his reaction.

“I see you've been netting . . . what?” Con opened the file and pretended to scan the time sheets, as though he hadn't known for the past nine days exactly what the farm was paying her.

“Less than four hundred dollars a month,” Lireinne stated, her face discouraged now. “That's it. I tried to get on full-time, but Tina said y'all didn't need me for more than four hours a day. Like, that's just not
right
. I always have to put in at least six hours to get it all done, but I don't get paid except for four. That sucks,
big time,
” she said with hot vehemence.

Con nodded, emanating sympathy. “Boy, I understand—do I ever. Unfortunately, Tina's right. That's farm policy regarding casual labor. Usually a hoser's just not worth that kind of outlay, so we call the job part-time even though it's basically full-time work—when someone's doing the good job you've been doing, that is. I agree. That does suck.”

Lireinne looked away. Her voice was small and bitter as she said, “Nobody can live on that.”

Taking a calculated risk, Con placed two light fingers on her knee. She gave him a startled glance, a question in her doubting eyes.

“But if you take this promotion, Lireinne,” Con said, “instead of an hourly wage, you'll be getting a salary—say, two thousand a month? You'll net about sixteen hundred, after taxes. That's a big jump up.” Con removed his fingers and leaned back in his chair, watching as the girl absorbed this offer. Now, it was only two thousand dollars, a sum closing in on the bottom line of Lizzie's monthly grocery allowance (not counting wine, a separate budget), but even that modest amount was bound to seem a fortune to a girl like Lireinne.

“Really?”
Her eyes were wide. “Two thousand dollars a month? But, like, what's a personal assistant do, anyway?” Lireinne asked cautiously. She shifted in her chair, those new-leaf eyes doubtful again.

It was a question Con had contemplated ever since he'd hatched the idea of how to bring Lireinne into his orbit, especially since he didn't actually need an assistant.

“Good question,” he said, nodding in affirmation. “I'm a busy man, ridiculously busy. I spend hours on the phone, selling skins all over the world, handling the farm's legal issues. You could be a big help to me, Lireinne. Keeping up with my correspondence, screening my calls, updating my calendar. You're comfortable with computers, aren't you? There'll be some data entry, too.”

Absently rubbing her crescent-scarred eyebrow, Lireinne didn't answer for a minute. “I had a class in school, before I quit. We don't have a computer at home, though. I might need a couple of days to get my head back into it, if that's okay.”

This was hardly a deal-breaker. Con had known it was unlikely she'd be worth a damn right away, but keeping his calendar wasn't why he'd offered her the job in the first place. Just sitting across from her now was a promise of almost unimaginable pleasure—if only he could be patient. He'd known instinctively that propositioning her wasn't a successful ploy. Not with this girl. After nine days of deliberation and daydreaming, Con had become certain that when it came to Lireinne, the long game would be the only game.

Meanwhile, her uncertain expression had grown thoughtful. “I can't come to work up here in the house dressed like this.” She gestured at her faded jersey and shorts. “I'll have to buy some new clothes, won't I.”

It wasn't a question, but Con was prepared for this as well.

“Yes, of course. I'm okaying an advance on your new salary for more, uh, professional clothing.”

Actually, he'd give a hell of a lot to go shopping with her, to oversee the Cinderella-transformation from Lireinne the hoser to the glorious girl of his daydreams, but for now he was going to have to wait to indulge that deeply enjoyable notion. Later on, after he was sure of her, he'd take Lireinne to Saks and do it right.

Con was sure now that he'd pursue this seduction without haste because this girl was the real deal. During this meeting, Con had realized she wasn't like his other girls, an ordinary conquest. Some casual . . .
thing
with this girl held no appeal to him; the thought was almost distasteful, to tell the truth. He sensed there were depths to Lireinne he couldn't have imagined before and that made her even more wildly desirable. Con surreptitiously rubbed his damp palms on his pants legs with a quickening of hungry anticipation.

“But I'm probably going to have to get a car, too.” Lireinne's cool voice broke into his thoughts. She was biting her full lower lip speculatively, her slim hand playing with her long black hair. “If I'm all dressed up,” she said, “I can't
walk
here from the house, not in real shoes with heels. I mean, y'all don't want me showing up for work in flip-flops.” It was a self-possessed suggestion.

Clever girl, Con thought with an inward smile. Of course she'd need a car.

“There's a farm vehicle, one of the older Explorers you can use for now,” he said smoothly, as if he'd already thought of a car—which he hadn't. “We'll call it a loan, but once you're on the company's insurance, you can drive it until you can afford one of your own.”

Con didn't dare sweeten the offer any more without asking for trouble with Hannigan: already he could imagine the raised eyebrows in the office when the hoser showed up tomorrow morning as his new personal assistant. It was a piece of luck that Roger and his wife were coming to his house for something like a working dinner tonight: there was a lot Roger had missed while he was away and he needed to be brought up to speed on the waste-water issue before Tuesday's staff meeting. Con could casually drop the news of Lireinne's promotion into the conversation instead of springing it on Roger in front of Tina and Jackie. A couple of months from now, after he'd won her, Lireinne could have a little SUV. Nothing too flashy, but she'd probably fall in love with anything with a CD player and that new-car smell.