Spending Monday on the phone arguing with state and county agencies about septic tanks and drain fields in Rancho Casero did nothing to improve his irritable state of mind. Normally, he never argued with bureaucrats. Normally he cajoled and persuaded them to a point of view closer to his own. Today, he didn’t have the patience.
Through Kim on his cell phone, he negotiated a new contract to build a five-thousand-square-foot house in a country club subdivision in Fort Worth. Something for Chick to do when his crews weren’t buried by construction in Rancho Casero.
He ate his meals in his mobile home.
The next day, Kim called and told him they had a deal for a Days Inn motel franchise and a weight lifted from his shoulders. She faxed him a pile of documents to review.
Later Brad England called and reported that his preliminary design for Ledger Ranches was ready for inspection. He needed Terry back in Fort Worth.
Terry threw his gear together again and left early the next morning, but not before Marisa had opened the café. Since he didn’t know when he would return, he stopped in to pay his tab.
She was sitting at a table when he entered, shuffling some papers. An aroma of cooking fruit and spices filled the large room. He stepped into her line of sight. “Baking something good, huh?”
She looked up, her head cocked, fresh lipstick glistening on her heart-shaped lips. “Apple pies.”
He walked over to her table, pulled out a chair and helped himself to a seat. Her musky perfume threaded through the food smells. “Sorry I’ll miss getting a slice. I’m leaving town. I stopped off to pay my bill.”
“You’ve only eaten here once since you got back.” She returned to reading the piece of paper in her hand.
He had no trouble detecting a bristly tone. So she had noticed he hadn’t been into the cafe to eat. “I know,” he said. Are you upset about that?”
She looked up at him, unsmiling. She probably wanted to give him a piece of her mind about something. Too bad. Despite how much he had come to want her abrupt, but commonsense opinions, the days when he listened to her were over. She would soon be a married woman, which considerably lessened her influence. “Something’s come up. You happen to know what I owe or do you need to look it up?”
“Six dollars,” she answered curtly. “Forget the cents.”
“Great.” He stood up and dug his money clip from his jeans pocket, peeled off a ten and handed it to her. “Keep the change.”
“No.” She grabbed the ten, got to her feet and quickstepped to the cash register.
He sighed mentally and waited for her to make change. This was not how he had meant this meeting to go. “You didn’t say the other day. When’s the wedding?”
She slammed the cash register drawer and handed him four dollars. “We haven’t decided.”
The answer he wished he could hear was,
It isn’t happening
, but that was a silly notion on his part. “Well, good luck.” He concentrated on folding the change she gave him into his money clip, then he turned and made for the front door without giving her a direct look. “See ya,” he called, refusing to look back.
Outside, he jerked his truck door open and climbed in, fired the engine, then sat there a minute staring at the junk in the display windows and thinking of how much effort it took to keep those two giant windows clean. A visual came to him of Marisa standing on a ladder washing those windows, her arms lifted, her midriff and that belly button ring visible. He thought of lifting her off the ladder and her body sliding down his, her smiling that bright white smile with those full lips as he held her and—
Fuck!
“Okay, dammit,” he grumbled, “just go ahead and marry an old man for his money.”
He pulled out onto the highway and pointed his truck toward Pecos. His next thought was he hadn’t noticed any reduction in the inventory in the Pecos Belle’s flea market. Curious. And problematic. That mountain of junk would have to be liquidated and in this part of Texas that would be a monumental task, hardly one a single woman caring for a sick person could easily accomplish.
Well, surely those aunts would help when the time came.
At Pecos, he connected with I-20. As the interstate stretched out ahead of him, crowded with heavy truck traffic, his mind began to put together his plans. On this trip to Fort Worth, he would accomplish what had languished while he had floundered and worried about Agua Dulce’s odd population. He wouldn’t return to West Texas until he and Brad had settled on a final plan for Ledger Ranches retirement community, until he had designed a marketing strategy with which Kim could move forward and until he and Chick had settled on half a dozen home designs.
He would be too busy to think about Marisa. In a way, her being tied to Lanny was a good thing. It hardened his attitude toward both her and the Agua Dulcians and he no longer felt guilty or obligated.
****
When’s the wedding?
For a few seconds Marisa totally gave herself over to the fear those words set off, fear that had chomped at her like a hungry wolf ever since Lanny proposed and she had failed to tell
him the idea of their getting married was too outrageous to consider.
For a few more seconds in the empty café’s silence, she let herself imagine how it might be if it had been the other millionaire she now knew who had proposed to her. Terry Ledger of the quick smile, the sun-streaked brown hair, the agile-looking hands....The soft lips and the sturdy,
young
body.
Well, not entirely young, but younger than fifty-five.
Shit, shit, shit
. Everything about him appealed to her, though her good sense told her it was too ridiculous for a grown woman to be swooning over the unattainable.
Better to focus on the doable, right? In the two weeks since Lanny proposed, he had proved to be an even gentler, nicer man than she had first thought. The perfect suitor. He had been to visit her in the café often, had been to visit Mama. He had taken her to dinner in Odessa and Midland several times, hiring a nurse out of Kermit to watch over Mama for the few hours they were gone. He hadn’t shown up yet with the promised diamond ring, but every time he came into the café, she wondered if he had it in his pocket. She had no doubt he would bring one. No man had ever spoiled her like she believed Lanny might.
She had discovered in him a sense of humor she hadn’t known he had. He could dance. He was a news junkie, so he knew every current event and was interested in politics. He could quote every daily cattle price in Texas. A life different from the one she had imagined when he first proposed began to unfold in her mind's eye and she had begun to think living with him as a companion could be interesting and even a joy.
Not once had he pressured her for sex. She hadn’t offered it, either. Even as positive as her thoughts about him had become, she still hadn’t reconciled herself to crawling into bed with him.
The whole damn thing was insane. Just insane.
The kitchen timer dinged and jolted her from her woolgathering. She stuffed the bills she had been sorting into a file folder and went to the kitchen, where the cinnamon-laced apple pies were baking. She was removing them from the oven when the front door chimed. She glanced toward it and saw two tall women. It was early for tourists unless they had spent the night at the Starlight Inn.
Chapter 18
When the pair came closer and sat down at the lunch counter Marisa recognized the older one, though she hadn’t seen her more than once or twice since high school. Lanny’s older daughter. She had been dark-haired in school; now she was blond.
Marisa gave them a quick head-to-toe, not failing to note that they weren’t wearing rags. Nor were they poorly shod or lacking in flashy jewelry. An uneasy feeling niggled at Marisa. Pecos Belle’s wasn’t a likely hangout for Lanny’s well-to-do kids.
She set the pies on trivets to cool and, wiping her hands on a towel, walked out of the kitchen and greeted the two women. The three of them went through the inane high-school-reunion-how’s-your-mother conversation. Old home reunion week. Phony. Marisa offered them coffee.
“I’d rather have iced tea,” the younger one said. She was also blond. The older one said she, too, preferred tea.
While Marisa filled plastic glasses with ice and tea, she prodded her memory. She knew from gossip that Lisa Winegardner, the daughter who was the same age as Marisa, had left home for college in Austin, but later flunked out. While there, she had met and married some kind of computer wizard and remained in
Austin permanently. The younger daughter, Kristy, had soon followed her sister, but hadn’t married. She now held a part-time token job in a retail store and spent her free time playing golf and taking class after class at the University of Texas. Everyone knew neither of them had ever seriously worked for a living and never would.
Marisa had been back in Agua Dulce over a year now and couldn’t recall seeing or hearing of either daughter coming to visit Dad even once before now. Her sixth sense told her why they had come as a team today, but she refused to believe the worst unless she heard it from their mouths. “Just passing through town?” she couldn’t resist asking.
“We came to visit our father,” Lisa said, hooking wispy strands of blond hair behind her ear with two elegantly manicured fingers.
“It’s been a while since you were up.”
“I’ll get right to the point, Miss Rutherford—”
“Miss Rutherford?”
Oh, hell,
Marisa thought. Her instinct was right again. “Gosh, when we were on the volleyball team in Wink, you called me Marisa.”
Lisa stiffened, a near snarl crossing her perfectly outlined lips. “Marisa, then. I’m saying it right out. I want you to leave my father alone.”
The younger sister didn’t speak, but holding her glass of tea with fingers tipped by talon-like red nails, she sipped and turned her head away.
The words, “my father” didn’t fit the Lanny Marisa had come to know. “Dad,”
maybe, or “Daddy,” but not “father.” She placed a fist on her hip and gave her future stepdaughter a direct look. “Maybe he’s the one you should be talking to. I haven’t bothered him. He came to me.”
“I doubt that. I know how it goes. A younger available woman, an old man—”
“I beg your pardon. I’m not an
available
woman. And your dad isn’t an old man. And I didn’t—”
“He’s twenty-two years older than I am, Marisa. That means he’s twenty-two years older than you.” Her brown eyes turned almost black. “My God. My mother would turn over in her grave if she could see what’s going on.”
The memory of Lanny’s negative remarks about his marriage flew into Marisa’s mind. She couldn’t keep from narrowing her eyes. “And what do you think is going on, Lisa?”
“Oh, get real. You’re not fooling anyone. Your mother ...Everyone knows about her and Clyde Campbell.” A smile Marisa could describe only as malicious quirked the corners of Lisa’s mouth. “But in the end, putting out for an old man didn’t do her any good, did it? She didn’t wind up with a penny of Clyde’s money, did she? I’d think that would be a lesson—”
“Just stop right there.” Marisa could feel the very blood in her veins flaming. She just might punch Lisa Winegardner’s face. “Who do you think you are, coming into my business and spouting insults? My mother never wanted Clyde Campbell’s money. God knows, that lying bastard lost her more than she gained.”
Lisa’s eyes shot daggers. “I know a gold digger when I see one. Like mother, like daughter.” She set her glass on the counter with a thunk. “My brother’ll be here today and we’re going to have this out once and for all. You might as well know right now you’re not getting your hands on a penny of our family’s money. The estate’s been set up for years and no one’s touching it. I’m telling you again. You leave him alone.”
She started to rise, but Marisa rounded the end of the lunch counter, her fist clenched at her side. Lisa’s eyes bugged. She sank back to the stool and clutched an oversized handbag to her chest like a shield. Kristy stood up and backed away. Lisa scooted backward off her stool and stood up, too. In her high heels, she was at least a head taller than Marisa.
Marisa lashed out. “You know something, Lisa? If you’d show up once in a while and be a daughter to your dad, you might see how lonely he is.”
Before she punched the dumb blonde’s lights out, Marisa breezed past her and started for the back exit. Then she stopped. Why should she flee? She hadn’t done anything wrong. She turned back to her antagonist. “On the other hand, a visit from you would probably be a waste of Lanny’s time. You’re too damn selfish to care about him and too damn dense to see how bleak his life is. Come to think of it, you always were dense as a fence post. I remember what a hard time you had graduating from Wink High School.” Marisa thrust out her hand and pointed toward the front door. “Just get out of here. And take your accusations with you. If you’ve got an axe to grind, take it up with him.”
Marisa stomped out of the café into the apartment and slammed the door. She was shaking all over as she sank to the sofa in the living room. What had she done?
Told off her future husband’s oldest kid, that’s what.
And said daughter had been afraid Marisa might hit her.