April and Dean both came into town to get her. April handed over Blue’s driver’s license and claimed the Saab. Dean bailed Blue out of jail and yelled at her. “I leave you alone for a couple of hours, and what do you do? You get yourself arrested! I feel like I’m living in an I Love Lucy rerun.”
“I was framed!” Blue’s shoulder banged against the door of the Vanquish as he took a curve too fast. She was so angry she wanted to hit something, starting with him for not being as indignant as she was. “Since when have you heard of anybody being thrown in jail for driving without a license? Especially somebody who has a perfectly valid license.”
“Which you didn’t have on you at the time.”
“But which I could have produced if they’d given me half a chance.”
The police hadn’t questioned Blue’s statement that Riley was a family friend visiting the farm, and while Blue had been seething in her cell, Riley was sipping a Coke and watching Jerry Springer on the waiting room television. Still, it had been one more scary experience for the eleven-year-old, and April had driven her back to the farm as soon as the police turned over the Saab’s keys.
“This whole thing was totally bogus.” Blue glared across the passenger seat at Dean, whose blue-gray eyes had turned the exact color of an ocean storm.
He wheeled around another curve. “You had no license, and you were driving an out-of-state car registered to someone else. How does that constitute being framed?”
“I swear to God, all those fashion magazines have destroyed your brain. Think about it. Ten minutes after I went head to head with Nita Garrison, the police pulled me over with a lame excuse about random seat belt checks. How do you explain that?”
He switched from anger to condescension. “So what you’re saying is that you got into a fight with an old lady, who then forced the police to arrest you?”
“You haven’t met her,” she countered. “Nita Garrison is mean to the bone, and she has the town in her pocket.”
“You’re a walking catastrophe. Ever since I picked you up on—”
“Stop making such a big deal out of it. You’re a professional football player. You have to have spent some time in jail yourself.”
He bristled. “I have never been in jail.”
“Dude. The NFL won’t let you on the field if you haven’t been arrested at least twice for assault and battery—double points if you beat up a wife or girlfriend.”
“You’re not even mildly amusing.”
Probably not, but she’d made herself feel better.
“Start at the beginning,” he said, “and tell me exactly what happened with the old lady.”
Blue described their encounter in detail. When she finished, he was silent for a few moments before he spoke. “Nita Garrison was way out of line, but don’t you think you could have been a little more tactful?”
Blue bristled all over again. “No. Riley doesn’t have a lot of people standing up for her. Or any, for that matter. It was time to fix that.”
She waited for him to tell her she’d been right, but instead, he turned into the freaking town historian. “I talked to the painters about Garrison being up for sale and got the whole story.” A few hours earlier, she’d been anxious to hear this, but not when he still hadn’t said she was right.
He shot past a Dodge Neon that had unwisely decided to pull out in front of him. “A carpetbagger named Hiram Garrison bought a couple of thousand acres around here after the Civil War to build a mill. His son enlarged it—that abandoned brick building we passed on the highway—and established the town, all without selling an acre. If people wanted to build houses or businesses, they had to lease the land from him, even the churches. Eventually, he passed everything to his son Marshall. Your Mrs. Garrison’s husband.”
“Poor guy.”
“He met her a couple of decades ago on a trip to New York. He was fifty at the time, and she was apparently hot.”
“Let me tell you those days are gone.” His civics lecture had started to make her wary. She had the feeling he was buying time. But for what?
“Marshall apparently shared his ancestors’ aversions to selling even a quarter acre. And since they had no children, she inherited it all when he died—the land the town’s built on and most of the businesses.”
“That’s way too much power for one mean-spirited woman.” She separated her ponytail to tighten the rubber band. “Did you find out how much she’s asking for it?”
“Twenty million.”
“That rules me out.” She gazed at him sideways. “Does it rule you out?”
“Not if I sell my baseball card collection.”
She hadn’t really expected him to divulge his net worth. Still, he didn’t need to be so sarcastic about it.
A dairy farm flashed past as he took advantage of the straightening road. “East Tennessee is a growing area. Popular with retirees. She had an offer for fifteen million from a group of Memphis businessmen but turned it down. People suspect she doesn’t really want to sell.” The car nearly fishtailed as he took the turn onto Callaway Road. “Without any national franchises, Garrison is pretty much a time capsule—quaint, but frayed at the edges. The local business leaders want to capitalize on that quaintness, spruce everything up so it’s a tourist destination, but Nita refuses to cooperate.”
As he raced past the lane that led to the farm, she straightened. “Hey! Where are you going?”
“Someplace private.” The road turned into a dirt track. His jaw tensed. “Where we can talk.”
Her heartbeat kicked up. “We already talked. I don’t want to talk anymore.”
“Too late.” The bumpy track abruptly ended at a rusted barbed wire fence bordering an overgrown pasture. He flicked off the ignition and caught her in those ocean storm eyes. “Topic number one on our agenda. April’s impending death…”
She gulped. “Tragic.”
He waited. His charm had disappeared, leaving behind the no-nonsense man who made his living being quicker, smarter, and tougher than everyone else. She should have seen this coming and been better prepared. “Sorry,” she said.
“Oh, we both know you can do better than that.”
She tried to open the door to get some air and discovered it was locked. The old sense of helplessness sent a rush of adrenaline through her, but just as her fighting instincts kicked in, the lock clicked open. She got out, and so did he. She walked away from him toward the rusty fence. “I know I shouldn’t have meddled,” she said carefully. “It was none of my business. But she looked so sad, and I’m a total head case when it comes to maternal relationships.”
He came up behind her, caught her by the shoulders, and turned her around. His grim features locked into final countdown. “Don’t ever lie to me. If it happens again, you’re out of here. Understand?”
“That’s not fair. I like lying to you. It makes my life easier.”
“I mean what I say. You crossed the line.”
She gave up. “I know. I apologize. Really.” She felt a weird urge to poke at the forbidding corners of his mouth until she’d rearranged them into the charming grin she was accustomed to. “I don’t blame you for being mad. You have every right.” She couldn’t resist asking. “When did you figure it out?”
He released her shoulders but stayed where he was, looming over her. “About half an hour after I left the house last night.”
“Does April know you know?”
“Yes.”
Blue wished April had chosen to share that information with her.
“At least there’s one good thing about my mother…” He studied her intently. “I don’t have to worry about April emptying out my bank accounts.”
A crow shrieked in the distance. She took a step back from him. “How do you know about that?”
“Two can play the meddling game. Stay out of my private business, Blue, and maybe I’ll stay out of yours.”
He must have gotten into her voice mail when she’d given him her phone. She could hardly protest, no matter how much she hated him knowing about Virginia. He finally moved away from her to survey the pasture. A covey of birds shrieked as they flew up from the long grass. “So what are you going to do about Riley?” she said.
He whirled around. “I don’t believe you! Didn’t we just talk about your meddling?”
“Riley’s not your private business. I’m the one who found her, remember?”
“I’m not doing anything,” he declared. “April got hold of one of Mad Jack’s serfs a couple of hours ago. Someone’s coming to pick Riley up.”
“Just like so much garbage.” She began walking back to the car.
“That’s the way he works,” he said from behind her. “His responsibility stops with writing checks and hiring people to do his dirty work.”
She turned. He hadn’t moved away from the fence. “Are you going to…talk to her?” she asked.
“And say what? That I’m going to take care of her?” He delivered a sharp kick to the rotting post. “I can’t do that.”
“I think it would help if you’d at least promise to stay in touch with her.”
“She wants a lot more from me than that.” He came toward her. “Don’t give me any more trouble, okay? I’ve already bailed you out of jail and paid your traffic fine.”
Just like that, he was on the attack again. She had to squint against the sun to return his gaze. “I’ll repay you as soon as I can.”
“We’re bartering, remember?”
“Remind me how that works?”
Instead, he surveyed her critically. “Have you considered letting a professional work on your hair as opposed to a kindergartner with a set of plastic scissors?”
“Too busy.”
“Stop being such a hard-ass.” His hand curved around her shoulder, and he hit her with a smoky-eyed look that made her knees go weak. She knew he’d given that same look to a thousand women, but the long day had made her defenses sluggish. Their eyes locked, his as dark as the sea. She understood his danger. He had an innate sense of entitlement and an arsenal of lethal sexuality. But she still didn’t move. Not an inch.
His head dipped, their mouths meshed, and the sounds of birds and breeze faded away. Her lips parted on their own. He touched her with his tongue. Silky threads of pleasure unwound inside her. The kiss deepened, and dazzling colors began swirling in her head. She’d turned herself over to him just like all the others. She’d been swept away.
The knowledge chilled her. Having a nighttime fantasy about a gypsy prince was one thing, but acting on it was something else entirely. She pushed away, blinked her eyes, and came up swinging. “That was a disaster. Jeeze, I’m sorry. If I’d known the truth, I’d never have kidded you about the gay thing.”
The corner of his mouth cocked, and his lazy eyes trickled over her as intimately as a lover’s hand. “Keep fighting, Bluebell. You’ll only make the victory sweeter.”
She wanted to dump a bucket of cold water over her head. Instead, she gave him a dismissive wave and headed for the dirt track that led to the house. “I’m walking back. I need to be alone so I can have a long, hard talk with myself about being so insensitive.”
“Good idea. I need to be alone so I can picture you naked.”
She flushed and picked up her pace. Fortunately, the farm was less than a mile away. Behind her, the Vanquish roared to life. She heard him back up and turn around. Before long, the car drew up next to her, and the driver’s window slid down. “Hey, Bluebell…I forgot something.”
“Yeah, what’s that?”
He slipped on his sunglasses and smiled. “I forgot to thank you for defending Riley against the old lady.”
And then he was gone.
Riley barely touched the dinner Blue fixed that evening. “It’ll probably be Frankie who comes to get me,” she said, pushing aside a fig Blue had added to the chicken and dumplings. “He’s my dad’s favorite bodyguard.”
April reached across the table and pressed her hand over Riley’s. “I’m sorry I had to tell them you were here.”
Riley ducked her head. One more disappointment in her young life. Earlier, Blue had tried to distract her with an invitation to bake brownies, but that had gone sour when Dean had come in and brusquely refused Riley’s eager plea to look at her scrapbook. He thought he was doing the right thing, but Riley was his flesh and blood, and Blue wished he’d spare a small corner of his life for her. She knew what he’d say if she pressed him. He’d say Riley wanted more than a small corner, and he’d be right.
It was just as well he’d driven off. Now she had space to get her equilibrium back and straighten out her priorities. Her life was complicated enough right now without putting herself at more of a disadvantage by becoming another of Dean Robillard’s easy conquests.
Riley reached for the plate of brownies Blue had ended up baking alone, then stopped herself. “That woman was right,” she said softly. “I am fat.”
April set down her fork with a clink. “People need to concentrate on what’s right about themselves. If you only think about what’s wrong, or about all the mistakes you’ve made, you get paralyzed. Are you going to fill up your head with garbage—everything you don’t like about yourself—or are you going to be proud of who you are?”
April’s intensity made Riley’s lip tremble. “I’m only eleven,” she said in a tiny voice.
April made a business of wadding her napkin. “That’s right. I’m sorry. I guess I was thinking about someone else.” She gave Blue an overly bright smile. “Riley and I’ll clean up while you relax.”
They ended up working together. April tried to distract Riley with talk of clothes and movie stars. One of Riley’s offhand remarks revealed that Marli had deliberately bought Riley’s clothes too small, hoping to shame her into losing weight. Soon after, April excused herself to go to the cottage. She tried to convince Riley to come with her until her father’s assistant arrived, but Riley was still hoping Dean would return.
Blue set Riley up at the kitchen table with a set of watercolors. Riley studied the blank paper. “Would you draw some dogs for me so I can paint them?”
“Wouldn’t you rather draw them yourself?”
“I don’t think I have enough time for that.”
Blue squeezed her arm and drew four different dogs. As Riley started to paint, Blue grabbed some clothes upstairs and took them out to the caravan. On her way back inside, she stopped in the dining room and gazed at the four blank walls. She imagined them covered with dreamy landscape murals, the kind of work her art professors had so tactfully criticized her for painting.
“A bit derivative, don’t you think, Blue?”
“You need to start stretching yourself. Pushing the boundaries.”
“I’m sure an interior decorator would love what you’ve done,” her only female professor had said, more bluntly. “But sofa paintings don’t make good art. This isn’t a real statement. It’s sentimental claptrap, an insecure girl looking for a romanticized world to hide in.”
Her words made Blue feel as though she’d been stripped naked. She’d given up her dreamy landscapes and begun producing bold mixed-media pieces using motor oil and Plexiglas, latex and broken beer bottles, hot wax and even her own hair. Her professors were delighted, but Blue knew the work was phony, and she left school at the beginning of her junior year.
Now the blank dining room walls wanted to lure her back to those dreamy places where life was simple, where people stayed in place, where only good things happened, and where she would finally feel safe. Disgusted with herself, she went outside to sit on the porch steps and watch the sunset. Maybe painting kids’ portraits didn’t inspire her, but she was good at it, and she could have built up a respectable business in any of the cities where she’d lived. She never did, though. Sooner or later, she started feeling panicky, and she knew the time had come to move.
The porch post felt warm against her cheek. The sun reminded her of a shimmering copper globe hanging low over the hills. She thought about Dean and their kiss. If the timing were different…If she had a job, an apartment, money in the bank…If he were more ordinary…But none of that was true, and she’d spent too many years living at the mercy of others to put herself any further under his control. As long as she resisted, she had power. If she gave in, she’d have nothing.
The noise of an engine intruded on her thoughts. Shielding her eyes, she saw two cars approaching down the lane. Neither of them was Dean’s Vanquish.