The words cut like a knife. She actually felt them. Her sad eyes met his dark, searching ones.
“Not quite,” she replied tersely.
As understatements went, it was a master stroke. She watched the blood drain out of his face, and knew he was remembering, as she was, their last encounter, in his office, when she’d fainted.
He couldn’t speak. He tried to, but the words choked him. He winced and turned away, striding back to the sports car. Leslie watched him go with a curious emptiness, as if she had no more feelings to bruise. Perhaps this kind detachment would last for a while, and she could have one day without the mental anguish that usually accompanied her, waking and sleeping.
She turned mechanically and went slowly into the house on her crutches, and down the hall to her small apartment. She had a feeling that she wouldn’t see much of Matt Caldwell from now on. At last she knew how to deflect his pursuit. All it took was the truth—or as much of it as she felt comfortable letting him know.
* * *
Ed phoned to check on her later in the day and promised to come and see her the next evening. He did, arriving with a bag full of the Chinese take-out dishes she loved. While they were eating it, he mentioned that her job was still open.
“Miss Smith wouldn’t enjoy hearing that,” she teased lightly.
“Oh, Karla’s working for Matt now.”
She stared down at the wooden chopsticks in her hand. “Is she?”
“For some reason, he doesn’t feel comfortable asking you to come back, so he sent me to do it,” he replied. “He realizes that he’s made your working environment miserable, and he’s sorry. He wants you to come back and work for me.”
She stared at him hard. “What did you tell him?”
“What I always tell him, that if he wants to know anything about you, he can ask you.” He ate a forkful of soft noodles and took a sip of the strong coffee she’d brewed before he continued. “I gather he’s realized that something pretty drastic happened to you.”
“Did he say anything about it to you?”
“No.” He lifted his gaze to meet hers. “He did go to the roadhouse out on the Victoria highway last night and wreck the bar.”
“Why would he do something like that?” she asked, stunned by the thought of the straitlaced Mather Caldwell throwing things around.
“He was pretty drunk at the time,” Ed confessed. “I had to bail him out of jail this morning. That was one for the books, let me tell you. The whole damned police department was standing around staring at him openmouthed when we left. He was only ever in trouble once, a woman accused him of assault—and he was cleared. His housekeeper testified that she’d been there the whole time and she and Matt had sent the baggage packing. But he’s never treed a bar before.”
She remembered the stark question he’d asked her and how she’d responded. She didn’t understand why her past should matter to Matt. In fact, she didn’t want to understand. He still didn’t know the whole of it, and she was frightened of how he’d react if he knew. That wonderful tenderness he’d given her in the Jaguar had been actually painful, a bitter taste of what a man’s love would be like. It was something she’d never experienced, and she’d better remember that Matt was the enemy. He’d felt sorry for her. He certainly wasn’t in love with her. He wanted her, that was all. But despite her surprising response to his light caresses, complete physical intimacy was something she wasn’t sure she was capable of responding to. The memories of Mike’s vicious fondling made her sick. She couldn’t live with them.
“Stop doing that to yourself,” Ed muttered, dragging her back to the present. “You can’t change the past. You have to walk straight into the future without flinching. It’s the only way, to meet things head-on.”
“Where did you learn that?” she asked.
“Actually I heard a televised sermon that caught my attention. That’s what the minister said, that you have to go boldly forward and meet trouble head-on, not try to run away from it or hide.” He pursed his lips. “I’d never heard it put quite that way before. It really made me think.”
She sipped coffee with a sad face. “I’ve always tried to run. I’ve had to run.” She lifted her eyes to his. “You know what they would have done to me if I’d stayed in Houston.”
“Yes, I do, and I don’t blame you for getting out while you could,” Ed assured her. “But there’s something I have to tell you now. And you’re not going to like it.”
“Don’t tell me,” she said with black humor, “someone from the local newspaper recognized me and wants an interview.”
“Worse,” he returned. “A reporter from Houston is down here asking questions. I think he’s traced you.”
She put her head in her hands. “Wonderful. Well, at least I’m no longer an employee of the Caldwell group, so it won’t embarrass your cousin when I’m exposed.”
“I haven’t finished. Nobody will talk to him,” he added with a grin. “In fact, he actually got into Matt’s office yesterday when his secretary wasn’t looking. He was only in there for a few minutes, and nobody knows what was said. But he came back out headfirst and, from what I hear, he ran out the door so fast that he left his briefcase behind with Matt cursing like a wounded sailor all the way down the hall. They said Matt had only just caught up with him at the curb when he ran across traffic and got away.”
She hesitated. “When was this?”
“Yesterday.” He smiled wryly. “It was a bad time to catch Matt. He’d already been into it with one of the county commissioners over a rezoning proposal we’re trying to get passed, and his secretary had hidden in the bathroom to avoid him. That was how the reporter got in.”
“You don’t think he…told Matt?” she asked worriedly.
“No. I don’t know what was said, of course, but he wasn’t in there very long.”
“But, the briefcase…”
“…was returned to him unopened,” Ed said. “I know because I had to take it down to the front desk.” He smiled, amused. “I understand he paid someone to pick it up for him.”
“Thank God.”
“It was apparently the last straw for Matt, though,” he continued, “because it wasn’t long after that when he said he was leaving for the day.”
“How did you know he was in jail?”
He grimaced. “Carolyn phoned me. He’d come by her place first and apparently made inroads into a bottle of scotch. She hid the rest, after which he decided to go and get his own bottle.” He shook his head. “That isn’t like Matt. He may have a drink or two occasionally, but he isn’t a drinker. This has shocked everybody in town.”
“I guess so.” She couldn’t help but wonder if it had anything to do with the way he’d treated her. But if he’d gone to Carolyn, perhaps they’d had an argument and it was just one last problem on top of too many. “Was Carolyn mad at him?” she asked.
“Furious,” he returned. “Absolutely seething. It seems they’d had a disagreement of major proportions, along with all the other conflicts of the day.” He shook his head. “Matt didn’t even come in to work today. I’ll bet his head is splitting.”
She didn’t reply. She stared into her coffee with dead eyes. Everywhere she went, she caused trouble. Hiding, running—nothing seemed to help. She was only involving innocent people in her problems.
Ed hesitated when he saw her face. He didn’t want to make things even worse for her, but there was more news that he had to give her.
She saw that expression. “Go ahead,” she invited. “One more thing is all I need right now, on top of being crippled and jobless.”
“Your job is waiting,” he assured her. “Whenever you want to come in.”
“I won’t do that to him,” she said absently. “He’s had enough.”
His eyes became strangely watchful. “Feeling sorry for the enemy?” he asked gently.
“You can’t help not liking people,” she replied. “He likes most everybody except me. He’s basically a kind person. I just rub him the wrong way.”
He wasn’t going to touch that line. “The same reporter who came here had gone to the prison to talk to your mother,” he continued. “I was concerned, so I called the warden. It seems…she’s had a heart attack.”
Her heart jumped unpleasantly. “Will she live?”
“Yes,” he assured her. “She’s changed a lot in six years, Leslie,” he added solemnly. “She’s reconciled to serving her time. The warden says that she wanted to ask for you, but that she was too ashamed to let them contact you. She thinks you can’t ever forgive what she said and did to you.”
Her eyes misted, but she fought tears. Her mother had been eloquent at the time, with words and the pistol. She stared at her empty coffee cup. “I can forgive her. I just don’t want to see her.”
She glanced at him. “Have you been to see her?”
He hesitated. Then he nodded. “She was doing very well until this reporter started digging up the past. He was the one who suggested the movie deal and got that bit started.” He sighed angrily. “He’s young and ambitious and he wants to make a name for himself. The world’s full of people like that, who don’t care what damage they do to other peoples’ lives as long as they get what they want.”
She was only vaguely listening. “My mother…did she ask you about me?”
“Yes.”
“What did you tell her?” she wanted to know.
He put down his cup. “The truth. There really wasn’t any way to dress it up.” His eyes lifted. “She wanted you to know that she’s sorry for what happened, especially for the way she treated you before and after the trial. She understands that you don’t want to see her. She says she deserves it for destroying your life.”
She stared into space with the pain of memory eating at her. “She was never satisfied with my father,” she said quietly. “She wanted things he couldn’t give her, pretty clothes and jewelry and nights on the town. All he knew how to do was fly a crop-dusting plane, and it didn’t pay much…” Her eyes closed. “I saw him fly into the electrical wires, and go down,” she whispered gruffly. “I saw him go down!” Her eyes began to glitter with feeling. “I knew he was dead before they ever got to him. I ran home. She was in the living room, playing music, dancing. She didn’t care. I broke the record player and threw myself at her, screaming.”
Ed grimaced as she choked, paused, and fought for control. “We were never close, especially after the funeral,” she continued, “but we were stuck with each other. Things went along fairly well. She got a job waiting tables and made good tips when she was working. She had trouble holding down a job because she slept so much. I got a part-time job typing when I was sixteen, to help out. Then when I’d just turned seventeen, Mike came into the restaurant and started flirting with her. He was so handsome, well-bred and had nice manners. In no time, he’d moved in with us. I was crazy about him, you know the way a young girl has crushes on older men. He teased me, too. But he had a drug habit that we didn’t know about. She didn’t like him teasing me, anyway, and she had a fight with him about it. The next day, he had some friends over and they all got high.” She shivered. “The rest you know.”
“Yes.” He sighed, studying her wan face.
“All I wanted was for her to love me,” she said dully. “But she never did.”
“She said that,” he replied. “She’s had a lot of time to live with her regrets.” He leaned forward to search her eyes. “Leslie, did you know that she had a drug habit?”
“She what?” she exclaimed, startled.
“Had a drug habit,” he repeated. “That’s what she told me. It was an expensive habit, and your father got tired of trying to support it. He loved her, but he couldn’t make the sort of money it took to keep her high. It wasn’t clothes and jewelry and parties. It was drugs.”
She felt as if she’d been slammed to the floor. She moved her hands over her face and pushed back her hair. “Oh, Lord!”
“She was still using when she walked in on Mike and his friends holding you down,” he continued.
“How long had she been using drugs?” she asked.
“A good five years,” he replied. “Starting with marijuana and working her way up to the hard stuff.”
“I had no idea.”
“And you didn’t know that Mike was her dealer, either, apparently.”
She gasped.
He nodded grimly. “She told me that when I went to see her, too. She still can’t talk about it easily. Now that she has a good grip on reality, she sees what her life-style did to you. She had hoped that you might be married and happy by now. It hurt her deeply to realize that you don’t even date.”
“She’ll know why, of course,” she said bitterly.
“You sound so empty, Leslie.”
“I am.” She leaned back. “I don’t care if the reporter finds me. It doesn’t matter anymore. I’m so tired of running.”
“Then stand and deliver,” he replied, getting to his feet. “Come back to work. Let your leg heal. Let your hair grow out and go back to its natural color. Start living.”
“Can I, after so long?”
“Yes,” he assured her. “We all go through periods of anguish, times when we think we can’t face what lies ahead. But the only way to get past it is to go through it, straight through it. No detours, no camouflage, no running. You have to meet problems head-on, despite the pain.”
She cocked her head and smiled at him with real affection. “Were you ever a football coach?”
He chuckled. “I hate contact sports.”
“Me, too.” She brushed her short hair back with her hands. “Okay. I’ll give it a shot. But if your cousin gives me any more trouble…”
“I don’t think Matt is going to cause you any more problems,” he replied.
“Then, I’ll see you on Thursday morning.”
“Thursday? Tomorrow is just Wednesday…”
“Thursday,” she said firmly. “I have plans for tomorrow.”
* * *
And she did. She had the color taken out of her hair at a local beauty salon. She took her contact lenses to the local optometrist and got big-lensed, wire-framed glasses to wear. She bought clothes that looked professional without being explicit.
Then, Thursday morning, cast and crutches notwithstanding, she went back to work.
She’d been at her desk in Ed’s office for half an hour when Matt came in. He barely glanced at her, obviously not recognizing the new secretary, and tapped on Ed’s door, which was standing open.
“I’m going to fly to Houston for the sale,” he told Ed. He sounded different. His deep voice held its usual authority, but there was an odd note in it. “I don’t suppose you were able to convince her to come back…why are you shaking your head?”
Ed stood up with an exasperated sigh and pointed toward Leslie.
Matt scowled, turning on his heel. He looked at her, scowled harder, moved closer, peering into her upturned face.
She saw him matching his memory of her with the new reality. She wondered how she came off, but it was far too soon to get personal.
His eyes went over her short dark hair, over the feminine but professional beige suit she was wearing with a tidy patterned blouse, lingering on the glasses that she’d never worn before in his presence. His own face was heavily lined and he looked as if he’d had his own share of turmoil since she’d seen him last. Presumably he was still having problems with Carolyn.
“Good morning, Miss Murry,” he murmured. His eyes didn’t smile at her. He looked as if his face was painted on.
That was odd. No sarcasm, no mockery. No insolent sizing up. He was polite and courteous to a fault.
If that was the way he intended to play it…
“Good morning, Mr. Caldwell,” she replied with equal courtesy.
He studied her for one long moment before he turned back to Ed. “I should be back by tonight. If I’m not, you’ll have to meet with the county commission and the zoning committee.”
“Oh, no,” Ed groaned.
“Just tell them we’re putting up a two-story brick office building on our own damned land, whether they like it or not,” Matt told him, “and that we can accommodate them in court for as many years as it takes to get our way. I’m tired of trying to do business in a hundred-year-old house with frozen pipes that burst every winter.”
“It won’t sound as intimidating if I say it.”
“Stand in front of a mirror and practice looking angry.”
“Is that how you did it?” Ed murmured dryly.
“Only at first,” he assured the other man, dead-pan. “Just until I got the hang of it.”
“I remember,” Ed chuckled. “Even Dad wouldn’t argue with you unless he felt he had a good case.”
Matt shoved his hands into his pockets. “If you need me, you know the cell phone number.”
“Sure.”
Still he hesitated. He turned and glanced at Leslie, who was opening mail. The expression on his face fascinated Ed, who’d known him most of his life. It wasn’t a look he recognized.
Matt started out the door and then paused to look back at Leslie, staring at her until she lifted her eyes.
He searched them slowly, intently. He didn’t smile. He didn’t speak. Her cheeks became flushed and she looked away. He made an awkward movement with his shoulders and went out the door.
Ed joined her at her desk when Matt was out of sight. “So far, so good,” he remarked.
“I guess he really doesn’t mind letting me stay,” she murmured. Her hands were shaking because of that long, searching look of Matt’s. She clasped them together so that Ed wouldn’t notice and lifted her face. “But what if that reporter comes back?”
He pursed his lips. “Odd, that. He left town yesterday. In a real hurry, too. The police escorted him to the city limits and the sheriff drove behind him to the county line.”
She gaped at him.
He shrugged. “Jacobsville is a small, close-knit community and you just became part of it. That means,” he added, looking almost as imposing as his cousin, “that we don’t let outsiders barge in and start harassing our citizens. I understand there’s an old city law still on the books that makes it a crime for anyone to stay in a local place of lodging unless he or she is accompanied by at least two pieces of luggage or a trunk.” He grinned. “Seems the reporter only had a briefcase. Tough.”
“He might come back with a trunk and two suitcases,” she pointed out.
He shook his head. “It seems that they found another old law which makes it illegal for a man driving a rental car to park it anywhere inside the city limits. Strange, isn’t it, that we’d have such an unusual ordinance.”
Leslie felt the first ripple of humor that she’d experienced for weeks. She smiled. “My, my.”
“Our police chief is related to the Caldwells,” he explained. “So is the sheriff, one of the county commissioners, two volunteer firemen, a sheriff’s deputy and a Texas Ranger who was born here and works out of Fort Worth.” He chuckled. “The governor is our second cousin.”
Her eyes widened. “No Washington connections?” she asked.
“Nothing major. The vice president is married to my aunt.”
“Nothing major.” She nodded. She let out her breath. “Well, I’m beginning to feel very safe.”
“Good. You can stay as long as you like. Permanently, as far as I’m concerned.”
She couldn’t quite contain the pleasure it gave her to feel as if she belonged somewhere, a place where she was protected and nurtured and had friends. It was a first for her. Her eyes stung with moisture.
“Don’t start crying,” Ed said abruptly. “I can’t stand it.”
She swallowed and forced a watery smile to her lips. “I wasn’t going to,” she assured him. She moved her shoulders. “Thanks,” she said gruffly.
“Don’t thank me,” he told her. “Matt rounded up the law enforcement people and had them going through dusty volumes of ordinances to find a way to get that reporter out of here.”
“Matt did?”
He held up a hand as she started to parade her misgivings about what he might have learned of her past. “He doesn’t know why the man was here. It was enough that he was asking questions about you. You’re an employee. We don’t permit harassment.”
“I see.”
She didn’t, but that was just as well. The look Ed had accidentally seen on Matt’s face had him turning mental cartwheels. No need to forewarn Leslie. She wasn’t ever going to have to worry about being hounded again, not if he knew Matt. And he didn’t believe for one minute that his cousin was flying all the way to Houston for a cattle sale that he usually wouldn’t be caught dead at. The foreman at his ranch handled that sort of thing, although Leslie didn’t know. Ed was betting that Matt had another reason for going to Houston, and it was to find out who hired that reporter and sent him looking for Leslie. He felt sorry for the source of that problem. Matt in a temper was the most menacing human being he’d ever known. He didn’t rage or shout and he usually didn’t hit, but he had wealth and power and he knew how to use them.
He went back into his office, suddenly worried despite the reassurances he’d given Leslie. Matt didn’t know why the reporter was digging around, but what if he found out? He would only be told what the public had been told, that Leslie’s mother had shot her daughter and her live-in lover in a fit of jealous rage and that she was in prison. He might think, as others had, that Leslie had brought the whole sordid business on herself by having a wild party with Mike and his friends, and he wouldn’t be sympathetic. More than likely, he’d come raging back home and throw Leslie out in the street. Furthermore, he’d have her escorted to the county line like the reporter who’d been following her.
He worried himself sick over the next few hours. He couldn’t tell Leslie, when he might only be worrying for nothing. But the thought haunted him that Matt was every bit as dogged as a reporter when it came to ferreting out facts.
In the end, he phoned a hotel that Matt frequented when he was in Houston overnight and asked for his room. But when he was connected, it wasn’t Matt who answered the phone.
“Carolyn?” Ed asked, puzzled. “Is Matt there?”
“Not right now,” came the soft reply. “He had an appointment to see someone. I suppose he’s forgotten that I’m waiting for him with this trolley full of food. I suppose it will be cold as ice by the time he turns up.”
“Everything’s all right, isn’t it?”
“Why wouldn’t it be?” she teased.
“Matt’s been acting funny.”
“Yes, I know. That Murry girl!” Her indrawn breath was audible. “Well, she’s caused quite enough trouble. When Matt comes back, she’ll be right out of that office, let me tell you! Do you have any idea what that reporter told Matt about her…?”
Ed hung up, sick. So not only did Matt know, but Carolyn knew, too. She’d savage Leslie, given the least opportunity. He had to do something. What?
* * *
Ed didn’t expect Matt that evening, and he was right. Matt didn’t come back in time for the county commission meeting, and Ed was forced to go in his place. He held his own, as Matt had instructed him to, and got what he wanted. Then he went home, sitting on pins and needles as he waited for someone to call him—either Leslie, in tears, or Matt, in a temper.
But the phone didn’t ring. And when he went into work the next morning, Leslie was sitting calmly at her desk typing the letters he’d dictated to her just before they closed the day before.
“How did the meeting go?” she asked at once.
“Great,” he replied. “Matt will be proud of me.” He hesitated. “He, uh, isn’t in yet, is he?”
“No. He hasn’t phoned, either.” She frowned. “You don’t suppose anything went wrong with the plane, do you?”
She sounded worried. Come to think of it, she looked worried, too. He frowned. “He’s been flying for a long time,” he pointed out.
“Yes, but there was a bad storm last night.” She hesitated. She didn’t want to worry, but she couldn’t help it. Despite the hard time he’d given her, Matt had been kind to her once or twice. He wasn’t a bad person; he just didn’t like her.
“If anything had happened, I’d have heard by now,” he assured her. His lips pursed as he searched for the words. “He didn’t go alone.”
Her heart stopped in her chest. “Carolyn?”
He nodded curtly. He ran a hand through his hair. “He knows, Leslie. They both do.”
She felt the life ebb out of her. But what had she expected, that Matt would wait to hear her side of the story? He was the enemy. He wouldn’t for one second believe that she was the victim of the whole sick business. How could she blame him?
She turned off the word processor and moved her chair back, reaching for her purse. She felt more defeated than she ever had in her life. One bad break after another, she was thinking, as she got to her feet a little clumsily.
“Hand me my crutches, Ed, there’s a dear,” she said steadily.
“Oh, Leslie,” he groaned.
She held her hand out and, reluctantly, he helped her get them in place.
“Where will you go?” he asked.
She shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. Something will turn up.”
“I can help.”
She looked up at him with sad resignation. “You can’t go against your own blood kin, Ed,” she replied. “I’m the outsider here. And one way or another, I’ve already caused too much trouble. See you around, pal. Thanks for everything.”
He sighed miserably. “Keep in touch, at least.”
She smiled. “Certainly I’ll do that. See you.”
He watched her walk away with pure anguish. He wished he could make her stay, but even he wouldn’t wish that on her. When Matt came home, he’d be out for blood. At least she’d be spared that confrontation.