Long, Tall Texans--Christopher Page 8

  By the time she got herself together and eased back in, Garrett Carlton was nowhere to be seen. She went back to Mamie’s side and stayed there the rest of the night, hoping against hope that he wouldn’t return.

  * * *

  It had been a sobering confrontation. She hoped she never had to see Garrett again. Sitting on the dock, she moved her toes in the cool water, laughing softly at the tiny fish still nibbling on them. The lake was glorious in autumn. Leaves were just beginning to turn, in every single shade of red and gold the mind could imagine. There was a soft breeze, lazy and warm, because autumn had come late to north Georgia. Kate, in her long cotton dress, with its brown and yellow and green print, looked like part of the scenery in a postcard.

  “What the hell are you doing on my dock?” a cold, angry voice growled from behind her.

  She jumped up, startled, and grabbed her shoes, too unsettled to think of putting them on. “Your dock?” She’d thought the house was closed up. She hadn’t seen any lights on in it for days and she’d never considered who might own it. The dock had always been deserted. She’d been coming here for several days to enjoy the minnows and the view of the lake.

  “Yes, my dock,” he said angrily. His hands were shoved deep in the pockets of his tan pants. He wore a brown designer polo shirt, which emphasized the muscles in his chest and arms.

  “I-I’m sorry,” she stammered, her face turning bright red. “I didn’t think anybody lived here…”

  “Funny girl,” he shot back. “Mamie knows that I’m here three months of the year. You knew.”

  “I didn’t,” she bit off, feeling tears threaten all over again. She moved away from him. “Sorry,” she added. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know…”

  “I come here to get away from people, reporters, telephones that never stop ringing. I don’t want my privacy invaded by cheap little girls in cheap dresses,” he added insolently, sneering at her off-the-rack dress.

  Her lower lip trembled. Tears threatened. But her injured pride wouldn’t let that insult go by unaddressed. “My dress may be cheap, Mr. Carlton, but I am not.” She lifted her chin. “I go to church every Sunday!”

  Something flashed in the eyes she could barely see. “Church!” he scoffed. “Religion is the big lie. Sin all week, then go to confession. Sit in a pew on Sunday and hop from one bed to another the rest of the week.”

  She just stared at him. “From what I hear, bed-hopping is your choice of hobbies. It is not mine.”

  He laughed shortly. “Women will do anything for a price.”

  As if in answer to that cynical remark, a beautiful brunette in a fashionable dress stuck her head out the door of his lake house. “Garrett, do hurry,” she fussed. “The soufflé is getting cold!”

  “Coming.” He gave Kate’s dress a speaking look. “Did you get that from a thrift shop?” he asked insolently.

  “Actually, I bought it off a sale rack. And for a very good price.”

  “It looks cheap.”

  “It is cheap.”

  “Stay off my dock,” he said coldly.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll never walk this way again,” she murmured as she turned to leave.

  “If you take that speedboat on the lake again, you pay attention to where you’re driving it. The lake police will be watching.”

  She didn’t turn around. Her stiff little back told its own story.

  “Impudent upstart,” he muttered.

  “Overbearing pig.”

  She thought she heard amused laughter behind her, but she didn’t turn around. She kept on walking.

  * * *

  Mamie looked up as Kate walked into the living room. The house was two stories high, overlooking the lake. It had a grace and beauty much like Mamie herself. It seemed to blend effortlessly into its surroundings. She was smiling, but the smile faded when she saw the younger woman’s face. It was flushed, and traces of tears marred her lovely complexion.

  “What’s wrong, sugar?” she asked gently.

  Kate drew in a breath. “I didn’t know Garrett Carlton owned the house down the shore,” she said. “I’ve been sitting on the dock, dangling my feet off the edge. He caught me at it and ordered me off the property.”

  Mamie grimaced. “I’m sorry, I should have told you. He spoke to you at the party, about the boat, didn’t he?”

  “Yes, if you can call threats and intimidation a conversation,” she replied with a wan smile. “I wasn’t being reckless at all. I just didn’t see the Jet Ski. It came out of nowhere.”

  “You have to anticipate that people on Jet Skis do crazy things. So do other motorboat drivers. We had a tragedy here on the lake a few years back. A speeding motorboat hit a houseboat and killed two people.”

  “How horrible!”

  “The driver had been drinking. He was arrested and charged, but the passengers on the boat were still dead.”

  “I’ll be more careful,” Kate promised. She grimaced. “I don’t understand why he dislikes me so much,” she murmured absently. “He was horrible to me at the party. And he looks at me as if he hates me,” she added.

  Mamie had a feeling about that, but she wasn’t going to say what it was. She only smiled. “I’ll have a dock built on the lake, just for you, sweetheart, so you can dangle your little feet.” Mamie’s was one of the few homes on the lake that didn’t boast a private dock. Kate had to drive Mamie’s car over to the marina to use the boat. Or walk, if Mamie was away, as she often was, since Mamie was eccentric and only kept one luxury car at her lake house. It wasn’t that much of a walk for someone as young and athletic as Kate was.

  Kate laughed. “You don’t have to go to that trouble. I’ll walk over to the marina and dangle my feet off the docks there. It isn’t as if I can do it much longer, anyway. It’s October already.”

  “With your luck, the dock you choose at the marina will be the one where Garrett keeps his sailboat.” Mamie chuckled. “Docks don’t cost that much―they’re mostly empty drums with planking on top. I’ll have someone see about it next week.” She waved Kate’s protests away, then said, “Come on in here, will you, honey? I want to dictate some chaotic thoughts and see if you can inspire me to put them into an understandable form.”

  “I’ll be happy to,” Kate replied.

  * * *

  “Who was the girl on the dock?” Ariel asked as she and Garrett shared the overcooked soufflé she’d taken out of the oven.

  “One of the new generation,” he said coldly. “And that’s all I want to say about her.”

  She sighed. “Whatever you say, darling. Are we going out tonight?”

  “Where do you want to go?” he asked, giving up his hope of a quiet night with a good book and a whiskey sour.

  “The Crystal Bear,” she said at once, naming a new and trendy place on the outskirts of Atlanta, near Duluth, where the main attraction was a huge bear carved from crystal and a house band that was the talk of the town. The food wasn’t bad, either. Not that he cared much for any of it. But he’d humor Ariel. She was beginning to get on his nerves. He gave her slender body a brief appraisal and found himself uninterested. He’d felt that way for several days. Ever since that little blond pirate had almost run into him on the Jet Ski and he’d given her hell for it at Mamie’s party.

  The girl was unusual. Beautiful in a way that had little to do with her looks. He’d seen her, from the porch of his lake house, usually when she didn’t see him. There had been a little girl who’d wandered up on the beach. The blond woman―what was the name Mamie had called her? He couldn’t remember―had seen her, bent to comfort her, taken the child up in her arms and cuddled her close, drying her tears. He’d seen her walking back down the beach, apparently in search of the missing parent.

  The sight had disturbed him. He didn’t want children, ever. Countless women had tried to convince him, practically trick him into it, for a decade, but he was always careful. He used condoms, despite assurances that they were on the pill. He was always wary beca
use he was filthy rich. Women were out to ensnare him. A child would be a responsibility that he didn’t want, plus it also meant expensive support for the child’s mother. He wasn’t walking into that trap. He’d seen what had happened to his only brother, who lived in misery because of a greedy woman who’d gotten pregnant for no other reason than to trap him into a loveless marriage. That marriage, his brother’s, had ended in death, on this very lake. It chilled him to remember the circumstances. The blonde woman brought it all back.

  Still, the sight of the blonde woman with the child close in her arms, her long, shiny hair wafting in the breeze, made him hungry for things he didn’t understand. She had no money, and wasn’t even that pretty. It puzzled him that he should have such an immediate response to her. That night, at the party, he’d stared at her, hungered for her, wanted her.

  He’d made her cry, frightened her with his reckless anger. He hadn’t meant to. She didn’t seem like other women he knew who pretended tears to get things. Her tears had been genuine, like her fear of him. He’d been shocked when she backed away from him. It had been a long time―years―since anyone had done that. And never a woman.

  Then he’d found her sitting on his dock, laughing as she dangled her feet in the water. The sight had hit him in the heart so hard that it had ignited his temper all over again. He had no need of this blonde woman. He had Ariel, bright and beautiful, who would do anything he asked, because he showered her with the expensive diamonds she loved.

  The blonde in the cheap dress had been wearing even cheaper jewelry. Her shoes had been scuffed and old. But she had a regal pride. It amused him to recall her cold defense of her morals. Which were of no concern to himself, he thought, and promptly shut her out of his mind.

  * * *

  Mamie called Kate to her office a few mornings later as she was sealing the last of several envelopes that contained the neat little notes Kate had typed and printed for her. Mamie had just finished signing them.

  “I would have done that for you,” Kate protested.

  “Of course you would, but I had some time.” She put the envelopes in a neat stack. “You can stamp them and put the address labels on. Here’s the thing, sweetie, I’m going to be away for about two or three months. A sheikh has invited me to stay at his palace and see the sights in Qawi with his family. We’ll watch horse races, attend cultural events all over the Middle East, even spend some time on the Riviera in Monaco and Nice on the way home. Do you want to stay here or go home to your dad?”

  Kate swallowed. “Well…”

  “You’re welcome to stay here,” she said gently, because she knew how Kate’s father treated her. Kate had often lived with another family in Texas, but she’d said that she didn’t want to impose on them. “I know how much you hate to travel. It’s why I’ve never taken you overseas. But you’d be doing me a favor actually, because I wouldn’t have to close up the lake house. What do you think?”

  “I’d love that!”

  Mamie smiled. “I thought you might. Okay. You know what to do. You can drive the speedboat, too, but no speeding,” she added firmly. “You don’t want to make Garrett angry. Really, you don’t.”

  Kate frowned at her employer. There was something odd about the way she’d said it.

  Mamie sat down and folded her hands in her lap. “I wasn’t always a famous author,” she began. “I started out as a newspaper reporter on a small weekly paper. From there I moved to entertainment magazines, doing feature stories on famous people.” She grimaced. “One of them was Garrett Carlton. His best friend—who turned out to only be a distant acquaintance—had assured me that he had Garrett’s permission to tell me things about his private life. So I quoted the man as my source and ran the story.”

  “This sounds as though it ended unhappily,” Kate said when her companion was very quiet.

  “It did. The man who gave me the quotes was a business rival who hated Garrett and saw an opportunity to get even for a business account he lost. Most of what he told me was true, but Garrett’s fanatical about his privacy. I didn’t know that until it was too late. Long story short, the magazine fired me to keep him from suing.”

  “Oh, no.”

  “It was a bad time,” Mamie recalled quietly. “I was just divorced, with no money of my own. I depended on that job to keep my bills paid and a roof over my head. I landed another job, with a rival magazine, a couple of weeks later. Luckily for me, that publisher didn’t like Garrett and wasn’t going to be forced into putting me on the street for what another magazine printed.”

  “He tried to have you fired from that job, too?” Kate asked, aghast at the man’s taste for vengeance.

  “Yes, he did. So when I tell you to be careful about dealing with him, I’m not kidding,” Mamie concluded. “I would never fire you, no matter what he threatened. But I still work for publishers who can be threatened.”

  “I see your point,” she said quietly. “I won’t make an enemy of him. I’ll make sure I stay out of his way from now on.”

  “Good girl,” Mamie said gently. “You’re very special, Kate. I trust you, which is more than I can say about most people I know. I wanted children, but my husband didn’t.” She smiled sadly. “It’s just as well, the way things turned out.”

  “Why is Mr. Carlton so bitter?” Kate asked suddenly. “I mean, he never smiles and he’s always upset about something or someone. It just seems odd to me.”

  “He lost his brother, his only sibling, in an accident on this lake. A drunk driver in a boat hit him and his wife in their houseboat and left the scene. They both died.” She swallowed. “Garrett spent a fortune, they say, searching for the man’s location for the police. He was prosecuted and sent to prison. He’s still there.”

  “Did the drunk man have family?”

  Mamie nodded. “A wife and a little girl. They lost their home, their income…the child had to go to social services. The mother ended up dead of a drug overdose. It was a tragic story, all the way around.”

  “Life is so hard for children,” Kate murmured, thinking of the poor little girl. Garrett Carlton was vindictive.

  “It is.” Mamie looked around. “Well, I’d better be on my way. Come help me pack, Kate. I have a couple of evening dresses I want to give you. They’re too small for me, and they’ll suit you very well.”

  “I never go anywhere to wear evening dresses.” Kate laughed. “But thank you very much for the thought.”

  Mamie glanced at her. “You should be dating, meeting men, thinking about starting a family.”

  “I haven’t met anyone I felt that way about, except Steven.” She shuddered. “I thought he was the perfect man. Now I’m not sure I’ll trust my judgment about a man ever again.”

  “You’ll get over it in time, honey,” Mamie said, a gentle smile on her face. “There are plenty of handsome, eligible men in the world, and you have a kind heart. You don’t think so right now, but men are going to want you, Kate. That nurturing nature is something most men can’t resist. They don’t care as much for physical beauty as they do for someone who’s willing to sit up with them when they’re sick and feed them cough syrup.” She grinned.

  Kate laughed, as she was meant to. “Well, one day. Maybe.”

  Mamie left in a whirlwind of activity, met by a stretch limousine with a stately driver in a suit and tie. She gave Kate a handful of last-minute chores, a research assignment to complete for her next book and an admonition to be careful about going out after dark. Her parting shot was to stay off the lake in the speedboat until Garrett went to his home in the south of France as he did most years just before Christmas.

  Kate promised to be careful, but no more. The speedboat had become her solace. When she was out on the lake, with the wind blowing through her long hair and the spray of the water on her face, she felt alive as she’d never felt before.

  * * *

  She hadn’t told Mamie, but she was still wounded by Steven’s rejection several years later. She’d been too w
ounded to ever trust another man. She’d felt close to Steven, felt a sense of belonging to someone for the first time in her young life. His rejection had been painful. She’d always been shy, lacked self-confidence. Now she distrusted her own judgment about people. Steven had seemed so perfect. But he had prejudices she hadn’t known about.

  Ideals were worthwhile, certainly, but it had been her father’s choice of vocations that had alienated him. He hadn’t considered that she might not feel as her father did. He simply walked away, without a backward glance.

  For several weeks, she hoped that he might call or write, that he might apologize for making assumptions about her. But he hadn’t. In desperation, she’d written to a former girlfriend in San Antonio, where Steven had moved to, a mutual friend from high school. The friend told her that Steven was involved with a new organization―a radical animal rights group, much larger than the one he’d belonged to when Kate knew him. He and his friend were apparently still living together, too. Neither of them dated anybody. Steven said that he was never going back to Jacobsville, though. That was when Kate finally gave up. She wasn’t going to have that happy ending so beloved by tellers of fairy tales. Not with Steven, anyway. She walked idly through the woods, a stick held loosely in her hand. She touched it to the tops of autumn weeds as she walked, lost in thought.

  She almost walked straight into the big man before she saw him. She jumped back as though he’d struck out at her. Her heart was beating a mad rhythm. She felt breathless, frightened, heartsick. All those emotions vied for supremacy in her wide brown eyes.

  She bit her lower lip. “I’m sorry,” she said at once, almost cringing at the sudden fierce anger in his broad face.