“I’ve never been more serious. Today was only a sample of what’s in store for me for the next few months unless I have a gen-u-ine fiancée standing at my side. The only person besides us who has to know the truth is my mother.” The noise at the door had finally stopped, and he walked over to the telephone. “I’m gonna call her now to make sure she plays along.”
“Stop! I didn’t say I’d do this.” But she wanted to. Oh, how she wanted to. She had so little time with him that every second was precious. And she had no delusions about his feelings toward her, so she wasn’t in danger of confusing reality and illusion. She remembered the promise she’d made to herself to give and not take, and for the second time that day, she decided to spread her wings and free-fall.
He was giving her that cocky look that said he knew he’d won, and she reminded herself that she cared about him too much to contribute to his character flaws by letting him dictate all the terms. She stalked over to him and crossed her arms.
“All right,” she said in a low, determined voice. “I’ll go along with this. But you are not, under any circumstances, to refer to me again as ‘the future Mrs. Bobby Tom,’ do you understand? Because if you say that just once, just once, I will personally tell the entire world that our engagement is a fraud. Furthermore, I will announce that you are—are—” Her mouth opened and closed. She’d started out strong, but now she couldn’t think of anything terrible enough to throw at him.
“An ax murderer?” he offered helpfully.
When she didn’t reply, he tried again. “A vegetarian?”
It came to her in a flash. “Impotent!”
He looked at her as if she’d gone crazy. “You’re going to tell everybody I’m impotent?”
“Only if you call me that obnoxious name.”
“I seriously advise you to stick with that ax murderer idea. It’ll be more believable.”
“You talk big, Bobby Tom. But from personal observation, I’d say that’s about all you do.”
The words slipped out before she had time to think about them, and she couldn’t believe what she’d said. She, a thirty-year-old virgin with no experience at flirtation, had issued a sexual challenge to a professional libertine. He gaped at her, and she realized she had finally rendered him speechless. Although her knees were showing an alarming tendency to tremble, she stuck her chin up in the air and marched out of the bedroom.
By the time she reached the front hallway, she had begun to smile. Surely a competitor like Bobby Tom wouldn’t let a remark like that go unchallenged. Surely, even now, he was planning some appropriate form of retaliation.
10
“Mr. Sawyer will see you now, Mrs. Denton.”
Suzy rose from the leather couch and crossed the well-appointed reception area toward the office of the CEO of Rosatech Electronics. She stepped inside and heard a soft click as Wayland Sawyer’s secretary shut the carved walnut door behind her.
Sawyer didn’t look up from his desk. She wasn’t certain whether he had made a calculated decision to put her in her place or if he simply had no more manners than he’d had in high school. Either way, it didn’t bode well. The city and the county had already sent a flock of important representatives to talk with him, and he had been maddeningly noncommittal. She knew that she, as the female president of the Board of Education, was considered a rather pathetic last-ditch effort.
The office was decorated much like a gentleman’s library, with richly paneled walls, comfortable furniture up-holstered in deep burgundy, and hunting prints. As she walked slowly across the Oriental carpet, he continued to study a folder of papers through the lenses of a pair of half glasses that looked very much like the ones she, after a lifetime of perfect vision, had recently been forced to buy.
The cuffs of his blue dress shirt had been turned twice, revealing surprisingly muscular forearms for a man of fifty-four. Neither the dress shirt, the neatly knotted navy-and-red-striped tie, nor the half glasses could disguise the fact that he looked more like a roughneck than a captain of industry. He reminded her of a slightly older version of Tommy Lee Jones, the Texas-born actor who was a favorite of her bridge club.
She tried hard not to let his silence rattle her, but she wasn’t like these talented young women who functioned better in a boardroom than a kitchen. Growing an herb garden interested her far more than competing for power with men. She was also from the old school and accustomed to common courtesy.
“Perhaps this isn’t a good time,” she said softly.
“I’ll be with you in a minute.” His voice was impatient. Without looking at her, he jerked his head toward one of the side chairs in front of his desk, just as if she were a dog he was ordering to lie down. The offensive gesture forced her to realize exactly how futile her mission was. Wayland Sawyer had been impossible in high school, and obviously nothing had changed. Without another word, she made her way back across the carpet toward the door.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
She turned to-him and spoke quietly. “My visit is obviously an intrusion on your time, Mr. Sawyer.”
“I’ll be the judge of that.” He snatched off his glasses and motioned toward chair. “Please.”
The word was barked out as a command, and Suzy couldn’t remember when she’d taken such an instant dislike to someone; although, as she thought about it, she realized it wasn’t all that instant. Way had been two years ahead of her, the biggest hood at Telarosa High, and the kind of boy only the fastest girls had gone out with. She still had a vague memory of seeing him standing behind the gym with a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth and his hard eyes slitted like a cobra’s. It was difficult to reconcile the teenage hoodlum with the multimillionaire businessman, but one thing hadn’t changed. He had terrified her then and he still did.
She swallowed her trepidation and made her way to the chair. He studied her openly, and she found herself wishing she’d ignored the blistering summer heat and worn a suit instead of her chocolate silk wrap dress. The garment tied loosely at the side and fell in soft folds over her hips as she sat. She had brightened the simple neckline with a chunky matte gold necklace and small, matching earrings. Her sheer, chocolate-tinted stockings were the same shade as her designer pumps, which were embellished around the sides of the square polished heels with a parade of tiny gold panthers. The outfit had been ridiculously expensive, she was certain, a birthday gift from Bobby Tom after she’d refused to let him buy her a condo on Hilton Head.
“What can I do for you, Mrs. Denton?”
His words held the trace of a sneer. She could deal with the more aggressive male members on the board because she’d known most of them all her life, but she was clearly out of her element with him. As much as she wanted to leave, however, she had a job to do. The children of Telarosa were going to lose so much if this awful man had his way.
“I’m here representing the Telarosa Board of Education, Mr. Sawyer. I want to make certain you’ve considered the consequences that closing Rosatech is going to have on the children of this town.”
His eyes were dark and chill in his rawboned face. Propping his elbows on the desk, he pressed his fingers together and studied her over the tips. “In what capacity are you representing the board?”
“I’m the president.”
“I see. And is this the same Board of Education that kicked me out of school a month before I could graduate?”
His question stunned her and she had no idea what to say.
“Well, Mrs. Denton?”
His eyes had darkened with hostility, and she realized that, for once, the gossip was accurate. Way Sawyer believed he had been wronged by Telarosa, and he had returned to take his revenge. The old stories came back to her. She knew that Way had been illegitimate, a condition that had made both him and his mother Trudy outcasts. Trudy had cleaned houses for a while—she’d even cleaned for Hoyt’s mother—but eventually she’d become a prostitute.
Suzy crossed her hands in he
r lap. “Do you intend to punish all of the children just because you might have been mistreated here forty years ago?”
“Not quite forty years. And the memory’s still young.” He gave her a thin smile that didn’t make it past the corners of his mouth. “Is that what you think I’m doing?”
“If you move Rosatech, you’ll turn Telarosa into a ghost town.”
“The company isn’t its only source of income. There’s the tourist industry.”
She saw the cynical twist to his lips and stiffened as she realized that he was baiting her. “Both of us know tourism won’t ever support this town. Without Rosatech, Telarosa is going to die.”
“I’m a businessman, not a philanthropist, and my responsibility rests with making the company more profitable. Right now, it looks as if consolidating with a plant in San Antone is the best way to do that.”
Controlling her anger, she leaned forward slightly. “Would you let me take you on a tour of the schools next week?”
“And have all those little children run screaming in terror when they see me? I think I’ll pass.”
The mockery in his eyes told her that being the town’s pariah didn’t bother him all that much.
She looked down at her hands in her lap and then back at up him. “There’s nothing I can say to change your mind, is there?”
He stared at her for a long moment. She was conscious of muffled voices in the outer reception area, the soft tick of the wall clock, the sound of her own breathing. Some-thing she didn’t understand flickered across his face, and she felt a stab of foreboding. There was an almost imperceptible tension in his posture that threatened her.
“Maybe there is.” His chair squeaked as he leaned back, and the hard, unforgiving lines of his face reminded her of the rugged granite slopes found in this part of Texas. “We can discuss it over dinner at my house on Sunday evening. I’ll send a car for you at eight.”
No polite invitation, but a direct command, and phrased in the most insulting manner. She wanted to tell him that she’d eat dinner with the devil before she’d eat with him, but the stakes were too high, and as she stared into those grim, implacable eyes, she knew that she didn’t dare refuse.
Gathering up her purse, she stood. “Very well,” she said quietly.
He had already slipped his half glasses back on and returned his attention to his papers. As she left his office, he didn’t bother to say good-bye.
She was still fuming when she reached her car. What a despicable person! She had no experience dealing with someone like him. Hoyt had been open and sunny, the opposite of Way Sawyer. As she fumbled for her car keys, she wondered what he wanted from her.
She knew Luther Baines would be expecting a phone call from her as soon as she got home, and she didn’t know what she would say to him. She certainly couldn’t tell him that she had agreed to have dinner with Sawyer. She couldn’t tell anyone that, especially Bobby Tom. If he ever found out how Sawyer had intimidated her, he’d be furious, and too much was at stake for her to risk his interference. No matter how upsetting, she would have to handle this herself.
“I’d rather not, Bobby Tom.”
“Now don’t let those pink flamingos and that tractor tire flower garden throw you off, Gracie. Shirley’s real good with hair.”
Bobby Tom held open the door of Shirley’s Hollywood Hair, which was located in the garage of a small, one-story house on a dusty residential street. Since he didn’t have to be on the set until noon, he had announced he was using the morning to get her started on her make-over. He gave her a determined nudge inside the salon, and goose pimples broke out on her arms. Like every other public place in Texas, the beauty shop was air-conditioned to the temperature of a deep freeze.
Three walls of the small shop were painted Pepto-Bismol pink, while one wall was covered in black-and-gold-mirrored tiles. There were two beauty operators in the salon, one a trim brunette in a light blue smock, the other a blowsy blonde sporting one of the biggest beehives Gracie had ever seen. Her pudgy thighs were encased by purple stretch pants and a tight pink T-shirt clung to a huge pair of breasts. The T-shirt read GOD, I WISH THESE WERE BRAINS.
Gracie prayed that the Shirley, who was supposed to do her hair, would prove to be the trim brunette, but Bobby Tom was already walking over to the other beauty operator. “Hey there, doll face.”
The woman looked up from the mound of coal black hair she was teasing and let out a throaty gargle. “Bobby Tom, you good-looking sonovabitch, it’s about time you came by to see me.”
He planted a kiss on a cheek covered with a garish rouge circle. She slapped his butt with her free hand. “You still got the best one in the state.”
“Coming from a connoisseur like yourself, I consider that a compliment of the highest order.” He smiled at the other operator and her customer, then greeted the two women peeking out from under the helmets of their hair dryers. “Velma. Mrs. Carison. How you ladies doin’ today?”
They giggled and tittered. Bobby Tom looped his arm around Gracie’ s shoulders and drew her forward. “Everybody, this is Gracie Snow.”
Shirley regarded her with open curiosity. “We’ve heard all about you. So you’re the future Mrs. Bobby Tom.”
He took a hasty step forward. “Gracie’s sort of a feminist, Shirley, and she doesn’t like it when people call her that. To be honest, we might be dealing with a hyphen situation here.”
“For real?”
Bobby Tom shrugged, palms extended, the last sane man in a crazy world.
Shirley turned on Gracie, and her painted eyebrows arched into her forehead. “Don’t do it, honey. Gracie Snow-Denton sounds just plain peculiar. Like you should live in a castle in England somewhere.”
“Or show up on a weather map,” Bobby Tom offered. Gracie opened her mouth to explain that she had no intention of hyphenating her last name, but then snapped it shut as she saw the trap he’d laid for her. Silvery devil-lights danced in his eyes, and she firmly repressed a smile. Was she the only person on earth who saw through him?
Shirley resumed her work on the head of hair in front of her while she studied Gracie in the mirror at the same time. “I heard you wouldn’t let her fix herself up, Bobby Tom, but I never figured you’d let it get this far. Whatcha want me to do with her?”
“I’m going to leave it in your hands. Gracie’s pretty much a wildcat, though, so don’t get too conservative.”
Gracie was appalled. Bobby Tom had just told a beautician with a blond beehive and Ringling Brothers makeup not to be too conservative when she worked on her hair! She started to offer a sharp rebuttal, but he distracted her with a quick peck at the lips.
“I’ve got some errands to run, sweetheart. Mom’s going to pick you up and take you clothes shopping so you can get a head start on that trousseau you’re so set on. Now that I’m lettin’ you get gorgeous again, don’t you change your mind about marryin’ me.”
All the women burst into laughter at the absurdity of the idea that any woman would back away from the opportunity to marry Bobby Tom Denton. He tipped his hat at them and headed out the door. Despite her annoyance, she wondered if she was the only one who felt as if the sunlight had gone with him.
Six pairs of curious eyes locked in on her. She smiled weakly. “I’m not really a—uh—wildcat.” She cleared her throat. “He sometime exaggerates and . . .”
“Take a seat, Gracie. I’ll be with you in a minute. There’s a new People magazine you can look at.”
Thoroughly intimidated by this person who held the future of her hair in her hands, Gracie dropped into a chair and grabbed the magazine. One of the women under the dryers peered at her through the clear plastic frames of her eyeglasses, and Gracie braced herself for the inevitable.
“How did you and Bobby Tom meet?”
“How long have you known each other?”
“When did you pass the quiz?”
The interrogation was swift and relentless, and it didn’t stop when Shirley call
ed her over to her chair and began work. Since Gracie didn’t believe in telling lies, she had to concentrate so hard on circumnavigating the truth without actually uttering a falsehood that she couldn’t supervise the damage being inflicted on her hair. Not that she could have seen it, anyway, since Shirley kept the chair turned away from the mirror.
“You’ve got a good perm here, Gracie, but you have an awful lot of hair. You need some layers. I like layers.” Shirley’s scissors clicked away and wet, coppery hair flew everywhere.
Gracie dodged a question about the regularity of her menstrual cycle while she worried about what was happening to her hair. If Shirley cut it too short, she’d never be able to get it into her french twist, which, even if it hadn’t been exactly flattering, was at least neat and familiar.
A heavy lock, nearly three inches long, fell into her lap, and her anxiety escalated. “Shirley, I—”
“Janine’s gonna do your makeup.” Shirley nodded her head toward the other operator. “She just started to sell Mary Kay this week, and she’s looking for customers.
Bobby Tom said he wanted to buy you a fresh supply of cosmetics to replace all the stuff you lost in that South American earthquake when you were guarding the vice president.”
Gracie nearly choked, and then fought against laughter. He was maddening, but entertaining.
Shirley switched on the hair dryer and spun the chair to the mirror. Gracie gave a gasp of dismay. She looked like a wet rat.
“I’ll teach you how to do this yourself. It’s all in the fingers.” Shirley began pulling at her hair, and Gracie envisioned clumps of frizz standing straight out from her head. Maybe she could hold it down with one of those big hair-bands, she thought, with a trace of desperation. Or maybe she should just buy a wig.
Then, so gradually she could barely believe it, something wonderful began to happen.
“There.” Shirley finally stepped back, her fingers having worked their magic.