Heaven, Texas

  Gracie glanced at Cheryl Lynn’s softly draped off-the-shoulder coral lace dress with envy. Her own voluminous black wraparound skirt and red-and-white-striped knit top made her look like a barber’s pole.

  Cheryl settled her hand over Bobby Tom’s thigh. “Explain to me again exactly who’s after you. I thought you only had problems with paternity suits, not the CIA.”

  “Some of those paternity suits can get kinda nasty. In this case, the young lady in question didn’t mention her father’s close connection with organized crime until it was too late. Isn’t that so, Gracie?”

  Gracie pretended not to hear. Although she was secretly entranced with the image of herself as an Uzi-toting CIA agent, she knew it probably wasn’t good for his character to encourage him in falsehoods.

  Once again Bobby Tom glanced at her over the top of Cheryl Lynn’s fluffy blond curls. “How was that spaghetti you ordered?”

  “It was excellent.”

  “I’m not much for the green stuff they poured over it.”

  “Are you referring to the pesto?”

  “Whatever. I like a nice meat sauce.”

  “Of course you do. With a double rack of greasy ribs on the side, I’ll bet.”

  “You’re making my mouth water just thinking about it.”

  Cheryl Lynn lifted her head from his shoulder. “You’re doin’ it again, B.T.”

  “Doing what, sweetheart?”

  “Talkin’ to her.”

  “Oh, I don’t think so, darlin’. Not when I’ve got you on my mind.”

  Grace gave a small cough, letting Bobby Tom know that Miss Lone Star Cowgirl Roundup Queen might buy his particular line of horse pucky, but she saw right through him.

  Although the evening had been somewhat embarrassing, it had also been enlightening. It wasn’t every day that a mere mortal like herself got to observe pure genius at work. She had never imagined any man could be such a skillful manipulator of women. Bobby Tom was eternally agreeable, perpetually charming, incessantly indulgent. He was so relentlessly accommodating that none of the women who orbited around him seemed to realize he only did exactly as he pleased.

  They pulled to a stop in front of a row of mission style condominiums. Cheryl Lynn leaned closer and whispered something in Bobby Tom’s ear.

  He scratched the side of his neck. “I don’t know, honey. That might be kind of embarrassing with Gracie lookin’ on, but if you don’t mind, I guess it’s all right with me.”

  This was too much, even for Cheryl Lynn, and the beauty queen reluctantly agreed that they should call it a night. Gracie watched as he popped her umbrella and held it over her head while he escorted her to the door. In her opinion, Bobby Tom was showing good sense in dumping Cheryl Lynn, although she couldn’t imagine why he’d agreed to go out with her in the first place. The beauty queen was opinionated, self-centered, and considerably less intelligent than the source of those crab legs she’d ordered for dinner. Even so, Bobby Tom had treated her as if she were a paragon of womanhood. He was the perfect gentleman with everybody but her.

  At the doorway to the condo, she saw that Cheryl Lynn had wound herself around him like a snake around the Tree of Knowledge. Not that he seemed to mind. She pushed her hips against his as if they’d been there before. Although Gracie considered herself a mild-tempered person, quick to make allowances and slow to anger, the longer he took with his good-night kiss, the more she could feel her indignation growing. Did he have to do major oral surgery on every woman he met? He had so many female scalps hanging from his belt he could walk around without his pants and nobody would know he was naked. Instead of wasting time coming up with a new diet pill, the pharmaceutical companies in this country would better serve the female population by producing an antidote to Bobby Tom Denton.

  Her anger simmered as she watched Miss Bluebonnet Rodeo Saddle Queen attempt to climb his legs, and by the time he returned to the car, she had worked herself into a stew. “We’re going right to the emergency room so you can get a tetanus shot!” she snapped.

  Bobby Tom lifted one eyebrow. “I take it you didn’t like Cheryl Lynn.”

  “She spent more time looking around to make sure everybody noticed who she was with than she did looking at you. And she didn’t have to order the most expensive items on the menu just because you’re rich.” Gracie was building up a good head of steam as she combined four days worth of frustration into one outburst. “You didn’t even like her; that’s what made it even more disgusting. You could not stand that woman, Bobby Tom Denton, and don’t you try to deny it because I can see right through you. I’ve been able to see through you from the beginning. You’ve got more lines than a fisherman. All that malarkey about the CIA and Uzis. And I’ll tell you another thing. I, for one, don’t happen to believe a word about these alleged paternity suits.”

  He looked slightly amazed. “You don’t.”

  “No, I do not. You’re full of balderdash!”

  “Balderdash?” The corner of his mouth kicked up. “You’re in Texas now, honey. Down here we just call it plain old—”

  “I know what you call it!”

  “You sure are in a grouchy mood tonight. I’ll tell you what. Just to cheer you up, how about if I let you get me out of bed at six o’clock tomorrow morning? We’ll drive straight to Telarosa. We should be there for lunch.”

  She stared at him. “You’re kidding.”

  “I’m not such a sorry excuse for a human being that I’d kid you about something so near and dear to your heart.”

  “You promise we’ll go straight there? No side trips to see an ostrich ranch or visit your first grade teacher?”

  “I said we would, didn’t I?”

  Her crankiness evaporated. “Yes. All right. Yes, that sounds wonderful.”

  She settled back in the seat certain of one thing. If they made it to Telarosa tomorrow, it would be because Bobby Tom had decided he wanted to be there, not because of what she wanted.

  He turned back to her. “Just out of curiosity, how come you don’t believe me about those paternity suits? They’re pretty much a matter of public record.”

  She had spoken impulsively, but as she thought over what she had said, she became convinced that this was simply another example of Bobby Tom stretching the truth. “I can imagine you doing many nefarious things, especially involving women, but I can’t imagine you abandoning your own child.”

  He glanced over at her and the corners of his mouth formed an almost imperceptible smile. It broadened as he returned his attention to the highway.

  “Well?” She regarded him curiously.

  “You really want to know?”

  “If it’s the truth instead of one of those tall tales you spin for the rest of the world.”

  He tipped the brim of his Stetson forward a fraction of an inch. “A long time ago a lady friend slapped me with a paternity suit. Even though I was pretty certain the baby wasn’t mine, I had all the blood work done. Sure enough, her old boyfriend was the guilty party, but since he was a born-again sonovabitch, I decided to help her out a little.”

  “You gave her money.” Gracie had watched Bobby Tom in action long enough to understand how he worked.

  “Why should an innocent kid suffer just because his old man is a jerk?” He shrugged. “After that, word got out that I was an easy mark.”

  “And more paternity suits came along?”

  He nodded.

  “Let me make a guess. Instead of fighting them, you made settlements.”

  “Just a couple of small trust funds to take care of essentials,” he replied defensively. “Hell, I’ve got more money than I can spend, and they all signed papers admitting I wasn’t the father. What’s the harm?”

  “No harm, I suppose. But it’s not really fair. You shouldn’t have to pick up the bill for other people’s mistakes.”

  “Neither should little kids.”

  She wondered if he was thinking of the tragedy of his own childhood, but his expression wa
s unreadable, so she couldn’t tell.

  He pushed the buttons of his car phone and propped the receiver to his ear. “Bruno, I didn’t wake you up, did I? That’s good. Say, I don’t have Steve Cray’s number. You mind giving him a call and telling him to fly the Baron down to Telarosa tomorrow.” He pulled into the left lane. “All right. Yeah, I thought I’d do some flying when I’m not working. Thanks, Bruno.”

  He replaced the phone and began to hum “Luckenbach, Texas.”

  Gracie struggled to speak evenly. “The Baron?”

  “A classy little turbo-charged twin. I keep it at an airstrip ’bout half an hour from my house in Chicago.”

  “You’re telling me that you fly?”

  “I didn’t mention that to you?”

  “No,” she said unsteadily. “You didn’t.”

  He scratched the side of his head. “Shoot, I must have had my pilot’s license—let’s see. . . I guess it’s going on nine years now.”

  She clenched her teeth. “You own your own plane.”

  “Sweet little thing.”

  “And a pilot’s license?”

  “Sure do.”

  “Then why did we have to drive to Telarosa?”

  He looked wounded. “I just had it in my mind, is all.” She dropped her head into her hands and tried to conjure up a picture of him staked out naked in the desert with vultures eating his maggoty flesh and ants crawling in his eye sockets. Unfortunately, she couldn’t make the image gruesome enough. Once again, he had done exactly what he wanted without regard for anyone else.

  “Those women don’t know how lucky they are,” she muttered.

  “What women are you talking about?”

  “All of them who were fortunate enough to fail your football quiz.”

  He chuckled, lit up a cigar, and launched into the chorus of “Luckenbach, Texas.”

  They headed southwest out of Dallas, driving through rolling pastureland dotted with grazing cattle and shady pecan orchards. As the land grew hillier and rockier, she began to see frequent signs for dude ranches as well as glimpsing some of the local wildlife: quail, jackrabbits, and wild turkey. Telarosa, Bobby Tom informed her, sat on the fringes of the Texas Hill Country, a hundred miles from nowhere. Because of its relative isolation, it had missed the prosperity of towns like Kerrville and Fredericksburg.

  In her conversation with Willow that morning, her employer had ordered her to bring Bobby Tom directly to the Lather spread, a small horse ranch located several miles east of the city limits, where they would be doing much of the shooting, so Gracie wouldn’t actually see the town until that evening. Since he seemed to know the location Willow had described, Gracie refrained from reading the directions aloud.

  They turned off the winding highway onto a narrow asphalt road. “Gracie, this movie we’re making. . . Maybe you’d better tell me a little something about it.”

  “Like what?” She wanted to look her best when they got there, and she reached into her purse for a comb. She had put on her navy suit that morning so she’d look professional.

  “Well, the plot for one thing.”

  Gracie’s hands stilled. “Are you telling me you didn’t read the script?”

  “I never got around to it.”

  She closed her purse and studied him. Why would a seemingly intelligent man like Bobby Tom accept a part in a movie without having read the script? Was he that undisciplined? She knew he wasn’t very enthusiastic about the project, but even so, she would, have thought he’d take some interest. There must be a reason, but what could it possibly—

  At that moment she was overcome by a horrible suspicion, one that made her feel almost ill. Impulsively, she reached out and curled her hand around his upper arm.

  “You can’t read, can you, Bobby Tom?”

  His head shot around, eyes flashing with indignation. “Of course I can read. I did graduate from a major university, you know.”

  Gracie understood that colleges gave their star football players a great deal of latitude when it came to academics, and she was still suspicious. “In what field of study?”

  “Playground management.”

  “I knew it!” Her heart filled with sympathy. “You don’t have to lie to me. You know you can trust me not to tell anyone. We can work on improving your reading together. No one would ever have to know that—” She broke off as she saw the gleam in his eyes. Belatedly, she remembered his laptop computer, and she gritted her teeth. “You’re teasing me.”

  He grinned. “Sweetheart, you’ve got to stop stereotyping people. Just because I was a football player doesn’t mean I didn’t learn the alphabet. I managed to struggle through U.T. with a respectable grade point average and earn myself a degree in economics. Although I’m usually too embarrassed to admit it, I happened to be an NCAA Top Six scholar athlete.”

  “Why didn’t you say so in the first place?”

  “You’re the one who decided I couldn’t read.”

  “What else was I supposed to think? No one in his right mind would sign a movie contract without reading the script first. Even I read the script, and I’m not even in it.”

  “It’s an action adventure movie, right? I’m supposed to be the good guy, which means there’ll also be a bad guy, a beautiful woman, and a tot of car chases. Now that we don’t have the Russians to kick around, the bad guy’ll either be a terrorist or a drug runner.”

  “A Mexican drug lord.”

  He gave her an I-told-you-so nod. “There’ll be a bunch of fights, all kinds of blood, gore, and cussing, most of it gratuitous, but still protected by the First Amendment. I’ll be running around looking manly, and the heroine, movies being what they are, will prob’ly be running around naked and screaming. Am I pretty much on target so far?”

  He was right on target, but she didn’t want to encourage his slipshod study habits by saying so. “You’re missing the point. You should have read the script so you could understand the character you’re playing.”

  “Gracie, sweetheart, I’m not an actor. I wouldn’t have the slightest idea how to be anybody but myself.”

  “Well, in this case, you’re going to be a drunken ex-football player named Jed Slade.”

  “Nobody’s named Jed Slade.”

  “You are, and you’re living on a run down Texas horse ranch you bought from the brother of the heroine, who’s a woman named Samantha Murdock. I presume you know that Natalie Brooks is playing the part of Samantha. The people at Windmill feel quite lucky to have signed her.” As Bobby Tom nodded, she went on. “You don’t know who Samantha is, though, when she picks you up in a bar and seduces you.”

  “She seduces me?”

  “Just like in real life, Bobby Tom, so that part shouldn’t give you any trouble.”

  “Sarcasm just doesn’t suit you, sweetheart.”

  “Unbeknownst to you, Samantha drugs you when she gets you back to your house.”

  “Before or after we do the wild thing?”

  Once again, she ignored him. “You pass out, but you have the constitution of an ox, and you wake up in time to see her tearing up the floorboards in your house. The two of you have a big fight. Normally, you could easily overpower her, but she has a gun and you’re groggy from the drugs. There’s a struggle. Eventually, you start strangling her so you can take the gun away and force the truth out of her.”

  “I am not strangling a woman!”

  He looked so outraged that she laughed. “In the process, you discover that she’s the sister of the man you bought the ranch from, and that he was running drugs for a wealthy Mexican kingpin.”

  “Let me guess. Samantha’s brother decided to hold out on the kingpin, who had him iced, but not before the brother hid a wad of cash from one of his drug runs under the floorboards of the house.”

  “That’s where the heroine thinks it’s hidden, but it’s not there.”

  “The kingpin, in the meantime, decides to kidnap the heroine because he thinks she knows where the money is st
ashed. Old Jake Slade—”

  “Jed Slade.” She corrected him.

  “Old Jed, being a gentleman in addition to being a drunk, naturally has to protect her.”

  “He’s falling in love with her,” she explained.

  “Which makes for lots of excuses to keep her naked.”

  “I believe you also have a nude scene.”

  “Not in a million years.”

  5

  The Lanier ranch had known better days. A cluster of wooden buildings with peeling paint sat on a flat section of land that stretched back from the banks of the South Llano River. Chickens scratched in the dirt beneath an old oak in the front yard. Next to the barn, a windmill with a broken blade turned listlessly in the July heat. Only the well-fed horses in the corral looked prosperous.

  The equipment trucks and trailers being used by the film company sat close to the highway, and Bobby Tom parked the Thunderbird next to a dusty gray van. As they both got out of the car, Gracie spotted Willow standing in a coil of cables near a portable generator, where she was talking with a thin, studious-looking man holding a clipboard. Crew members worked near the corral, adjusting large lights set on sturdy tripods.

  Willow looked up as Bobby Tom, nearly two weeks late, strolled toward her. He was resplendent in black slacks, coral shirt, and diamond-patterned gray silk vest topped by a charcoal Stetson with a snakeskin band. Gracie waited with a good deal of relish for her sharp-tongued employer to light into him.

  “Bobby Tom.”

  Willow spoke his name as if it were a sonnet. Her lips curved in a soft smile and her eyes lit up with dreamy pleasure. Her sharp edges seemed to melt away, and as she walked forward, she extended her arms to grasp his hands.

  Gracie felt as if she were choking. All the verbal lambastings she had endured came rushing back to her. Bobby Tom was getting a hero’s welcome when he was the one responsible for the trouble!