Night Moves : Dream Man/After the Night

  Faith restrained herself from an unladylike snort. If Margot had seen Gray run her out of town—again—she wouldn’t think Faith had such a “way” with men. “I’m just nice to him, is all. It’s nothing special. And he can’t be as bad as you say he is, or he wouldn’t still be in business.”

  “He’s still in business because the old fart is a smart businessman,” Margot said. “He has an evil genius for sniffing out prime property right before it becomes prime, and buying it up for a song. Damn him, people only go to him because he has the land they want.”

  Faith grinned. “Like you said, a smart businessman. He’s always been as nice as he can be to me.”

  She might have restrained herself from snorting, but Margot had no such inhibition. “I’ve never seen a man who wasn’t nice to you. How many times have you been stopped for speeding?”

  “All total?”

  “Just this past year will do.”

  “Ummm . . . four times, I think. But that’s unusual; it’s just that I’ve been traveling so much this past year.”

  “Uh-huh. And how many times have you gotten a ticket?”

  “None,” Faith admitted, rolling her eyes. “That’s just coincidence. Not once have I tried to talk my way out of it.”

  “You don’t have to, and that’s my point. The cop walks up to your car, you hand him your license and say, ‘I’m sorry, I know I was flying,’ and he ends up handing your license back and telling you to slow down, because he’d hate to see your pretty face all cut up in an accident.”

  Faith burst out laughing, because Margot had been in the car with her when she had been stopped that time. The Texas state trooper in question had been a burly gentleman of the old school, with a thick gray mustache and a drawl as slow as molasses. “That’s the only time a cop has said anything about my ‘pretty face,’ quote and unquote.”

  “But they were all thinking it. Admit it. Have you ever gotten a speeding ticket?”

  “Well, no.” She controlled her amusement. Margot had gotten two speeding tickets within the past six months, and now was having to stick strictly to the speed limit, to her great resentment, because a third ticket would result in the temporary loss of her driver’s license.

  “You can bet neither one of the cops who stopped me said anything about slowing down before I got my pretty face all cut up,” Margot muttered. “No sirree, they were pure business. ‘Let me see your license, ma’am. You were doing sixty-five in a fifty-five zone, ma’am. Your court date will be such and such, or you can mail in your fine by such and such date and waive your right to a court appearance.’ ” She sounded so disgusted that Faith had to turn away to keep from laughing in her face. Margot didn’t see anything funny about her two speeding tickets.

  “I’d never had a ticket before in my life,” Margot continued, scowling. Faith had heard it many times before, so that she could almost say the words in unison with her friend. “I’ve been driving for half my life without so much as a parking ticket, and then all of a sudden the damn things seem to be coming out of the woodwork.”

  “You make it sound as if you could paper your walls with them.”

  “Don’t laugh. Two tickets are pretty damn serious, and a third one is a catastrophe. I’ll be poking along at fifty-five for two years. Do you know how much this throws off a schedule? I have to get up earlier and leave earlier, everywhere I go, because it takes me so long to get there!” She sounded so aggrieved that Faith gave up the struggle and began giggling helplessly.

  Margot was a joy. She was thirty-six, divorced, and had absolutely no intention of staying that way. Faith didn’t know what she would have done without her. When she had finally scraped up enough money to buy the agency, she had known how to handle the customer part of the business, but despite her college degree in administration, there was a great deal of difference between textbooks and real life. Margot had been assistant to J. B. Holladay, the previous owner of Holladay Travel, and had been glad to handle the same duties for Faith. Her experience had been invaluable. She had kept Faith from making some serious mistakes in financial matters.

  More than that, Margot had become a friend. She was a tall, lean woman with bleached blond hair and a dramatic flair for clothes. She made no bones about being in search of a new husband—“Men are a lot of trouble, honey, but they do have their good points, one big one in particular”—and was so good-natured about it that she had no trouble getting dates. Her social life would have exhausted the strongest debutante. For her to claim that Faith had a way with men, when Faith seldom went out with anyone and she herself was seldom at home, was pushing it a bit, in Faith’s opinion.

  “Don’t laugh,” Margot warned. “You’re going to be stopped by a female cop one of these days, and that’s when your luck will run out.”

  “That’s all it is, luck.”

  “Sure it is.” Margot abandoned that subject and gave her a curious look. “Now, what’s this about a house in Godforsaken Louisiana?”

  “Prescott,” Faith corrected, smiling. “It’s a little town north of Baton Rouge, almost at the Mississippi state line.”

  Margot snorted again. “That’s what I said. Godforsaken.”

  “It’s my hometown. I was born there.”

  “You don’t say. And you actually admit that out loud?” Margot asked with all the incredulity of a true Dallas native.

  “I’m going home,” Faith said softly. “I want to live there.” It wasn’t a step she took lightly; she was going back with the full knowledge that the Rouillards would do everything they could to cause trouble for her. She was deliberately placing herself once more in proximity with Gray, and the danger of it made her lie awake at nights. Besides trying to find out what had happened to his father, all those years ago, she had a lot of ghosts to face, and Gray was the biggest one. He had tormented her, in one way or another, for most of her life, and she was still caught in the helpless childhood whirl of emotions where he was concerned. In her mind he was omnipotent, bigger than life, with the power to either destroy her or exalt her, and her last meeting with him had done nothing to dilute that impression. She needed to see him as a normal man, meet him on equal footing as an adult, rather than a vulnerable, terrified young girl. She didn’t want him to have this power over her; she wanted to get over him, once and for all.

  “It was that trip to Baton Rouge that did it, wasn’t it? You got that close and just couldn’t stand it.” Margot didn’t know about what had happened twelve years ago, didn’t know anything about Faith’s childhood other than she’d been in foster care and was very fond of her foster parents. Faith had never talked about her past or her family.

  “I guess it’s true about roots.”

  Margot leaned back in her chair. “Are you going to sell the agency, or what?”

  Startled, Faith stared at her. “Of course not!”

  There was a subtle relaxation of Margot’s expression, and abruptly Faith realized how alarming her decision could be for her employees. “Everything will go on just like before, with two minor exceptions,” she said.

  “How minor?” Margot asked suspiciously.

  “Well, for starters, I’m going to be living in Prescott. When Mr. Bible finds a house for me, I’m going to put in a fax machine, a computer, and a photocopier, so I’ll be as in touch, electronically speaking, as I am now.”

  “Okay, that’s one. What’s the other?”

  “You’re going to be in charge of all the offices. A district manager, you might say, except there’s only one district and you’re the only manager. You don’t mind traveling, do you?” Faith asked, suddenly anxious. She had forgotten to consider that when making her plans.

  Margot’s eyebrows arched in disbelief. “Me, mind traveling? Honey, are you out of your ever-lovin’ mind? I love to travel. You might say it expands my hunting area, and God knows I’ve already given most of the prime bucks around here their chance for a life of excitement. It’s their hard luck if some lucky guy somewhere
else takes me out of circulation. Besides, it’s never a hardship to go to New Orleans.”

  “And Houston and Baton Rouge.”

  “Cowboys in Houston, Cajuns in Baton Rouge. Yum, yum,” said Margot, licking her lips. “I’ll have to come back to Dallas to rest.”

  • • •

  Her plan fell smoothly into place, but then Faith went to a lot of trouble to make certain it did. She took a great deal of satisfaction in her efforts; she had been helpless at fourteen, but now she had resources of her own, and four years in the business community had given her a lot of contacts.

  With Mr. Bible’s help, she quickly located and settled on a small house for sale. It wasn’t in Prescott, but was situated a couple of miles outside the town limits, on the edge of Rouillard land. Buying it put a sizable dent in her savings, but she paid for it in full, so Gray wouldn’t be able to pull any strings with a mortgage holder and cause her any trouble. She knew enough now to foresee what steps he might take to make things rough for her, and counteract them. It gave her great pleasure to know she was outflanking him, and he wouldn’t know anything about it until it was too late to stop her.

  Very quietly, handling everything through the agency so her name didn’t appear anywhere that it might cause an alert, she got the utilities turned on, the house cleaned, and gleefully shipped her furniture to her new home. Only a month after Gray had run her out of town for the second time, Faith pulled her car into the driveway of her house and looked at it with extreme satisfaction.

  She hadn’t bought a pig in a poke. Mr. Bible had arranged for her to look at photos of the house, both inside and out. The house was small, only five rooms, and had been built back in the fifties, but it had been remodeled and modernized with an eye toward selling it. The previous owner had done a good job; the new front porch went all the way across the front, and there was a porch swing at one end to lure the new inhabitants out to enjoy the good weather. Ceiling fans at each end of the porch guaranteed that the heat would seldom become too uncomfortable. Each room inside also had a ceiling fan.

  Both bedrooms were the same size, so she had chosen the back one for herself and converted the front one into a home office. There was only one bath, but she was only one person, so she didn’t expect to have a problem with that. The living room and dining room were pleasant, but the best thing about the house was the kitchen. Evidently it had been remodeled several years before, because she couldn’t imagine anyone spending the money to customize a kitchen when a more standard approach would have made the house just as saleable and cost a lot less. Someone had loved to cook. There was a six-eye cooktop, and built-in microwave and conventional ovens. Floor-to-ceiling cupboards all along one wall provided enough storage space for a year’s worth of food, if she so chose. Instead of a work island, a six-foot butcher-block table occupied the middle of the room, providing plenty of work space for any culinary adventures. Faith wasn’t that enthralled with cooking herself, but she liked the room. She was, in fact, thrilled with the entire house. It was the first place she had ever lived that belonged to her; apartments didn’t count, because she had rented those. This house was hers. She had a real home.

  She was fizzing with internal delight when she drove into Prescott to stock up on groceries, and take care of two necessary errands. Her first stop was the courthouse, where she bought a Louisiana tag for her car and applied for her Louisiana driver’s license. Next was the grocery store. It was a subtle pleasure to shop without thought of cost in the same store where the owner had once followed her around every time she came in, eyeing every move she made to make certain she didn’t slip something into her pocket and walk out without paying for it. Morgan had been his name, she remembered, Ed Morgan. His youngest son had been in Jodie’s class.

  Leisurely she selected fruit and produce, putting each selection in a plastic bag and twisting a green tie around the bag to close it. A gray-haired man in a stained apron came out of the stockroom carrying a crate of bananas, which he began arranging on an almost empty display shelf. He glanced at her, then looked back, his eyes widening in disbelief.

  Though his hair was a great deal thinner and what was left had changed color, Faith had no trouble recognizing the man about whom she had just been thinking. “Hello, Mr. Morgan,” she said pleasantly as she wheeled her buggy past him. “How are you?”

  “R-Renee,” he sputtered, and something in the way he said her mother’s name made Faith freeze inside, and look at him with new eyes. God, not him, too! Well, why not? Guy Rouillard hadn’t always been available, and Renee wasn’t the type of woman to deny herself.

  Her smile faded, and her voice cooled. “No, not Renee. I’m Faith, the youngest daughter.” She was incensed on behalf of her childhood self, constantly humiliated by being treated like a thief, when all the while the man who had made such a production of following her around in the store had been part of the pack of hounds baying after her mother.

  She pushed the buggy on down the aisle. It wasn’t a large store, so she heard the flurry of voices as he hurried to tell his wife who she was. Not long afterward, she became aware that she had picked up a shadow. She didn’t recognize the teenage boy, also wearing a long, stained apron, who blushed uncomfortably when she glanced at him, but it was obvious he’d been told to make certain everything went into the buggy and not her purse.

  Her temper flared, but she held it in tight control and didn’t allow herself to be hurried. When she had gotten everything on her list, she wheeled the buggy to the checkout counter and began unloading it.

  Mrs. Morgan had been operating the cash register when Faith had entered the store, but Mr. Morgan had taken over the duty and his wife was watching intently from the small office cubicle. He eyed the groceries she was unloading. “You’d better have the money to pay for all this,” he said unpleasantly. “I’m real careful who I take a check from.”

  “I always pay cash,” Faith retorted coolly. “I’m careful who I let see the number of my checking account.”

  It was a moment before he realized he had been insulted in kind, and he flushed darkly. “Watch your mouth. I don’t have to take that kind of lip in my own store, especially from the likes of you.”

  “Really.” She gave him a smile and kept her voice low. “You weren’t that particular when it came to my mother, were you?”

  The flush faded as abruptly as it had come, leaving him pale and sweating, and he cast a swift glance toward his wife. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Fine. See that the subject never comes up again.” She pulled out her wallet and stood waiting. He began pulling the items down the counter, punching in prices as he went. Faith watched each price as he rang it up, and stopped him once. “Those apples are a dollar twenty-nine a pound, not a dollar sixty-nine.”

  He flushed again, furious that she had caught him in an error. At least, she assumed it was an error, rather than deliberate cheating. She would make certain she checked every item on the sales receipt before leaving the store. Let him get a taste of what it was like to be automatically assumed dishonest. Once she would have backed down, humiliated to the core, but those days were long past.

  When he rang up the total, she opened her wallet and pulled out six twenty-dollar bills. Normally her grocery bill was less than half that, but she had let herself run out of a lot of things rather than going to the trouble of moving them, so she had to restock. She saw him eyeing the cash left in her wallet, and knew the story would fly around town that Faith Devlin had come back, and was flashing a roll that would choke a horse. No one would think she had come by it honestly.

  She couldn’t tell herself that she didn’t care what the townspeople thought; she always had. That was one of the reasons she’d come back, to prove to them, and herself, that not all Devlins were trash. She knew in her mind that she was respectable, but she didn’t know it in her heart yet, and wouldn’t until the folks in her hometown accepted her. She couldn’t divorce herself from Prescott;
this town had helped shape who she was as a person, and her roots went deep. But wanting acceptance from the people here didn’t mean she would let anyone insult her and get away with it. As a child she had been quietly obstinate about going her own way, but in the twelve years since she had lived here, she had grown up and learned how to stand up for herself.

  The same boy who had followed her in the store carried the bags out to her car. He was about sixteen, she guessed; his joints still had the looseness of childhood, and his feet and hands were too big for the rest of him. “Are you related to the Morgans?” she asked as they walked across the parking lot, with him pushing the buggy.

  He blushed at being personally addressed. “Uh, yeah. They’re my grandparents.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Jason.”

  “I’m Faith Hardy. I used to live here, and I’ve just moved back.” She stopped at her car and unlocked the trunk. Like most teenage boys, he was interested in anything with four wheels on it, and gave it a good look. She had bought a solid, reliable sedan rather than a sports car; the sedan was better for business, and it took a certain type of attitude to drive around in a sports car anyway, an attitude Faith had never had. She had always been older than her years, and stability, dependability, were far more important to her than speed and flashy looks. But the car, a dark, sophisticated European green, was less than a year old and had a certain style to it, for all its reliability.

  “Nice car,” Jason felt moved to comment as he transferred the groceries from the buggy to the trunk.

  “Thanks.” She tipped him, and he looked at the dollar in surprise. By that, she could deduce that either tipping wasn’t the norm in Prescott, or people usually carried out their own groceries and he had been pressed into duty so he could see if she kept the inside of her car clean, or something like that. She suspected the latter; the nosiness of smalltown people knew no bounds.

  A small, white Cadillac wheeled into the parking lot as Faith was unlocking her car door, and abruptly braked as it came even with her. She glanced up and saw a woman staring at her, dumbstruck. It took a moment before she recognized Monica Rouillard, or whatever her name was now. The two women faced each other, and Faith remembered how Monica had always gone out of her way to be nasty to the Devlins, unlike Gray, who had pretty much treated them normally until Guy had disappeared. Despite herself, Faith felt a flash of pity; if her suspicions were right, their father was dead, and they had gone all these years without knowing what had happened to him. The Devlins had suffered because of Guy’s actions, but the Rouillards had suffered, too.