“I’d be willing to pay very generously.”
Until then, Ernest had not seemed to fully comprehend the magnitude of the problem or to be personally concerned with finding a solution, but at the words “pay” and “generously,” his entire demeanor underwent a distinct change. “How much does a regular rented car cost you?” he asked, slanting her a speculative sideways glance.
Diana remembered signing a charge slip for a Lincoln Town Car she’d rented in Dallas for several days. “Two or three hundred dollars, I think. Why? Have you thought of a car I could rent?”
“I know just the ticket!” he announced with startling enthusiasm as he slammed down on the clutch and brake pedals, and swung the old truck into Gus’s repair yard, stopping behind the taxi and blocking part of the driveway with his back fender. “I’ll go see what kind of deal I can make for you.”
Diana was so grateful she nearly patted his arm as he slid out of the truck, leaving the door swinging on its hinge.
In a gratifyingly short time, a man emerged from the cinder-block building. He was wearing a light blue shirt and dark blue work pants with a grimy rag dangling out of a back pocket. The oval patch on his shirt pocket proclaimed in red letters that he was “Gus.” As he walked, he pulled the rag from his pants and began wiping his hands. “Pleased to meet you, miss,” Gus said a little uneasily. “Ernest says you’re interested in the Ford, and he’s bringing it around.”
From the rear of the building, Diana heard an engine crank followed by a mechanical cough and sputter, then silence. Another attempt to start it brought success, and Diana opened her purse, hoping Gus took credit cards. “There he is,” Gus said.
Laughter and horror left Diana gaping at a rusted orange pickup truck that was, if possible, in even worse shape than the blue truck she’d ridden in to Kingdom City. It was coated in a thick layer of dirt, with the front bumper tied on with a rope and the passenger window held together with duct tape. Speechless, she watched Ernest climb out of the truck, his expression pleased. “You’re joking,” she told him. “What am I supposed to do with that?”
“You buy it!” Ernest exclaimed as if that should have been obvious as well as exciting. Stretching his arms out, he lifted his hands palms up in a gesture of absolute jubilation. “You buy it for five hundred bucks; then you keep it or sell it back when you leave.”
Diana knew she was trapped, but she couldn’t believe this was her only solution, and the idea of paying five hundred hard-earned dollars for a rusty, filthy, disreputable pile of orange junk was almost more than she could bear. “I can’t believe that thing is worth five hundred dollars.”
“She’s solid as a rock,” Ernest said, displaying a remarkable ability to overlook details such as loose bumpers, a headlight that was hanging by its electrical wires, and the taped-together glass.
Diana had no choice and she knew it. “I’ll take it,” she said in a small, miserable voice, reaching into her purse for her credit card. Still silent, Gus took the card and walked into the shop. He returned a few minutes later with a charge slip for her to sign and a handful of cash. While Diana signed the ticket, Ernest pitched her suitcases into the back of the orange derelict in the driveway; then he came around to make certain the proceedings were successfully concluded. “That does it, then,” he said, and to Diana’s confusion, she saw him hold out his hand to Gus, who then counted out $490 in bills into it.
“Where’s my other ten bucks?” Ernest said, scowling.
“You still owed me for that tire.”
Belatedly sensing a scam, Diana rounded on both men. Since Gus had never urged her to buy the damned truck in any way, she put the blame solely on Ernest and shifted her narrowed gaze to his impenitent, leathery face. “Do you mean to tell me,” she said in a low, indignant voice, “that you just managed to foist your own car off on me?”
“Sure did,” he said with a grin. Then he added insult to injury by nudging her in the side and confiding, “I’d have taken two hundred and fifty dollars and been glad to get it.”
Inwardly humbled, Diana looked him straight in the eye and told the larcenous old man a lie she hoped would keep him awake nights. “Yes, but I’d have paid a thousand dollars.” The expression of dismay on his face was so comical and so satisfying that Diana’s temper cooled considerably even before she heard Gus’s choked laugh.
Ernest followed her around to the driver’s door and held it open while Diana climbed gingerly onto a filthy, torn, vinyl seat; then he closed the door for her. The steering wheel seemed enormous, but Diana got a good grip on it; then she felt for the brake pedal with her toe and the gearshift with her hand. Her foot encountered three pedals, not two, and when she looked at the gear lever, she saw a diagram instead of nice little letters indicating Drive, Park, and Reverse. A stick shift. Her heart sank.
“Betcha can’t handle a standard transmission, can you?”
“Certainly,” Diana lied, looking over her shoulder while her heart bumped nervously. The only way out of the crowded lot was to back down the driveway, which sloped downward to the street. Pretending to wait for two mothers carrying babies to walk behind and past her, Diana glanced at the diagram and tried to remember the trick associated with using the clutch and the brake that Doug had taught her when she was sixteen.
Satisfied that no one was behind her, she shoved at the clutch and yanked on the gearshift, wincing at the metallic screech of gears; then she released the clutch with a jolt that made the truck shake and she slammed down on the accelerator. As the truck careened backward and gathered speed, Diana steered frantically, and Gus yelled a warning over Ernest’s roar of laughter, but somehow the truck landed safely on the street, pointed in the opposite direction. Pride and common sense made Diana decide to circle the block, rather than turn it around.
Chapter 47
WHEN THE TRUCK ACTUALLY HELD together for five full miles, Diana relaxed enough to take note of the scenery. This was a part of Texas she rarely saw but that everyone who watched westerns automatically identified with the state. Behind miles of fencing that separated vast pastures from winding county roads, newborn calves frolicked beside their mothers and gangly foals with flying tails scampered in short bursts on unsteady legs while watchful mares looked on.
She could imagine how it would look in springtime, when the bluebonnets and buttercups and Indian paintbrush would burst into bloom, spreading their blossoms like a fluffy patchwork quilt over the rumpled hills and shallow valleys.
She had to stop once at a filling station to make certain she hadn’t passed the turnoff to Cal’s house, because the addresses were usually painted on rural mailboxes that were partially covered by tall grass.
Up ahead, she saw what had to be the right place, and she gingerly slowed the truck, praying it wouldn’t die when she navigated the turn. It backfired when she slowed down, and the gears screeched horribly when she tried to shift into a different gear, but she made the turn. Once she had done that, she was confronted with a new series of problems in the form of a hilly gravel drive a mile long that twisted in and out among trees that no one had wanted to cut down apparently, and then rose sharply again.
* * *
“She should be here any minute,” Cole told Cal, glancing at his watch. “If she’s not, I’m going to go look for her.” He’d called his office, learned that Diana was on her way, armed only with Cal’s address, and he’d phoned the airfield immediately. The woman who worked there said Diana had arrived and gotten a ride with a local man who, she assured Cole, was “pretty respectable.”
“You should have gone after her,” Cal told him worriedly. “You can’t have a wife wandering over the countryside, lost and alone. That’s no way to treat a wife.”
“If I knew which road the man she’s with had taken, I would try to intercept her,” Cole explained patiently, surprised by the signs of unprecedented nervousness his uncle had been exhibiting ever since he realized Diana was on her way.
Cal’s next words were interrupted by
a loud boom that cracked like thunder from the direction of the driveway. “What the hell is that?” he said, following quickly after Cole, who was already heading for the front porch.
“I assume it’s Diana’s ride,” Cole said, staring in disbelief at an orange pickup truck with a loose bumper and a drooping headlight that was slowly lurching its way toward them, accompanied by the rhythmic screech of grinding gears and deafening backfires.
Cal watched for a moment, but he was more concerned with making a good first impression on his new niece. He smoothed his hair back carefully at the temples with both hands, squared his shoulders, and checked his tie. “Cole,” he said with a strange hesitation in his voice, “do you think Diana will like me?”
Surprised and touched by his uncle’s unprecedented nervous uncertainty, Cole said with absolute certainty, “Diana will love you.”
Satisfied, Cal directed his attention to the approaching vehicle just as it gave one more earsplitting screech and then shot forward in a burst of speed. “Looks like he finally found second gear.” Squinting, he added, “Can you tell if Diana’s with him?”
Cole was younger and his eyes were better. As the truck reached the level spot that led directly to the front door, Cole stared with widened eyes at the face of his wife. “It’s Diana,” he uttered, hurrying down the porch steps to the drive with Cal right at his heels.
When they stepped out in front of her, Diana was so glad to see them that she mixed up the clutch with the brake and stepped down on the accelerator.
“Look out!” Cole shouted, jumping out of her path and dragging Cal with him. The truck missed them by inches, rolled to a stop, backfired, and died.
Shaking with fear at having nearly run over both men, Diana dropped her forehead on the steering wheel while Cole ran around the truck to help her out. She straightened just as he grabbed the handle to open her door. “Who owns this pile of sh—junk?” Cole demanded. The door handle came off in his hand, and he reached through the open window, groping for the handle on the interior.
He got hold of it, yanked the door open, and held his hand out to Diana to help her down. Like the elegant young woman she was, his wife accepted his hand, daintily removed her derriere from a tear in the vinyl seat as deep as a canyon, and then gracefully alighted.
Pausing for a brief moment to brush the dirt off her clothes, she flashed a warm smile at Cal, who was standing at Cole’s elbow; then she looked at Cole with a sheepish smile. “We do.”
Cal gave a sharp bark of laughter.
* * *
“This is my house,” Cal explained, ushering her in the front door and insisting that she sit on his chair because it was the most comfortable; then he rushed off to the kitchen to get her a glass of fresh lemonade. Neat stacks of magazines and books on a vast array of topics were everywhere, and on the coffee table, in plain view, he had carefully placed the latest copy of Foster’s Beautiful Living.
Diana could hardly believe that the gallant, endearing man who beamed at her as if she were the sunshine of his life was the same ferociously determined man who had forced his powerful nephew into marriage by blackmailing him with half of his own corporation—albeit for “Cole’s own good.”
“We’ll just stay here for a little while,” he explained, handing her a glass of lemonade and then standing in front of her as if she might need help drinking it. Finally, apparently satisfied that she could handle it, he sat down across from her on the sofa beside Cole and continued with the schedule for the day. “In a little bit, we’ll go over to the other house. We’ll eat supper there, and then you and Cole will stay there and I’ll come back here.”
Diana had come to adore him in less than five minutes. “Oh, but I thought we were going to stay with you,” she said, shooting a confused look at Cole, “so we could get to know each other while I’m here.”
“The other house is right here on the ranch,” Cal assured her, positively beaming with pleasure that she wanted to see more of him.
After showing her around his home, he decreed that it was time to leave.
* * *
Cal’s house was on flat ground in a wide clearing, situated for convenience not the view, but the other house, a mile further down the road and around a sharp bend, was positioned for view and setting, and it had both. “How beautiful!” Diana exclaimed as she slid out of Cole’s station wagon.
Perched on the edge of a wooded hilltop that faced out across a shallow valley was a cozy house of stone and rough-cut cedar surrounded on three sides by a huge cantilevered deck that hung suspended in midair over the edge of the hill. Inside, it was rustic, with a huge fireplace at one end and rows of sliding doors at the other that opened onto the deck. Two large bedrooms opened off the living room, and the kitchen looked out over the hills in the opposite direction from Cal’s house.
“This is Letty,” Cole said fondly, leading a plump woman with her hair pulled back in a bun out of the kitchen and into the living room. Letty seemed almost as happy to know Diana as Cal was.
“Supper will be at six,” she said, already retreating back into the kitchen. “It is nothing fancy. And nothing like the beautiful pictures in your magazine, either.”
“I’m not much of a cook,” Diana admitted.
“Good,” she replied with a twinkle in her eyes.
Diana turned around and through the doorway saw Cole putting her suitcases at the foot of a king-size bed. He turned and caught her watching him, and a bolt of electricity seemed to shoot from his body straight into hers. He’d put his arm around her shoulders in a casually possessive gesture when he’d introduced her to Cal. But nothing in that gesture, or anything else he’d done, indicated what he felt about whether this was going to be a honeymoon or not.
She wasn’t certain if that meant he took for granted that it was, or that he wasn’t overly concerned one way or another.
All that began to change when dinner was over.
Chapter 48
SUNSET HAD PAINTED THE SKY in wild streaks of lavender, purple, and red by the time they’d finished dinner and Letty had cleared away the plates.
The initial nervousness that Cal had displayed when she first got there had vanished. In its place was the assumption that she was part of the family and always would be. Besides making Diana feel like a fraud, it led to several questions about motherhood, such as how she would run her company and still have a baby. To make matters worse, she had the distinct feeling that Cal was aware that she’d not considered any of that and was suspicious about why not.
Annoyingly, Cole didn’t seem to suffer any of her guilt or self-consciousness. In fact, he was making her uncomfortable, and she had a feeling he was doing it deliberately. While appearing to pay attention to the conversation, his heavy-lidded dark silver eyes were making a leisurely appraisal of her features that made Diana self-consciously reach up to lift a strand of hair off her cheek.
He was leaning back in his chair with his long legs stretched out in front of him and his feet crossed at the ankles, ignoring the sunset in favor of her. Without moving a muscle or saying a word, he was emanating an aura of predatory virility that was tangible enough to cut with a knife.
And to cap everything off, both men were completely unself-conscious about other things that made Diana acutely uneasy, things that seemed to creep into the conversation with nerve-racking regularity. Diana’s simple compliment about the hand-wrought-iron table they were sitting at led Cal to provide her with the information that Cole had actually had a king-size bed shipped down four days ago to replace the double-size one that had been in the bedroom. And then he remarked that among other new furniture that had arrived by truck was the big L-shaped sofa in the living room, which had more pillows on it than any three beds he’d ever seen.
When she said that she thought the landscaping around the house was very pretty, she discovered that Cole had had an army of workmen up there manicuring the place until an hour before she arrived. “It wasn’t fit to bring a bride
to,” Cal informed her. Then he tipped his head to a double chaise longue on the deck a few yards away. “Cole had that sent down from Dallas for your stay,” he confided. “I’ve never seen the likes of it, have you?”
She turned and looked at the double chaise and nodded with a smile. “Once before.”
“Shows you what I know. Looked to me like he was putting a bed right there on the front porch! I’ve seen beds on porches before,” he joked, “but they usually have box springs tossed out beside them, along with an old wringer-washer.”
Diana’s heart jumped. Maybe it did look like a bed.
“Cal,” Cole said mildly.
Diana thought his objection to the topic of beds too late and too little.
If she agreed to “honeymooning” here, which she had rather expected to do, she’d envisioned something that started a little later and progressed a little slower.
At exactly 8:30 Cole looked at Cal and Cal looked at his watch, quickly stood up, and announced, “Well, it’s time I get back to work.” Since he didn’t have work, and since it was only now fully dark, Diana leapt to the obvious conclusion that Cole thought it was time to use one of the many new, fully padded, horizontal surfaces in the house, and Cal wanted them to get busy making him a great-great-nephew.
Diana stood up almost as abruptly as he did. “I think I’ll take a shower and change into something . . . cleaner!”
Cole watched her back through the door, puzzled by her reaction to being alone with him. He was certain she intended to go to bed with him. He was fairly certain . . .
He wasn’t certain at all.
A few minutes later, he went into the kitchen for a glass of iced tea and noticed his bedroom door was open. One of her suitcases was missing and the bathroom she was using was the one in the second bedroom. He tipped the pitcher up, considering the ramifications of that. Separate bathrooms in Diana’s circle, and his own now, were a practical and convenient accoutrement. She was being civilized and sophisticated. Or shy. Or evasive.