by Sandra Brown
“I’ll be leaving for the hospital early. They told me that Carole will be taken out of the recovery room about six and moved into a private room. I want to be there.”
Eddy studied the shiny toes of his shoes for a moment before raising his eyes to his slightly taller friend. “The way you’re sticking so close to her through this—well, uh, I think it’s damned admirable.”
Tate bobbed his head once, tersely. “Thanks.”
Eddy started to say more, thought better of it, and gave Tate’s arm a companionable slap. Tate wouldn’t welcome marriage counseling from anyone, but especially not from a bachelor.
“I’ll leave and let you get to bed. Stay in touch tomorrow. We’ll be standing by for word on Carole’s condition.”
“How are things at home?”
“Status quo.”
“Jack said you’d put Fancy to work at headquarters.”
Eddy laughed and, knowing that Tate wouldn’t take offense at an off-color comment about his niece, added, “By day I’ve got her stuffing envelopes. By night, God only knows who’s stuffing envelopes. By night, God only knows who’s stuffing her.”
* * *
Francine Angela Rutledge crossed the cattle guard doing seventy-five miles per hour in a year-old car that she’d inflicted with five years’ worth of abuse. Because she didn’t like safety belts, she was jounced out of her seat a good six inches. When she landed, she was laughing. She loved feeling the wind tear through her long, blond hair, even in wintertime. Driving fast, with flagrant disregard for traffic laws, was just one of Fancy’s passions.
Another was Eddy Paschal.
Her desire for him was recent and, so far, unfulfilled and unreciprocated. She had all the confidence in the world that he would eventually come around.
In the meantime, she was occupying herself with a bellhop at the Holiday Inn in Kerrville. She’d met him at a twenty-four-hour truck stop several weeks earlier. She had stopped there after a late movie, since it was one of the few places in town that stayed open after ten o’clock and it was on her way home.
At the truck stop Buck and Fancy made smoldering eye contact over the orange vinyl booths while she nursed a vanilla Coke through a large straw. Buck gobbled down a bacon cheeseburger. The way his mouth savagely gnawed at the greasy sandwich aroused her, just as intended. So on her way past his booth, she had slowed down as though to speak, then went on by. She settled her tab quickly, wasting no time to chat with the cashier as she usually did, and went directly to her convertible parked outside.
Sliding beneath the steering wheel, she smiled smugly. It was only a matter of time now. Watching through the wide windows of the café, she saw the young man stuff the last few bites of the cheeseburger into his mouth and toss enough currency to cover his bill onto the table before charging for the door in hot pursuit.
After exchanging names and innuendos, Buck had suggested that they meet there the following night, same time, for dinner. Fancy had an even better idea—breakfast at the motel.
Buck said that suited him just fine since he had access to all the unoccupied rooms at the Holiday Inn. The illicit and risky arrangement appealed to Fancy enormously. Her lips had formed the practiced smile that she knew was crotch-teasing. It promised a wicked good time.
“I’ll be there at seven o’clock sharp,” she had said in her huskiest drawl. “I’ll bring the doughnuts, you bring the rubbers.” While she exercised no more morals than an alley cat, she was too smart and too selfish to risk catching a fatal disease for a mere roll in the hay.
Buck hadn’t been a disappointment. What he lacked in finesse he made up for with stamina. He’d been so potent and eager to please that she’d pretended not to notice the pimples on his ass. Overall, he had a pretty good body. That’s why she’d slept with him six times since that first morning.
They’d spent tonight, his night off, in the tacky apartment he was so proud of, eating bad Mexican TV dinners, drinking cheap wine, smoking expensive grass—Fancy’s contribution to the evening’s entertainment—and screwing on the carpet because it had looked marginally cleaner to her than the sheets on the bed.
Buck was sweet. He was earnest. He was horny. He told her often that he loved her. He was okay. Nobody was perfect.
Except Eddy.
She sighed now, expanding the cotton sweater across her braless breasts. Much to the disapproval of her grandmother, Zee, Fancy didn’t believe in the restraints imposed by brassieres any more than those imposed by seat belts.
Eddy was beautiful. He was always perfectly groomed, and he dressed like a man, not a boy. The local louts, mostly shit-kickers and rednecks, wore cowboy clothes. God! Western wear was okay in its place. Hadn’t she worn the gaudiest outfit she could find the year she was rodeo queen? But it belonged exclusively in the rodeo arena, as far as she was concerned.
Eddy wore dark three-piece suits and silk shirts and Italian leather shoes. He always smelled like he’d just stepped out of the shower. Thinking about him in the shower made her cream. She lived for the day she could touch his naked body, kiss it, lick him all over. She just knew he would taste good.
She squirmed with pleasure at the thought, but a frown of consternation soon replaced her expression of bliss. First she had to cure him of his hang-up over the gap in their ages. Then she’d have to help him get over the fact that she was his best friend’s niece. Eddy hadn’t come right out and said that’s why he was resistant, but Fancy couldn’t think of any other reason he would avoid the blatant invitation in her eyes every time she looked at him.
Everybody in the family had been tickled to death when she had volunteered to work at campaign headquarters. Grandpa had given her a hug that had nearly wrung the breath out of her. Grandma had smiled that vapid, ladylike smile Fancy detested and said in her soft, tepid voice, “How wonderful, dear.” Daddy had stammered his surprised approval. Mama had even sobered up long enough to tell her she was glad she was doing something useful for a change.
Fancy had hoped Eddy’s response would be equally as enthusiastic, but he had only appeared amused. All he had said was, “We need all the help down there we can get. By the way, can you type?”
Screw you, she had wanted to say. She didn’t because her grandparents would have gone into cardiac arrest and because Eddy probably knew that’s exactly what she was dying to say and she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing her rattled.
So she had looked up at him with proper respect and said earnestly, “I do my best at whatever I undertake, Eddy.”
The high-performance Mustang convertible sent up a cloud of dust as she wheeled up to the front door of the ranch house and cut the engine. She had hoped to get to the wing she shared with her parents without encountering anyone, but no such luck. As soon as she closed the door, her grandfather called out from the living room. “Who’s that?”
“It’s me, Grandpa.”
He intercepted her in the hallway. “Hi, baby.” He bent down to kiss her cheek. Fancy knew that he was sneakily checking her breath for alcohol. In preparation for that, she had consumed three breath mints on the way home to cover the smell of the cheap wine and strong pot.
He pulled away, satisfied. “Where’d you go tonight?”
“To the movies,” she lied blithely. “How’s Aunt Carole? Did the surgery go okay?”
“The doctor says it went fine. It’ll be hard to tell for a week or so.”
“God, it’s just awful what happened to her face, isn’t it?” Fancy pulled her own lovely face into a suitably sad frown. When she wanted to, she could bat her long lashes over her big blue eyes and look positively angelic. “I hope it turns out okay.”
“I’m sure it will.”
She could tell by his gentle smile that her concern had touched him. “Well, I’m tired. The movie was so boring, I nearly fell asleep in it. ’Night, Grandpa.” She went up on tiptoe to kiss his cheek and mentally cringed. He would horsewhip her if he knew how her lips had been occupied barely
an hour ago.
She moved along the central hallway and turned left into another. Through wide double doors at the end of it, she entered the wing of the house that she shared with her mother and father. She had her hand on the door to her room and was about to open it when Jack poked his head through his bedroom door.
“Fancy?”
“Hi, Daddy,” she said with a sweet smile.
“Hi.”
He didn’t ask where she’d been because he didn’t really want to know. That’s why she told him. “I was at a… friend’s.” Her pause was deliberate, strategic, and rewarded by a pinched look that came to her father’s mouth and eyes. “Where’s Mama?”
He glanced over his shoulder into the room. “Sleeping.”
Even from where she stood, Fancy could hear her mother’s resonant snores. She wasn’t just “sleeping,” she was sleeping it off.
“Well, good night,” Fancy said, edging into her bedroom.
He detained her. “How’s it going down at headquarters?”
“Fine.”
“You enjoying the work?”
“It’s okay. Something to do.”
“You could go back to college.”
“Fuck that.”
He winced but didn’t chide. She had known he wouldn’t. “Well, good night, Fancy.”
“ ’Night,” she replied flippantly and soundly closed her bedroom door behind her.
Seven
“I might bring Mandy to see you tomorrow.” Tate regarded her closely. “Since the swelling’s gone down some, she’ll be able to recognize you.”
Avery gazed back at him. Even though he smiled encouragingly every time he looked at her face, she knew it was still frightful. There were no bandages to hide behind. As Irish would say, she could make a buzzard puke.
However, in the week since her operation, Tate had never avoided looking at her. She appreciated that charitable quality in him. As soon as her hands were capable of holding a pencil, she would write him a note and tell him so.
The bandages had been removed from her hands several days ago. She had been dismayed at the sight of the red, raw, hairless skin. Her nails had been clipped short, making her hands look different, ugly. Each day she did physical therapy with a rubber ball, squeezing it in her weak fists, but she hadn’t quite graduated to grasping a pencil and controlling it well enough to write. As soon as she could, there was much she had to tell Tate Rutledge.
She had finally been weaned from the despised respirator. To her mortification, she hadn’t been able to make a single sound—a traumatizing occurrence for a broadcast journalist who was already insecure in her career.
However, the doctors had cautioned her against becoming alarmed with the assurance that her voice would be restored gradually. They told her that the first few times she tried to speak she probably wouldn’t be able to make herself understood, but that this was normal, considering the damage done to her vocal cords by the smoke she had inhaled.
Beyond that, she was virtually hairless, toothless, and taking liquid nourishment through a straw. Overall, she was still a mess.
“What do you think about that?” Tate asked her. “Do you feel up to having a visit with Mandy?”
He smiled, but Avery could tell his heart wasn’t in it. She pitied him. He tried so valiantly to be cheerful and optimistic. Her earliest postoperative recollections were of him speaking soft words of encouragement. He had told her then and continued to tell her daily that the surgery had gone splendidly. Dr. Sawyer and all the nurses on the floor continued to commend her on her rapid progress and good disposition.
In her situation, what other kind of disposition could one have? She could cope with a broken leg if her hands could handle crutches, which they couldn’t. She was still a prisoner to the hospital bed. Good disposition be damned. How did they know that she wasn’t raging on the inside? She wasn’t, but only because it wouldn’t do any good. The damage had already been done. Avery Daniels’s face had been replaced by someone else’s. That recurring thought brought scalding tears to her eyes.
Tate misinterpreted them. “I promise not to keep Mandy here long, but I believe even a short visit with you would do her good. She’s home now, you know. Everybody’s pampering her, even Fancy. But she’s still having a tough go of it at night. Seeing you might reassure her. Maybe she thinks we’re lying to her when we say that you’re coming back. Maybe she thinks you’re really dead. She hasn’t said so, but then, she doesn’t say much of anything.”
Dejectedly, he bent his head down and studied his hands. Avery stared at the crown of his head. His hair grew around a whorl that was slightly off-center. She enjoyed looking at him. More than her gifted surgeon, or the hospital’s capable nursing staff, Tate Rutledge had become the center of her small universe.
As promised, sight in her left eye had been restored once the shelf to support her eyeball had been rebuilt. Three days following her surgery, the sutures on her eyelids had been taken out. She’d been promised that the packs inside her nose and the splint covering it would be removed tomorrow.
Tate had had fresh flowers delivered to her private room every day, as though to mark each tiny step toward full restoration. He was always smiling when he came in. He never failed to dispense a small bit of flattery.
Avery felt sorry for him. Though he tried to pretend otherwise, she could tell that these visits to her room were taxing. Yet if he stopped coming to see her, she thought she would die.
There were no mirrors in the room—nothing in fact that would reflect an image. She was sure that was by design. She longed to know what she looked like. Was her ghastly appearance the reason for the aversion that Tate tried so hard to conceal?
Like anyone with a physical disability, her senses had become keener. She had developed an acute perception into what people were thinking and feeling. Tate was being kind and considerate to his “wife.” Common decency demanded it. There was, however, a discernible distance between them that Avery didn’t understand.
“Should I bring her or not?”
He was sitting on the edge of her bed, being careful of her broken leg, which was elevated. It must be a cold day out, she reasoned, because he was wearing a suede jacket over his casual shirt. But the sun was shining. He’d been wearing sunglasses when he had come in. He had taken them off and slipped them into his breast pocket. His eyes were gray-green, straightforward, disarming. He was an extremely attractive man, she thought, mustering what objectivity she could.
How could she refuse to grant his request? He’d been so kind to her. Even though the little girl wasn’t her daughter, if it would make Tate happier, she would pretend to be Mandy’s mother just this once.
She nodded yes, something she’d been able to do since her surgery.
“Good.” His sudden bright smile was sincere. “I checked with the head nurse and she said you could start wearing your own things if you wanted to. I took the liberty of packing some nightgowns and robes. It might be better for Mandy if you’re wearing something familiar.”
Again Avery nodded.
Motion at the door drew her eyes toward it. She recognized the man and woman as Tate’s parents. Nelson and Zinnia, or Zee, as everybody called her.
“Well, looky here.” Nelson crossed the room ahead of his wife and came to stand at the foot of Avery’s bed. “You’re looking fine, just fine, isn’t she, Zee?”
Zee’s eyes connected with Avery’s. Kindly she replied, “Much better than yesterday even.”
“Maybe that doctor is worth his fancy fee after all,” Nelson remarked, laughing. “I never put much stock in plastic surgery. Always thought it was something vain, rich women threw away their husbands’ money on. But this,” he said, lifting his hand and indicating Avery’s face, “this is going to be worth every penny.”
Avery resented their hearty compliments when she knew she still looked every bit the victim of a plane crash.
Apparently Tate sensed that she was uncomfortable beca
use he changed the subject. “She’s agreed to let Mandy come see her tomorrow.”
Zee’s head snapped toward her son. Her hands met at her waist, where she clasped them tightly. “Are you sure that’s wise, Tate? For Carole’s sake, as well as Mandy’s?”
“No, I’m not sure. I’m flying by the seat of my pants.”
“What does Mandy’s psychologist say?”
“Who the hell cares what she says?” Nelson asked crossly. “How could a shrink know more what’s good for a kid than the kid’s own daddy?” He clapped Tate on the shoulder. “I believe you’re right. I think it’ll do Mandy a world of good to see her mother.”
“I hope you’re right.”
Zee didn’t sound convinced, Avery noticed. She shared Zee’s concern, but was powerless to express it. She only hoped that the benevolent gesture she was making for Tate’s sake wouldn’t backfire and do his emotionally fragile daughter more harm than good.
Zee went around the bright room watering the plants and flowers Avery had received, not only from Tate, but from people she didn’t even know. Since no mention had ever been made of Carole’s family, she deduced that she didn’t have one. Her in-laws were her family.
Nelson and Tate were discussing the campaign, a topic that seemed never to be far from their minds. When they referred to Eddy, she mentally matched the name with a smooth-shaven face and impeccable clothing. He had come to see her on two occasions, accompanied by Tate each time. He seemed a pleasant chap, sort of the cheerleader of the group.
Tate’s brother was named Jack. He was older and had a much more nervous nature than Tate. Or perhaps it just seemed so since during most of the time he’d been in her room, he had stammered apologies because his wife and daughter hadn’t come to see her along with him.
Avery had gathered that Dorothy Rae, Jack’s wife, was permanently indisposed by some sort of malady, though no one had referred to a debilitating illness. Fancy was obviously a bone of contention to everyone in the family. Avery had pieced together from their remarks that she was old enough to drive, but not old enough to live alone. They all lived together somewhere within an hour’s drive of San Antonio. She vaguely recalled references to a ranch in the news stories about Tate. The family evidently had money and the prestige and power that accompanied it.
