To Believe

by Carolyn Brown

  “I think you had better explain,” Joann said. “Kyle would have to hock his new truck and even that horse he’s so fond of to buy this many flowers. What do you have to say for yourself?”

  “They’re from the man I slapped last night for thinking I was a hooker,” she explained weakly. “I … well, I …” she stuttered. “I slapped a man for thinking I was a hooker, but it was really Buddy’s fault. He got this man to help him play a joke on me only I didn’t know it was a joke. I thought he really was convinced I was a hooker and I slapped fire out of his face.”

  “You slap a man and he sends you a room full of roses. I think something is wrong with this picture.” Joann said.

  The phone rang and all three women jumped as if caught in the middle of a major sin just inside the pearly gates of heaven. Jodie grabbed the receiver from the phone on the sideboard. “Hello … yes, she is,” she covered the mouth piece with her hand as she handed it to Roseanna. “It isn’t Kyle but it’s male,” she whispered.

  “This is Roseanna,” she said cautiously.

  “This is Trey Fields. Did you get my apology and flowers?”

  “Yes, thank you, but it wasn’t necessary …”

  “Yes, it was necessary. I’m totally embarrassed at my behavior. In my defense I was tired and wanted to get home. The bartender said he’d talk to the mechanic if I’d go along with the joke. It was cruel and I’m sorry. I would like to take you to dinner to make it up to you. Do you like seafood?”

  Rosy winked at Jodie who was holding her heart and fluttering her long eye lashes dramatically. “Yes, I do, but I don’t know you.”

  “He wants to take me to dinner,” she covered the mouth piece and whispered.

  Jodie’s eyes twinkled in mischief. “Tell him yes if he’s got a lear jet.”

  “And I don’t know you, but I’d like to anyway. I’ll send Sam, my driver, for you tomorrow night at six P.M. He’ll drive you to Dallas in the limousine and we’ll fly to Houston for seafood at a nice little restaurant I particularly like down there. The weatherman says there’s no chance of rain and the beach should be lovely. Sam will have you back home by one-thirty in the morning, I promise,” Trey said.

  A picture of Kyle’s face when he heard about the roses and about some rich dude flying her to the Gulf of Mexico just to eat seafood skipped through her mind. He’d figure out real quick she wasn’t a woman he could boss around.

  “I would love to,” she said smoothly.

  “Good, I look forward to seeing you again. Until tomorrow night please enjoy the roses and again I’m truly sorry for my behavior. Good-bye, Miss Cahill.”

  She giggled as she hung up the phone. Kyle could pout until the cows came home and she would wallow in the luxury of being right. He’d be livid when he heard that she had met a rich man who was flying her to Houston just for supper. Wait until the old gossip grapevine fired up and he finally realized she wasn’t about to call him and apologize for singing for her sister last night. When he found out she wasn’t wasting away to nothing waiting on him to apologize and say he was wrong he’d know he wasn’t about to start ordering her around—ever.

  “I’ve got a date tomorrow night with Trey Fields, the man I slapped at the bar last night. He must have a jet, Jodie. Because he’s flying me to Houston for a seafood dinner and his driver, Sam, will pick me up in the limo at six. He says there’s a rose for each apology for his ‘inexcusable behavior’ last night. Looks like that’s one whole bunch of apologies.”

  “Well, I’ll be danged!” Bob exclaimed. “You think that’s wise, Rosy?”

  “I’m big enough to take care of myself if it isn’t.”

  “Yep, I guess you are,” he chuckled and went back into the kitchen to finish frying bacon for breakfast. “Come on Joann. I think Jodie said she could eat half a side of pork for breakfast and a bushel of biscuits. I can fry bacon but the hogs would run from one of my biscuits, so you’d better start measuring out the flour.”

  Joann looked around her at hundreds of red roses. “Well, what are you going to do with half the roses in the state?”

  “Heavens, I don’t know Momma. I’ve never had anything like this happen to me before. Too bad they aren’t biscuits. I’m so hungry I think I could eat that many biscuits for breakfast, and Jodie already said she was starving to death.”

  “Holy smoke, sister. You got a man sending you this many flowers and flying you to Houston to dinner. I won the finals last night and got a buckle so big it covers my whole body and you’re thinking about food,” Jodie laughed.

  “Well, something’s making my stomach flutter around and it sure isn’t love, so it’s gotta be hunger,” Rosy moaned.

  Roseanna slipped into a long, denim, column dress with two rows of gold buttons up the front and epaulettes on the shoulders. She pulled on a pair of navy boots with denim tops and gold earrings shaped like cowboy boots, and piled her hair high on top with two bobby pins.

  She raised an eyebrow at Jodie as both of them studied her reflection in the mirror. “What about this? Looks just like a cowgirl, don’t it?”

  Jodie shook her head. “Too gaudy. We’re dealing with the filthy rich, not the white-trash gaudy. You gotta find something else. Something kind of basic and wear that fourteen carat herringbone chain Momma bought for your birthday last fall. What’s this feller look like anyway? How’s he fill out his jeans?”

  “Wasn’t wearing any,” Roseanna hung the dress back in the closet and stood in front of the doors. She crossed her arms under her black lace bra and patted her foot on the carpet. Why in the world did she agree to this date? She could have just let Kyle find out about the roses and he would have been furious enough. Now she had to spend an evening with that pompous rich dude who would bore her to death with his attitude.

  “Well, holy smoke, Rosy. You said he appeared out of nowhere, insulted you, had Joe Bob fix his car and left. Just how did you see him without his jeans on?” Jodie’s tone demanded an explanation. “Maybe there’s another side to all those roses down stairs? ’Fess up, Rosy, now. Tell me what really happened last night while I was down there fighting to stay on the back of a bull.”

  She pulled a burgundy broomstick skirt from the closet. “I didn’t see him without his jeans on, Jodie. I could wear this and that camisole top that laces up the front. Maybe my new burgundy lace up Ropers? And some big loopy gold earrings.”

  Jodie shook her head. “Nope. It’ll never work. What was he wearing if he wasn’t wearing jeans?”

  “A black Italian silk suit with one of those boxy looking jackets and pleated pants. He filled out the back side pretty good. I could see him sitting on the stool and what I saw looked just fine. He had black hair slicked back and a square face. Dang good looking and so full of himself it oozed out all over his body.” Roseanna put the skirt and top back and pulled out a slinky, black dress with no sleeves and a square neckline. She held it up to her body with the hanger covering her face.

  “That’s the ticket. Black hose, your gold chain and gold stud earrings,” Jodie said.

  “Seems kinda plain to me. Maybe I’ll wear the long dangly ones with feathers tangled up in the gold loops.”

  Roseanna laughed when her sister faked a gag.

  “You’ll knock his eyes out when he sees you in that get up.” Jodie threw the recliner back, picked up the remote control and pushed the button, turning on the small television in the corner of her sister’s bedroom. An antique four-poster bed of burled oak and a dresser to match sat on the north wall. An oak entertainment system filled the wall space between the two windows on the south wall. The bathroom opened off the west wall and the recliner sat in the middle of the floor in the huge bedroom. At one time she and Jodie shared the room. But when the older sisters, Melanie and Lisa, married the same summer ten years ago, the two younger sisters spread their belongings out over the whole upstairs of the split level ranch house that was part of Cahill Ranch and Lodge. Granny Etta ran the lodge, a specialized boarding hous
e with eight bedrooms and a massive dining room. The rules were the same there as they were in the other two old time boarding houses south of Sulphur: breakfast, buffet style, in the morning; supper, family style in the evening.

  “If he’s that conceited, why’re you going to dinner with him?” Jodie flipped through the channels. “I wouldn’t be dating Chris if he was more conceited than me. But then there aren’t many men that egotistical. He’s probably the only man who would put up with my bull. But you know what, when he lowers his head and draws his eyebrows down, then looks at me real serious and says, ‘Jodie, I think that’s enough,’ in a low, husky voice, I know I’ve pushed him far enough.”

  “Well, I’m glad somebody can do that to you,” Rose anna laughed. “I’m going out with Trey Fields because Kyle Parsons thinks I’m sitting down here mooning my life away just waiting on him. He thinks if he drives up in the yard, I’ll just melt in a puddle at his feet. Anyway, if I go out on this date Momma will tell the women at the garden club on Monday all about me getting the flowers and going out to dinner with Trey. Kyle’s Aunt Linda goes to the same club, so she won’t let her dress tail touch her hind end before she gets to a telephone to call her sister, Maryanne, who’s Kyle’s mother … and she’ll bust a gut trying to find Kyle to tell him. The telephones will probably be smoking by the time the news gets to him. And by then that sorry sucker will know he can’t tell me what to do and he can’t call my sister a hussy and get away with it either. I still wish I blacked his eye.”

  “I’m not so sure that’s a good idea for you to use this other man just to make Kyle jealous,” Jodie said.

  She held up a pair of stringy, high-heeled sandals. “Good idea or not, I’m doing it. Now, what do you think of these shoes? They’ll make me as tall as he is. I betcha I can look him right in his sultry green eyes with these on.”

  “So, he’s got sultry green eyes and he looks like a movie star? Maybe you ought to forget all about Kyle. Just tell this Trey fellow about the cop who’s been hanging around your back door for the past couple of months and see if you can make him jealous.” Jodie said. “Yep, I think those shoes will do just fine. Now let’s do something with that hair.”

  At exactly six o’clock a stretch limousine turned down the lane. Roseanna watched it approach from her bedroom window. The tall gray haired man she remembered from the bar on Friday night was Trey’s chauffeur. She’d wondered how he fit into the picture—if he was just a friend or a brother, or what?

  “I’m Sam, Mr. Trey Field’s driver. I’m here to pick up Miss Cahill.” He explained to Bob.

  Bob nodded toward the stairs. “Well, here she is. Have a good time, Rosy. Eat a handful of shrimp for me.” He kissed his daughter on the cheek.

  “Sure will, Daddy,” she smiled. “I’ll be home late. Don’t wait up or you’ll be an old bear tomorrow.”

  Sam held the door for her and she sat down pulling her long, silky legs into the limo. The car was cool and soft music was playing.

  “If you don’t like that music, there’s a drawer of CD’s right beside the television set,” Sam said from the front seat as he put the car in gear and watched the ranch fade into the background through the rear view mirror. She looked like she came from a good family. A bit common from what Trey usually chose, but then he did owe her an apology after the note on the napkin. Common or not, she surely knew how to take care of herself. Sam would be willing to bet his bank account that she could give that boy a run for his money any day of the week. He couldn’t wait to see Trey’s face when that long-legged, good looking beauty got out of the limo.

  She pulled out the drawer and found rows of CD’s … all classical, most of them piano music. She picked one with a picture of a red rose lying on top of black and white piano keys titled. “Intimate Piano: Romantic classics by Beethoven, Shumann, Shubert, Mozart, Grieg and Others.” She put it in the cassette player and pushed the button. Not bad … not good, but not bad. She’d prefer a little more of a country twang like Floyd Cramer. She rummaged around in her black, silk purse and found two CD’s, one of Cramer’s and one by Lorrie Morgan. She popped the CD out of the player and put in Floyd’s music. After the first song, she noticed Sam was keeping time with his forefinger on the steering wheel as he drove.

  Chapter Three

  Roseanna leaned back in the plush seat and stretched out her long, lanky legs. This was pure luxury after working on her feet all day. An hour and a half of nothing but a floating ride in a nice, cool car with Floyd’s piano in surround sound. It all was more than a little bit surreal but she intended to enjoy the whole evening because it would surely be the last time she ever had a limo pick her up for a date. Even the richest rancher in all of northern Texas wouldn’t send a driver for her.

  Colin Vance Fields, III, or Trey as he called himself was way out of her league and she didn’t entertain any notions that they’d even get along. Everything about him spelled big money. Really, really big bucks. If she stepped out of the limo and in an instant they were both thunderstruck, she wasn’t young enough, naive enough or foolish enough to think that it could ever go past one date.

  Even if they hated each other there would always be this one time when she felt like Cinderella. She shut her eyes and let the piano music fill her soul as she thought about the jolt that glued her to the floor when her palm made contact with his cheek. His face had a red print where she slapped him soundly. But her hand was still burning an hour later and it wasn’t all just from the force of the blow, either. If just a touch, in a fit of anger, could bring about that kind of emotional upheaval, she couldn’t imagine what a passionate kiss would do. Now, wouldn’t that just be the luck of the Irish—to find the very man who’d make her insides dissolve into a pile of mush and not be able to touch him with a ten foot pole. To fall head over heels in love with a rich man who’d probably look down on her like a poor little church mouse. Well, he might start out with that attitude but before the night was over, he’d realize that he’d met his match.

  He folded his arms against his chest, leaned back against the stairs leading up into the company plane and watched the limo drive onto the runway. No woman had ever hit him in all of his twenty-eight years. Not his mother or his father or even his sister in all their sibling rivalry. Not even Julia Bustrom and they’d hated each other since the very first day of kindergarten. They’d been hateful in their youth, cunningly cutting in their teenage years and lately, they’d learned to completely ignore each other.

  It was crazy for him to invite a backwoods, middle-class woman to dinner. Completely and unquestionably insane. She came from a family who resorted to fists when they were angry. However, when he thought about the way she looked when she plowed through all those drunks on the dance floor and met him, face-to-face, eyeball-to-eyeball, daring him to assume she was a hooker, something primeval boiled up from his heart that superseded every single thought of class. He held his hand to his cheek and remembered the sting of her open handed slap. But it was more than that. Something had triggered a switch down deep in his heart and he had to see her again, if for no other reason than to get her out of his mind. She’d taken up residence there and refused to leave.

  She’d probably arrive dressed in a pair of tight fitting jeans and another of those western looking tops, and when they sat down to eat, she’d have the manners of a country bumpkin, who didn’t know a salad fork from a butter knife. She’d giggle all the time, swoon when she saw the inside of the plane, and then figure out he was worth millions and try to latch on to him, and then he’d be sorry he’d sent all the roses he could find in Murray County, Oklahoma or invited her to dinner.

  The limo came to an easy stop just a few feet from him. Roseanna slung her long legs out of the limousine and stood up. She stuck out her right hand. “Colin Vance Fields the third, I am Roseanna Cahill, the one and only. Friends call me Rosy.”

  His handshake was firm but gold rimmed sunglasses covered his eyes so she couldn’t make out what he was thin
king.

  “I’m pleased to meet you. Sam, we’ll be back by midnight. Please be here to take Miss Cahill home. Shall we board?” He took her arm and guided her up the stairs into the plane.

  The warmth of his hand on her elbow sent soft shivers racing up and down her backbone.

  “Ever flown before?” he asked.

  “Sure, I’ve flown. Lots of times, but this is pure luxury.”

  They were inside a room with soft blue silk wallpaper, matching velvet couch, love seat and two recliners. A small bar covered most of one end of the room. A raised panel, oak door led into the cockpit on the other end.

  “It’s one of our company planes. I’d have flown to Durant in it over the weekend but my father had it in Europe. It came back this afternoon. Please make yourself comfortable. Can I get you something to drink? Bottled water? Wine?”

  She draped one long, silky leg over the other. “Just water.”

  He picked up perfectly round balls of ice from a silver bucket and dropped them into a crystal glass.

  “Do you often just hop in this plane and fly to Houston for supper?” She asked.

  “Yes, I do. I told you we would go to Houston but my favorite restaurant is closed for remodeling. Instead we’re going to Galveston tonight. There’s a little seafood place right on the beach.” He filled the glass with bottled water then wrapped a linen napkin around it.

  “Thank you. Just what kind of company do you have?”

  A deep voice came through the speakers above the bar. “We’re ready for take off, Mr. Fields. Buckle up until we’re in the air.”

  He motioned toward two recliners. “They are equipped with seat belts. To answer your question, we started in oil back in the thirties when the boom hit Northern Oklahoma. Cushing, to be exact. Then Grandfather started an investment company and it spread into a conglomerate of companies. We keep a suite of offices in Tulsa and that’s where I am working these days. My father got his doctorate in business and stepped into the company, and I recently received my doctorate so I’m following in his footsteps.”