Texas Rich

by Fern Michaels

  Susan Coleman hung her dress in the closet exactly one inch from the garments hanging on either side. The neat closet always pleased her. Everything should be neat and tidy. Her life was like that in many ways, she reflected. It seemed to make things easier when everything was in its proper place and well ordered.

  Auntie Amelia and Rand were forever taking her to task about it. “Let up once in a while, Suse,” Rand teased. “You’re becoming so . . . so sterile.” She’d been offended by his choice of words, but she hadn’t argued. What was the point? It was her life and she would do as she pleased. Then Auntie Amelia had told her that the lack of passion in her life was affecting her work. That had hurt; any criticism of her music hurt. But she had smiled and placated her much-loved Aunt with promises to relax a little.

  Susan glanced at the little clock on her beside table. It was nearly time to call Riley and wish him a happy birthday. She was almost sorry now that she hadn’t attended his party, but it would have cut several weeks out of her life, weeks away from her music and from Peter—and Jerome, too, of course. Besides, she disliked traveling.

  Susan tied the belt of her dressing gown with precision. This particular shade of ice blue flattered her fair complexion and cool blond prettiness. She preened before the pier glass, straightening the belt so that the knot was correctly centered and the ends were the same length.

  A steady hand with short-clipped nails reached for the phone to place the call. Thirty minutes, she was told—not enough time to go downstairs and brew a pot of coffee and not enough time for a leisurely soak in the tub.

  Susan frowned, resenting this loss of precious time; she didn’t like it when things did not go according to plan. But she should have realized that it was still a part of the business day in Texas and that transatlantic calls would take time. Thank goodness she’d placed the call person to person. If Riley wasn’t home, there’d be no danger of having to speak to anyone else in the family. Except for Mam none of the others would really want to talk to her anyway, but she would do what was expected, regardless.

  Her eyes were drawn to the telephone again, this time her thoughts on Peter Gillette. She’d left the handsome assistant conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra only two hours ago. He was probably home by now. Home, with his wife and two children. A familiar throb of misery touched her at the thought. Only when she was with him, held fast in his embrace, lying beside him, was she able to forget he was a married man.

  She’d never known that passion could be so wild and uncontrolled. Peter had shown her and Susan had been a willing pupil. She loved him, desperately, but his wife would never agree to a divorce and his celebrity would thrust the affair into the spotlight. The thought of a public scandal frightened her.

  Everything about Peter was wild and exciting and cluttered. He was cluttered with a wife and children and disorganization. He lived for nothing but his music and love, he had told her. Of this Susan had no doubt, but surely there was more to life. Without her, he would forget to have his hair cut and would appear before an audience of thousands in shirts with frayed cuffs. These were the obligations of a wife, and while she took a certain small pleasure in looking after him, she hardly wanted to elect herself as Peter Gillette’s caretaker.

  They had so much in common; if only he wasn’t so . . . She grappled for the word. Used. Yes, that was it, he was used, shopworn. Love—at least the love in her life—should be fresh and shining, untarnished. She’d suffered enough messiness during her early years at Sunbridge to last her a lifetime: Pap’s infidelities, Maggie’s pregnancy. . . . How could she consider getting involved with Peter, who would have to fight for a divorce, even endanger his career, in order to marry her? How much better, how much tidier, it would be if she had fallen in love with Jerome de Moray instead.

  Jerome, concert violinist of genius talent. She’d met him last year during a tour of Italy and Austria, and he’d recently come to London to further his studies. Young, inexperienced, and terribly in love with her. Jerome was exactly the kind of man she wished Peter could be. Peter claimed Jerome’s talent was adequate, but Susan knew he was jealous. Jerome was a classical virtuoso, and her talent combined with his could lead them to paths of glory in the music world. It seem like a storybook marriage, glamorous and romantic. No loss of reputation, no newspaper scandal; everything would be tidy and neat. If only she loved him.

  Shy, beautiful Jerome, cloistered by his wealthy family and his love of music. She didn’t think he’d ever been to bed with a woman; his violin was his mistress.

  If love took courage, Susan thought wearily, she didn’t have it. Loving a man like Peter took courage; loving a man like Jerome took compassion. One would cause tumult and disorder; the other would fit into her life as though he’d always been there. She sighed. One of these days she would have to make a decision, and she knew she would choose safety.

  The telephone near her elbow shrilled. Quickly she snapped it up. “Riley! Happy Birthday!”

  Billie laid aside her escritoire and began to reread what she had written to Thad. Time was growing short and she still had to apply her makeup. She would finish the letter after Riley’s party. Thad would want to know how it went. She’d have some news of Maggie, too.

  Billie met her gaze in the bathroom mirror. She didn’t look all that different, only older. Thankfully, her figure was still slim, and her skin was clear—although she was using more makeup these days. Lord, where had all the years gone?

  Billie rummaged in her work cabinet for Riley’s going-away present. She hoped he would like the gift: she’d toiled over it for months. Her special present for her son, a painting of Sunbridge with portraits of all the family members looming over the spacious spread. It had been painstakingly rendered on blocked silk, and she’d spent hours selecting just the right frame. Riley would have a reminder of home to take with him. It had been painted with love and it would be given with love. It was small, no larger than an eight-by-ten photograph. The package was flat and easy to carry. Doubt assailed her as she walked back to the main house to see if Sawyer was ready to leave. What if he didn’t like it? What if Moss and Seth deprecated her efforts? Her shoulders straightened. She would live with it, the way she lived with everything lately.

  Secretly, Billie was glad that Riley was leaving. She had little to say about any decision that had to do with him. The young man lived a charmed life. Approval and admiration came easily to him, as did friendships and distinction. Inwardly, she believed that Moss’s obsessive love could be Riley’s undoing. She could see the burden her son carried trying to live up to the Coleman ideal.

  In some respects the boy was different from the two powerful elder Coleman men. Riley had always returned love and affection. He’d been a wonderful brother to Maggie and Susan, never letting a week go by without writing them even when they didn’t respond.

  Once, late in the afternoon, Riley had come into the studio to talk with her. When he’d seen what she was doing, he’d appeared stunned and said quite openly that he’d had no idea she was so talented. His praise and approval had made her feel wonderful. Then he’d told her he feared he would disappoint his father and confided that he had terrible nightmares about it. She’d offered to intervene with Moss, but Riley had been adamant and confessed that he knew things would be different when he went off to school. He’d grinned and put his arms around her. “Thanks for not telling on me,” he’d said softly. On that day, for those few minutes, Billie and her son had been close.

  Sawyer was waiting by the front door, her gift for Riley in her hand. She hugged her grandmother and turned about to show off her first long dress.

  Billie beamed down at the child and tousled her glossy chestnut curls. “You look so pretty, I’m going to have to keep my eye on you or some young man will steal you away. Right from under my nose!” She laughed. “I’m ready. Are you?”

  “Grand, do you think Maggie will come? You said she promised.” Billie saw the unspoken questions in Sawyer’s ha
zel eyes, eyes that were so like her own.

  “Do you want her to be there?” Billie asked.

  Sawyer shrugged, pretending indifference. “It’s just that I wish I knew her better. Maggie is such a mystery, just like my Nancy Drew books—you never know what’s going to happen next with her.”

  “And Maggie is a book you’d like to read, is that it? Sawyer, darling, I’ve tried to explain Maggie to you and there are no more words left. I’m counting on her being there. She and Riley have a good relationship, and I don’t think she’ll miss his twenty-first birthday. I know she cares for you, darling, and of course she’ll want to see you, but don’t go getting your hopes up and expecting grand things from her.”

  “Am I like her?” Sawyer asked shyly.

  No, darling, Billie wanted to say, you’re nothing like Maggie. You’re the sunshine and Maggie is the shadow. But Billie knew instinctively that Sawyer needed to connect, to belong, even in the most intangible way. “Yes,” she lied, “you’re very much like your mother. You have her curly hair and her talents for riding and swimming. And I think you’ll be as tall as she is when you’re full-grown.

  “Now we’d best hurry, darling, or we’ll be late.”

  As Billie drove along the highway with the fidgety but silent Sawyer beside her, she struggled with her ambiguous feelings toward Maggie. She remembered how she’d felt when Maggie had finished school in Vermont and returned to Sunbridge. Sawyer was almost four years old and Billie had feared the mother-daughter reunion. But her fears had proved groundless. To Maggie, Sawyer was just another insignificance of Sunbridge, a long-forgotten cry from a cradle in the nursery. At the time, Sawyer’s love for Billie was so total that it made no difference to her how she’d come into this wide, beautiful world; the open-hearted, smiling girl won friends on her own merit, and her personality was so pleasing, her character so far above reproach, that everyone welcomed her eagerly into their midsts. But Sawyer was older now, and more susceptible to rejection. If Maggie ever built her hopes and then dashed them mercilessly, it would create a wound from which the child might never recover. Billie knew what rejection could do to a grown woman, much less a child. Moss had seen to that.

  Moss. Her husband. She should have ended it all years ago. Why had she persisted in the fight to hold on to something that couldn’t be saved? She had come to hate the word commitment. Her commitment, her sacrifices. Living as they did was a farce—she in her studio and Moss in the house or off somewhere near Alice Forbes or someone like her for weeks or months at a time. At least there was some sort of comfort in knowing that Moss couldn’t be any more faithful to Alice than he was to his wife.

  It seemed the only thing they had in common was the growth of their respective careers and interests. Moss’s aviation company had grown to huge proportions; because of the growing conflict in Southeast Asia, fighter and transport planes were needed, and Coleman Aviation was being underwritten by government contracts to provide them. Once again Moss was sitting in the catbird seat, raking in the profits. The Colemans had the Midas touch; their timing was impeccable.

  To Billie’s surprise, the balance sheets showed her to be quite successful in her own right. Nearly four years ago, her small studio had been no more than a haven; it had provided solitude and a place to work. Then one day, quite by chance, one of the abstracts she’d given to a local art gallery on commission had interested a leading textile manufacturer. That interest had inspired Billie to forge ahead and establish herself as a designer. She’d unearthed the folio Amelia had compiled for her so very long ago, then made countless long-distance calls, to initiate the contacts and set up appointments prior to taking her first business trip back to New York.

  That first trip had been an education. Gradually Billie had learned how to sell herself. Each item of her wardrobe—all . “Billie” originals—had been tailored to complement the image projected by each of the companies with which she’d had appointments.

  Those had been terrible days, Billie reflected, filled with self-doubt and anxiety. Pounding the pavement, braving rejection, waiting for hours at times in reception areas, only to discover that her appointments had been forgotten or would not be honored.

  At her fifth interview with a leading textile manufacturer, Billie’s vibrant designs had been enthusiastically received, and she had returned to Texas with orders for one-of-a-kind “Billie” designs. The contract had been small, but it had been a start, all she’d really needed to validate herself as a designer. Now nearly four years later, her work could no longer be considered a hobby; it was a business with deadlines and decisions. Table linens and bedcovers bloomed with her original designs, as did wall coverings and even her latest venture—silk scarves and needlework kits. Her signature was a bold, black Billie and was even a registered trademark. It gave her enormous pleasure to see that copies of her imagination and handiwork were carried by the prestigious Neiman Marcus and other leading department stores. Her original oils were in demand for gallery showings. The art and textile design world seemed to be at her feet. Billie still wondered what she had done to justify this success. How much was luck and how much was talent? Once she’d become established, it had been revealed that she was one of the Colemans of Texas. How much had that added to the interest she generated from leading manufacturers and designers?

  In the end, she reminded herself of the early days—how hard she’d worked, how persistently she had pounded the pavement. She was a word-of-mouth success and it had been hard-earned. Now she was Billie. Plain and simple. In her circle of work and interests no last name was needed. To the outside world she was an artist, a success. To the family, she was merely eccentric, holing herself away in her studio, preferring her own company to theirs—the original sin.

  This was the part of the flight to Sunbridge Thad liked best—the last ten minutes before his descent. Looking down on the Coleman empire from on high gave a man a sharper perspective. Things looked smaller, less intimidating.

  It was difficult to believe nine years had passed since his trip to Hong Kong. Nine years since he had held Billie in his arms. It felt as though he had put himself on hold, only to pick up right where he’d left off.

  He was free now, unencumbered by his seven-year marriage, a marriage that Billie had encouraged him to consider. “Make a life for yourself, Thad. Don’t wait for me. Love and be loved,” she had told him. Somehow he had allowed her to convince him.

  It hadn’t been easy to find someone who could ease the hurt, but eventually Kate Harrington had entered his life. They’d been buddies, playing golf, competing at tennis, taking Solomon for long walks, in an easy, comfortable relationship that made no demands on either of them. He smiled to himself when he remembered his less-than-romantic proposal of marriage, her easygoing, laughing acceptance.

  But the marriage had failed. He’d underestimated Kate’s love for him, thinking she felt as he did, comfortable and easy, more companions than lovers, more steady and caring than passionate. He’d been stunned by her sexual demands and had obligingly tried to satisfy her, but he’d been unable to give her the love—the desire and the passion—that he still felt for Billie. It had been two years since Kate had divorced him.

  The divorce had hurt, and even though he had come to terms with it, put it into perspective, the hurt would always be there, more distant and less poignant, but still there.

  The sound of the Cessna’s landing gear being released sounded like thunder in Thad’s ears. A few more minutes and he’d be there. Sunbridge. Suddenly his shoulders felt lighter. Billie. Riley’s twenty-first birthday. Billie.

  Sawyer’s eyes sparkled when she saw the decorations and the number of people attending Riley’s party. The club was closed for all other activities, but it appeared all the members were in attendance anyway. Billie foced a smile onto her face and began to lead Sawyer through the crowd toward the family table. Should she put her present on the long table with all the others and hope it wasn’t lost in the shuffle, she w
ondered, or should she keep it with her? In the end Sawyer made the decision. She bounded up to Riley and dragged him back with her to Billie. “Will you promise to open Grand’s and my present last? They’re the best. You’ll see. Will you, Riley?”

  “You bet I will, cricket. Let’s see, yours has the purple bow and Mam’s has purple paper. I’ll remember. What’s in it, Mam?” He grinned, shaking the box with curiosity.

  “It’s a secret,” Sawyer chirped. “This is better than Christmas, isn’t it, Riley? Did you ever get this many presents at Christmas?”

  “No, squirt, I never did.” Riley smiled brilliantly, the smile that warmed Billie’s heart and reminded her so much of Moss when she’d first met him—when she’d first loved him. “I’m going to need help getting all these to the car when it’s time to go home. Will you help me?”

  “You bet!” Sawyer quickly agreed, looking up at him adoringly. Billie realized that Sawyer had the same warmth and charm that drew people to Riley. Charisma, they now called it. She knew that she herself had never possessed such magnetism, and she was proud of these two offspring of hers.

  “Have you seen your grandmother?” Billie asked Riley.

  “Yes. I believe she’s over there somewhere with Pap.” He indicated a crowd of people near the bandstand. “Mam, I want the first dance. Promise?”

  “Promise. Sawyer, you don’t have to stay here with the old folks. I see Arlene, Susy, and Patty over there with Cynthia. They’re probably waiting for you. Don’t get stains on your dress or get into any trouble.”