Wildcatter's Woman

by Janet Dailey

  When she started to pass him right by to go directly in to see his father, Race fell in step beside her. “Visiting hours are over for tonight,” he informed her.

  “Oh.” She glanced at the slim gold watch on her wrist, slowing her steps. “I didn’t think I was gone that long.”

  He caught her wrist and lifted it to examine the watch, both of them halting in the hospital corridor. “Very nice,” he murmured coolly. “And very expensive. Is it a gift from an admirer?”

  “I suppose you could say that.” She withdrew her wrist from his loose hold, her pulse accelerating at his touch. “Your father gave it to me last Christmas.”

  “You should have married him instead of me,” Race said.

  Her breath-filled laugh held little humor. “I’ve thought about that more than once.”

  “It’s just as well you didn’t,” he replied. “I could never have handled you being my step-mother.”

  “What’s the difference?” Vanessa retorted. “You couldn’t handle me being your wife.”

  “Which reminds me.” Race ignored her jibe. “The hospital staff is under the impression that we are still man and wife. It seems you neglected to mention we are divorced.”

  “There’s a reason for that,” she said, unconsciously covering the bareness of her ring finger. “They weren’t allowing anyone to see Phillip who wasn’t a member of the immediate family. I was afraid they wouldn’t let me in, so I omitted telling them.”

  “Well, they know now.” His level gaze studied her quietly. “I wouldn’t worry about it. They expect Dad to be taken out of Intensive Care tomorrow and transferred to a private room. So they’ll lift the visitor restrictions.”

  She nodded a brief acknowledgement of the news. “If visiting hours are over, I guess there’s no more reason to stay.” Vanessa felt her nervousness building under his steady regard. “Do you want me to drop you off at your apartment on my way home?”

  “But it isn’t on your way home,” Race pointed out. “You don’t need to bother. I’ve already got a ride.”

  “Oh?” Startled by his statement, she blurted her curiosity. “With whom?”

  “The blonde on duty.” He indicated the young nurse at the station with a nod of his head. “She lives a block from my place.”

  “You always did work fast.” Vanessa bit out the words.

  “Connie and I have been out a few times, so this isn’t the first time we’ve met,” Race corrected that impression.

  “I see.” It didn’t seem to do any good to insist that she had no right to be jealous. She was. “In that case, there’s very little else to say, except good night.” She tried to extract herself from the scene as gracefully as she could.

  “Good night, Vanessa,” Race responded.

  As she walked down the corridor, she could feel his gaze following her. Vanessa experienced a little throbbing ache in the region of her heart.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  VANESSA TELEPHONED Phillip at least once during the day and went by the hospital every evening after the shop closed to visit him. In just one short week after his heart attack, he seemed to make remarkable progress, a little of his strength and healthy vigor returning each day.

  Only on two occasions did she run into Race at the hospital, and neither time did they exchange more than a few civil comments. From Phillip she had learned Race had gone back to the drilling site three days ago. There had been an ambivalent mixture of relief and regret that it was unlikely she’d be seeing him again.

  On Wednesday, everything seemed to go wrong at the shop. There had been a mix-up in the measurements for some special-order drapes. None of them fit the windows. Naturally Vanessa had a furious client on her hands because she was throwing a big party that weekend and she was going to have bare windows in her living room. Then, her assistant, Peter “Pierre” Benoit, threw an artistic tantrum that had reduced Carla to tears.

  Vanessa nearly didn’t go to the hospital after she locked the shop doors for the night. But Phillip was expecting her. Knowing that Phillip was becoming bored from nothing to do, she decided to stop by for a few minutes.

  As she approached the open door to his private room, she heard Phillip talking to someone. When her name was mentioned, Vanessa paused to listen.

  “… not knowing from one day to the next if she’s going to have a place to eat or sleep,” Phillip was saying. “If you’d give up this foolish business and take over for me at the bank, I know you could get her back.”

  She breathed in sharply, realizing he must be talking to Race. Vanessa held that breath, her guess confirmed in the next second when she heard him reply.

  “If I have to give up my business, I don’t want her back.” It was a hard, flat rejection of the idea, issued without any hesitation. Race hadn’t even paused to consider it.

  The breath she’d so silently held was released in a deflating sigh. Race couldn’t have made his position plainer. She had been cherishing a silent hope that he might be regretting his adamancy at the time of their divorce, and perhaps would have even acted differently if given a second chance. But that wasn’t so.

  Lost in thought, Vanessa had blocked out most of the activity going on around her. She started visibly when a familiar voice spoke to her, coming from right beside her.

  “Hello, Vanessa.” Sybil Devereux, Phillip’s secretary, sent a warm but harried smile at Vanessa when she turned. “Are you on your way in to see Phillip, or just leaving?”

  A small cowardly streak in her wanted to say she was just leaving, but she was bound to be caught in the lie if Sybil mentioned seeing her to Phillip, which was likely. Her mouth was stiff but she forced it to curve in a responding smile.

  “On my way in,” Vanessa admitted, and took the last two steps to cross the door’s threshold to enter Phillip’s private room, with Sybil accompanying her.

  Race was standing at the window with his back to the door. The sleeves of his white shirt were rolled back, exposing the sinewed strength of tanned forearms. With a turn of his head, he glanced over his shoulder, his expressionless gaze meeting and holding Vanessa’s for the span of a second. There was a strong, unnerving flutter of her pulse.

  “Hello, Phillip.” Vanessa quickly redirected her attention to the man in the bed, wearing a conservative maroon robe. “How are you feeling?”

  “Fine. Fine.” He repeated himself in an automatic reply to a question he’d heard much too often. His gaze went past Vanessa to the older woman with her. “Sybil. I was wondering what time you’d arrive. Did you and Vanessa come together?”

  “No, we met outside in the hallway,” Vanessa replied, conscious that Race had turned from the window and was watching her. “Hello, Race.” She looked at him, fighting the little ache in her throat. “I didn’t expect to find you here. I thought you’d gone back to your well.”

  “I did, but I had to come back to New Orleans on business, so I decided to check and see how Dad was doing.” His gaze traveled over her length, making an absent inspection of the cool seersucker suit she was wearing—white with a thin navy stripe over a gauzy navy blouse. The outfit created a very poised and professional look rather than flattering.

  “I see,” she murmured, unable to think of anything suitably casual to say to continue the conversation.

  “How are things at the bank, Sybil?” Phillip inquired with the keenness of a man anxious to get back to his work.

  “It’s running smoothly,” she answered, but he didn’t look pleased by the assurance.

  “Now, that is a lie, Sybil.” He pointed a scolding finger at her. “It never runs smoothly.”

  “All right,” his secretary conceded with a smile. “There’ve been a few rocky patches, but nothing we couldn’t handle.”

  The number of visitors in Phillip’s room swelled from three to five as two executive officers of his bank entered. It was more than the room could comfortably accommodate. Tension threaded stiffly through her limbs when Vanessa realized Race was at her side.
Her darted glance was held by the probing quality of his steady gaze.

  “Let’s get out of here and I’ll buy you a cup of coffee,” he suggested in a low voice meant only for her hearing.

  The invitation took her by surprise. Vanessa heard herself agreeing without taking a moment to consider the wisdom of it. Not by any stretch of the imagination could it be said that they were on friendly terms. Yet Vanessa found the idea appealing.

  Even if she had wanted to, she wasn’t given a chance to change her mind. Race interrupted his father’s conversation with the two bank members long enough to inform him they were leaving, then ushered Vanessa out of the room.

  The guiding touch of the hand on the back of her waist was unsettling in a familiar way. It seemed to take away all her hostility, all the animosity Race usually aroused in her, and replaced it with something warm and tremulous. Vanessa had no idea what she could discuss with him, but she knew she didn’t want to argue with him this time.

  At the hospital cafeteria, they skipped the food line and went directly to the end where the drinks were. Race set two cups of hot coffee on a tray and pushed it to the cash register. Vanessa wasn’t intentionally trying to snoop when she watched him take his billfold from a hip pocket to pay for the coffee, but she couldn’t help noticing all he had in his wallet were four one-dollar bills. He spent one of them paying for the coffee. It preyed on her mind to know how short of cash he was.

  After slipping the change into his pocket, Race picked up the tray. “There’s an empty table by the wall. Is that all right?”

  “It’s fine,” she agreed absently, and followed when Race led the way to it.

  Once they were seated, the silence lengthened. Vanessa curved both hands around her cup, the heat from the coffee burning into her palms. It was impossible not to be conscious of the strong, sun-browned hands across the narrow table from her, or their male owner. She searched for some safe question to open the conversation.

  “How did you get here?” she finally asked. “Did you drive?”

  “Yes.” His mouth quirked briefly, drawing her gaze to its male shape. “So I’m not trying to cadge a ride.”

  “It didn’t occur to me that you might be,” Vanessa replied, feeling they had started out on the wrong foot already. She lifted her cup, glancing at him over its rim, and tried a different subject. “How is the drilling going?”

  “It’s coming along fine.” His craggy features wore a dryly amused look. “It isn’t necessary to pretend to be interested in my progress—or lack of it, Vanessa.”

  “I’m not pretending,” she denied, and felt uncomfortable with the lie, because her interest was only superficial. She knew nothing about the problems or procedures in drilling for oil or natural gas.

  “This is a first, then,” Race said, and lifted his coffeecup in a mocking toast to the occasion. “When we were married, I had the distinct impression that you only asked about my work because you were secretly hoping I’d fail. Admit it, Vanessa, you were glad when the wells came in dry.”

  “I wasn’t.” But she remembered feeling smugly complacent because she had told-him-so. Looking back, she could see how she had rubbed it in.

  There was a brief shake of his dark head to reject her automatic denial. “Even that last well”—his voice was level and subdued, recounting facts without any cynical or bitter overtones—“when I lost every dime I had, you weren’t angry because we lost the house. You thought for sure I was going to accept a vicepresidency in Dad’s bank. That’s what you wanted me to do. When you found out I was putting another investment together to drill a new well, that’s when you walked out and filed for a divorce.”

  “Yes.” She admitted it, her chin lifting at a slightly defiant angle. “When I realized you hadn’t learned your lesson from that, there didn’t seem to be any point in going on. If you were so irresponsible as to risk our home and our marriage, then they obviously didn’t mean very much to you.” A surge of agitation swept through her as Vanessa abruptly set her cup on the table and clenched it tightly. “It’s all in the past now, Race. Do we have to keep raking it up? Can’t we just… talk?”

  “About what?” he challenged with cynical lightness. “Was there ever a subject we agreed on?”

  A raw tension licked along her nerve ends, but she determinedly ignored his taunt. “Did Phillip happen to mention to you that the doctor said they would probably be sending him home next week?”

  “Yes, he told me.” Race mocked her choice of subjects, since it was so short-lived, ending with his answer.

  “It’s futile, isn’t it?” She searched his sun-hardened features with a kind of resigned sadness. “We can’t talk about anything without sniping at each other, can we?”

  Race took a drink of his coffee and didn’t comment on her observation. “What’s been happening in your life these past four years? Dad said something about you starting your own business. An interiordecorating shop, right?”

  “Yes.” Vanessa didn’t elaborate, doubting that Race really cared.

  “You always had a knack for that, I remember,” he said. “You were talking about getting into that when we met, weren’t you?”

  “Yes. That’s why I was working for that furniture store, so I could get some practical experience before applying at a professional shop.”

  “What made you decide to strike out on your own instead of going to work for someone else?” he asked curiously.

  “At the time, there weren’t any openings.” Vanessa went on to explain how his father had encouraged her into setting up her own shop when she wasn’t able to find a position with any of the decorating firms in the metropolitan area.

  Her cup was empty before she realized how adeptly Race had manipulated the conversation until she had told him all about her initial trials of getting started and the subsequent success she had achieved. Even her social life had entered into the conversation, since a great many of her contacts had been made that way.

  “Haven’t you found yourself a steady, reliable guy who can offer the security you think is so important?” Race mocked, but with a gentle smile.

  “Not yet.” Vanessa shrugged the answer. But his description of “steady and reliable” fit several of the men she had dated. It was a little startling to remember how dull they had been, but she didn’t mention that. Someone walked by with a plateful of food. The aroma of fried chicken wafted past Vanessa, reminding her how long it had been since lunch. “Have you eaten yet?” she asked Race.

  His split-second hesitation prompted her to recall how short of funds he was. “No.” It was a clipped answer.

  On impulse she suggested, “Let’s have dinner together. We can go to that little seafood restaurant out by Lake Pontchartrain.” She could see the refusal forming in his expression, so she hastened to add, “It’ll be my treat.”

  A muscle flexed along his jawline. “No thanks.”

  “Why not?” Vanessa argued lightly. “You paid for my coffee. Why can’t I buy your dinner?”

  “Dinner is a bit more expensive than coffee,” he reminded her with a stiff smile.

  “What difference does that make?” she persisted, and guessed it was his pride that was making him turn down her invitation because he couldn’t afford to buy her dinner. “You accepted a ride to New Orleans with me, and I paid for the gasoline.”

  “But you were making the drive whether I rode with you or not.” It was a minor point but a very significant one as far as Race was concerned.

  Irritated by the feeling that she had come up against an immovable object, Vanessa tried another approach. “All right. If you won’t let me buy you dinner, then why don’t you come to my apartment and I’ll fix us something to eat?”

  For a long second he considered her with a lazily disguised closeness. “On one condition.”

  “What’s that?” She lifted her head, wondering what it could be.

  “That I’ll stop by a grocery store on the way to your place and buy the food.”
>
  There was impatience in the laughing breath she expelled. “That’s ridiculous. I have ham steaks and fresh shrimp for cocktails in my refrigerator,” Vanessa protested. “There’s no need for you to buy any food.”

  “Let’s get this straight, Vanessa.” A hard light glittered in his dark eyes. “It’s going to be a cold day in hell when I let you pay for the food I eat. And I don’t give a damn how broke or hungry I am.”

  “You’re overly sensitive,” she snapped, impatient with him for making her invitation sound like charity.

  “If I am, it’s thanks to you.” He placed both hands on the table to shove his chair back. “I’ll meet you at your apartment in half an hour.”

  “Do you have the address?” she asked, standing up to leave.

  “Yes.” But he didn’t say how he had obtained it. It was hardly a secret, since she was listed in the phone book. Phillip could have given it to him, for that matter. There was a small run of pleasure that Race had taken the time to find out where she lived.

  In the hospital parking lot, they separated. As Vanessa drove her Porsche onto the street, she noticed the mud-spattered tan pickup truck reversing out of its stall. It was too far away to read the black lettering on the door panel, but she recognized the snarling wildcat decal below it.

  Her apartment was located in the block of buildings fronting Jackson Square in the very heart of the New Orleans French Quarter. It had taken her over a year to fix it just the way she wanted it, but the warm, cozy atmosphere she had managed to create partially compensated for the fact that she lived alone.

  Arriving ahead of Race, Vanessa took advantage of that to quickly straighten up. She took off her light suit jacket and hung it in the closet. There wasn’t time to change out of her pencil-slim skirt and navy blouse, but she did freshen her makeup and add a few more pins to keep the French coil hairstyle looking neat.

  As she left the bedroom, there was a knock at her door. Vanessa paused and pressed a hand against the sudden tightening of her stomach. Her lips felt dry despite the coating of gloss she’d just applied. She moistened them and walked to the door.