Texas Rose

by Marie Ferrarella

  Carl was only glad that he’d managed to get word to Haley and to sneak her into the hospital room to see her mother before Isadora was killed.

  But it was apparent now that his simple act of kindness had placed him in jeopardy. That went double for Haley.

  He could only hope that the FBI continued to keep her safe.

  Carl tried to tell himself that if the Texas mob meant to kill him, they would have done it by now. But he knew them, knew what they were like. Toying with their intended victims was typical of their ruthless sense of humor. He was the mouse to their cat. It was as simple as that.

  He didn’t know if going to the FBI with his suspicions about the phone calls would even get him anywhere, much less the protection he knew he needed. He doubted that even with a wiretap the calls could be traced. The mob was too smart for that.

  Still, he was a judge and had some pull.

  Maybe it was worth a call at that. What did he have to lose?

  But when he reached for the receiver again, it wasn’t to put in a call to the nearest FBI office, it was to set his life in long overdue order. His sense of mortality haunted him like a dark, uninvited guest. If he were to die tonight, within the next hour, matters between him and Dylan, his estranged son, would remain unresolved for all time.

  The situation had to be rectified. He couldn’t die with that on his conscience. Couldn’t die without Dylan knowing that he’d forgiven him all the sins of his past.

  Pressing numbers on the keypad Carl had thought he’d long since forgotten, he called Dylan’s number at his home.

  The phone rang five times. Carl debated hanging up before some answering machine picked up. After all this time, he didn’t want his first contact with Dylan to be in the form of a disembodied voice on an answering machine.

  Better that than nothing, Carl told himself fatalistically. The phone rang another two times.

  “Hello?”

  Carl gripped the receiver. It wasn’t an answering machine. It was Dylan. He took a deep breath. “Hello, Dylan?”

  “Yes?” There was a pause on the other end of the line. Recognition failed to set in. “Who is this?”

  Part of Carl wanted to hang up, to postpone this awkward call. But he was stronger than that. “Dylan, this is your father.”

  “Dad?” Dylan asked incredulously. The uncertainty in his voice indicated that he was trying to discern if this was some kind of a cruel joke.

  Carl began to talk quickly, knowing if he didn’t, it would never come out. He didn’t want to give Dylan a chance to hang up. After all this time, his son had the right. The fault lay with him, not Dylan. He should have been more understanding, not so preoccupied about his image, about how it looked for a judge to have such a delinquent as a son.

  But all that was in the past. Dylan had changed, reformed. Begun a new life. It was time to heal the scabs.

  “Yes, it’s me. Dylan, I don’t remember what it was we argued about, what finally drove us apart, but I just want to say I’m sorry for my part. No,” he amended with feeling, “I’m sorry for all of it. And sorry that it’s taken you away from me for all this time.”

  There was silence on the other end. Silence that lasted so long, Carl wasn’t sure if his son was still there.

  And then he heard, “Dad, are you all right?”

  There was concern in Dylan’s voice. Carl felt an overwhelming sense of relief.

  “Maybe I’m more all right now than I have been for a long time.”

  Genuine concern clicked in. “Dad, do you want me to come and get you? Where are you?”

  The questions amused Carl. Dylan had to be thinking that he was going senile. But the truth was, he was thinking more clearly now than he had been all along.

  “I’m home, Dylan.”

  Home. The word conjured up a plethora of memories for Dylan. Maybe, he thought as he began a dialogue with his father, it was time that home was more than just a memory, more than just a word. Maybe it was time to see it again for himself.

  Matt couldn’t shake off the feeling. He felt exactly like the feline in the title of the revival play to which Beth had given him and Rose tickets. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. That was him, all right. An antsy creature unable to find a foothold or a place to stand. That was him when it came to his dealing with Rose.

  He could hear Beth’s words echoing in his head when she’d given him the tickets after he’d told her that he was going to propose to Rose.

  Find a good place to do it, a public place where she can’t yell at you. Although why a woman would yell at the man who had just pledged to give her his heart for all eternity was beyond him.

  Hell, the whole gender of women was beyond him. He didn’t begin to pretend to understand any of them, least of all the woman who had lassoed his heart and then tied him up so tight, it would take steel bull cutters to set him free.

  As they walked out of the Helen Hayes Theater, a mosquito buzzed around his head. Matt waved it away. The mosquito, he noticed, didn’t want to have anything to do with Rose.

  Rather than take the arm he’d offered her, Rose was walking alongside of him. He made the best of the situation, telling himself she’d come around.

  “Did you like the play?” he asked, making conversation.

  The question brought the first smile to her lips he’d seen all evening.

  “I have always liked the play,” she told him, recalling when as a six-year-old she’d first watched Paul Newman and Elizabeth Taylor on a late-night television movie. “Almost as much as that mosquito seems to like you.”

  He muttered under his breath, waving away a second one that circled around his head higher than the first.

  “It’s your sweet blood they’re after.” Her grin grew wider. “Some people attract mosquitoes more than others. I guess there’s no accounting for taste.”

  “I notice they leave you alone,” he observed darkly.

  “As long as I’m with you, I’m safe.” Rose laughed.

  This had been a very enjoyable evening and she was feeling magnanimous. That Matt was still here considering what he thought about her surprised her. But she knew he had to be getting back to the ranch. It could only spare him for so long. Everything would all turn out for the best. In the interim, she could pretend that things were different. What was the harm? At most, they had a few days left.

  “You’re my own personal insect repellent,” she told him.

  That didn’t sound very romantic. They’d had a torrid night and then she’d cooled to him completely once he’d discovered her secret. She didn’t seem to think that the news of her pregnancy should have affected him the way it did. Maybe he’d made too much of what he’d come to view as their relationship. Still, he couldn’t just leave things this way.

  He tried not to dwell on the fact that Rose still hadn’t confirmed or denied the existence of another man. She’d just let things slide.

  Maybe he should have, too. If only he wasn’t so damnably drawn to her…

  It had taken Aunt Beth’s coaxing and finally coming up with tickets to this play before Rose deigned to say so much as a single word to him.

  But she’d been worn down during the course of the day and he meant to keep working on her until she agreed to what he had to say. After all, it was in her best interests. He’d meant what he’d said to Beth. A woman just didn’t go back to a place like Mission Creek and have herself a baby, then expect nothing else to change. Beth knew that as well as he did, even if she’d been away from Mission Creek all these years.

  It didn’t matter that Rose was Archy Wainwright’s daughter. That only meant that people wouldn’t say anything to her face, or where she could hear them. But they’d talk behind her back and that was a fact.

  The very thought made Matt’s blood boil. No one had the right to say disparaging things about Rose. Not while he could draw breath and do something about it.

  The ring box and its contents was burning a hole in his pocket. He’d borrowed the engagemen
t ring from Beth to visually support the statement of his intentions that he was about to make. Beth’s second husband had given it to her when they’d gotten engaged, but she’d offered it to Matt permanently. When he’d declined, Beth had sworn that the ring held no sentimental value to her. She’d only kept it because “the stinker didn’t want me to.” After finding her husband of seven years in bed with a much younger woman, Beth had thought she’d earned not only the right to keep her jewelry after the divorce, but everything else she could get by hook or crook, as well.

  He noted that Rose looked as if she was trying to locate a cab. It was too soon to go home, even if the hour was late.

  “Would you like to get something to eat?”

  Rose shook her head. “It’s getting kind of late.” And she needed her sleep for the baby as well as for herself.

  “Some coffee, then?” His mind scrambled as he searched for a way to keep her out. Beth’s suggestion about proposing in a public place was beginning to take on the guise of very solid advice. “You could have tea,” he amended, suddenly remembering her condition.

  His thoughtfulness got to her. Rose inclined her head.

  “All right. There’s a little coffee shop a block away. The Critic’s Choice. It’s where all the firstnighters congregate, waiting for the newspaper reviews to hit the streets.”

  He couldn’t think of a more excruciating way to earn a living. Just worried about what Rose would say to him had him nervous, what was it like to worry about what strangers said? Strangers who could make or break your career with a well-placed line.

  Of course, there was no comparison if he examined what was at stake. On the one hand, it was just a play, a performance. On the other, he was looking at the rest of his life.

  At the rest of their lives, he thought, slanting a glance at Rose.

  There was something in his look that she couldn’t read. “What?”

  He wasn’t about to tell her what he was thinking. That would only scare her off. “Just noticing how pretty you look tonight.”

  Her hair was curling from the humidity, the light blue and white halter dress was beginning to stick to her even though she’d only just now been inside the air-conditioned theater. Humidity was descending rapidly.

  She’d had better days—and nights. She shrugged off the compliment. “Must be the poor lighting,” she muttered.

  He stopped to place his hand beneath her chin, as if to examine her face from several angles. But it was her eyes he wanted to see. Her eyes, which at times were the only clue he had as to what was going on inside her head.

  This wasn’t one of those times.

  “The lighting’s just fine, Rose.”

  She didn’t know why, but his assertion made her smile even more broadly.

  The café had a lovely outdoor area that was surrounded by black wrought iron. Rose sat nursing her tall glass of herbal iced tea, watching the ice cubes melt. The waitress was backing away after bringing Matt another cup of coffee. It was close to midnight.

  “That’s your third cup,” Rose noted. She set her glass back on the table. The condensation on the sides ran down to pool at the base of the glass where it met the table. “Is something wrong?”

  Since he couldn’t drink anything strong here, he was searching for a drop of courage in his coffee. He figured being wired might help him face her down until he got the answer that would do both of them the most amount of good.

  “No, they just make great coffee.”

  “The best,” she agreed. She’d come here on her first day in New York and had broken down to have a single cup of coffee herself. In deference to the new life she was carrying, she’d opted for a latte, heavy on the milk. The tea, she thought, playing with the straw, was almost as good. “But you have any more of that and we’re going to have to tie a string to your ankle to keep you from flying away. I know how much caffeine is in that. You must be completely wired.”

  “Not completely.” Matt set the cup down. No more coffee, no more excuses. It was time he got to the point of all this. “Rose, I want…I want…Oh, hell.” He’d never been good with words, any words, no matter what the occasion. His heart and lips just weren’t connected that way. He’d never minded it, until just now. “This says it all.” He placed the ring box on the table.

  Rose’s eyes narrowed. She stopped bobbing ice chips with her straw. But she made no move to pick up the box to pull it toward her.

  His impatience grew to almost unmanageable proportions. “Well, come on, aren’t you going to open it?”

  She recognized the box. Beth had shown it to her once. She’d offered to have the ring made over for her then, but Rose had declined.

  “I don’t have to open it. It’s Aunt Beth’s third engagement ring.” There were two rings ahead of that one. There was the ring from her first husband, and one from someone named Hal, who’d died before they could get married. “Why do you want me to look at Aunt Beth’s third engagement ring?”

  “I don’t want you to look at it. I want you to wear it.”

  That made it worse. “Why do you want me to wear Aunt Beth’s third engagement ring?”

  She made it sound like an open-ended series. “It’s not Beth’s. Technically, it’s mine if I want it. She offered to give it to me.”

  Rose knew where Matt was going with this and she didn’t want him to get there. “Congratulations. I hope the two of you are very happy together. I wish you both the best of luck.”

  “Damn it, Rose.” He realized he’d raised his voice and people at the nearby table were staring at him. Matt lowered his tone, though it took effort to keep it under control. She exasperated him faster than anyone ever had. “I don’t want to get engaged to your aunt Beth. I’m trying to get engaged to you.”

  Damn it, he’d said it. Said what she’d wanted to hear. What she couldn’t say yes to. “Then I suggest you get yourself another hobby, Matt, because this isn’t going to happen.”

  Why was she being so damn stubborn about this? He had every right to be angry at her, yet she was acting as if this was somehow all his fault. “Rose, the baby needs a last name.”

  She pulled herself up. “It’ll have a last name. It’ll be a Wainwright.”

  “It can also be a Carson.” He reached for her hand, but she pulled it away. “Damn it, Rose, I’m trying to protect you.”

  “Well, don’t bother. I can protect myself.”

  “Like you did about this baby.”

  Hurt, angry, her eyes grew to small, angry slits. “That wasn’t fair.”

  He realized his mistake the moment he’d said the words. “I didn’t mean that.”

  “Didn’t you?” Hurt, she had half a mind to hurl the ring, box and all at him, but it was Beth’s, so she left it where it was. She blew out a breath. “I might have guessed you’d be a throwback.”

  Now what was she talking about? he asked himself. “What do you mean by that?”

  “This is the twenty-first century.” Not wanting to be the main floor show, Rose leaned over the table, her voice low, her anger barely suppressed. “Women have babies without husbands all the time. I’m not going to take your pity, or your guilt, or your inverted sense of what’s right and wrong in this world. I can stand on my own without you or anyone else. Coming out here was proof of that.”

  It had taken courage to temporarily sever ties with the people she had always turned to in times of stress and unhappiness. She’d opted to shield them—and this big dumb jerk in front of her, as well.

  She had to be crazy, she decided. There was no other explanation for it.

  “You’ve got Aunt Beth,” he pointed out. “That doesn’t strike me as very independent.”

  She was almost at the breaking point. “Are you deliberately trying to pick a fight with me?”

  “No, I’m deliberately trying to get engaged to you.” He was asking her to marry him. What was so terrible about that? What was she so angry about? Didn’t she realize what he was risking with this propo
sal? His family would be furious with him, yet he was risking their wrath for her. What more did the woman need? “Rose, I’m giving it my best shot.”

  He made it sound like some kind of test he had to pass, some nebulous contest as in the Odyssey. Rose had enough.

  She got up from the table. “All right, you gave it your best shot. And you missed the target. By a hell of a country mile. Now if you don’t mind, I’m going to get a cab and go to my co-dependent home.”

  He had no idea what the hell she was babbling about, only that the streets were dangerous. “It’s late.”

  “Beauty and brains, too. You are a catch,” she said sarcastically. “For someone else, not me.”

  He caught her hand as she turned away. “Why? Why not you? You made love with me last night.”

  She flushed as a passing waiter glanced first at her, then at Matt and smiled his approval. “That didn’t mean anything,” she said.

  “It felt like it meant something,” Matt insisted.

  It felt as if it had meant something to her, too, but she wasn’t about to say that. It would give him too much leverage, and he had far too much as it was.

  Abruptly pushing him away from her, she turned on her heel and hurried around the circumference of the wrought iron fence. Skirting a party of five that had picked this moment to come in, she made her way out the gate.

  Quickly, she ran down the block. Suddenly drained, she looked around for a cab. She couldn’t encourage Matt, couldn’t let him do the honorable thing. Not just to give the baby a name. There had to be more to it than that, more to make a good marriage that would be facing so many obstacles. The only way she was ever going to say yes to him would be if he told her he loved her. Really loved her. Because with love, all things were possible.

  But he was doing the “honorable” thing. She’d heard him say so as much to Beth. The word love hadn’t entered into the conversation and she wasn’t about to commit her soul to a man who didn’t love her.

  Caught off guard by her sudden escape, Matt quickly dug into his pocket and peeled out several bills to cover the drinks. Tossing the money onto the table, he debated following Rose’s path, but that would put him behind. He needed to catch her before she could get a cab.