“Sifted? For what?” Tru looked up at Ben.
As if he’d know what you sifted sand for. He didn’t have a clue.
Eleanor looked up from her stack. “How should I know?”
“Can you really have your beach sifted?” Ben asked.
Trudy snapped, “How should I know?”
“You’ve got royalty checks coming in all the time. But you’re going to have to do some scrambling to make your house payment.”
Ben made sure Tru was balanced on her own feet before he reached past her for the bills. “How carefully have you checked these out, Eleanor? Was Liz skimming? Is she guilty of a crime? I think we should arrest her just on principle. It oughta be illegal to spend eighteen hundred dollars on a shirt. For that matter, it oughta be illegal to charge eighteen hundred dollars for a shirt. I may go arrest Vera Wang.”
He studied the pile of outrageously overpriced stuff, jewelry, watches, mounds of clothes and shoes, belts and purses, home décor that belonged at a flea market as far as Ben was concerned.
He glanced at Tru. He knew she looked expensive, but he had no idea that if someone stole one of her earrings, they’d be guilty of a felony.
“How soon until that new book is done?” Eleanor asked. “You get another third of your payment when the manuscript arrives at the publishers, right?”
Ben scowled at the bills, placed them on the desk, and looked at Eleanor. “How tough is it going to be for her to make the house payment?”
Tru shook her head, her eyes on at her shirt. Then suddenly she headed up her stairs. “I’ve got stuff I’ve never opened. We’ll return it.”
“I don’t know if you can return haute couture, Trudy.”
Trudy stopped halfway up the stairs, turned around and sank to a step. She buried her face in her hands.
Ben watched her, afraid she might burst into tears. He couldn’t stand it when women cried. He tended to do anything, say anything, promise anything, to get them to stop.
Tru snapped her head upright and, from ten feet below her, Ben saw the fire raging in her eyes.
“I was good to that woman.” Trudy stood, her fists clenched at her side, her teeth gritting as she breathed heavily.
Ben heaved a sigh of relief. Anger was good. Anger he could handle.
She jabbed her finger at the chandelier like it was a human who could hear her. “I did not approve an eighty-five thousand dollar chandelier! You’re coming down. If you’re not worth anything, you’re going to be scrap medal.”
Ben stared at her. It wasn’t exactly ‘as God is my witness, I’ll never be hungry again’ but it wasn’t bad.
“She shouldn’t be talking to lamp shades,” Eleanor said.
Ben nodded.
Tru charged down the stairs. “Get her on the phone.”
Ben took a step back from the guttural voice, afraid Tru’s head was going to spin around.
Eleanor stood at the bottom of the stairs, wringing her hands. “Now, Trudy, I don’t know if that’s best.”
Ben rested his fingers on Eleanor’s arm to interrupt her. “Tru, look at me.” Ben had been a cop for a long time. He knew the tone of voice that got instant results. He didn’t yell. He didn’t raise his voice or put one ounce of anger in it. But he got her attention.
Tru looked at him, her eyes blazing so fierce Ben had the feeling she was mad at everybody who’d ever pushed her around in her whole, spineless life.
He tried to remember everything she’d taught him. “I don’t blame you for being angry.”
She bared her teeth at him. He stepped right in front of her. She wouldn’t really bite him, would she?
“Trudy Jennings, I’m so proud of you.”
Her jaw dropped open. “P…proud?”
“Yes, you’ve worked so hard and earned so much money and cared for people the whole time you were doing it. You’ve never said one thing and done another. And I want you to know that it’s okay for you to be angry.”
“It…it is?” She closed her mouth before any of the flies that buzzed around the chandelier dropped in. “Why is it?”
“Jesus got angry, Tru. When he was faced with a hypocrite or someone who hurt innocent people or who lied and cheated, it made him very angry. It’s not a sin to be angry.”
Her eyes narrowed. “I don’t need your permission to get mad.”
“I know you don’t.” He kept thinking, soft answer, soft answer. Great, now he was doing a mantra. “That’s what I’m trying to say. Because I think, later, when you calm down, you’re going to be ashamed of yourself for losing your temper, especially if you phone Liz and yell at her. And I don’t want you to do that.”
“Yell at her?” Some of the darkest purple eased out of her face.
“No, be ashamed.” Ben reached out and rested both hands on Tru’s shoulders. He squared her off in front of him. He’d been using his soft answer voice to ease her out of her bad mood. But as he felt his own temper calm and her shoulders relaxing, he knew, for the first time, just how wise Tru’s advice was.
“I don’t want you to do anything tonight, in the heat of the moment, that you’ll regret later.”
“But she can’t get away with this.” There was still heat in Tru’s voice, but it was subsiding. When she closed her eyes, the color of her cheeks faded until Ben didn’t think he could toast marshmallows on them anymore.
Her head dropped forward. “She’s ruined me, Ben. In six months, she’s wrecked everything.”
“She hasn’t wrecked anything important.” Ben lifted her chin and her eyes fluttered open. “She hasn’t made you less brilliant. She hasn’t hurt your soul. She hasn’t done anyone bodily harm. All she’s done is spent money.”
“Money I don’t have.”
“Money you can make more of.” Ben pulled her closer, wishing he could protect her. He’d wanted to toughen her up, but now, when she’d taken a blow hard enough to make a well-done beef steak tougher, he wished he could have spared her.
She let herself rest against him. Trembling with shock and anger, she fit perfectly against him. He rubbed her back and she moved closer.
It struck Ben that there was something else Tru could do in the heat of the moment she might regret later. Or she might not regret it. And neither would he.
Eleanor eased herself out of the room.
Ben saw her go out of the corner of his eye, but he never took his attention from Tru. He wasn’t about to take advantage of her when she was this upset. He’d done this hero complex thing with sweethearted Cara, too. But he couldn’t always be the strength for someone else. There came a time when people needed to be strong. He couldn’t forget that. He couldn’t let this sweet vulnerability trick him into falling for a softie. Not again.
Taking a deep breath, he relaxed his grip.
“Ben, why would she do something like that to me? She wasn’t even stealing for herself. She was being flagrant with my money in ways she knew would hurt me. She betrayed my trust.” Tru’s eyes flashed again.
Ben leaned down until his nose almost touched hers. He spoke, one word at a time. “Turn. The. Other. Cheek.”
Silence stretched between them.
He saw the battle inside of her. Her face, so pure and innocent, showed every thought. Ben watched as good and evil warred inside the kindest woman he’d ever met.
At last, with a stricken look, Tru said, “I can make myself say the words, but I don’t know if I can ever mean them.”
“I don’t fault you for honesty. Losing this much money is devastating.”
“It’s not the money so much as the contempt. She had to know my financial situation. She had to know, especially after the huge down payment on the house, that there was a limit to what I could spend. She deliberately did this to hurt me, while I was paying her the best salary she’d ever had, and giving her more respect than any employer who’d ever hired her.”
“How do you know that?”
“She told me. She…” Tru faltered.
&n
bsp; “She gossiped about her other employers?”
Tru nodded.
“Do you suppose she was telling the truth?”
Tru’s shoulders slumped. “Probably not. Why would she have said a decent word about them when she never had a good word for anyone else? And now she’ll go on to another job and say awful things about me to her new boss.”
Tru buried her face in her hands. “She could ruin me if she sells an unsavory story about me to the tabloids or some celebrity peep show on television.”
Ben smiled since she wasn’t watching anyway. She was so sweet. It’d be hard to ruin her. “My advice is to spend the next few weeks hating her guts then, when you’ve wallowed enough, get over it and forgive the battle axe.”
“So I can call her and scream? Do you think Jesus would consider that turning the other cheek?”
“No, but Jesus has a lot more patience than most people. And he did hate injustice and Liz was unjust to you. No, keep it to yourself. If you do tell her off, she’s the kind of woman who might make something out of it. Maybe even record the call and sell it to the highest bidder. You’re big enough news and Tru Interventions Jennings bawling out a former employee could generate a lot of bad press.”
Ben regretted advising Tru to let Liz go. He’d like to mete out a little frontier justice on Tru’s behalf. His mom, the hanging judge, would agree.
She heaved a deep sigh. “Okay, you’re right.” She looked up the stairs. “What I need is some advice. I need a new personal manager I can trust. I need to find a way to unload all that stuff somehow.”
Ben lifted his hands up toward the ceiling. “It’s gonna be dark in here.”
Tru rubbed her hand over her face then looked up. Shaking her head back and forth, she said, “It really is a pretty lamp shade.”
“Not that pretty.”
She looked at him and at the same second, they began to laugh.
“Tomorrow’s Saturday,” Ben said. “How about I come over and help you get this whole mess sorted out.”
Tru’s laughter died but there was still a gleam in her eye and a smile on her face. “I’d like that.”
Whadda ya know? It really works. A soft answer really does turn away wrath.
17
“It really works, doesn’t it, Ben? A soft answer really does turn away wrath. Admit it.”
“Is this an ‘I told you so’?” Ben laid boxes of Jimmy Choos in the backseat of Tru’s Seville.
Trudy watched him like a hawk as they worked inside her garage. “Handle them gently. I don’t want so much as a scratch even on the boxes when I return them to the store.”
Tru, putting her insomnia to good use, had spent a couple of hours in the middle of the night, researching the return policy of the stores who had dealt with Liz.
“So big deal designers are good about returns, huh?”
“They’re great. Eleanor was all wrong about haute couture.”
Ben shrugged. “Well, it figures she would be. How would she know anything about hot coats?”
“Hot coats?”
“Yeah, by the way, where are the coats? I haven’t seen any of these hot coats you say you’re returning.”
“Hot coats?” Trudy studied him, trying to read his mind since his mouth wasn’t making any sense. “Oh, you mean haute couture?”
“Coats, coaters, whatever.”
Trudy decided to forget the explanation. “I sure don’t know anything about them, except for what I learned on-line.”
“How much sleep did you get?”
“The usual, not much.” Trudy rested her boxes beside Ben’s. She wasn’t used to anyone worrying about her, except Eleanor of course. And she paid Eleanor to worry. Having Ben try and nag her into sleeping better was kind of pleasant. Futile, but pleasant.
“I think the stores are being especially nice to me because I’m about the best customer they’ve ever had.”
“Not after today.”
“I’ll still have spent a fortune with them. As long as things still have the tags on, they’ll take returns, plus, if you just aren’t happy they’ll take stuff back no questions asked.”
“So why aren’t you returning everything?”
“Because that’s dishonest.” Trudy shook her head. “I shouldn’t have to explain this to a policeman. Yes, they all cost too much, and I can’t afford them, but I’ve worn them. They’re used. The stores can’t resell them, and I’m not unhappy with them—except for the price of course. I’m not going to lie.”
Ben stopped loading the car and looked at the ceiling of the garage. “I’ve found a good person, Lord. You don’t have to rain fire down on Sodom and Gomorrah.”
Trudy giggled. “And after all these go back and the chandelier comes down…”
“The interior design store is okay with that?” Ben tagged along behind her back into the house where Eleanor stacked things. Trudy couldn’t help but marvel at having such hard working, attractive help at her disposal.
“Yep, they’re even sending an electrician to re-hang the old one…which I found in a third floor bedroom late last night.”
“On the weekend?” Ben started gathering boxes.
“Yes. Can you believe it? No charge. They sold me the Chihuly vases, too and they’re all going back. They said all these are art pieces and they’re all originals. They’ll sell right away for more than I paid, so they don’t care at all. It’s art so it appreciates with age. The jewelry store is taking a bunch of jewelry I’ve never worn, too.”
Trudy carefully bagged a small stack of jewelry boxes. She wished she could dig up her sod and un-sift the beach. “Now, quit changing the subject and admit that I was right about a soft answer turning away wrath.”
“It is an ‘I told you so’? I knew it. That’s beneath you.” Ben balanced an armload of boxes marked Versace, Dior, Prada and other names Tru had been too foolish to pay attention to.
“You know, you saved me last night.”
Ben grinned at her. “Well, you weren’t exactly standing on a window ledge, you know. You were just mad.”
Trudy stopped and turned around. Ben almost ran into her. “Thank you. This isn’t an ‘I told you so’. This is a thank you.”
“I’m being nicer at the precinct, too.”
A smile bloomed on Trudy’s face. “How’s that working out?”
“Okay. Some of the guys are really giving me a hard time about it. Wanna know if I’ve got six months to live, did I win the lottery, did the doctor put me on Xanax, stuff like that. I may have to pound them to get them to stop. But I promise I’ll speak softly the whole time I’m doing it.”
Trudy couldn’t remember when she’d had so much fun with anybody. “It seems like I spend my whole life controlling my temper. Did you know that?”
“Get moving. Talk while you work.”
Trudy turned around.
From behind her, Ben said, “And you don’t work too hard controlling your temper around me. You yell at me all the time.”
Trudy jogged down the two shallow garage steps and, as she approached the open trunk, she settled the packages in the car and Ben tucked his in beside hers. Standing just inches apart, she wrinkled her nose. “Oh, I’m pretty nice to you sometimes.”
Ben’s eyes changed. She wouldn’t have noticed it if she hadn’t been watching him so closely.
Trudy froze and then she burned. Ben leaned down just as she reached up. The kiss felt so nice it scared her to death.
Trudy jumped back just as Ben slipped his arms around her waist. He let go.
Shaking her head, Trudy turned aside and studied the trunk but she didn’t see anything, she felt instead. Ben’s warmth and strength. Another place for her to hide.
“Ben, I’m sorry but…”
“No, that shouldn’t have happened. There’s no future in it and I shouldn’t have done it.”
Trudy frowned and turned to him. “I’m the one who did it and I apologize.”
Ben’s eyebrows scrunched
together. After glaring at her for a full minute he said, “Well, as long as we understand each other. I’m here to protect you, not get involved. It’s against regulations, plus you’re my teacher. You could be fired for something like this.”
Trudy’s temper snapped. “It’s not exactly like I’m a fifty-year-old professor and you’re some innocent eighteen-year-old willing to do anything to get an A, you know.”
“So, then it’s okay at Bella Vista Christian College for a teacher to get involved with a student?”
“Of course it’s not. And we’re not involved. I just…we had a moment of…” Trudy wanted to scream and she wasn’t sure why. She turned to the house and Ben caught her arm.
Pulled back around, she said, “What?”
“Say it.”
Trudy clenched her lips together.
Ben leaned closer. “We had a moment of what, Tru-Blu? Madness? Attraction? What would you call it?”
“I’d call it nothing. I’m planning to forget it.”
Ben leaned down and for a moment she wondered if he was going to kiss her again. And she wondered if she was going to let him.
When his nose almost touched hers, he said, “You’re a liar.”
Trudy backed up a step, in shock.
Ben reeled her back in. “A liar and a coward.”
“I am not.”
“Call it a mistake if you want.”
Trudy’s ears started burning. Her cheeks felt hot.
“But don’t call it nothing.”
“I…I’m not a liar.”
“You lie all the time, Tru-Blu. You lie when you give that soft answer back to people you want to belt. You lie when Eleanor and I decide your fate and you stand there and take it. I thought maybe you were coming around when you finally blew your stack last night, but now here you are lying again.”
“It’s not lying to be polite.”
“It is if you tell polite lies.”
Trudy wanted to deny it. She wanted to run. “I’m trying to live by a philosophy I believe in. Responding to evil with good doesn’t make you a liar. Trying to settle a fight without resorting to violence doesn’t make you a coward.”
“It’s made you one.”
“B…but you didn’t want that kiss any more than I did.”
Loving the Texas Lawman_A Texas Lawman Romantic Suspense Page 14
