Slow Waltz Across Texas

by Peggy Moreland

  “Why?” she asked, her voice trembling. “Tell me why you want me to come home with you, Clayton?”

  He reared back to stare at her, then frowned and glanced away, avoiding her gaze. “Because you belong there,” he said gruffly. “It’s our home.”

  She stared at his profile, ice slowly spilling through her veins as she realized too late what she’d done. She’d welcomed him into her bed, exposed her heart. And he’d broken it all over again.

  The moisture that filled her eyes spilled over her lashes as she rolled away from him. “No,” she said, her voice thick with tears. “I’m not going home with you.”

  Stunned, Clayton pushed himself to an elbow, watching as she rose from the bed and stooped to pick up her nightgown from the floor.

  “Why?” he asked as she headed for the adjoining bath. “You still want me. You can’t deny that you do.”

  She stopped in the doorway and turned, one hand on the door, the other clutching the nightgown to her breasts, her heart breaking a little more. “No, I won’t deny that I still want you,” she said, tears streaming down her face. “But then, sex was never our problem, was it?” Her breath hitched painfully, and she closed the door between them, not wanting him to see how much he’d hurt her.

  Clayton heard the lock turn, then lunged to his feet and charged for the door. He pounded a fist against it. “Rena! Open the door!” he shouted. “Don’t lock me out. Talk to me. Please,” he cried desperately, pressing his fist against the panel of wood, “just open the door and talk to me. We can work this out.”

  He lifted his fist to pound again, but whirled at the sound of another fist hitting the bedroom door across the room.

  “Rena!” he heard her father yell from the other side of the locked door. “What’s going on in there? Are you all right? Do you want me to call the police?”

  Clayton dropped his forehead against the bathroom door, feeling the frustration rising, the anger. The tears.

  “Rena!” her father shouted again. “Is Clayton in there? Has he hurt you? I’m calling the police!”

  Clayton slowly lifted his head to stare at the door Rena had closed between them and laid a palm against the unrelenting wood, as if to touch her. “I’m coming back,” he whispered. “I’m coming back for you and the kids. And I’m taking you back home where you belong.”

  He heard his mother-in-law’s shrill voice join with that of his father-in-law’s, and knew his in-laws wouldn’t hesitate to call the police. They’d do anything to get rid of him.

  Hoping to spare Rena that last humiliation, he dragged the back of his hand across his eyes and grabbed his jeans from the floor. He jerked them on, then snatched up his shirt and socks. With a last wistful glance at the bathroom door, he turned for the window and the roof beyond.

  “Hi, Daddy!”

  At the sound of his daughter’s cheerful voice, Clayton tightened his fingers around the receiver, his heart squeezing in his chest. “Mornin’, shortcake. Put Mommy on the phone, okay?”

  “She’s still asleep.”

  Clayton frowned, glancing at his watch. “Well, would you wake her up for me? Tell her Daddy needs to talk to her.”

  “I— Wait, Nonnie!” Brittany cried. “I’m talking to my daddy.”

  There was a fumbling sound and Clayton could hear Brittany’s muffled complaint before his mother-in-law’s voice came across the line.

  “What do you want, Clayton?” she asked crisply.

  Clayton clenched his teeth. “I want to talk to my wife.”

  “She’s resting and I refuse to wake her. She had a very emotional night,” she added, the accusation in her tone letting Clayton know who she blamed for her daughter’s current state of exhaustion.

  “Then give her a message. Tell her that I’ve gone to a rodeo in South Dakota. But tell her I’m coming back at the end of the week.”

  “Yes, I’ll tell her.”

  Before he could say more, there was a click and the line went dead. Clayton slammed down the receiver, swearing.

  “That’s it,” he muttered darkly. As soon as he’d competed in the South Dakota rodeo, he was heading straight back to Oklahoma. And this time, he was taking Rena and the kids back to Texas. He wasn’t going to allow his in-laws to interfere in his marriage any longer.

  And he wasn’t going to allow them to find Rena a replacement for him.

  Rena sat opposite her mother at the breakfast table, hiding behind the morning newspaper, hoping that in doing so, she could thwart any attempt by her mother to broach the topic of Clayton’s late-night visit to her parents’ home.

  “Imagine him breaking into our home in the middle of the night like some robber.”

  Gritting her teeth at her mother’s superior tone, Rena gave the pages of the paper a firm snap, determined to ignore her.

  “Sometimes, Rena, I wonder what possessed you to marry that man.”

  Rena shot her mother a quelling look, tipping her head discreetly toward the twins.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” her mother said, dismissing Rena’s silent warning with a wave of her hand. “It isn’t as if the children aren’t aware of their father’s shortcomings.”

  “Mother,” Rena warned.

  “What’s shortcomings mean?” Brittany asked.

  “Eat your cereal, Brittany,” Rena ordered, then turned back to her mother. “I would appreciate it if you would refrain from making comments like that in front of my children.”

  “Comments like what? I merely said—”

  “I know what you said, Mother. It isn’t necessary to repeat it.”

  “Fine,” Gloria said with an indignant sniff. “But I am entitled to my opinions, you know.”

  “Yes, but you don’t need to air them in front of little ears.”

  “That’s us,” Brittany whispered to Brandon.

  “Brittany!” Rena cried in frustration. “I told you to eat your cereal.”

  “Now look what you’ve done,” her mother chided when tears swelled in Brittany’s eyes. “You’ve made the poor dear cry.” She rose from her chair and plucked Brittany from her booster. “There, there, snookums,” she soothed, cradling the child’s cheek against hers as she swayed back and forth. “You don’t have to eat that nasty old cereal, if you don’t want to.”

  “Yes, she does,” Rena said furiously and stood, intending to return her daughter to her booster.

  But Gloria turned away, preventing Rena from taking her granddaughter from her. “Not in Nonnie’s house, she doesn’t,” she snapped, then puckered her lips and cooed to Brittany, “Nonnie knows what’s best for her little girl, doesn’t she, snookums?”

  “That’s it,” Rena muttered angrily and threw her napkin down on the table. “We’re leaving.”

  Gloria spun, her mouth dropping open. “What? But you said you were staying until Sunday! You can’t leave now!”

  “Oh, yes, I can,” Rena told her. “You can’t tell me what to do anymore, Mother. I’m not a child.”

  “As if you ever listened to me even then,” her mother returned spitefully. “If you had, you wouldn’t have married Clayton in the first place. You would have married someone more suitable, someone of your own class. Someone like Bill. Not that shiftless cowboy who hasn’t the intelligence or the ambition to do anything but rope calves. With a little encouragement from you, you could have Bill. I know you could. And he would make a much better husband for you and father for these children.”

  Brittany lifted her head from her grandmother’s shoulder to peer tearfully at her mother. “I don’t want Bill to be my daddy,” she sobbed pitifully. “I want my real daddy.”

  Shaking with anger, Rena snatched Brittany from her mother’s arms and shifted her to her hip. “Don’t worry, sweetheart,” she told her daughter as she leaned to scoop a wide-eyed Brandon from his booster and onto her opposite hip. “Your daddy will always be your daddy, no matter what.”

  Her hands still trembling with rage, Rena dialed the number of the mot
el where Clayton was staying, then tucked the receiver between shoulder and ear and continued to pack.

  “Wayfarer Inn. How may I direct your call?”

  “Clayton Rankin, please,” Rena requested as she scooped her toiletries from the vanity and into her makeup bag.

  “I’m sorry,” the operator said after a moment. “Mr. Rankin has already checked out.”

  The makeup bag slipped from Rena’s fingers. “Checked out?” she asked in surprise. “Are you certain?”

  “Yes. He checked out early this morning.”

  Suddenly feeling weak, Rena sank to her knees. “Did…did he leave any messages?”

  “No, I’m sorry. Is there anything else I can help you with?”

  Rena shook her head. “No,” she said slowly. “But thank you.”

  She gulped back a sob as she pressed the button to disconnect.

  Clayton had left without even saying goodbye.

  Sniffling, she stooped to rake the spilled toiletries back into her bag. The tears pushed harder against her throat when she saw the packet of birth control pills lying on the floor. Picking it up, she sank back on her heels, remembering the previous night of passion with Clayton.

  She sniffled again and shoved the packet deep into her makeup bag.

  Well, at least this time she wouldn’t have to worry about getting pregnant, she reflected miserably.

  But having Clayton’s children was never the problem. Winning his love was.

  Five days later, and several thousand dollars richer, Clayton returned to Tulsa, having firmed up his decision while he was away.

  He was packing up his wife and kids and taking them home to their ranch in Texas.

  He knew that Rena would pitch a fit when he told her to load up the kids, that he was taking them all home, but he didn’t see any other way for them to resolve whatever problems she thought they had with their marriage unless they returned home and to neutral ground. He sure as hell hadn’t been able to discover her grievances with him when he’d been in Tulsa before. But he suspected that part of the problem, if not all of it, was due to her parents’ interference. They were so busy filling her mind with his inadequacies and parading possible replacements past her that he didn’t stand a chance of talking to his wife, much less working out any problems with her. Not as long as she remained in Tulsa and within her parents’ influence.

  And he sure as hell wasn’t going to sit quietly by and allow his in-laws to squeeze him right out of his family’s lives. Not without first putting up one hell of a fight.

  Approaching the Palmers’ home, he started to pull his truck and horse trailer to the curb, knowing how much his mother-in-law detested him parking his vehicle on her driveway, then muttered, “To hell with her,” and steered his truck onto the curved drive, coming to a stop directly opposite the front door.

  After jumping down from his truck, he strode to the side of the trailer and to the open window where Easy’s head appeared. “If you feel the call of nature,” he murmured to his horse as he reached to scratch the animal between the ears, “dump a load out the window.”

  Chuckling at the image of Mrs. Palmer’s face, if Easy were to manage to soil her pristine drive, he gave the horse a final pat and jogged for the door. After punching the doorbell, he shifted impatiently from one foot to the other, praying Rena would answer the door and not her mother.

  But when the door opened, it was Mrs. Carson, the Palmers’ housekeeper who appeared.

  “Clayton!” she said in surprise. “What are you doing here?”

  “I came to see Rena. Would you get her for me?”

  Mrs. Carson glanced nervously over her shoulder, then stepped out onto the porch. “She’s not here,” she said in a low voice.

  “Where is she?”

  “Gone.”

  “Gone!” he repeated in surprise.

  “Yes. She packed up the children several days ago and left.”

  Unaware that Rena had been planning on leaving her parents’ home, Clayton could only stare.

  “I gather that she and her parents had words,” Mrs. Carson confided, nervously wringing her hands. “Mrs. Palmer has been in her room ever since, suffering from one of her migraines.”

  Clayton swore under his breath, angry with himself for letting his in-laws chase him off before he’d had a chance to finish his discussion with Rena. “Do you know where she was headed?”

  Mrs. Carson caught her lower lip between her teeth and glanced over her shoulder again and into the house. She stared a moment, then squared her shoulders and turned back to face Clayton. “Salado. I saw the address on a piece of paper lying on Mr. Palmer’s desk.”

  “Salado? Who does she know in Salado?”

  “I’m not sure, but I remember the address. Box 19, Ranch Road 12.”

  Grateful for the information—information that he was sure would get Mrs. Carson fired if the Palmers ever found out she’d shared it with Clayton—he caught her hand in his and squeezed. “Thanks, Mrs. Carson.”

  Sniffing, the woman tipped up her chin. “A man has a right to know where his family is.” She flapped a hand at him, shooing him away. “Go on,” she urged. “Go after her. Rena needs you.”

  Praying that what the housekeeper said was true, impulsively Clayton dropped a kiss on her wrinkled cheek. “I hope so, Mrs. Carson. I sure hope so,” he said again, then turned and loped down the steps.

  Four

  It took Clayton a little more than six hours to make the drive from Tulsa to Salado…six hours in which to work up a pretty good steam.

  How the hell were he and Rena supposed to work out whatever problems she had with their marriage, he asked himself, if she kept running away every time he got near her or pressed her for answers?

  “Making me chase her all the way to Oklahoma and back,” he muttered angrily as he took the Salado exit off Interstate 35. “Locking herself in the bathroom and refusing to come out and talk to me? What the hell kind of game is she playing, anyway?”

  Well, she could damn well dance him a slow waltz all the way across Texas, he told himself as he saw a sign indicating that Ranch Road 12 lay a quarter of a mile ahead, but he wasn’t giving up. He’d chase her to hell and back, if that’s what it took to save his marriage.

  Unsure where he was going—or how he’d keep himself from strangling Rena when he arrived—he made the turn onto Ranch Road 12, scanning the numbers on the mailboxes as he drove down the two-lane country road.

  He passed right by the mailbox with 19 hand-painted on its side before he could make out the weathered numbers, and had to reverse in order to make the turn onto the long, potholed drive lined by towering cedars.

  Frowning at the old two-story house that came into view, he wondered if he’d read the address correctly. But then he saw Rena’s Lincoln Navigator parked beneath a tree beside the house and knew that this had to be the right place. Parking his truck alongside his wife’s SUV, he cut a glance toward the house, his frown deepening. A couple of sheets of tin were missing from the steep roof of the two-story stone structure, and the shutters that flanked the front windows hung at odd angles and flapped in a light afternoon breeze. What the hell was Rena doing in a place like this? he asked himself irritably. The house looked as if it had been abandoned for years!

  Prepared to give his runaway wife a piece of his mind for leading him on this wild-goose chase across two states and back, he opened the door to his truck and jumped to the ground. Ramming his hat down firmly on his head, he headed for the front porch and the sagging screen door. He rapped twice, listening as he squinted to peer through the rusted screen, then called out, “Rena!” when he didn’t hear a reply.

  Still not hearing a response, he spun on his heel and looked around, scowling, but saw no sign of life and heard no sound, other than the chirping of birds roosting high in the live oak trees that shaded the house.

  Sure that his family had to be somewhere nearby, he crossed to the edge of the porch, braced a hand on the railin
g and vaulted over, then marched to the rear of the house. And that’s where he found the twins, both with their backs to him and their heads shoved into the open doorway of a small shed.

  He quickened his step and yelled, “Brittany! Brandon!”

  They jumped, then turned, their eyes wide with surprise as they peered up at him.

  “What are you kids doing?”

  Brittany grinned up at him. “Hi, Daddy. We’re watching Mommy work,” she informed him in that matter-of-fact way of hers, then turned to poke her head inside the shed again.

  Wondering what in the world Rena could be doing inside the shed, Clayton braced a hand against the weathered door frame and leaned to peer over his children’s heads. What he saw made his jaw sag. If Brittany hadn’t told him it was her mother inside the shed, he would never have recognized the woman kneeling on the hard-packed ground. Rena—his debutante, high-society wife, who always looked as if she’d just stepped off the page of some glossy fashion magazine cover—had a bandanna tied around her head and was wearing an old, stained shirt, her knees poking through the holes of a pair of threadbare jeans. He watched her fight with a wrench almost twice the size of her hand for a good ten seconds before he managed to find his voice. “Rena?”

  She dragged a wrist across her damp forehead, leaving a streak of black grease behind, before turning to frown at him. “What are you doing here?” she muttered resentfully.

  “What are you doing here?” he shot back.

  “I live here.”

  “Since when?”

  “Since five days ago, although I bought the place long before that.” She tossed the wrench aside and rose to face him. “But don’t worry. I didn’t use your money to purchase the property. I used the inheritance Grandmother Palmer left to me.”

  Clayton curled the hand he held against the door frame into a fist. “I wasn’t worried about how you paid for it,” he growled. “But I am wondering why you felt the need to buy a house in Salado, when you already have a home not much more than a hour’s drive from here.”