by Lynda Trent
“Why?” Clare ground out. “Why!”
“I didn’t want you to find out about it like this. Regina told me you wouldn’t be here.”
“Why didn’t you call me?”
“I tried. You didn’t answer the phone. Every time I came by, Betty said you couldn’t be disturbed.”
Clare couldn’t deny that. Instead, she took another drink. “Then it’s true? You’re really marrying her?”
Ryan hesitated. There was no way to explain his reasons to Clare. “Yes. It’s true.”
“Why did you tell me you loved me, when you really wanted her? Why, in God’s name, did you do that to me?”
“I can’t explain. I meant everything I ever said to you, Clare. I never once lied to you.”
“I see. I’m good enough to be your mistress, but not your wife!”
“What the hell are you talking about? I asked you to marry me and you turned me down!”
“When? I did no such thing!” Clare gasped.
“Yes, you did! In the field the day we had that big argument!”
“That was a marriage proposal? I thought you just wanted me to follow you about the oil fields!”
He stared at her in shock. “Clare”
“So there you are!” Regina exclaimed as she swept into the room. “I declare, you’re hard to keep up with.” She came over and perched on his lap and kissed him in spite of his thunderous scowl. “You’re going to have to be careful of that after we’re married.”
“Get off me,” he said warningly.
Regina looked at him calculatingly, and moved to the arm of the chair. “Have you told Clare about my little investment, darling?” She turned her mirthless eyes toward the other woman. “I’m putting my money into your well. Ryan told me you lost, your biggest backer, and, well, I saw no sense in not going ahead. After all, Ryan says it’s a good investment and he certainly has my best interests in mind.”
Ryan glared at her, but she only smiled.
“He also has his best interests in mind as well. Don’t you darling?”
Clare stood and put her glass down. “If you’ll excuse me, I have to leave now.”
“So soon? I wanted to ask your opinion about having new linens monogrammed. As an artist, I thought you’d have some really unique idea, perhaps using the fact that Ryan and I have the same initials… or will have.”
Anger flashed in Clare’s eyes. “I have a very unique suggestion about your linens, Regina, but it doesn’t involve a monogram.”
Regina gasped and pressed her hand to the area where she presumed her heart lay.
When Clare reached the door, Regina called after her, “By the way, you really shouldn’t closet yourself away with my fianc?. It doesn’t help your reputation any. A single girl can’t be too careful in a small town.”
Clare turned and said smoothly, “Don’t worry, Regina. I won’t try to move in on what you’ve clearly defined as your territory. I never share. Not when it’s something worthwhile.” With a frigid smile, Clare left.
“What was she talking about?” Ryan demanded. “What have you told her?”
“Nothing, really. She wasn’t talking about you at all.”
“What do you mean?” Ryan grabbed her and his fingers bruised her arm.
“Her husband had a crush on me! Could I help that?”
He pushed her from him. “You’re despicable!”
“Careful, darling,” she warned, “or I’ll take my money out of that well so fast you won’t know which way it went! And your precious Clare will be disgraced!”
He shoved her into a chair and placed his large hands on the arms, cornering her. Not two inches from her face, he growled, “Careful, Regina. I won’t be pushed or bullied or frightened. I’m doing this for Clare’s sake, but don’t overplay your hand. I can ruin your reputation as easily as you can ruin hers, so don’t expect me to dance to your tune. We have an agreement, but it doesn’t include hurting Clare. Understand?” His voice was low and steady, and frighteningly dangerous.
Regina shrank back but snarled, “The same goes for you. I can crush her like a peanut shell, so don’t break our bargain. You’re mine!”
Sounds of the distant party wafted into the silence-filled room.
Go tell your friends goodby,” he said, straightening up. “I’m driving away in three minutes. With or without you.”
“But we just arrived! What can I tell Marla?”
“You’ll think of something,” he said as he left the room.
Regina had no doubts as to whether he meant it, and she hurried to find her hostess. She paid no attention to the burly man who was talking to Tom, but he followed her movements with his expressionless green eyes, and he saw the brilliant flash of her new diamond ring. Neal Thorndyke had had no inkling that Regina had become engaged to Ryan.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Clare sat the large tin wash tub down on her outside patio and straightened her back painfully. Eldon had said he’d do it, but he had other chores to see to. She went back to her car for the bags of ice.
For months she’d put off having a party because of the expense involved. She made just enough money to five from month to month, but not nearly enough to buy wine and bourbon for the sort of evening out her friends had come to expect. Although she knew she was earning the name of miser for herself, she could do nothing about it.
Then, the week before, she had received a substantial check from the New Orleans gallery: Her two paintings had sold! The windfall allowed her to bring her electricity bill up to date, with some left over.
The surplus, however, was stiff not enough to hire a bartender and extra maids, and supply drinks for the people she wanted to invite. Despondently, Clare had sat in front of her television and tried to figure a way to hold her own place in the demanding social structure. A commercial had come to her rescue.
As two stereotyped patrolmen worried over the latest Lone
Star beer theft by the dread “giant armadillo,” Clare had sat up and watched more closely. The mythical “giant armadillo” had become a familiar byword every place Lone Star beer was sold, and had probably prompted Texas’ unofficial adoption of the small animal as its state mammal. The seed of an inspiration took root in her mind.
Now, as Clare emptied the ice into the tub, she smiled. Next she added bottle after bottle of Lone Star beer. Her party’s theme was a Giant Armadillo Entrapment. The beer was “bait” and the dress was boots and jeans. Eldon had put bales of hay around the patio for seating, and Clare had persuaded three boys from the college to supply the western musiccheap. They had agreed to play for beer, fifteen dollars each and her written recommendation as a boost for other gigs.
She wrapped a quilt around and over the top of the tub to hold in the cold and, after a long deliberation, went back to her car. As she drove along the road to her farm, she tried to sort out her thoughts. Now that it was too late, she was all too aware that she loved Ryan. At least, Clare comforted herself, she’d never let him know. He had played her false, but she still had her love as a secret. Somehow this held little comfort.
She reached the rig just as the shift was changing. Across the clearing, Ryan watched her park beside the old barn, then he walked over to her car. Clare got out and waited for him to come closer.
“Ryan, this isn’t easy for me to say. Please understand. As you know, my party is tonight.”
He nodded, not trusting himself to speak. She looked so beautiful and so vulnerable. So determined to make the best of the situation, even though her pain and loneliness were so obvious.
“I… I’d rather you and Regina didn’t come. I know I invited you, but, well, I just can’t go through with it. You and ISeeing you with her bothers me too much.”
“I understand.”
“It’s not that I don’t want you to be happy… I do!… but Regina we’ve never liked each other. Today it dawned on me that I don’t have to see her if I don’t want to. Not at my own party, at least!” She pa
used for breath. “I’ve never taken back an invitation before, and I’m terribly embarrassed.”
“Don’t be. As a matter of fact, we can’t come anyway.” Ryan spoke the lie smoothly though the “we” still felt bitter in his mouth.
Clare’s dark eyes held so much hurt that he longed to take her in his arms. But, of course, that was impossible. Instead, he said gruffly, “The well is coming along nicely now. The truckload of pipe will be here any day now. We should hit oil depth in another mouth.”
She tried to smile. How meaningless it all was now that she had lost her love. “Good. I have to go or I won’t be on time for my own party. Thanks for understanding.”
“Sure.” He reached out his hand but dropped it again before he touched her.
Quickly, Clare got in her car and drove away.
She showered and dressed in her best jeans, buttoning a madras plaid shirt that emphasized her slender waist and perfectly molded her full breasts. Instead of putting her hair up, she braided it in a thick rope over one shoulder and fastened it with a leather thong. As she pulled on her hand-stitched boots, she heard the doorbell ring.
Betty opened the door for Cliff Anderson, who looked determinedly western and very uncomfortable in his new jeans. Clare forced herself to smile; she had forgotten she’d invited him.
“Cliff! I’m so glad you could come. Let’s go into the back. You’re the first to arrive.” She linked her arm with his and led him onto the porch.
The sun was hanging low over the pines, tinting the sky. In the shrubbery, a cricket sang and a lightning bug flashed intermittently in the lengthening shadows. The white porch and balcony took on a purple hue in the fading light.
“You look lovely,” he said as he patted her small hand that lay in the crook of his elbow.
“Thank you. You look nice, too. And very different from your usual attire.”
He smiled. “I like to go casual from time to time. It gives me a chance to relax.” He walked stiffly, his movements belying his words.
Clare suppressed a smile. “Look, there’re Tom and Marla.”
” I know about the giant armadillo. I know about the giant armadillo,” Maria chimed, mimicking the beer commercial as
they came across the back lawn. Only when she wore the most formal of dresses and the highest of heels did Maria forsake the grass for the sidewalk. “This is a darling idea! I wish I’d thought of it first!”
Clare pulled the quilt off the tub. “Help yourself. The beer’s cold and the boys are ready to play.” The plaintive strains of “San Antonio Rose” sweetened the night as the backyard lights came on.
“It’s good seeing you, stranger,” Maria said as she hugged Cliff. “I didn’t know you had come to town.”
Clare glanced at Cliff. She had assumed he was staying at their house as he usually did when he was in Kilgore.
“I’m going back to Dallas tomorrow. You ought to get that lazy husband of yours to bring you to a real city sometimes.”
“Yeah, Tom, how about it?” Marla teased.
Clare shrugged. Cliff probably had an early appointment and didn’t want to disrupt the Gentrys with a pre-dawn departure. He must have taken a room at the Community Inn.
As the guests trickled in and the small band toned its music to a volume more suited to an intimate gathering than to an acid rock festival, Clare began to relax. The novel idea of a Giant Armadillo Entrapment party was unique enough that even the most dedicated drinkers never thought to ask for anything stronger… and far more expensive. Now and then there was a “sighting” of the armadillo lurking in the azalea hedge or beyond the fern-encompassed lagoon.
Dyna, in a pair of denims as new and as uncomfortable as Cliff’s, expounded on Clare’s originality in glowing terms. Clare had no doubt that her party would be written up in the Sunday edition of the paper as the fête champere of the season.
While Dyna cooed over the “authentic” hay bales and sipped from her bottle of beer as if it were champagne, Clare smiled smugly. Her social status had taken a giant stride upward. She was so engrossed in Dyna’s praises that she jumped when she felt a man’s arm slip around her shoulder.
“I agree with everything she says,” Cliff said, hugging her. “Your party is a roaring success.” He left his arm proprietarily around her.
Clare moved away slightly. “Cliff, this is Dyna. She has the most marvelous stories about her twins. Dyna, do tell Cliff about the time they accidentally locked their chemistry teacher in the storage closet.”
This was all the encouragement Dyna needed, and Clare managed to escape Cliff. It wasn’t that she found him unattractive, far from it. But his touch had made her feel edgy. She didn’t want him to take that liberty again.
Effortlessly, Clare turned a small band of armadillo hunters back toward the party and away from the path that led to her prospering vegetable garden. Soon the first of her produce would be ripe, and she had no intention of explaining to anyone why she’d plowed up a formal yew maze that was the envy of several of her friends. No one in the garden club would ever believe she might have done it in a moment of back-to-basics passion. Vegetables were planted by farmers’ wives; roses and yew hedges by society ladies with gardeners. There were virtually no exceptions. Clare felt it would be easier to hide the garden than to explain her improbable actions.
When Clare was mingling with her guests, she was surprised to overhear Cliff coupling her name with his in an anecdote. True, she had been in the scene he was describing, but his words implied a bond between them that didn’t exist. Frowning slightly, she moved away.
The party progressed well. No one got drunk and jumped in the pool, no one discovered her secret vegetable garden, no one trounced her marigolds into the ground. All in all, it was better than she had expected. When the bulk of guests began to leave, Clare was exhausted but happy. Even without Elliot to dominate her and to countermand her orders, Clare’s party had been a success.
Only three people remained, and Clare joined them around the emptied wash tub.
“This has been so much fun!” Maria exclaimed. “God, I thought I’d die when Mildred told that joke about the man who found the mermaid!”
Tom chuckled appreciatively. “I’ve got to remember that one to tell at the club.”
That may be where she heard it,” Cliff grinned. “I doubt that one came from the church sewing circle.”
There was nothing in his tone to give offense, but Clare felt as if her sex had somehow been put down. “You might be surprised, Cliff,” she said. “You don’t know how raunchy we are when men aren’t around.”
He pulled her to him. “I’ll bet you are,” he said intimately. “Come sit down and tell Tom about the time we sold those paintings to that client from Venezuela.” He turned to his friend. “Clare was staying in the Hyatt-Regency and, tell him, honey. You do it so well.”
“Honey” stared at him as if he had lost his mind. “We sold some paintings to a man from Venezuela,” she parroted.
Marla caught Clare’s coolness and nudged her husband. “We’d better go, sweets. I’m asleep on my feet all of a sudden.”
“In a minute,” Tom responded. “What happened?”
“Nothing. He’s going to hang them in some house on top of a mountain. I don’t know what Cliff’s referring to.”
This time, even Tom heard the remoteness in Clare’s voice. “Yeah. Well, I’m beat, too. It’s been a long day. How about it, Cliff? Need a bunk for the night? ” Marla dug her elbow into Tom’s ribs.
“No,” Cliff said as he snaked his arm around Clare’s shoulder. “I have a place to stay.”
Marla exchanged a quick look with Clare, saw her friends’s startled anger, and swung Tom around and propelled him toward the gap in the back hedge. “See you tomorrow, Clare,” she called over her shoulder.
Clare shrugged off Cliff’s arm and demanded, “What’s gotten into you?”
“Nothing, baby. I just thought they’d never get around to leaving.” H
e tried to pull her to him. “Let’s go inside. The night is getting damp.”
Clare put her hands on his chest and pushed him firmly away. “Somehow I get the feeling that you’re taking an awful lot for granted. Where do you think you’re staying tonight?”
“Here, of course. With you.”
“Here! Where did you get an idea like that?”
“From you! After all, you invited me.”
“I asked you to the party, Cliff. I never suggested that we have a slumber party afterward!”
He stared down at her in genuine surprise. “I’m sorry. I thought… God, I feel like a fool.”
With a sigh, Clare put her hands on his shoulders. “No,
Cliff. It was just a misunderstanding. I can see now where I must have left the wrong impression. I’m sorry.”
He put his arms around her waist. “You can still change your mind,” he said hopefully as he bent his and kissed her.
Clare was at first shocked, but then thought wryly, why not? Maybe I can learn to respond to him if I try. If she could teach herself to love him, even a little, she could ease the aching void that Ryan had left in her life. Clare kissed Cliff back and he darted his tongue into her warm mouth. His lips crushed hers and she felt smothered by his rough desire. After a minute, she pulled away.
“No, Cliff. I’m sorry, but I just don’t feel that way about you. You’re my friend and you’ve done wonders for my career, but I don’t love you.” Her basic honesty prevented her from playing games with anyone’s feelings, especially those of a man like Cliff, whom she liked and respected as a friend.
“You don’t have to love me to go to bed with me,” he protested. “If it helps any, I don’t love you, either.”
