She halted and focused upon the person in front of her.
“You nearly ran into me,” Rick Wallace said, his brown eyes alight with respect and kindness.
“Oh, I’m so sorry. I was distracted,” Eddi breathed and resisted the urge to dash another glare toward Dave.
“Yes, I noticed.” Rick eyed the stage as if he were observing a nest of vipers.
Eddi witnessed an identical expression last night when Dave spotted Rick. A new realization posed itself upon the horizon of her mind. At some point in their lives, Rick and Dave must have crossed paths, and neither of them enjoyed the encounter.
All Eddi could think of was how much more agreeable Rick was than Dave. Both men had rich brown eyes. Both men were dark-complected with hair the color of polished walnut. Both were tall. Admittedly, Dave was by far the better looking.
But looks aren’t everything, she thought. Neither is money.
While Rick made ends meet on a policeman’s salary, Dave probably owned enough loot to buy all of Dallas. Eddi would choose a man of character over a man with money any day. Rick probably possessed more character than Dave ever would.
“Last night Mrs. DeBloom asked everyone to tour the rest of the house if they wanted,” Eddi said with an inviting grin. “She’s been doing a lot of remodeling and redecorating, and I think she’s proud of her work.”
“I would be, too,” Rick agreed and scanned the foyer. “This is a showplace. I’d never be able to afford it, that’s for sure.”
“Really.” Eddi motioned toward the curved staircase. “Want to go on the grand tour with me?” she asked.
“I thought you’d never ask,” Rick said with a dimpled smile.
Eddi surreptitiously glimpsed her sister talking with André. With his head bent toward Linda, André looked as if he were thinking of kissing her. Linda leaned toward him and didn’t attempt to hide her attraction—despite the crowd.
They did make a striking couple with their tans and fair hair. While André still had some maturing to do, he was leagues better than some of the men Linda had dragged home. Eddi could only hope her younger sister was finally beginning to grow up.
When Linda placed a hand on the side of André’s face and gurgled with laughter, Eddi dashed aside any reservations about talking to Rick. Hopefully Rick would enjoy her company tonight as much as Eddi did his.
Linda’s attention drifted from André as she noticed Eddi enticing Rick up the stairway. She frowned. Eddi had also monopolized Rick during most of the picnic last night. She was obviously wasting no time continuing the act tonight.
A hard burn erupted in Linda’s gut. Rick is my guest, not Eddi’s! she thought. This is like ninth grade all over again!
Five years ago, Linda had arrived home from school one Friday, her boyfriend Brian in tow, only to discover Eddi home from college. Linda and Brian had planned to attend the high school football game together, but Brian coerced her into hanging out at her house instead. By eight o’clock, Brian had spent the majority of the evening flirting with Eddi, and Linda understood the real reason Brian wanted to stay home.
As Eddi and Rick paused halfway up the stairs, Linda gritted her teeth. An insecure urge insisted she go to the bathroom and double-check her appearance. Her mother had always insisted she was much cuter than Eddi, but Linda still worried—especially when, even after hinting that he’d like to spend the night with her, Rick spent most of his time looking at Eddi.
She refocused upon André and tried to shape her stiff lips into a smile. He droned on about some motorcycle he owned back in Houston. Linda attempted to appear interested while keeping tabs on Eddi and Rick from the corner of her eyes. André’s angular face, tanned and lean, proved the perfect compliment for his shocking blue eyes. Even though André was better looking than Rick, even though he and Linda had far more in common, as of now she was beginning to prefer Rick.
She allowed her gaze to casually drift past André to the top of the stairs where Eddi and Rick turned a corner and disappeared. The only thing that remained was Eddi’s melodious laugh drifting down the stairway.
The burn in Linda’s midsection exploded into an inferno. “Excuse me, André,” Linda mumbled and shifted her shoulder bag. “I need to go to the restroom.”
“Oh, sure,” André said and stepped aside.
Linda rushed past him and a knot of visitors gushing over the mansion’s beauty. She glowered straight ahead, beginning to hate this place.
She entered the bathroom left of the stairway and snapped the door shut. The smell of the peach candle flickering on the cabinet reminded her of the candles Eddi always burned in her room before she left home. Linda blew out the candle and stuck it inside a door under the sink.
She gazed into the oval mirror. Her strawberry blond hair, usually straight and lifeless, now hung around her face in golden waves, thanks to a recent blow-out at the salon. The perfect finish of designer cosmetics enhanced her faint tan and made her nearly as pretty as Jenny—and definitely more attractive than Eddi. Her cosmetician suggested that Linda dot the mole at the corner of her mouth with some black eye pencil, which added a seductive touch to her whole look.
Linda dug through her purse and pulled out her cosmetic pouch. She extracted a red lip gloss and slathered on a thick layer. The gloss proved the perfect match for her and enhanced the full curve of her lips. She dropped the lip color back into her purse and retrieved a tiny bottle of Giorgio. Linda added one light mist to her neck and welcomed the scent over the peach candle’s odor.
She deposited the perfume in her purse and removed one more item from the inside pocket—her flask of courage. Linda unscrewed the lid and poured a generous dose of the whiskey into her mouth. She swallowed hard and winced. The wad of liquid slipped down her throat like a hot coal, warming her stomach with a daring boost.
Linda set the whiskey aside and eyed the buttons on the front of her snug blouse. With a calculating smile, she unfastened the top three. The material slid away to reveal a hint of cleavage.
“Rick Wallace,” she whispered. “I’m coming upstairs for you now. By the time we get back to Houston, you won’t even remember Eddi’s name.”
Eleven
As Eddi and Rick ascended the second floor, his admiring smile and unaffected air nearly made her forget Dave’s rude behavior. The tension began to ease from Eddi, and she didn’t protest when Rick placed his hand in the small of her back.
“Let’s go into this room,” he said and nudged her through an ajar door.
They stepped into a sizable bedroom, filled with exquisite antiques and scented with a spicy aroma that reminded Eddi of a forest dripping rain. The room stretched as far as a sitting area near a pair of French doors that opened onto a balcony. The final rays of evening sunlight caressed the decor schemes of rust and emerald and black. A leopard-print comforter hugged the queen-sized poster bed that featured rich brown gauze instead of a canopy.
“This is gorgeous,” Eddi breathed and pivoted to examine the room.
“Yes, lovely,” Rick mumbled with a lusty undertone.
At first, Eddi suspected Rick wasn’t talking about the room at all, but about her. Such a come-on would be in line with the men Linda normally brought home, but Eddi had begun to expect more of Rick. The hair on her arms prickled, and she doubted the wisdom of entering a bedroom with her new acquaintance. Eddi darted him a keen glance. Rick’s attention was riveted to the French windows. He walked across the area rug toward the doors, seemingly unaware of Eddi’s presence.
Finally, Rick motioned to her and pointed toward the windows. “Did you notice this view?” he asked.
Eddi moved toward him and dismissed her moment of caution. Rick was beyond doubt every bit as honorable as she had assumed him to be. The lusty undercurrent must have been solely the product of her imagination. Eddi had always gone with her gut instincts when it came to men. While she didn’t consider herself infallible, her first impressions were often the most accurate.
That certainly had been the case with Dave Davidson. From their first meeting, Eddi had tagged him as someone who perhaps thought more highly of himself than he ought. While her initial judgment had wavered in the face of her attraction for him, it had proven to be the correct assumption.
Rick, on the other hand, seemed to be everything Dave could never be—kind, courteous, a true gentleman who’d never bait a woman to appease some twisted need for verbal fighting.
Eddi paused beside Rick and gazed upon a sky too spectacular for any artist’s brush. The indigo sky stretched toward a fiery ball dipping toward the east Texas hills. Pink clouds sprinkled with gold dust floated against a teal canvas that dazzled the mind and captured the soul.
“Get a load of that!” Rick exclaimed.
“Wow!” Eddi breathed. “The mansion is great, but—”
“No decorator could ever match what God can do with the sky,” Rick finished.
Surprised at his reference to the holy, Eddi examined Rick’s profile.
He faced her and tilted his head as if posing a silent question. “Did something I say bother you?”
“No,” Eddi said. “I was just . . . uh . . .” she slipped her hands into her pants pockets, “ . . . impressed, I guess, that you mentioned God.”
“Oh?”
“Yes, you see, He’s very important to me, and I—”
“And well He should be.” Rick nodded and crossed his arms. “He’s always been important to me. Since childhood. I’ve longed to be in the ministry, even.”
“Oh?” Eddi asked. “But you became a policeman instead?”
“Well, yes.” Rick’s shoulders sagged, and he nudged at the thick piled rug with his loafer.
A heavy silence settled upon the room—a silence that wrapped Eddi in a pall of repression. “So that wasn’t your first choice?” Eddi observed.
“No.” The gloomy slant of Rick’s features hinted at years of disillusionment.
Eddi debated whether or not to prime Rick for more information. She certainly didn’t want to come across like an interrogating lawyer, yet her curiosity proved nearly too intense for silence.
“How long have you known Dave Davidson?” Rick asked.
“What?” Eddi tried to make sense of the rapid change of subject.
“Dave Davidson—” Rick repeated. “How long have you known him?”
“Not long,” Eddi admitted. “About six months. I met him when I moved to London. Why?”
“He’s my cousin—or rather, my foster cousin, I guess you could say.”
“What?” Eddi blurted.
Rick nodded. “Amazing, isn’t it, how paths can cross in our lives.”
“No kidding!” Eddi glanced toward the sky once more. The clouds, once pink, were taking on a purple hue. Instead of again falling into rapt admiration, Eddi’s mind raced with the bits of news Rick was supplying. She finally came to the conclusion that Rick’s not going into the ministry must somehow be related to Dave’s being his cousin.
“Actually, Dave is the reason I didn’t go into the ministry,” Rick said.
Eddi narrowed her eyes and examined Rick. “I was beginning to wonder if that was coming next.”
“You’ve got a sharp mind,” Rick said. “It’s no wonder you’re a successful lawyer.” He studied Eddi’s face in a way that made her feel as if he were looking beyond her femininity to honestly admire her mental capabilities. Few people had offered such unbiased accolades of late.
Frowning, Eddi moved past the French windows toward a wide window ledge, suited for sitting. She nudged aside a trio of teak-colored pillows and sat down. “I’ve noticed that you and Dave don’t seem to be members of the mutual admiration society,” she observed.
“No, we aren’t.” Rick turned toward the window. The sun cast a radiance upon him that seemed supernatural and lent a glow of truth to Rick’s every word. “Do you know his real name is William Davidson?”
“Yes.”
“Doesn’t surprise me that you found out,” Rick said without ever taking his attention from the sky. “And you probably already know he developed the internet company USA Online?”
“Yes, and that he’s one of the richest men in America.” Eddi observed a mantel clock perched atop the center of the baroque maple dresser. The secondhand ticked around as if it were counting the facts concerning Dave.
Rick chuckled and faced Eddi. “He couldn’t hide anything from you for very long, could he?”
Eddi tried to flip her braid over her shoulder. Instead, she touched the base of her bobbed hair. “I wish I could claim credit for all this information, but my sister Jenny was the one who found it.”
“Ah, yes, Jenny. She favors Linda quite a bit, doesn’t she?”
“Yes, I took after my father more, I guess. Linda and Jenny look more like Mom.”
“Well, you all are lovely ladies,” Rick said as if he were the finest of well-bred gentlemen.
“And you are very gracious,” Eddi replied and decided Dave could learn a thing or two from his foster cousin.
“He was always jealous of me, you know.”
“Who, Dave?”
“Yes. He seemed to think our grandparents favored me over him and his younger brother.”
“And you don’t think so?”
Rick shrugged. “No. I really don’t. I think Grandfather and Grandmother cared for me as much as they cared for them. And I think Dave couldn’t stand that because I wasn’t a real relative.” He neared Eddi and sat next to her. Rick propped his elbows on his knees and leaned forward. He stared at the carpet as if he were watching the replay of an old movie.
“My foster father was Dave’s uncle, by the way—his dad’s brother,” he added. “I was their only child. They couldn’t have kids, and they couldn’t adopt me because my parents wouldn’t release their rights. So I wound up living with them from the time I was ten until I left home. They were good to me—really good. Almost everyone in the family accepted me.”
“Except Dave?” Eddi asked.
“Well,” Rick hesitated, “yeah. Everyone except Dave.”
“Humph,” Eddi grunted. “That figures.”
Rick straightened and picked up one of the teak-colored pillows. “It’s hard to believe he’s got so many wrong attitudes when his parents were in the ministry,” he said.
“Were they missionaries or—”
“No, his parents co-pastored a church east of Dallas, not far from where I lived, but they really loved missions. That’s how they got killed. They’d gone on a missions trip to Mexico with a church group.” He sat up and leaned against the windowframe behind them. “The traffic down there is horrific and, well, they wound up in an awful accident. Neither of them made it out alive.”
Eddi toyed with a pillow tassel and wondered about the circumstances that placed Rick in a foster home. She rested her hand on Rick’s arm, and he covered her hand with his.
“That was terrible,” she said.
“Yes, it was terrible. Dave was nineteen and his brother was only fifteen. Mrs. DeBloom took them in as her own. This is only the second time I’ve even seen her. The other time was at my aunt’s funeral.”
“Oh, really?” Eddi queried.
“Yeah. Mrs. DeBloom was Dave’s mom’s sister. She lived west of Fort Worth, and we were on the east side of Dallas. I don’t think she even recognized me last night when she invited us all to the practice tonight.” Rick waved his hand. “Anyway, shortly before I got out of high school, our grandfather passed away. This was actually a year before Dave’s parents were killed. Believe it or not, Grandfather left a sizable sum for me to go to seminary on—and that was the stipulation, that the money be spent on seminary and no other college. If I didn’t want to go to seminary, I was granted ten thousand cash and that’s all. That was fine with me because I sensed God was calling me to the ministry. I was ready for seminary. Grandfather knew that, but . . .” He rubbed his face and shook his head.
“What happened?” Eddi
prompted and could only guess where this was leading. Somehow, Dave had been a hindrance to Rick’s calling.
“When Dave learned of the will’s specifications, he was determined to stop me. I was so naïve that when he called and asked about the seminaries where I’d applied, I told him. Little did I know he would convince his father to call the seminaries and essentially ruin my reputation.” His face drooped into a melancholic mask. “None of the seminaries would admit me after that. I was so disheartened, I wound up taking the money and going to the police academy.” He gazed across the room as if he were trapped in a painful past.
“But that’s slander!” Eddi burst. “You could have filed a lawsuit and—”
“I would never do that,” Rick said and shook his head. “Never! It would have created a huge family stink. One thing our grandfather insisted upon was that we keep our family pride. A lawsuit would have been like dragging my grandfather’s name through mud. If he’d been alive, he would have been mortified. I just couldn’t do it.”
“But,” Eddi prompted and squeezed his arm, “Dave cost you your calling and your reputation.”
Rick pulled her hand between his and stroked the inside of her palm with his index finger. While the gentle gesture warmed her regard for Rick, it in no way evoked the volatile reaction she knew from Dave’s touch. Eddi slipped her hand from Rick’s.
She stood, paced toward the bed, pivoted, and approached Rick. Dave’s every haughty expression floated through Eddi’s mind. Each point of Rick’s story confirmed what she already knew. Dave Davidson was a cad who’d take the last dime from his own grandmother if that meant increasing his fortune.
A deep well of animosity erupted from the bottom of her soul. “I know this isn’t the most Christian thing to say, but I really can’t stand William Fitzgerald Davidson,” she enunciated the name as if it were covered in thorns.
“It would appear that you have learned quickly what I learned the hard way,” Rick said, his eyes troubled. But soon his features softened. Rick stood and reached for Eddi’s hand. He moved closer and smiled into her eyes.
First Impressions: A Contemporary Retelling of Pride and Prejudice Page 12
