The casual use of a name from her past caused Karen to start slightly. It also intensified the Alice-in-Wonderland feeling of entering a conversation late. “I’m sorry,” she murmured, “I don’t—”
Diane instantly apologized. “No, it’s me. Different conversation, different house, different people. Things get a little confused when you’re on the road so much.”
John was in the living room in his easy chair, talking to a young man who also looked to be in his early thirties. Of mixed heritages—most obviously Hispanic and Asian—he had dusky skin, slightly almondshaped brown eyes and dark brown hair that stood out straight from his head in a short clip. His smile was broad and open, and when he stood to greet her, his hand stretched to meet hers in unconditional friendship. Karen automatically liked him. He wasn’t much taller than she was herself—five foot six or seven. Solidly built. Muscled without being overly muscled.
“Manny, this is—” Diane paused.
“Karen,” Karen supplied. “Karen Latham.”
“Manny Cruz, my husband,” Diane said, completing the introduction.
Bette hurried in from the kitchen, flushed and laughing. “Oh, Karen, good! You’re here! Everything’s ready, I think. Lee’s putting the finishing touches to the deviled eggs. I’ve never made them with curry powder before. They taste absolutely wonderful!”
“Curry powder?” John echoed doubtfully.
“We didn’t have any in our supplies,” Bette bubbled on. “They did in theirs.” She smiled at the Cruzes. “Lee said you have to be prepared to cook for yourselves when you’re out on location.” Again the name—Lee! “Everyone can come to the table now. We’ll start serving in just a second.” Then she disappeared back into the kitchen.
Bette’s behavior was markedly different from the way it had been this afternoon. Almost as if she’d been starstruck.
“Nice to meet you.” Manny grinned, shifting their handshake into an escort service to the dining room.
“Last I heard, we were havin’ plain ol’ roast beef and mashed potatoes,” John commented dryly as he and Diane followed. “I didn’t know things had turned so special. That boss of yours sure has a way about him to get Bette in such a state. I don’t think I ever remember seein’ her so twittery.”
“Lee’s been known to charm the birds from trees,” Diane said, equally as dryly.
“Lee?” Karen managed to ask as she took her place at the table. If she didn’t want to mimic her mother’s continuing unreasonableness she was going to have to do something to desensitize herself to that name. Numerous people had it. She couldn’t keep reacting every time—
The door from the kitchen opened and a tall, muscularly lean man with thick dark hair, light eyes and far-too-familiar features strode into the room carrying a serving tray, Bette close behind him.
“Lee Parker,” Diane confirmed. She might have been making an announcement instead of answering Karen’s question.
Karen felt herself freeze. Then shock slid into a kind of surreal disbelief. It was him? It was him!
He didn’t seem the least surprised. In fact he said, “Hello, Karen,” as if nothing untoward ever had occurred between them.
Karen couldn’t move, couldn’t look away. Her mind screamed, Don’t just sit there! Do something! But nothing happened.
Bette removed the tray from Lee Parker’s grasp and set it awkwardly on the table. “Do you two know each other?” she asked.
“Wh—what are you doing here?” Karen said in a strangled whisper.
But before he could answer—before he could speak to her again—she jerked away from the table and hurled herself from the room.
A loud sound pounded against her ears as she ran back onto the landing, down the stairs and out of the saloon. The sound followed her into her aunt’s apartment as moisture wet her cheeks.
Like a terrified animal she pressed herself against the door, trying to keep horror at bay.
He was here...Lee Parker! A member of the family she had never wanted to see again! One of the worst members! He and Mae—the way they’d—
An anger like none Karen had experienced before exploded from the depths of her body, exaggerated because it sprang from a rage she hadn’t known was there. She began to shake, and the pounding in her ears increased.
“Karen?”
His voice. He was right outside the door.
“Karen, listen to me. I didn’t mean for it to happen this way. I didn’t set this up.”
She didn’t want to listen! She didn’t want him there!
Go away! she screeched. Yet the words remained a prisoner of her mind.
“Karen! I know you’re in there.”
“Go away!” she finally managed to say, but strong emotion made it almost inaudible.
“I need to talk to you, Karen. It’s not what you think. All those years ago—The Parkers. We aren’t—We never—”
“The Parkers can go straight to hell for all I care! I don’t want to have anything to do with you!”
“I never did anything to hurt you, Karen.”
Karen’s hands curled into fists as she continued to shake. He sounded so sincere, so reasonable. But she remembered the way he’d looked at her, as if she weren’t good enough. It was something she hadn’t been able to get out of her mind. She’d thought of it over and over for months following the aborted wedding. It had assumed almost more importance than what Alex had done. As had the suspicion that he’d played a large part in persuading Alex to disappear.
“Are you afraid to talk to me?” His challenge interrupted her thoughts. “I’d never have expected that. You didn’t seem to be afraid of anything. Even my mother.”
Karen bit her bottom lip.
“Or Mae. Mae didn’t seem to bother you, either. You made quite an impression on her, did you know that?”
There were a thousand words she wanted to hurl at him, none of them complimentary, but she wasn’t going to play his game. Bette could, but she wouldn’t.
She waited and he waited, one on either side of the old pine door.
Finally he said, “I guess I can’t make you talk to me, huh? But you can listen. I tried to tell you this a long time ago...I’m sorry for what my brother did to you, Karen. My entire family is sorry. Alex was wrong to hurt you. He should never have let it go so far, not when he—”
“Go...away!” Karen repeated her order through tightly clenched teeth.
Time passed, and when he said nothing more, she was able to gain a little control. The trembling stopped, as did the pounding in her ears, which she now recognized as the rapid thudding of her heart. She made several quick swipes at the leftover moisture on her cheeks.
She was going to have to leave Twilight. If he was here, she couldn’t be. First thing tomorrow she would load her things back in the car and go home to Kerrville.
“Karen?” Bette’s call from the other side of the door made her start. “What happened, honey? I’ve never seen you so upset before. Do you know Lee Parker? What did he do to you?” A pause. “Honey, open the door. Please? Okay?”
“I’d rather not.” Karen sniffed. “I’m sorry about your nice dinner.”
“Oh, who cares about dinner! It’s you we’re worried about. Look, if Lee Parker did anything bad to you, we’ll run him out of town so fast he won’t know what hit him. You know everyone in town will be up in arms.”
Karen thought about her already-decided-upon plan to leave and the town’s hoped-for future. They needed Lee Parker and his show to see those plans fulfilled. “Are you alone?” she asked.
“As the day I was born...well, minus my mother, of course.”
Karen opened the door slowly until she could see Bette’s concerned face. She sighed. “It wasn’t him. It was his brother. So you don’t have to run him out of town. He—he just apologized, too.”
“It doesn’t look like it helped much.”
Karen tried to smile, but the tight little jerk of her lips was a failure. “Like he said, it wa
s a long time ago. Tonight was...a surprise, that’s all. I didn’t expect—”
“Would you like me to keep you company for a while?” Bette offered.
“No. I’m fine. And don’t—don’t tell anyone in town. It won’t help.”
Bette’s look was dubious but she relented. “Well, you know where I am if you change your mind.”
Karen closed the door and locked it. She didn’t trust Lee Parker not to be hiding somewhere so he could force his way inside and make her feel even worse.
She still couldn’t believe him walking through that kitchen door, carrying a tray and then nonchalantly looking at her and saying, “Hello, Karen.”
Even as she remembered it, his voice reverberated through her nervous system and again made her shake. Only this time her shaking was joined by a near hysterical laughter as the old western cliché, “This town ain’t big enough for the two of us, stranger,” passed through her mind.
There was no question as to who would be getting out of town.
She would pack her things this very minute.
LEE TAPPED on the Cruzes’ bedroom door when he saw a rim of light spilling out onto the edge of the hall runner. He hadn’t come back right away after his attempted talk with Karen. He’d walked and thought and thought some more, trying to see if somehow he could have prevented what had happened all those years ago. Short of hog-tying his brother to make him stay put, he didn’t see how he could have done anything.
The door opened and Manny looked out.
“Can I come in?” Lee asked. “You two still decent?”
Manny motioned him inside. The cameraman was in jeans and an undershirt and Diane was decorously wrapped in a robe—not that Lee hadn’t seen them in less, and they him. Close conditions created their own kind of intimacy. The three knew one another far better than most.
“Do you finally want to tell us what’s going on?” Diane asked from her place on the bed, sitting with two pillows supporting her back. “This shoot has been different from the first, hasn’t it?”
Lee took the only chair while Manny continued to do his exercises, curling handheld dumbbells up and down in alternate short sweeps. He could feel their eyes on him. “You could say that,” he admitted.
“Who is she to you?” Diane demanded.
“She almost married my brother.”
“Almost?” Diane echoed.
“The ceremony was called off...when my brother bolted.”
“Oh, God. How soon before the ceremony did it happen?”
“During it.”
Diane was robbed of words. All she could do was stare at him, almost as if he were the guilty party.
“It wasn’t me. I didn’t do it,” Lee defended.
“You were there, though,” Manny said.
“I was best man.”
Manny stopped exercising to whistle softly. “Transference...she blames you, dude.”
Diane swung her feet from the bed, and dragging one of the pillows onto her lap, thumped it as if it were a man’s face. “What happened? When the minister got to the part about, ‘Do you take...’ he took off? No wonder she was upset when she saw you!”
“I know she blames me. She blames all the Parkers. Mae and I both tried to talk to her, but her parents wouldn’t let us.”
“I can understand why,” Diane said quickly.
“You knew she was in Twilight, didn’t you?” Manny asked.
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you tell us?”
Lee rubbed his hands together briefly. “It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. I thought I’d find her...if she was here. All I knew. was that she was supposed to be here. I’d apologize, and she’d either accept it or not accept it. Either way, the Parker honor would be upheld.”
“You knew she was coming to dinner,” Diane reminded him.
“I still thought I could talk with her.”
“So...did you? You followed her out.”
“I tried. Through her door.”
Diane gave a funny little smile. “Through her door? That was a new experience for you.”
Lee’s eyes sparked. “I wasn’t trying to hit on her!”
“Just talk to her,” Manny murmured. He, too, was smiling oddly.
Lee rose abruptly. “I’ll leave you two to it, then. I just didn’t want you to think this was going to get in the way of what we planned to do here. If she doesn’t want to have anything to do with the Parkers, she won’t have to. I’ll leave her strictly alone.”
“After coming all this way to see her,” Diane said.
“I didn’t come all this way to—” He stopped, feeling foolish for having put himself in this position. “We came to do a show, remember, and that’s what we’re going to do.”
“Yes, sir,” Diane returned, giving him a smart little salute that she ruined with a giggle.
“Oh, yeah,” Manny agreed. “Sure, man. Anything you say.” Only he, too, was still grinning as he resumed exercising, sweeping the dumbbells up and down, up and down.
Dumbbell, Lee thought as he moved down the hall to his own room. The word had two meanings, only one of which applied to him and his mishandling of the meeting with Karen Latham. It couldn’t have turned out worse.
“KAREN...KAREN,” a hushed voice called from beneath her bedroom window.
At first Karen tried to ignore it. She had a good idea who her late-night caller was, and if she stayed still and didn’t respond, maybe he’d go away.
“Karen...”
She threw the light cover off her legs and hurried to the window. He wasn’t about to go away.
Pete peered up at her in the moonlight.
“It’s late, Pete,” she said, her words as hushed as his. Voices carried easily in the night.
“I knew you weren’t sleepin’. I saw your light go out.”
Karen swept a fall of curls away from her face. “Pete...please. I’m tired. I want to sleep. And tomorrow... I’ll probably have to leave early.”
Pete blinked. “You goin’ somewhere?”
“I may. For a couple of weeks, then I’ll come back.”
His features assumed a stubborn look as he shook his woolly white head. “Uh-uh. Nah. It’ll be too late then. The damage’ll all be done.”
“Pete,” Karen pleaded desperately, “try to understand. There’s nothing I can do to stop this movie thing from happening. The others want it. I can’t—”
“I know that,” he said shortly. “They’re like horses with the bit between their teeth. Nothin’s gonna get ‘em to see sense now. But there’s somethin’ else...that bunch of TV people. I saw ‘em late this afternoon. John was takin’ ‘em around...out to the cemetery and about There’s three of ’em. They’ll probably start takin’ pictures tomorrow. We gotta stop ’em!”
Karen closed her eyes. “Pete—”
“Your aunt Augusta woulda done it!”
“Are you sure about that? Are you really sure?”
“Sure I’m sure!” he claimed.
Karen sighed. “Pete, there’s nothing I can do. I have to leave.”
Pete stared at her for another moment, then, jaw jutting, he said, “Now I’m not so sure about you bein’ like Augusta. Augusta never woulda run from a fight!” Whereupon he wheeled around and stomped away.
The moonlight allowed Karen to follow his shuffling gait before he disappeared into the shadows. His shoulders were hunched, his head lowered. She’d let him down.
Karen stretched out again in bed, an arm covering her eyes. What else could she do? She couldn’t change anything. If she had that kind of power she’d change a few things for herself. She’d get rid of her confusion about what she should do in the present and in the future. She’d look into the years ahead and see if what she decided would be what she truly wanted in life. She’d change the past, too, so that Lee Parker and his relatives couldn’t hurt her anymore. Had never hurt her. There wouldn’t be a ruined wedding, because a wedding would never have been planned.
Pete had as good as called her a coward. Was she a coward? Her things were packed and waiting in the living room. All she had to do in the morning was pick them up, carry them to the car, tack up the note she was leaving for Bette, then go. As far away as she wanted. She never had to think about the Parkers again.
Only...was that the way it would actually work? Or would she, too, think of herself as having acted in a less-than-sterling way?
She moved uncomfortably, then moved again. Finally, after about a half hour, she sat up.
Sleep wasn’t a commodity she was going to get very much of that night.
BY FIRST LIGHT OF MORNING Karen’s bags were unpacked and everything put away again. She’d made a decision. She didn’t care whether he was going to leave town or not, but she wasn’t.
She was Augusta’s niece. And like her aunt, she wouldn’t run away. She’d conduct her business, he could conduct his...and if they happened to cross paths, she’d stare him down like the rat he was and dare him to so much as speak to her. She also was determined not to be like her mother. She could control herself. She could control her reactions. She attacked her work in the antique shop with renewed vigor, and by the time she heard signs that the rest of the town was up and about, she’d already sorted through a trunk and several small trinket boxes and was ready to carry another labeled box upstairs.
On the trip down she saw Bette outside the saloon’s back door and waved.
At first Bette seemed uncertain how to react, then, copying Karen’s greeting, she walked over. “My goodness, you’re up early,” she said, her gaze moving carefully over the younger woman’s face.
Karen withstood the scrutiny. “Lots to do,” she said.
Bette frowned. “Everything’s...all right? After last night, you’re not—”
“I’m fine,” Karen said, and even smiled, making her dimples deepen.
Twilight, Texas Page 7
