“I know. You’ve got a business to run. I just called to tell you that Jed may be taking Marion Shelby to the 4H barbecue. I thought if you and Art could save a place for them at your table, introduce her around--“
“Does that mean you’re not coming? Shoot, Tessa! Everybody will be there . . . last I heard there’ll be enough of us to fill a couple of those long tables.”
“Garland and I are going up to Scott Shelby’s housewarming in Telluride. I told you about it, remember?”
“Went clean out of my mind. Well, obviously the 4H barbecue’s pretty tame stuff compared to hobnobbing with the rich and famous.”
“You’re as bad as Jed. Talk about sour grapes.”
“Not sour, Tessa, just dangling out of reach. So while you’re up there hip-hopping with Shelby, Jed’ll be down here square-dancing with his ex-missus?” She chuckled evilly. “Is that ironic or what!”
“I can’t see me hip-hopping with anybody. In fact, I don’t think anybody does it anymore. And to set the record straight, Jeannie, I suggested Jed ask her.”
“Did you now?” she drawled.
“You said she was a nice person . . . Jed thinks so, too. Where’s the harm?”
“Don’t know as there is any, dearie. But I do know Miz Shelby’s coming in tomorrow to get her hair and nails done. It’s not her regular day ... in fact she called me here at home last night to ask if I could squeeze her in. Her voice sounded real urgent. I couldn’t help wondering what was so all-fired important.”
Knowing Jeannie was hoping to get a rise out of her, Tessa held her tongue.
“Damn it, Tessa,” Jeannie complained, “you’re no fun at all! Tell you what, I’ll call you Sunday morning. We’ll compare notes. You can brag on Shelby’s guest list, and I’ll tell you how the date you set up worked out.”
Tessa frowned, wondering if what Garland had said about Scott could apply to Jed. Relationships and affairs sounded a lot more open-ended than a simple, old-fashioned, one-time date. “Yeah,” Tessa muttered, “you do that.”
“From the tone of your voice, a person might think you’ve been sampling some of that sour grape juice yourself.”
“I imagine Scott’s champagne will take care of that,” Tessa countered.
Jeannie’s sigh whispered through the receiver. “I can’t top that, Tessa, and I’ve run out of time to try. Have a real nice day!”
Chapter Fifteen
Tessa couldn’t resist a last look in the mirror. She tightened the narrow black grosgrain bow gathering her shoulder-length hair into a neat ponytail and plucked a couple of Plume’s long beige hairs from her black pants. “I swear, Garland, the way this gabardine picks up stuff you’d think it was magnetized.”
“I think your eyes must have built-in magnifying lenses, the way you keep fussing about things no one else can see.” Garland’s long sun-streaked hair swung in a gleaming arc as she turned towards the door. “Can we go now? We’ll be a good half-hour late as it is.”
Tessa eyed her daughter’s pale turquoise washed-silk tunic and billowy ankle-tied pants. “I don’t remember seeing that outfit before. You look,” she added sourly, “like a damn water nymph.”
“I bought it in Boulder this spring. The minute I saw it I thought of the necklace Uncle Jed gave me.” She fingered one of the turquoise-studded silver squash-blossoms. “What do you think?”
The necklace was an old and very beautiful Navajo pawn piece Jed’s mother had wistfully admired when she saw it hanging, dusty and forgotten, in a Utah trading post back in the thirties. Worth a chief’s ransom in today’s market, at the time it was too much of a bargain for even tight-fisted Walt Bradburn to pass up. Considering the enduring gratitude it earned him, it would have been a bargain at ten times the price.
After Aggie died, Walt took it into his head to sell it. To help pay the funeral expenses, he had said, and why the hell not? “There ain’t no other women in the family,” he complained to Jed, “and far as I can tell, none in sight neither.”
So Jed offered, tight-lipped, to pay his father the price he would have gotten from a dealer. It took five years’ worth of installments, plus interest, subtracted monthly from his meager token wages. The next time anyone saw the necklace was when Jed presented it, polished to a soft luster, to Garland the day she graduated from high school.
She had, of course, protested being given such a valuable family heirloom, but Jed just smiled and slipped it over her head. “You’re the only family I’m ever likely to have,” Tessa recalled him saying.
“It’s beautiful, Garland,” she murmured. “And so are you. I just hope you won’t be embarrassed to be seen with an old lady like me.”
“C’mon, Mom, you look great,” Garland said, swatting her mother affectionately. “Especially considering your advanced age,” she added, earning a swat in return.
As they drove up the gravel road winding across the valley floor, the slanting rays of the setting sun tipped the meadow grasses with gold. Mule deer trailed out of the scrubby oaks to join the grazing cattle in the cottonwood-fringed meadows. Larks soared and dipped above the creek, feasting on a cloud of gauzy-winged flies flitting just above the water rippling alongside the road.
“Must be a new hatch,” Garland said. “That means there’ll be a lot of well-fed trout by morning. Maybe I should string up my rod this weekend, catch us a panful.”
Tessa laughed. “Remember that contest you and Gavin had one summer? Don’t recall how old you were, but I doubt this valley ever saw two such determined fishermen before or since.”
“We were ten, Mom. Ten-year-olds are like that—fixated, they call it now. I know I gave Gav a run for his money, but when it came to snaring nightcrawlers for bait, he won hands down.”
“Maybe so, but I seem to remember that Gav always tried to set the hook too soon. Not that it mattered much. I never thought I could get tired of trout, but that summer ...” She shook her head.
“It got so we could hardly give them away,” Garland agreed, laughing. “Once, when Gav made a third delivery to Uncle Jed in the course of one week, he suggested we might consider releasing the fish.”
They came to the bend crossed by a narrow plank bridge. The loose boards rumbled under the wheels. “Do you suppose any of those trout we released could still be alive?”
Tessa reflected on the possibility. “They’d be real lunkers by now.”
“Yeah. Lurking in the deeper pools, surfacing like submarines to slurp in those flies— “
“I bet it’d take more’n flies to satisfy them,” Tessa said.
Garland’s fingers beat a nervous little tattoo on the steering wheel. “Gawd. Imagine if you fell in . . .”
They looked at each other, made faces, and rode on in silence through the deepening summer twilight.
They gained the highway a little after eight with, according to Garland, a good half-hour still to go.
“Strikes me as just about right,” Tessa said. She pointed to a narrow gravel road leading off to the left. “Hey, didn’t you say Scott’s new place is just off the Last Dollar road?”
“On the other end, Mom. We take it from this side and God knows when we’ll get there.”
“Too bad. Prettiest road in the county.”
“Can’t get much prettier than this,” Garland said, nodding towards the wide sweep of snow-tipped peaks, crimsoned now by the setting sun.
“No,” Tessa agreed. “It can’t.
The private road Garland finally turned into wound up and up through mature stands of aspen and spruce. The grade was steady and the surface smoother than the usual quick-and-dirty bulldozer job standard in less prosperous towns in the county.
“What are you peering at, Mom?”
“I’m looking for catch basins.”
“Catch basins? Whatever for?”
“Drainage. This road is a lot better engineered than you might think at first glance, Garland. Ah! There’s one!” she exclaimed, pointing. “They cost big bucks to i
nstall, and I bet Scott spent another small fortune for a top-of-the-line four-wheel-drive vehicle he won’t even need to get up a road as good as this.”
“Boy, nothing escapes you, does it?”
“Not when there are price tags attached.”
The road emerged from the dim forest into a lush meadow commanding a spectacular view of Sunshine Mountain and Mt. Wilson. Ahead of them sprawled a log-and-stone structure punctuated with long inset rectangles of glass. Bright shafts of light beamed across a low wide terrace hung with glowing lanterns. Tessa’s voice hushed. “And speaking of price tags ...”
It was too dark to make much sense of the design of the house, but it was big. Very big by Cottonwood standards; too big by Tessa’s. My God, imagine trying to keep it clean. They parked in a mowed clearing, and as they approached on foot, the laughing people glimpsed through the tall windows seemed more like midgets than normal-sized adults.
“Wow,” Tessa murmured.
“It’s like never-never land, isn’t it?” Garland said. “Although I imagine most of the people in there have long since forgotten what childhood’s all about.”
Tessa gave her daughter a sharp glance. “You’ve been here before, have you?”
“In and out, almost as fast as that. Just to double-check the newspaper ad copy for the festival Scott’s sponsoring—Shelby Associates, that is.”
“Same thing, isn’t it?”
“I guess.”
“Look, I’m not passing judgment. You’re a big girl; you can learn a lot from Scott.”
Garland fell silent. Tessa chose not to notice. Besides, there was too much else to occupy her mind. As they mounted the single wide step to the stone terrace surrounding the house, Scott came forward to greet them.
“Garland,” he said, taking one of her hands, “and dear Tessie.” He leaned forward to lightly kiss her cheek. “Now the party can begin.”
“Nonsense, Scott,” Tessa said. “It’s in full swing already.”
He grinned at Tessa. “Same old down-to-earth Tessie. God, it’s good seeing you again.”
“I could do without the ‘old’ part.”
“Now, Tessie,” he chided, “I meant old only in the sense of familiar. You brought me good luck, you know.”
“I’d say you’ve made plenty of your own since. I mean, look at this place!”
His shoulders lifted in a deprecating shrug. “You remember Sam Englehardt, Tessie?” She nodded. “He talked Architectural Digest into giving it some space in their November issue.”
Garland gave him a knowing look. “Which means it will coincide with the introduction of Wildings, right?”
“Smart as she is beautiful,” Scott said as he opened the door.
Tessa marched in, her long-legged stride faltering as the din of talk and laughter gusted towards her. Then, as Scott and Garland came up beside her, there was a sudden hush. She became aware of speculative eyes taking their measure. Her chin came up; her blue eyes issued a challenge. We’re every damn bit as good as you are!
Tessa turned to bolster her daughter with an encouraging smile, but found she needn’t have bothered. Scott had bent close to murmur something that brought a slow smile to Garland’s lips. His long fingers rested on her shoulder; his breath stirred the gold tendrils that wisped around her ears, and when she nodded, his hand slid slowly down to take hers and bring it to his lips. Garland turned towards him, her silk tunic undulating around her slim hips, to touch her head to his shoulder. Her cheeks, Tessa noticed, were suffused with color.
Tessa felt a sudden sharp pang.
Envy ?
How could that be? Garland was her daughter, for God’s sake, and Scott was old enough to be her father.
But as he moved jauntily forward, Garland’s hand swinging in his, he seemed ageless. He reached out to pull Tessa along with them with his other hand, then slipped it familiarly around her waist to rest in the small of her back. The breath caught in her throat as she felt the warm pressure of his fingers.
“People? May I have your attention please? Some of you already know that this gorgeous woman on my left was the inspiration for Wild Westerns, the line that launched me into fashion’s big time. I know Sam Englehardt does, because he’s the genius who dreamed up the ad campaign.
“Tessa Wagner and I met by accident. It all began at a rodeo in Cottonwood, that little cow town just over the mountain from here, more years ago than I care to acknowledge.”
“Twenty,” a gruff voice supplied. “More or less.”
“Thank you so much, Sam,” Scott said. “I’ll take less, if you don’t mind . . . how about you, Tessie?”
“Me, too,” she muttered.
“My muse agrees with me,” Scott said. His hand firmly propelled her forward. “Tell them how it was, Tessie.”
She stared at the sea of faces. Amused faces; doubting faces; young faces. My God, but they were young. Why would they care how it was back then? Most of them would have been in grade school twenty years ago. What the hell did Scott expect her to say?”
“Was that meeting really accidental, Tessa?” a throaty female voice inquired.
The woman’s obvious skepticism rankled. “Sure was. I had other things on my mind that day, and even if I’d wanted to strike up an acquaintance, I wouldn’t have known what to say. The guys I was used to ... well, they weren’t much like Scott.” She turned back to face him. “Come to think of it, you never did say why you were there that day.”
“I suppose I could claim it was fated,” he said, “but the truth is I’d never been to a rodeo. Oh, I’d seen them in movies and on the tube— who hasn’t? But actually being there, hearing the shouts and the bellowing, seeing the broncs twisting and plunging and the dust swirling up in choking clouds ...”
Scott’s left hand dropped away from Garland’s and spiraled into the air. “It was all very strong, very elemental stuff. Very Hemingway.
Then at intermission time, the ring was cleared, some battered barrels were brought in, and there was a garbled announcement over the loudspeaker about an exhibition. Some circusy sort of trick riding, I assumed. I had already started down the rickety grandstand when this girl of the golden West gallops in, riding hell-for-leather.
“One look at that blazing smile, that mane of gold hair bannering in the breeze as she leaned her horse around those barrels, defying gravity and loving every minute of it— “ He cast his eyes upward. “My God, who wouldn’t be inspired? So I waited for her by the exit gate. The rest, as they say, is history.”
“Not quite,” Tessa drawled. “For one thing, my horse damn near bit his fingers off.” She grinned at the shout of laughter her words provoked. “That little horse could pivot on a button, but he had a mean streak. Never did take kindly to strangers.”
“Neither did Tessa’s husband,” Scott confided in a stage whisper.
“What other part of your anatomy did he threaten, Scott?” It was the same throaty voice, which Tessa identified as belonging to an attractive thirtyish brunette snuggled against a large jowly red-faced man in his fifties.
“I’m happy to say I survived intact ... as you, dear girl, have very good reason to know.”
Her companion grunted and started forward, but was quickly discouraged by nearby guests.
Ignoring him, Scott turned his attention to Garland. “I had also hoped to introduce to you the talented young singer who will be representing my new line, Wildings, inspired by the colors and textures of Colorado wildflowers. Kayla Farrell will be the featured artist in the upcoming Bluegrass Festival Shelby Associates is sponsoring, but she was unable to join us tonight due to previous concert commitments. However, my lovely assistant, Garland Wagner, will be happy to answer any questions you may have . . . probably better than I, because she is more intimately involved with the day-to-day details.” Smiling, he swung her to face him. “In fact, I’m hoping I can persuade her to make our successful summer relationship a permanent one.”
Relationship? Tessa
frowned. A day spent scouting for wildflowers wasn’t her idea of a relationship. What the hell was going on here?
“They keep getting younger and younger, don’t they?” she heard someone murmur near her. Tessa turned angrily but was unable to determine the source of the insinuating comment.
“. . . While I’ve been chattering away here,” Scott was saying, “I see the tables have been transformed into veritable groaning boards, courtesy of Philippe Boucher, with whose culinary expertise I’m sure most of you are familiar. Tables have been set up on the terrace, where braziers have been lit to provide warmth on this cool night, and servers will soon be passing among you with a selection of wines. The house is open for your inspection— “
“Including the closets, Scott?” a snide voice inquired.
“Closets, too. If you’re expecting skeletons, I fear you’ll be disappointed,” he added in a tone whose lightness Tessa suspected of being somewhat forced. “As you know, this isn’t a new house. In fact, some of you may already be familiar with it, but I’ve done things, added things, you might find interesting. As I said, please feel free to roam, and thank you for coming!”
Tessa moved forward, hoping to snare Garland, but Scott had already taken her with him into the crowd.
Unused to neglect, Tessa regarded them sullenly as they bent smilingly to answer questions with a practiced ease that in her daughter’s case Tessa found astonishing. “My God,” she muttered, “you’d think they were royalty.”
She felt suddenly queasy; the palms of her clenched hands became moist with sweat. She hadn’t felt this way since her teens, before she had established herself as a winner; long before her biggest challenge was finding a spot to jam in the latest blue ribbon or an uncrowded shelf for another silver cup. But once experienced, the symptoms were unmistakable.
Envy.
This time there was no doubt about it.
When she gave up competing after winning the Western states championship, Barry had accused her of complacency, but Tessa had known the only place left to go was down, and she liked being a winner too much to risk that. Like the time Jeannie’s horse went lame and Tessa loaned her one of her own horses— a much better one. When the story got out, her selflessness had been widely hailed, but Tessa knew Jeannie didn’t stand a chance of beating her time, no matter what horse she was riding. Where was the sacrifice in that?
Colorado High Page 16
