By the time Tessa returned—she didn’t say anything to Jeannie, just frowned and shook her head—Marion was ready to leave. Tessa followed her silver, late-model four-by-four— big sucker; fully loaded— dropping behind to avoid the dust when they turned off onto the gravel forest service road that climbed up and up, bordered by a small rushing creek that narrowed as it neared its source.
Tessa’s ranch, Skywalk, commanded from its sprawling valley setting a panorama of the entire San Juan range. The house on the spread Scott had bought twenty-three years ago hunkered in the shadow of the jagged fourteen-thousand-foot upthrust of the highest peak. People sighed covetously when they saw the Skywalk view; this one sent your heart into your throat.
“Awesome,” Tessa said as they walked together up a path paved with rounds sliced from huge logs.
Over seventy years old when Scott bought it, the low sprawling ranch house looked much the same as it had after he restored it. The trees he had planted were bigger now, but there had been no additions. Even the color scheme— dark-stained logs; barn-red trim and front door—was the same.
“Isn’t it?” Marion agreed. “Last February, when the snow got so deep, I jumped every time I heard a distant rumble.”
“Never been any slides here that I know of.”
“Isn’t there always a first time?”
“Actually, no. Snow always chooses the easiest, fastest route down. This isn’t one of them. Now, if the house had been built below that fissure— “ Tessa pointed to a deep wide treeless gash on the mountain’s west flank— “then you’d have something to worry about. I can almost guarantee your safety here . . . well, you could get struck by lightning, I suppose, but snow slides? Uh-uh.”
“Glad to hear that. This house suits me just fine. It’s old and weathered, but kept in good repair, just like me.” She waved away Tessa’s automatic protest. “I want to turn this place back into a real working ranch, Tessa. I really don’t have any interest in making an architectural statement.”
Was that a backhanded slap at Scott’s new Telluride digs? Tessa wondered.
Inside, the house looked sort of like a cross between hers and Scott’s, Tessa thought. There were some good old Indian things— Navajo rugs; a couple of Apache baskets—and a very nice collection of much newer pots from the Pueblo of Acoma stood on the wide wood plank mantel over the blackened fireplace.
Tessa picked it up and peered at the bottom. “T. L.,” she read aloud. “I have one of hers, too. Theresa something.”
“Theresa Lukee,” Marion said. “I have three.” Aesthetic credentials having been exchanged, they smiled at each other. “So what do you think?” Marion said.
“About what?” Tessa asked.
“About this place . . . Scott told me you were at his housewarming.”
“Oh, I like this much better,” Tessa said without hesitation. “The only statement Scott’s house made to me was that I’d better watch where I put my dirty boots.”
Marion laughed. “Come out to the kitchen with me, Tessa. I asked you to lunch, but I’m damned if I know what I’ve got to give you.”
They agreed on grilled cheese sandwiches and a green salad. Tessa mixed up a ranch dressing. “Cottonwood style,” she told her hostess. “A lot zingier than the bottled variety.”
Marion, watching her shake in Tabasco sauce, said she didn’t doubt it.
Over lunch they talked of horses. Marion confessed to a weakness for Arabians; Tessa said she didn’t blame her.
“They’re beautiful animals. More elegant than quarter horses, but not muscled enough for competition-level cutting and barrel-racing. There are a couple of top breeders not too far from here—one is in Montrose, the other down near Durango. I’m sure either of them could fix you up.”
“I really appreciate that, Tessa. Would you be able to do any training I might require?”
“Sure thing. I’d enjoy working with a good Arabian again. We could do it together, then next time you could get a green horse and do the schooling yourself. Lot of satisfaction in it.”
Marion gave Tessa a searching look. “You know, I think we’re going to be friends.”
“Well, hell, so do I, Marion,” Tessa said, grinning. “We’ve been getting along like a regular house on fire. You had doubts?”
“I’m a lot older than you are. You’re what? Forty-five?”
“Now I know we’re going to be friends. Fifty.”
“I crossed over into Medicare land this spring,” Marion said with a rueful smile.
Tessa shrugged. “Scott’s the only person I know who puts much store on things like that.” She bit her lip. “Oh dear. Forget I said that.”
“Why? You’re quite right.” Seeing her lips curve in a soft smile, Tessa thought how attractive she was. “Dear Scotty. These days he’s his own worst enemy. He’s playing a losing game, but can’t yet bear to face up to it.”
Tessa didn’t have to ask what game she meant. “Do you think he ever will?”
“What choice does he have? He doesn’t look as good as he does by the grace of God, you know.”
Tessa’s eyes widened. “My God. I’ll admit I wondered, but there sure aren’t any telltale signs.”
“He’s paid a very good cosmetic surgeon a lot of money over the years to make sure there wouldn’t be. His grace and style are uniquely his, of course, but in time—two years, maybe three—that expertly firmed jawline will begin to sag again, and he’ll come trailing back to me, sadder, but probably not much wiser. I’ll have to find a tactful way to discourage him from having himself tacked up again. By then he’ll be closing in on sixty-five; I don’t want him to make a fool of himself.”
“I know it’s none of my business, Marion, but . . . well, I can’t help wondering what you expect to get out of it.”
Marion met her inquiring gaze directly. “Nothing. I love Scott, and he loves me, too, in his way. He’s a vain man, but not an evil one. Success is very important to him, and sometimes this need for it leads him astray. You’re aware that after his huge success with Wild Westerns, he had another triumph with Water Babies?”
Tessa nodded. “The girl who inspired that line was his first wife, wasn’t she?”
“Lovely creature,” Marion said. “She was a marine biologist working in San Diego. Sleek as a seal and a lot smarter. Scott met her by chance, swept her up in his whole ‘I’ll make you a star’ routine, and married her. When the line ran its course, she found that as far as Scott was concerned, she had, too. She walked out, took with her only what she had earned, returned to the work she was trained to do, and wrote a child’s guide to marine life. Unlike Scott’s next ventures, it was quite successful. Are you aware he had a breakdown?”
Tessa shook her head. “My daughter Garland told me he’d had a few bad years.”
“Seven. It was very hard for him. He kept trying and failing, and eventually lost everything to his creditors. That’s where I came in. I’d known Scott for years—he was very popular on the California charity circuit. Always willing to organize fashion shows to promote worthy causes.”
“Including himself?” Marion grinned.“Are you saying you bailed him out?”
“That was part of the deal.” Tessa looked shocked. “Scott never went so far as to propose a prenuptial agreement . . . let’s just say I had no illusion about how it was between us.”
“But I thought his folks had money . . . from things he let drop, I got the distinct impression he came from an old North Carolina family.”
Marion pushed her plate aside and rested her chin on tented hands. “Scott’s parents emigrated from Hungary in the fifties, settled in New York City on the lower east side of Manhattan, and opened a clothing store. They sold designer labels at close to wholesale prices a long time before factory outlets were ever thought of.
“Working in an atmosphere like that, you learn what women want, what they’re looking and hoping for, very fast. Scott began buying for the store in his early twenties and celebr
ated his thirtieth birthday by moving to the West Coast, where the California fashion industry was just beginning to take off. It must have been about then that he exchanged his humble rag trade background for blue-blooded North Carolina forebears.”
“But he was so convincing!” Tessa said.
“Wasn’t he? I remember him apologizing for that magnolia accent clinging to his speech—I didn’t know then how hard he worked at acquiring it— knowing full well it just added to his golden boy charm.” Marion laughed. “He really is a rascal! I might never have tumbled to the deception, except that one day I came home early from one charity meeting or another and found him in his study—huddled in a chair beneath your picture, actually weeping.
“He finally confessed that his mother was in a nursing home out in the valley—his father had died back East years before—and he could no longer afford the fees. I agreed to pay them, of course, but I insisted on accompanying him on his next visit, and met this wizened little old lady who had never mastered the English language. Listening to Scott trying to explain me to her in Hungarian was quite an eye-opener.”
“So he’s pure fake!” Tessa said.
“No, his flair for fashion is innate and very genuine.”
“I meant as a person.”
“I like to think of him as a romancer.”
“But he just plain, flat-out lied! Nothing very romantic about that.”
“Most people lie, Tessa ... in Scott’s world, most of the time.”
“Jed Bradburn doesn’t,” Tessa mused. “Although,” she admitted ruefully, “that’s one of the hardest things to accept about him.”
“Living with saints has never been easy.”
“Good Lord, Marion, I’d hardly call Jed a saint!”
“Then it wouldn’t be so hard, would it?”
Tessa shook her head. “I don’t understand.”
“Of course you don’t. Beautiful women have no need to.”
“You think I’m beautiful?”
Marion cocked her head consideringly. “You were beautiful, now you’re handsome as the devil. That’s better, I think. Elizabeth Barrett Browning must have been pretty damn handsome, too, otherwise I doubt Robert would have asked her to ‘grow old along with me; the best is yet to be.’“
“I beg your pardon?”
Marion smiled. “It’s not important, Tessa. What is, is for you to enjoy your life as it is now. Today and all the tomorrows. Jed loves you, you know.”
Tessa looked at her, surprised. “Yes, I do, but how did you?”
“That evening at the 4H barbecue? He must have mentioned you a dozen times, sometimes with good reason, more often not. If I were a different kind of woman, I would have been quite put out.”
“Perhaps,” Tessa began slowly, “you should have used the past tense. About the loving part, I mean. I hurt him recently . . . quite a lot, I’m afraid.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. He has value, that man.”
“I thought he might have gotten in touch with you since. He thinks you’re quite a gal . . . I thought maybe you and Jed ...”
“Oh, no,” Marion stated firmly. “Once you’ve been made love to by Scott—but I don’t have to tell you how good he is.”
“Actually, you do, because I never did. Everybody thinks I must have—even Scott— but I didn’t. Cross my heart!”
Marion threw back her head and laughed. “You may be the only woman who ever said no to him, Tessa. Poor Scotty! He’d want to forget that. But tell me, why did you?”
Tessa hesitated. This woman came from a much more sophisticated world . . . how could she explain it without seeming a ninny? “I was married,” she said at length, “and I don’t break promises . . . not even those I wish I hadn’t made.”
Marion leaned across the table to take Tessa’s hands in hers. “Before I met you, I thought Jed was probably too good for you. I see I was wrong.”
Tessa ducked her head and swallowed hard, not trusting herself to speak. She patted Marion’s hand, noticing the wide gold wedding band for the first time. They may be legally divorced, she mused, but she obviously hasn’t given up hoping he’ll come back to her.
She scraped her chair back and stood up. “Well, I wish I could say the same about you and Scott, Marion. He sure doesn’t deserve you, and frankly, I don’t know how you can put up with waiting for him.”
Marion smiled up at her serenely. “You have to decide what you want most. What you want above all else.”
Tessa sighed. “That sure isn’t easy.”
“No, it’s not. But once you know, everything else is.”
At the door, Tessa thanked her. For lunch and everything that went with it. “You’ve given me a lot to think about.”
“You were going to give me the names of breeders?” Marion reminded her.
“Shoot! Went right out of my head. Got a piece of paper?” Tessa scribbled out the information Marion wanted. “I don’t have their numbers, but the phone company will. Good luck!”
“If one or both of them have horses that sound promising, would you be willing to come along with me to look them over? Maybe take them around the ring a few times? On a fee basis, of course. I wouldn’t expect to get your professional advice for free.”
“You wouldn’t get it for free,” Tessa said briskly. “Sure, be glad to. Tell you what, though: I’ll throw in the coming and going.”
“It’s a deal!” Marion said.
Tessa drove home slowly, pulling over to give impatient drivers room to pass. Marion Shelby had indeed given her a lot to think about.
Lose a friend; gain a friend.
Unfortunately, it didn’t balance out. An interesting chat over lunch didn’t quite match a lifetime of comradeship.
Her misery suddenly overwhelmed her. “Oh, Jed,” she murmured. “What have I done?”
Chapter Twenty-two
Saturday dawned bright and clear and windless. It’s going to be a hot one, Tessa thought, but she knew that Telluride, two thousand feet higher than Cottonwood, would be just enough cooler to take the edge off. A perfect day for Scott’s Bluegrass Festival.
She hoped for Garland’s sake, considering how much time she’d put into it, that it was a hit. For Scott’s sake, too, she conceded grudgingly. He had worked hard for his successes; it would be nice if he could return to Marion’s forgiving arms with his aging head unbowed. Nice for both of them, actually. Marion was too good for him, but love doesn’t make judgments like that. She knew exactly what she would be getting, and if the prospect pleased her, what the hell difference did it make what other people thought?
When Garland told her the Chamber had received more inquiries about the Bluegrass Festival than all the others combined, Tessa had offered to make a picnic supper.
“Including Rick?” Garland had said.
Tessa, who had needed no reminding, assured her the invitation did.
“I told you he wanted to take us to dinner, Mom— I can assure you he can afford— “
“That’s not the point. Garland. If the festival is as crowded as you anticipate, the restaurants will be, too.”
“So he’ll call Campagna to make a reservation.”
“That won’t stop people from waiting in line looking daggers at those of us lucky enough to have tables. Kind of takes the edge off a person’s appetite.”
At that. Garland threw up her hands. “And you sure have a way of wearing a person down, Mom. Picnic it is.”
When Tessa returned to the house after a session working with the bay colt, she found Plume waiting for her at the cellar door, hoping for a cool place to escape the heat. Tessa knew the goblins she feared as a child no longer hung out in that dark, earth-floored cavern, but she wasn’t all that crazy about the scuttling, all-too-real little creatures that did.
Garland had no such fears. “Since when are you afraid of a few itty-bitty mice and crickets, Mom?” she liked to tease.
Since never, of course— as long as she could be sure that
’s all that was down there in the damp darkness.
Tessa opened the door for Plume, who waddled down the wooden steps, the white tip of his tail disappearing in the gloom.
“Don’t blame me!” she called after him as she placed his water dish on the lowest step she could reach from the top. About what, she didn’t say. She’d ask Miguel to come in later to let Plume out.
Tessa had bought a family-size package of boneless chicken thighs to fry for the picnic. They would be messy to eat, but Garland was fond of the spicy coating Tessa used, and it would be interesting to see how Rick Chavez coped. Deviled eggs, sliced tomatoes, pickles, three kinds of cheese, sourdough bread, a tin of homemade pecan-studded brownies (okay, not as good as Nell’s, but close enough), a bottle of pretty good white wine, and a big thermos of coffee rounded out the menu.
Not exactly gourmet fare, but instead of settling for the usual jelly tumblers and the supermarket’s generic paper plates, Tessa had gone out of her way to a newly opened party goods store in Montrose for plastic wineglasses and fancy designer plate sets complete with matching napkins and hot cups.
Tessa could picture Garland’s amused expression and speculative sidelong glance when she saw them.
Who are you trying to impress, Mom ?
“No one, damn it!” Tessa muttered. Certainly not a lot of jumped-up Telluridians. But she didn’t want the youngest member of an old and respected family of oil-rich New Mexican landowners to think she was some backwoods janey-come-lately, either.
Tessa’s pickup, along with scores of other vehicles, crept along the road leading to the festival parking area. It was four-thirty, a half-hour before the event was scheduled to begin, and the jam was already in progress. Waved into a parking slot by a teenaged boy, Tessa despaired of ever finding Garland. But no sooner had she turned off the engine than Garland and Rick Chavez were smiling in at her. Had he arrived today or yesterday? Tessa wondered. Now that she thought of it. Garland hadn’t said where she was staying last night.
It’s none of your business, she told herself sternly. “Thank heaven! “she cried. “I thought I’d have to send up smoke signals. How did you ever spot me?”
Colorado High Page 24
