“Why?” Sharlene asked.
“I haven’t seen Mother since I told her I was quitting Radner and moving home to the ranch. She’s called a couple of times but it was to wrap up business. It’ll be easier if you are there beside me.”
“Man, I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes. First time I went home after basic training, my dad wouldn’t even speak to me for two days. He was so mad when I left for the service. In his world men shouldn’t go fight in wars and women damn sure ain’t supposed to do such an abominable thing. It’s awkward at best, heart wrenching at the worst,” Sharlene said.
Hank stepped aside and let them out of the elevator first. “What did you do?”
“Wore him down. I made sure I was in the barn when he was. I took his lunch to the field. I baled hay with him. Pretty soon he had to talk to me,” Sharlene said.
“If he’s against women in the military, how does he feel about you living in the back of a beer joint and working there?” Larissa asked.
“I haven’t told him,” Sharlene said. “Might not ever tell him. He doesn’t even agree with women working outside the home. He can barely swallow me living alone and working at a newspaper. The bar idea might give him a stroke.”
Hank’s truck waited under the awning. He helped Sharlene get settled in the backseat and then opened the passenger door for Larissa. He’d seriously considered hiring a limo just so he wouldn’t have to drive and could sit in the backseat with the two women, but that wasn’t who he was anymore. He was a rancher who’d traded his BMW in on a Chevy Silverado extended cab truck. And if his mother didn’t want to forgive him, then he’d simply have to wear her down like Sharlene had done with her father.
They were greeted at the door by Martha, who air-kissed Larissa and Hank. She wore a flowing caftan in a splash of oranges and browns, clunky jewelry, and sandals. Toenails that had been done in bright orange peeked out sporadically.
“I’m so glad to see you two. Hayes, you look more like your father every day. And this is?” She turned to Sharlene.
“I’m Sharlene. I work at the Honky Tonk for Larissa. You must be Martha. I’ve heard so much about you and your art,” Sharlene said.
Martha smiled. “And I’m sure every word of it was wonderful. Come on. I’m sure Larissa Ruth is dying to see her mother. Doreen is so happy and Rupert, well, darlins, if I wasn’t such a good friend, I’d take him away from her. I can’t wait until Victoria sees Sharlene.”
“Why?” Sharlene whispered to Larissa.
“You’ll see.”
“Larissa Ruth.” Doreen hurried toward them and wrapped her daughter up in a tight embrace.
“Just Larissa, Mother,” she said.
“Can’t do it. You were Ruth too many years. I’ll have to ease into the first name so bear with me. And this is… oh, my lord.”
Sharlene and Doreen eyed each other and then giggled.
“Now I understand,” Sharlene said.
They were the same height, had the same red kinky hair and face shape.
“Did you ever play the Annie part in a school play?” Doreen asked.
“Yes, ma’am. Did you?”
Doreen nodded.
“Hayes?” Victoria crossed the room. “You look just like Henry back when he was younger in that suit and boots.”
He kissed her on the cheek. “Mother.”
“You are not forgiven,” she said.
“When you stop calling me Hayes and start calling me Hank, I’ll know you’ve had a change of heart.”
“Don’t hold your breath,” she said. “Dear God, Doreen. You didn’t tell me you’d given birth to two daughters. You have kept a secret from your best friend, haven’t you?”
“She’s not mine,” Doreen said.
“Unbelievable. Who are you?” Victoria asked.
She extended her hand. “I’m Sharlene and I work for Larissa at the Honky Tonk.”
Victoria shook it and blinked several times. “Where are you from?”
“Corn, Oklahoma, originally.”
“Well, it’s amazing. Everyone here will think you are the daughter.”
“It is a little eerie,” Sharlene said.
“You all go on and visit with Doreen and Rupert and mingle among the guests.” Victoria looked at Hank. “I’m expecting you for a visit tonight, alone. Informal. In the library at eight.”
“I’ll be there,” he said.
Emma grabbed Hank on the right and Holly looped her arm through his on the left side. “We’ve got a corner all saved. We’re dying to know why you left Radner. Are you crazy? Working on a ranch when you could be the next in line for one of the biggest corporations in Texas?”
He shook them off and took a step closer to Larissa who was talking to her mother. “I’d like you to meet Larissa Morley.”
“You are the woman who paid all that money for him and then sent him back to the party, aren’t you?” Emma said.
Larissa told Doreen that she’d catch up with her later and turned around to face the women and Hank. “Yes, I am. And you were the ones who were bidding against me?”
They nodded.
“And we heard you own a beer joint. Is that right?” Holly asked.
“It is,” Larissa said.
“Must be a damn good business,” Emma said coldly.
“It keeps me from sleeping in the street and out of jail for catfights. You’ll have to excuse us now. Sharlene and Hank and I have to go have a word with Rupert.” She tucked her arm in Hank’s and led him away from the two women.
“You can thank me later,” she said.
“For what?”
Sharlene giggled nervously and looked at Hank. “She just saved your sorry ass from those two she-coons. Larissa won that catfight.”
Larissa led them to the small group of people standing with Doreen and Rupert. Rupert’s eyes lit up when he saw her. He reached out and draped an arm around her shoulders and hugged her up next to him.
“Everyone meet my new daughter? I’m told she looks more like me than she does her mother,” he said.
“Well, that one looks like her mother. There’s no denying it,” a lady said.
“But I’m not,” Sharlene said.
“Honey, somewhere down the genetic line you two sprang from the same relative,” the woman said.
Doreen whispered to Larissa, “Talk of genetic lines reminds me. I’ve left a present for you at the hotel. It will be delivered to your room at eight tonight. I know that Victoria is going to have a heart-to-heart with Hank and this will give you a little something to keep you busy this evening.”
“What about Sharlene?”
“She’s a big girl. She can entertain herself,” Doreen said.
***
Hank kissed Larissa hard and passionately outside her hotel room at seven thirty. “I’ll be here to pick you up at eleven in the morning.”
She didn’t doubt that he would be there to take her and Sharlene back to Mingus. She did have a niggling little qualm that Victoria would convince him to come back to Radner. He’d had a month at the ranch again and this time it wasn’t vacation time where he helped when he wanted. He was taking on more and more responsibility and Henry was doing less and less. He was lucky if he got to run by the Honky Tonk on Saturday night for a couple of hours. It would be easy to fall back into the lush life that Radner Corporation offered.
She leaned against him and hugged tighter. “I thought you might be my present.”
“What present?”
“Mother said she was having a present sent up to my room. I thought maybe she and Victoria cooked up a story to tell me about you needing to be gone this evening and you were my present.”
He sighed. “I would have loved to have been your present. What would you have done with me if I had been?”
“What you do with all presents. Unwrap them,” she teased.
He moaned.
She stepped back. “Go on and get it over with. I imagine Mother is sending me a bot
tle of vintage wine from Italy. If I have a headache tomorrow morning and I’m all grouchy on the trip home, you can blame her.”
“Next Sunday belongs to me. Don’t make plans. We’ll go on a fall picnic if it doesn’t rain,” he said.
“And if it does?”
“Then we’ll spend the day in bed,” he teased.
One dark eyebrow lifted slightly. “Sleeping?”
“As tired as I’ve been that’s probably the gospel truth of the matter.” He hurried to get in the elevator.
Another five minutes and he would have called Victoria to tell her he’d see her the next morning for brunch and the visit. He already knew what she was going to say and he wasn’t interested. He’d never worked so hard as he had the past month or been so frustrated because of a woman. But there was peace in the weariness and the aggravation.
His heart wanted Larissa to be there forever and he wanted to fall down on one knee and propose but he couldn’t. Not until he’d proven for himself that he was truly a rancher. He couldn’t offer her a life until he’d taken care of his own doubts. He drove back to his mother’s beautiful estate on the outskirts of Dallas. When he pulled up in the circular driveway in front of the house, Leroy, the butler, came out to greet him and take his keys.
“She’s waiting in the library and you are two minutes late,” Leroy said.
“Yes, sir,” Hank said. If that kiss had led to something more he would have been even later.
“You’re late. You know I expect punctuality,” Victoria said when he slung open the double doors. She had changed into a royal blue velvet lounging outfit and had taken her hair down.
“I don’t work for you anymore,” he said.
“But you will always be my son and as such you should be on time.”
He poured two fingers of Scotch into a glass and sat down. “How is it that you are so animated and free with your friends and you treat me like an employee?”
She sipped her drink then set it down on the coffee table separating them. They shared a brown leather sofa—one on one end and one on the other, three feet of space between them. Books lined three walls with the fourth one solid glass looking out over the gardens. It was a blaze of fall colors in yellows and oranges at that time of year and kept two full-time gardeners busy five days a week.
“Are you happy up there playing in the dirt?” she asked.
“I am and you didn’t answer my question.”
“You always did have more of him in you than me. I hate that and I worked so hard to keep you away from that damned ranch. You’ve got a life here. One of relative ease and you were happy until you went up to that gawdforsaken shit hole. I’ll answer your questions. Martha and Doreen have known me since we were kids. I can be like that with them. Carefree like a child. With you, it’s different. I can’t explain it.” She fumbled with the coaster.
“Okay, fair enough. There are things I can’t explain either. So fire away. Give me your best speech.”
Victoria shook her head. “I don’t have a speech. I will offer you your old job back with a substantial raise, the penthouse apartment at the corporation, and a company car until you can get that ugly truck sold. The offer is on the table for exactly five minutes.” She looked at her watch.
He shook his head. “No, but thank you.”
“What if I’d said forever? That you could come back anytime and it would all be waiting for you?”
“Answer would be the same. I’m in love with Larissa, Mother. I want to spend my life with her. I can’t ask her to trust me with her heart until I’m sure I’m trustworthy. I hurt her and I have to go slow when I want to rush in with both feet, my heart, and soul.”
Victoria gasped. “You cannot be serious. That girl might be Doreen’s child but she’s a bartender, for God’s sake, Hayes. I cannot have a daughter-in-law who owns a beer joint in Mingus, Texas.”
“Maybe not, but I could easily have a wife that does. It’ll be your loss if you can’t get past that. Good night, Mother,” he said.
“Good night, Hayes. I won’t change my mind.”
“I won’t either.”
He started up the stairs to his old bedroom and thought that if he was at the ranch, Henry would have said, “Good night, son.”
Chapter 20
Larissa had twenty minutes before her fancy bottle of imported wine would arrive at the door. She made a trip through the restroom and went back down the elevator to the bar in the lobby. Only one other person was at the bar and he was sitting at the far end. She ordered a Coors and carried it to the lounge where she sat on a long modern sofa and watched the people.
The man at the bar picked up his beer and sat down beside her. “Are you Larissa Morley?”
Her spine felt as if someone was drizzling cold water down it. “How did you know my name?”
“I think I would have known you without knowing your name. You are the absolute image of my mother,” he said.
So there was another double in the world. Sharlene looked like Doreen. And now this man thought she looked like his mother. It was a stupid pickup line and she had it on the end of her tongue to tell him so.
“I’m Larry Morleo. I understand that you are my daughter. I was waiting until eight o’clock to knock on your door, just like your mother said for me to do. But when I saw you at the bar, I knew it had to be you. You look so much like Elvira Turnbull Morleo that it’s uncanny.”
Larissa couldn’t speak. Words would not come. She thought she’d have a full-blown stroke before she finally whispered. “My mother found you?”
He nodded. “Last week. She called and told me the whole story.”
She stared.
He did the same.
“You don’t look a thing like I pictured you all these years,” she said.
“How did you picture me?”
“Oh, ten feet tall, bulletproof, a sorry bastard part of the time for leaving me and Mother when I was tiny. A knight or a king some of the time, a rodeo cowboy on occasion.”
He smiled. His face was the same shape as Larissa’s. He had the same dark brown eyes with heavy lashes. His hair was sprinkled with gray in the temples. He was tall and carried himself like he’d been in the military.
“I didn’t know about you. If I had I wouldn’t have left you,” he said.
“Where do you live?”
“Abilene. I went to Oklahoma State University on a scholarship. All my family is from Abilene. I’m retired from the Air Force now and took over a construction business from my father when he retired last year.”
“I have grandparents?” She was in awe. She’d pictured having a father, meeting him someday, but not in a hotel lobby with a bottle of Coors in her hand.
He nodded. “And cousins, aunts, uncles. Too many to name or count.”
“Brothers or sisters?”
He shook his head. “My wife wasn’t able to have children.”
“How does she feel about this?” Larissa asked.
“Well, let me tell you how it happened. We were having supper at our home with my brother and his wife when the phone rang. It was your mother and when we got through with the ‘do you remember me’ and all that, she hit me with the bomb. I didn’t know what to say, to tell the truth. So I told her that yes, I would come over here and see you on this day at this time. When I turned around my wife said, ‘Before or after we met?’ I didn’t know what to say. So she repeated it. ‘I know you were talking to a woman who says you have a child. We’ve been married twenty years. Tell me that it was before that.’ So I told them the whole thing.”
“You didn’t answer my question,” Larissa said.
“She would like to meet you but she said I was to come alone this time because we needed time to talk and bond. Are you married? Do I have grandchildren?” His voice sounded almost wistful.
“I’m not married. I own and operate a beer joint called the Honky Tonk in Mingus, Texas. No grandchildren. This is awkward, isn’t it?”
He t
ouched her shoulder. “Yes, it is. We’re bound by blood and heritage but not by experiences and love yet. Give it time, Larissa. This is our first meeting.”
“Thank you. When I was a little girl I played this scene in my head so many times. It changed as I got older. You weren’t an astronaut by the time I was seven.”
He smiled. “I see you like beer. Your mother hated it.”
“Still does. She’s a champagne woman. I didn’t even realize I liked beer or country music until I moved to Mingus,” she said.
“You don’t have to work in a beer joint. I’m not a wealthy man but my wife, Mary Beth, and I are very comfortable. You could work for me,” he said.
She laughed. “I work in the Honky Tonk because I love it, not because I have to, and besides all that, I own the place as well as work there. Thank you for the offer but I’ll stay where I am.”
“The offer will be there in six months or six years,” he said.
She studied him for a long while before she answered. “How can you say that? I could be a druggie or an alcoholic or I could be lying to you about my beer joint just to fleece you. How can you trust me enough to make that statement?”
“I’m a pretty good judge of character and you are so much like my mother. I can’t wait for you two to meet each other. I can’t explain it. You’ll have to meet her and then you’ll understand,” Larry said.
“What do we do now?” she asked.
“I suggest we finish these beers and sleep on what we have found out about each other. Maybe we could have breakfast together tomorrow morning? And then if you’ll give me your number, I’ll call. Or you’re going to laugh at this, but Momma still likes to dance and loves country music. Would it make you uncomfortable if we showed up at your Honky Tonk?”
Larissa could hardly believe her ears. “My grandmother in a beer joint? That’s hard to envision but bring her and whoever else wants to come dance on over. Monday through Wednesday the old songs are played on the jukebox. Friday and Saturday are new ones. Thursday is a toss-up.”
“How do you manage that?”
“Two jukeboxes,” she said.
My Give a Damn's Busted Page 27
