A Little Town in Texas

by Bethany Campbell

  “Goodbye, DeJames,” Mel said and hung up.

  He sighed and rose from the bed. He’d kicked off his shoes and socks and was shirtless. He smacked his bare chest and padded to the window. It had luxuriantly full white curtains that matched the bedspread and the canopy over the bed. He was in a set of matched rooms called the Gold Rooms, with a sitting room in between.

  The Plaza, it wasn’t. Still, it was a decent enough place, with a window seat and hooked rugs and a surprisingly well-stocked minibar. There was a combination restaurant and pub downstairs. Its Scottish décor would have struck Mel as absurd in the heart of Texas if he hadn’t known the hotel owner was from Glasgow.

  Mel knew much about this town. He’d come to it as his brother had, armed with knowledge. Unlike his brother, he wouldn’t let some woman make him into a turncoat.

  He stared out the window. He could identify the buildings as easily as if he’d lived here for months. There was the bank, Wall’s drug store, the Longhorn Coffee Shop, which was closed because it was Monday. Next to the café was the Longhorn Motel, where Nick had stayed.

  It was nothing but an L-shaped row of units, not shabby, but clearly low-priced. It wasn’t the kind of place Nick would have normally stayed on a bet. But he had done so because of the woman, Shelby.

  Mel looked at the whitewashed motel units and shook his head in disgust. He rubbed his upper lip and thought of all Brian Fabian had done for the Belyle family.

  Their mother still got teary when she tried to talk about how Nick had turned his back on such a good man. How Nick had given up everything. For a woman.

  “I trust you won’t make the same damn mistake,” Fabian had hissed at him before he’d left.

  “No problem,” Mel had assured him. And he meant it. He was made of tougher stuff.

  Behind him, the fax machine began to whir and click, receiving the first batch of data on Kitt Mitchell. She didn’t interest him as a person, he told himself. Not a bit. All he wanted was to know his enemy.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  KITT HAD BEEN WORRIED. After all these years, would she and Nora have anything in common, anything to say to each other?

  But they couldn’t stop talking. One memory sparked another; each story unleashed a flow of more. The two found they could still complete each other’s sentences—and make each other dissolve in hopeless giggles.

  They sat at the kitchen table with Ken, who listened to them with wry amusement.

  “And remember when we hiked up to Hermit’s Cave—” Nora began.

  “—we’d lugged tons of books up there—” Kitt put in.

  “And a blanket to sit on. And potato chips and a canteen of limeade—”

  “We were going to hide out all summer from my brothers—”

  Nora grinned. “—and a bat pooped in my hair—”

  “—and you screamed and ran halfway down the mountain—” Kitt snickered.

  “—yelling, ‘Bat poop! Bat poop!’ and pouring limeade on my head. Oh, Lord! And you behind me yelling, ‘It’s okay! People use it for fertilizer!’”

  Nora almost doubled up. Ken looked at his wife in wonder, as if he’d never seen her so giddy.

  Kitt laid her head in her folded arms on the table and laughed until she cried. Nora told how she’d washed her hair four times and would never go back to the cave. Kitt had to carry all the books back down by herself.

  This led to the story of how Reverend Blake’s dog had wandered into the church one Sunday morning when the reverend was preaching a sermon on the virtue of obedience.

  “Shoo, Spot,” the reverend had thundered. But Spot wouldn’t shoo. He sat in the middle of the aisle, ignoring his master and scratching a flea.

  Nora went to the counter, took a paper towel and dabbed at her face. “And we didn’t dare laugh. It nearly killed us.”

  “Whatever happened to that dog?” Kitt asked. Her ribs ached.

  “He died of old age. They buried him in the backyard under a rose bush. Eva Blake still gets misty when she talks about that dog.”

  Nora sighed and added, “The Blakes are eager to see you, you know—Howard and Eva. They always ask about you.”

  Kitt’s mirth vanished. An uneasy guilt filled her. She owed the Blakes a great deal, and she must visit them. But she didn’t want to, not at all. They brought back memories that still gave her bad dreams.

  But with false cheer she said, “Of course, I’ll go see them.”

  Ken got to his feet. “You two look like you’re just getting started. I need to catch some shut-eye. I’ve got a windmill to check out soon as the light comes up. Hope it doesn’t rain again.”

  He kissed Nora. It was not a perfunctory good-night kiss. It was full on the lips and lingering—not long enough to be showy, but long enough to convince Kitt how deeply he cared for his wife.

  “Good night, honey,” he said in a low voice. Nora rubbed her nose against his.

  Suddenly Kitt felt like an intruder. Ken wanted to make love, and Nora wanted it, too. “I should be going—” she began.

  “No,” Ken said. “You girls have catchin’ up to do. You don’t need me.”

  Nora was insistent. “I’m not letting you go yet. After all, it took twelve years to get you back here.”

  Ken kissed Nora’s cheek and limped from the room. Nora looked fondly after him. “He’s right,” she said, turning to Kitt. “We have a lot of catching up to do. I’ll make some cocoa?”

  “He seems like a good man,” Kitt said, gazing after Ken.

  “He is good,” Nora said. “The best. He’s made a world of difference in my life. And Rory’s. Lord, Rory. You should see him—he’s six foot one now.”

  Kitt smiled the mention of Rory. He was the one good thing to come from Nora’s marriage to Gordon Jones. But Nora’s unplanned pregnancy with Rory was why she had to marry when she was only sixteen.

  Kitt, eleven then, had been horrified. But she’d grown fond of Rory, and she knew how Nora loved him and how fiercely she had always protected him. And Rory had needed protecting. Gordon was abusive.

  When Kitt was in college, she got word that Gordon had died—violently. In a haze of jealousy and drugs, he’d come after Nora and Ken. Cal McKinney had tried to intervene. There was shooting, and Gordon, fleeing, had been hit by a car from the sheriff’s department.

  Kitt said carefully, “Does Rory ever mention Gordon?”

  “Not much. But he knows the truth. I didn’t want him to find out by the gossip—which is still going around, dammit.” Nora’s frank eyes showed a spark of anger, but it quickly faded. “He’s dealt with it fine, just fine.”

  “A freshman in college—I can’t believe it.” Kitt shook her head. “And he wants to be a professor, yet. He’s your boy, all right.”

  Nora’s smile was both happy and sad. “He was editor of the high school newspaper. Just like you. I wish Dottie could see him. She’d be so proud.”

  “She would.” Kitt put her hand over Nora’s and squeezed it. Dottie Jones had been a widow and Gordon’s mother. She’d always loved Nora and stood by her, even when Nora divorced Gordon. Dottie had been the original owner of the Longhorn, and she’d left it in her will to Nora.

  “How long have you been running the Longhorn now?” Kitt asked.

  “Almost ten years, off and on. I’ve poured enough coffee to float an aircraft carrier.”

  “I thought,” Kitt said carefully, “that when you got married again and went back to school, you were out of that place.”

  Nora tried to shrug as if it didn’t matter, but she didn’t fool Kitt. Nora said, “Ken saw that I finished my degree. He really wanted it for me….” Her voice trailed off.

  “You had a job at the high school,” Kitt said, still perplexed at what had happened to Nora. “The kids voted you Best Teacher.”

  “Ken got hurt,” Nora said, going to the counter. “And that was it.”

  Ken had been trying to help unload an unruly Brahma bull bought at a stock auction. The br
ute had kicked and pinned him against the side of the truck, half-killing him. His leg was broken, his pelvis fractured.

  “He couldn’t work for a year,” Nora said, stirring the cocoa. “J.T. did everything in his power to help. But at the same time, the school system was having money problems—no raises—and I could make better money going back to the Longhorn and managing it myself.”

  “What I’ve never understood,” Kitt said with a frown, “is why the school system had money problems?”

  Nora shrugged and filled two cups with cocoa. “The town’s lost people. The tax burden on those left—it was getting out of hand.”

  Kitt crooked an eyebrow. “But Crystal Creek should have been growing. With this location? This close to Austin? Wasn’t the town even trying to attract any kind of industry or business?”

  Nora gave her on odd look. “We have an industry—cattle. We have the winery. We don’t want things like that yucky cement factory at Kelso. Or the dairy operations at Bunyard—they both pollute something fierce.”

  Kitt eyed Nora with surprise. Did she believe Crystal Creek could survive without changing?

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Nora said, a bit defensively. She carried the cups to the table and sat down. “That Bluebonnet Meadows could actually help the town. We don’t see it like that. Our way of life is being threatened. Our heritage. Our identity.”

  Your identity has got you back cleaning tables and flipping burgers, Kitt thought. But instead she said, “You plan to keep working at the Longhorn.”

  Nora shrugged. “Rory’s in college. And business is steady.”

  But the conversation seemed to make Nora uneasy, and she changed the subject. “What about you? I know about your work—I read every sparkling word you write. But how about life? Any love interest?”

  It was Kitt’s turn to be defensive. As a reporter, she was used to talking about other people’s lives, not her own. She said, “I’m taking a break from that sort of thing.”

  Nora raised an eyebrow in concern. “What about that guy who wrote for U.S. News and World Report? Weren’t you living together?”

  Kitt rolled her eyes. “Reese? For a while he was kind of interesting. Then he became predictable. Then, finally, he bored me to tears.”

  Nora laughed. “They always end up boring you to tears.”

  Kitt had the decency to blush. This was true. She had never seriously dated a man for long. Any man who seemed vaguely like a prince quickly became a yawn-inducing frog.

  “Was he handsome?” Nora asked, leaning her chin on her hand.

  “Too handsome,” Kitt said. “It made him conceited.”

  An image of Mel Belyle flashed through her mind. He was far better-looking than Reese. Yet Mel’s looks were somehow different from Reese’s. Something deep in his sapphire eyes was complicated—and mysterious.

  She reminded herself that Mel was also more conceited than Reese—far more. Yet something about his cockiness seemed forced, more assumed than genuine. She couldn’t put her finger on it, which was maddening….

  “You said he was quite bright,” Nora said.

  “Reese? Very bright,” Kitt admitted. “But too serious.”

  “What’s the matter with serious?” Nora asked.

  “Nothing,” Kitt said. “At first it was attractive. But he had no sense of play. He didn’t have conversations, he gave lectures. Long, dull ones.”

  “Ugh.” Nora wrinkled her nose.

  “One day I realized that he was gorgeous, he was smart, the sex was great, but every time he opened his mouth, I wanted to scream.”

  Nora laughed. “You need a man with a little devil in him.”

  Kitt thought again of Mel Belyle, the wicked innuendoes, the playful sexuality of his words. She realized that he was staying at the same hotel she was, literally sleeping under the same roof….

  “So there’s nobody interesting?” Nora asked sympathetically.

  Kitt pulled herself back to the moment. “Nobody interesting in the least,” she said, almost believing it.

  MEL BELYLE WAS NOT without potential friends in Crystal Creek.

  There were people who looked at the rolling ranch country that Brian Fabian had bought and didn’t see land about to be despoiled. They saw a crop of dollar signs pushing out of the earth, begging to be harvested.

  Two who saw dollar signs were Ralph Wall, the town pharmacist, and his wife, Gloria. Mel had phoned them once he got settled, and Gloria immediately invited him over for a “little get-acquainted drinkee.”

  Mel went to see how much the couple would tell him and to gauge how grasping they were. They struck him as transparently greedy, and after two little drinkees, they were very talkative indeed.

  “A smart man stands to make a lot of money out of all this,” Ralph Wall said, doing his best to look like a smart man.

  “You’re exactly right,” Mel answered. He smiled at Gloria Wall. “These are excellent hors d’oeuvres, Mrs. Wall.”

  Gloria beamed. She was a large woman whose hair was a crown of tight ringlets rinsed to an improbable shade of gold. She had filled a silver plate with things stuffed with ham, olives, anchovies and enough creamed cheese to supply Philadelphia for a week.

  “We have five prime acres we inherited from Gloria’s mother,” Ralph said, leaning back in his flowered easy chair. “It’s the ideal location for a strip mall. I thought I could lease it to Mr. Fabian for a hundred years—”

  “Mr. Fabian doesn’t usually lease,” said Mel as pleasantly as he could. “This is an idea I’d have to run by him.”

  “He’ll like it,” said Ralph. “He’s a man who thinks outside the box. I can tell that. Yessir. I’m a man who thinks outside the box myself.”

  “Mama’s land is a select piece of property,” Gloria said. “We were thinking of leasing it at oh, maybe, a million dollars. That’s not very much, spread over a hundred years.”

  It’s highway robbery, thought Mel. “Interesting. We’ll have to do a feasibility study. That takes time. But I’ll be sure to suggest it.”

  “Let me freshen that drink,” she said reaching for the pitcher of margaritas.

  “No more, thanks,” Mel said. “But don’t let me stop you. This is truly a festive spread.”

  Gloria refilled Ralph’s glass and her own. “I lo-o-ove to cook. I want you to come for supper sometime this week. I’ll invite my niece, Ladonna Faye. She’s a lovely girl, a natural blonde like me, and so interested in investments. We’ll have such a nice cozy time.”

  When hell freezes over, Mel thought, suppressing a shudder. But he smiled, told them he’d checked his schedule and let them know. Now, when they were so friendly and their tongues growing loose, was the time to ask about Kitt Mitchell.

  He had a thin stack of information on her in his hotel room, faxed by the tireless DeJames. He’d learned a few things about Kitt—but not enough.

  He said, “I need to confide something to you. I got word today that Exclusive magazine’s sending a reporter after me. A woman who grew up here. Her name’s Katherine Mitchell.”

  Ralph and Gloria exchanged a significant look. Ralph said, “Little Kitt Mitchell? She’s coming?”

  “She may already be here,” Mel said. He knew she was; she had to be. It was eerie, but he could feel her presence in his marrow.

  Gloria peered at him over the edge of her drink. Ah, thought Mel. Gloria wants to gossip. It’s shining out of her face like a light.

  She said, “I’m surprised she’d lower herself. She couldn’t wait to shake the dust of this place off her feet.”

  Mel tilted his head in interest. “Really? What makes you say that?”

  Gloria twirled her glass coyly, making the ice cubes clink. “Well…” she said. “Far be it from me to gossip…”

  Mel stared into her slightly unfocused eyes. “This isn’t gossip. It’s intelligence. Business background.”

  “Give him the goods, Mama,” Ralph said and reached for another canapé.

>   Gloria seemed to puff up with importance. “I wish I didn’t have to say it, but Kitt came from riffraff. They both did.”

  Mel’s interest coiled up like an overwound spring. “Both of them? What do you mean?”

  Gloria heaved a sigh of false sympathy. “She and that Nora Slattery. She’s Kitt’s aunt. She owns the café and motel.”

  Mel nodded solemnly, hiding his jubilance. So the little vixen had told the truth about having an aunt. And he recognized Nora’s name; she ran the Longhorn, which was one of the town’s main nerve centers.

  “Excuse me,” he said. “Why’d you call them riffraff?”

  Gloria’s small eyes narrowed to knowing slits. “Well, Nora’s father was shiftless. Just a wrangler. He drifted all over the county. He worked for all of ’em at one time or another.”

  “All of them?” Mel reached for the pitcher and topped off her drink.

  “All the money people,” Gloria said with ill-disguised bitterness. “The big ranch folks. He dragged around a skinny wife and a passel of skinny kids. And the youngest was Nora. She was the ‘caboose.’ Her oldest brother—that was Herv—was sixteen—seventeen years older than her.”

  Ralph reached for another canapé. “Herv was already married when Nora was born. He worked for the McKinneys. Kind of a tenant-hand. There never was a Mitchell man who showed a lick of ambition.”

  “No,” Gloria said sipping her drink. “And they all married young. Had to. Couldn’t keep their pants on.”

  Mel frowned, wondering if this was supposed to include Kitt.

  “Well,” Gloria said with an expansive gesture. “When Nora’s mother died, Nora was the only kid left at home. She was about nine. So her daddy dumped her on her brother. On Herv, at the McKinneys’, and lit out for the panhandle. So Nora lived with Herv for—let’s see—seven years.”

  Ralph heaved himself up out of the easy chair. “Those margaritas are so tasty, I’m going to make up another batch.”

  “Oh, goody,” said Gloria. She gave Mel an almost flirtatious look. “What was I saying?”

  Mel inched back from her slightly. “I asked about Kitt Mitchell.”