Maybe his drive was gone because his manhood was failing. The thought sickened him. What if he got Cynthia excited, then couldn’t satisfy her? He could not face risking it.
She had taken her hand from his chest. Now she lay beside him in the darkness, listening to the damnable bumping and thudding from next door. The longer it lasted, the worse J.T. felt.
Finally, mercifully, it ceased. Silence fell. He imagined his son and daughter-in-law giggling and cuddling in the intimate quiet. Beside him, Cynthia sighed. “Maybe you should see a doctor.”
J.T. tensed. “I’m not due for a checkup for months,” he almost snapped.
Cynthia lay gazing up at the ceiling. “I don’t mean Nate Purdy. I mean a specialist.”
J.T. bristled. “A specialist? What’s wrong with Nate Purdy? He’s been my doctor for forty years.”
Cynthia didn’t even turn her head to speak. “I don’t know how frank you’d be with Nate. You’re so—macho. You always hate to admit anything’s wrong.”
“Nothing’s wrong,” J.T. countered. “I told you. I’m tired, dammit.” He shouldn’t have sworn, but he felt cornered and defensive.
“You’re taking too much on yourself,” she answered. “You’re wearing yourself out. You’re anxious. You’re on edge. Tonight you just picked at your supper. I worry about your heart.”
J.T. didn’t want to think about his heart. He’d had a heart attack almost eight years ago. He’d taken good care of himself since then. Nate Purdy had told him he could live to be a hundred if he was careful.
Cynthia said, “You were eager for Cal to come home. Now that he’s here, you’re touchy as an old bear. Why don’t you just sit back and let him handle this thing with Brian Fabian? You and I could go away for a while, even have a sort of second honeymoon—”
“Cal doesn’t live here anymore,” J.T. retorted. “He hasn’t even lived in this country for the past six months. He’s been in Australia, for God’s sake. I’ve been involved in this thing from day one, and I plan to stay involved.”
“Cal has a network of connections,” Cynthia argued. “That partnership of his, Three Amigos—those men are powerful. They can put him in touch with people who are expert in these matters. He—”
“Look,” J.T. said with impatience. “I know you were a big high muckity-muck banker in Boston. And I’m a lowly cattleman. But I’m not so ignorant and feeble that I have to turn over the reins yet. And why are you talking just about Cal? Tyler’s got a share in this, too. Lynn, as well.”
“There,” Cynthia accused. “See how edgy you are? All I’m trying to say is that I love you and I’m concerned about you.”
“If you’re concerned about me, let me sleep,” J.T. said, more sharply than he should have. “I’ve told you three times, I’m tired.”
“J.T.,” she said, “sooner or later we’re going to have to talk about this.”
“Make it later, will you?” he said. He turned his back to her and pulled the sheet up to his ears.
“I mean it,” she said, her voice tremulous. “We have to talk.”
“Good night, Cynthia,” he said with weary finality. She got up and swept into the bathroom. He heard the sound of running water and knew she was taking a sleeping pill. She came back to bed, but she slept on the opposite edge, as far from him as possible.
At last her breathing became even, and her body seemed to relax. He thought of all the things that preyed on his mind. He hadn’t felt well lately. His sex drive had diminished to nothing. He was facing the fight of his life, and his temper was frayed to tatters.
Sometimes it scared him. He should talk to Cynthia. But there were some things a man didn’t admit, and there were things he didn’t talk about. A man had to act like a man, dammit.
It was then that the noises next door had started the second time. J.T. lay there and listened to the sound of his son doing what he feared he could no longer do himself.
CAL FELL BACK against the pillow exhausted. “Oooh,” he said in happy exhaustion.
Serena cuffed his bare shoulder in mock punishment. “You promised you’d be quiet this time.”
He caught her hand and laced his fingers through hers. “Sugar, I’d’ve had to concentrate on two things at once to do that. And the only thing on my mind was you.”
“Your parents will think we’re terrible,” she said, but she settled beside him, snuggling close. “And that we do this every night.”
“We pretty much do,” mused Cal.
“Not twice,” she said with a wicked little laugh.
“Sweetheart, the spirit is often willin’, but the flesh is weak.”
“Tomorrow,” she said, “I want you to move this bed. I feel like we have a kettledrum for accompaniment.”
“Oh, I think Daddy and Cynthia get it on pretty regular.”
“I hope you’re right,” she said. “Your father does look tired this trip.”
“Daddy?” Cal said sleepily. He’d noticed it himself, but he’d decided not to pay mind to it. “Yeah. But he’s the original iron man.”
“He’d like to think so,” Serena said. “He’s pushing himself awfully hard. Maybe too hard. I think Cynthia has reason to worry.”
“He’ll be okay.” Cal dropped a drowsy last kiss on her forehead and began to settle into sleep. But sleep didn’t come. He mused on Serena’s words. He’d never worried deeply about J.T. In his mind his father was immortal and eternally strong.
But of course he was mortal, and strength had its limits. I’ve got to do something, Cal thought. I’ve got to help. Whether he likes it or not.
CHAPTER SIX
MEL’S SLEEP TEEMED with frustrating dreams that he couldn’t recall on waking. He shook his head to clear it, threw back the sheet and staggered to the window.
The sun was just rising, tinting the eastern sky pink and golden. The buildings of Crystal Creek seemed at rest, as if content to drowse through the dawn. The streets were empty, the sidewalks deserted.
He turned, stretching and running his hand through his hair. He was dressed in blue silk briefs and a T-shirt. He’d never slept naked. In boyhood he’d felt too shy, and it was an ingrained habit.
“What’s the matter with you?” women sometimes asked when he got out of his bed to slip back into his shorts and shirt.
“I can’t fall asleep undressed,” he’d say, trying to laugh it off. “It’s my only fetish.” One of the models he’d dated had spent time in therapy. It miffed her that that he always put clothes back on after making love.
“What’s your problem?” she’d demand. “I think you’ve got intimacy issues. You fear being uncovered. What are you ashamed of? You’ve got a nearly perfect body. I know bodies.”
Well, she hadn’t known him. Finally she’d said, “You’ve got to choose. Me or your shorts.” He chose his shorts. They didn’t try to psychoanalyze him.
He walked into the bathroom and splashed water on his face. He’d shave later. This morning he was going to run.
He hadn’t run all summer—it had been too hot, he’d gotten out of the habit. And now in the mirror his “nearly perfect” body looked a few pounds too heavy around the middle.
Worse, yesterday he’d been outsprinted in the airport by a woman—a very small woman, at that. Afterward, still fuming from the shame of it, he’d stopped at a mall in Dallas. He’d bought running shoes, shorts and a few extra T-shirts—items he hadn’t bothered to pack. The redhead was a wake-up call from the gods of fitness. It was time to get back in shape.
Besides, he was becoming antsy about taking up Fabian’s business where his brother had abandoned it. For the first time, he felt a wave of true uneasiness about Nick.
Quickly he dressed. He would run until he burned away all doubts and misgivings. He’d do a few miles out in the country, and he knew exactly where he wanted to go—the freshly cut main road that ran through the Bluebonnet Meadows development.
He’d see firsthand exactly how far Fabian had gotten before the l
ocal yokels shut him down. And he wanted to look over the controversial dam. He snatched his wallet and car keys and headed for the parking lot.
The western sky was clouding up, but the sun was still visible. As he drove, it rose higher, and he watched as the hills changed color, brightening under the gold of full morning.
A few solitary hawks cruised beneath the mounting clouds. Then a far larger bird flew out of the scrub beside the highway and flapped across the road—a wild turkey.
He smiled to himself. He’d never seen a turkey in the wild before. Then, in a stony field, he saw a small herd of longhorn sheep. They fled as the car approached, nimbly trotting up a narrow limestone shelf and disappearing among the boulders.
Beautiful country, all right, he told himself. No wonder everybody wanted a piece of it.
But then, the billboards loomed into sight. “The Future Site of Bluebonnet Meadows!” One trumpeted. Another announced: “Austin’s Finest Planned Community!”
The signs sprouted out of the land as if planted there by aliens with a rotten sense of decor. Lots for Sale! Tour Our Model Homes! Prices For Everyone! Share the Dream!
Somehow, the billboards irked Mel. They marked Fabian’s victory so far and promised of greater triumphs to come. But against the subtle hues of the landscape, they looked garish and out of place, and there were too damn many of them.
He’d have to tell Fabian. Memo: billboards need to be rethought. They make plastic flamingoes look good.
A barricade blocked the entrance to the main road into Bluebonnet Meadows. More signs. Not inviting, but hostile: KEEP OUT! TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED! AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY!
He considered himself Authorized Personnel. He parked beside the barricades and got out. Beyond the sawhorses and yellow tape, he saw the new road stretched across the landscape like a barely healed scar.
The ground on either side was still raw and churned. Heavy equipment had gouged a confusion of tracks into the denuded earth. The road took a curve and disappeared between a pair of low, stony mountains.
Mel stared at those mountains as he stretched before running. Beyond them lay the first of the model homes—and the last of the Hole in the Wall Dude Ranch.
Fabian’s planners had ordered most of the ranch’s out-buildings torn down. The wrecking ball had smashed them, the bulldozers had flattened their remains. All would be replaced with structures that matched the architectural overview.
Only the original lodge and ranch house would stay—as a rec center and sales office. But they would be gutted and redone to conform to the master plan. Everything in Bluebonnet Meadows must match.
Mel stepped over a sawhorse and started down the road at a medium jog. On either side of the concrete ribbon, the muddy earth was stabbed with surveyors’ flags, orange triangles wagging in the breeze.
But the morning air was cool and sweet in his lungs, and the faint sunshine warmed his bare arms and pumping legs. The muscles in his calves and thighs tingled pleasantly.
He followed the road’s curve. A surprised jackrabbit sprinted off into the nearest patch of mesquite. Sorry, buddy, Mel thought in amusement. No harm meant. This place is big enough to hold us all.
But the curve took a sharp bend, and the view worsened suddenly, almost violently. Mel slowed. Before him was a broken vista of construction mixed with destruction.
Oh, hell, he thought. He stopped, breathing heavily. For a stretch of twenty acres, the countryside looked as if it had been shelled. Ragged sockets of ground were littered with the debris of shattered buildings.
The injunction must have stopped work before these pits could be filled. Steam shovels and bulldozers stood idle, like great yellow dinosaurs rendered motionless by the spell of the law.
High on one mountain slope, the ranch house stood. Its empty windows looked like dead eyes, and only the skeleton of the porch remained. On a plateau below it, the lodge had a similar air of mutilation.
Mel shook his head. Anybody who had loved this place would be sick at the sight of it. He wiped the sweat from his forehead, then put his hands on his hips. On the flat, in the valley below the lodge, stood five houses, only one of them finished. Each reigned over its own muddy acre. No trees graced the yards, and no grass.
The wind had risen, making a sound like mourning.
Then he heard the sound of quick, light steps behind him. He turned to see Kitt Mitchell. Her running shorts and sleeveless T-shirt were bright yellow, and so was her terry headband.
She pattered toward him with lightning speed. Drawing up to him, she stopped, not even out of breath. She stood with one hip cocked and her arms akimbo. He looked into her blue, mocking eyes.
Perspiration gleamed on her skin, and although her fiery hair was pinned atop her head, tendrils had escaped and danced insouciantly in the breeze.
“Hi,” she said with bright, false innocence.
He glared as fiercely as he could. “You snuck up on me.”
She wasn’t fazed. She looked around the ravished landscape. “Nice rock pile,” she commented. “Who did it? Fabian’s convict labor?”
He crossed his arms. “You’re trespassing.”
“Am I?” she asked.
“Yes. This is private property. Leave.”
“Let me rest a minute,” she said, although she clearly wasn’t a bit tired.
“Did you follow me here?” he demanded.
“No. I followed the pretty signs. There were so many of them. All pointing this way. Where I found you surveying the work of your master. He’s done wonders with the place.”
Mel resisted grinding his teeth. Moments before, he himself hadn’t liked the look of Bluebonnet Meadows. Yet he felt compelled to defend it. “You can’t build up without tearing down first.”
“Did he have to tear down so much?”
He looked her over. She seemed so full of life and spirit that she practically sent electrical sparks popping into the air. He remembered the words DeJames had quoted: “Some women break records. Some break hearts. Kitt Mitchell does both.”
He bet she had broken hearts, all right. He envisioned them as an endless string of torn red valentines trailing behind her, and he should take the image as a warning.
“I’m not talking to you about this,” he said.
“Okay,” she said lightly. “Let’s just take in the view.”
She looked off at the five model houses in the middle distance. Each had a deep hole gouged into the earth behind it. She said, “I love to see the way the morning sunlight hits an open septic tank. Don’t you?”
“No comment,” Mel muttered. The pits had been dug for the tanks, but they hadn’t yet been placed. It was another action the Concerned Citizens of Claro County had stalled.
She brushed a strand of gleaming hair from her forehead and kept her gaze on the houses. “Nice the way they’re all going to resemble one another. Just a little difference here and there. Individualism is vastly overrated. Conformity—it’s a good thing.”
“No comment,” he repeated.
“I can’t wait to see five hundred of them,” she continued. “Like clones. Marching in lock step across the landscape. There will be a landscape, won’t there? Will Mr. Fabian allow grass to grow?”
“No comment,” he said for the third time. He studied her legs. Nice. Too nice. He crossed his arms more tightly and looked away.
“That was a pretty brochure you gave me,” she said. “There were designer’s drawings of the five types of houses allowed. They seemed to have grass in the yards. Or was it Astroturf? So much tidier. It doesn’t do sloppy things like grow.”
He stared at the land around them. It looked like a cross between a battlefield and a moonscape. Most construction sites did at some point, and she must know it. She was trying to needle him into replying.
He turned and stared at her. “You got straight A’s at Stobbart. And straight A’s at Georgetown. Except for chemistry II. What happened?”
She stiffened slightly. He
r eyes flashed into higher alertness. “How do you know that?”
“I’ve read your transcripts,” Mel said with a smirk. That ought to slow her down, he thought.
It didn’t. “And I’ve read yours,” she said. “At Yale you got straight A’s. But only an A minus in world geography. What was the problem?”
The problem had been a blonde. She’d had topography more interesting than any country. A beautiful girl. Very tall, he reminded himself. Unlike this sassy elf.
“Probably a blonde,” she said. “I’ve read that you’re partial to blondes. Tall ones. Models.”
He shot her a killing glance. He didn’t know who all her boyfriends or lovers had been, but he’d know soon. DeJames was as thorough as he was tireless. “Look,” he said, cocking his head. “This has been delightful. But I have to go. So do you. Off the property.”
Her eyes traveled to his feet. “Your shoes look new. Shouldn’t you break them in before you run?”
He pointed east. He did it with a great deal of authority. “That’s the way back to the highway. Take it.”
“If you’re going to keep running, I should go with you,” she said, tossing her hair from her eyes.
“No, you shouldn’t. Scat. Scram. Begone. Avaunt. Shoo.”
“I’ve got Band-Aids,” she said, patting the pouch fastened to her belt. “And water. I always carry emergency supplies. You could die of thirst out there in the man-made wasteland. Nothing but swamp mud to drink.”
He stretched, getting ready to head west, toward the model houses and past them to the lake. “I could call the sheriff to come get you, you know.”
“No,” she pointed out. “You don’t have your phone. You left it in your car. I peeked.”
“I can get a court order to keep you away from me,” he warned.
“Not now, you can’t,” she said with a smile. “Where are you going? To see the dam? I know Fabian’s engineers swear it’ll hold. People around here aren’t so sure.”
He turned from her, his patience nearly gone. “Goodbye,” he said and set out down the road at a brisk trot.
A Little Town in Texas Page 9
