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Carly eyed her quietly. “If you push her, she’ll leave. Then what will you do?”
“I’ll do my own housework and cooking,” Ella said grandly.
Carly shook her head. “Okay. It’s your life. But you’re missing out.”
“On what?” Ella muttered.
“On the only family you have,” Carly replied in a subdued tone. “I don’t have anybody,” she added. “My parents are dead. I had no siblings. I was married, but I was never able to have a child. My husband is dead, too. You have a child, and you don’t want her. I’d have given anything to have a child of my own.”
“You can have Keely,” Ella said, laughing. “I’ll give her to you.”
Carly moved toward the door. “You can’t give people away, Ella.” She looked back. “You don’t really have anybody, either.”
“I have men.” Ella laughed coldly. “I can have any man I want.”
“For a night,” her friend agreed. “Old age is coming up fast, for both of us. Do you really want to drive your only child away? She’ll marry someday and have children of her own. You won’t even be allowed to see your grandchildren.”
“I’m not having grandchildren,” Ella shot back. “I’m not going to be old. I’m only in my late thirties!”
Carly laughed. “You’re heading toward fifty, Ella,” she reminded her friend. “All the beauty treatments in the world aren’t going to change that.”
“I’ll have a face-lift,” the other woman returned. “I’ll sell more land to pay for it.”
That was unwise. Ella had already sold most of the land her family had left her. If she sold the rest, she was going to be hard-pressed just to pay bills. But Carly could see that it did no good to argue with her.
“Good night,” she told Ella.
Ella made a face at her, collapsed on the pillow and was asleep in seconds. Carly didn’t say anything else. She just closed the door.
Keely put on a pair of brown corduroy slacks and a beige turtleneck sweater and ran a brush through her thick, straight blond hair. She hoped Clark didn’t have an expensive date in mind. She couldn’t dress for it. She threw an old beige Berber coat over her clothes and grabbed her purse.
True to his word, Clark pulled up in the yard in exactly ten minutes, driving his sports car.
Carly came out of Ella’s bedroom just as Keely was leaving.
“Is she asleep?” Keely asked dully.
“Yes.” Carly was worried, and it showed. “She should never have said that to you,” she added. “She loved you when you were a baby. You wouldn’t remember, you were too little, but I do. She was so happy…”
“So happy that she now treats me this way?” Keely asked, hurt.
Carly sighed. “She was different after your father left. She started drinking then, and it’s just gotten worse year after year.” She saw that she wasn’t getting through to the younger woman. “There are things you don’t know about your parents, Keely,” she said gently.
“Such as?”
Carly shook her head. “That’s not my place to tell you.” She turned away. “I’m going home. She’ll sleep until morning.”
“Lock the door when you leave, please,” Keely said.
“I’m leaving now. You can lock it.” Carly got her purse and stopped just as the door closed behind the two women.
“I’m as bad as she is, sometimes,” the older woman confessed quietly. “I shouldn’t make fun of the way you are, and neither should she. But you don’t fight back, Keely. You must learn to do that. You’re nineteen. Don’t spend the rest of your life knuckling under, just to keep peace.”
Keely frowned. “I don’t.”
“You do, baby,” Carly said softly. She sighed. “Ella and I are a bad influence on you. What you need to do is get an apartment of your own and live your own life.”
Keely searched the other woman’s eyes. “I’ve thought about that….”
“Do it,” Carly advised. “Get out while you can.”
Keely frowned. “What do you mean?”
Carly hesitated. “I’ve said too much already. Enjoy your date. Good night.”
Carly walked off to her small import car. Keely watched her for a minute before she went down the steps to where Clark was waiting in his sleek Lincoln. He leaned across and opened the door for her.
He grinned. “I’d come around and open it, but I’m too lazy,” he teased.
She smiled back. He was like a kinder version of Boone. Clark had the same black hair and dark eyes, but he was a little shorter than his brother, and his hair was wavy—unlike Boone’s, which was straight.
“Neither one of you resemble your sister,” she remarked.
He shrugged. “Winnie got our mother’s coloring. She doesn’t like that. We hated our mother.”
“So Winnie said.”
He glanced at her as they pulled out of her mother’s yard. “We share the feeling, don’t we, Keely?” he probed. “Your mother is a walking headache.”
She nodded. “She was in high form tonight,” she said wearily. “Drunk and vicious.”
“What was Carly saying to you?”
“That I have to learn to stand up to her,” she said. “Surprising, isn’t it, coming from mother’s best friend? The two of them make fun of me all the time.”
Clark glanced at her, and he didn’t smile. “She’s right about that. You need to stand up to my brother, too. Boone walks all over people who won’t fight back.”
She shivered. “I’m not taking on your brother,” she said. “He’s scary.”
“Scary? Boone?”
She averted her gaze to the window. “Can’t we talk about something else?”
He was disconcerted by her remark, but he pulled himself together quickly. “Sure! I just heard that the Chinese are launching another probe toward the moon.”
She gave him a wry look.
“You don’t like astronautics,” he murmured. “Okay. Politics?”
She groaned out loud. “I’m so sick of presidential candidates that I’m thinking of moving to someplace where nobody runs for public office.”
“The Amazon jungle comes to mind.”
Her eyes narrowed. “If I went far enough in, I might escape television and the Internet.”
“I can see the headlines now,” he said with mock horror. “Local vet technician eaten by jaguar in darkest jungles of South America!”
“No self-respecting jaguar would want to eat a human being,” she retorted. “Especially one who eats anchovies on pizza.”
“I didn’t know you liked anchovies.”
She sighed. “I don’t. But when I was little, I discovered that if I ordered them, my dad would let me have more than two slices of pizza.”
He laughed. “Your father must have been a card.”
“He was.” She smiled reminiscently. “Animals loved him. I’ve seen him feed tigers right out of his hand without ever being bitten. Even snakes liked him.”
“That animal park must have been something else.”
“It was wonderful,” she replied. “We all loved it. But there was a tragic accident, and Dad lost everything.”
“Somebody got eaten?”
“Almost,” she replied, unwilling to say more. “There was a lawsuit.”
“And he lost,” he guessed.
She didn’t correct him. “It destroyed him.”
He frowned. “Did he commit suicide?”
She hesitated. This was Clark. He was her friend. She knew that he’d never tell Boone or even Winnie without asking her first. “He’s not dead,” she said quietly. “I don’t know where he is or what he’s doing. He developed a…a drinking problem.” She couldn’t tell him the whole truth. She glanced at him worriedly. “You won’t tell anybody?”
“Of course not.”
She studied her purse in her lap, turning it restlessly in her hands. “He left me with Mother and took off. That was six years ago, and I haven’t heard a word from him. For all I know, he could be dead.”
“You loved him.”
She nodded. “Very much.” She moved restlessly.
“What is it?”
She felt the pain of her mother’s words go right through her. “My mother said that she never wanted me. I ruined her figure,” she added with a hollow laugh.
“Good God! And I thought our mother was bad!” He stopped at a traffic light heading into Jacobsville and looked toward her. “Isn’t it a hell of a shame that we can’t choose our parents?”
“Yes, it is,” she agreed. “I was just sick when she said it. I should have guessed. She didn’t like me when I left, and she liked me even less when Dad dumped me on her, and now I think she hates me. I’ve tried to please her, keeping house and cooking and cleaning, but she doesn’t appreciate it. She grudges me the very food I eat.” She turned toward him. “I’ve got to get out of that house,” she said desperately. “I can’t take it anymore.”
“Mrs. Brown runs a very respectable boardinghouse,” he began.
She grimaced. “Yes, and charges a respectable price for rooms. I can’t afford it on my salary.”
“Hit Bentley up for a raise,” he suggested.
“Oh, right, I’ll do that first thing tomorrow,” she drawled.
“You’re scared of Bentley. You’re scared of Boone.” He pulled out into traffic. “You’re even scared of your mother. You have to step up and claim your own life, Keely.”
“What do you mean?”
“You can’t go through life being afraid of people. Especially people like my brother and Bentley Rydel. Do you know why they’re scary?” he persisted. “It’s because it’s hard work to talk to them. They’re both basically introverts who find it difficult to relate to other people. Consequently they’re quiet and somber and they don’t go out of their way to join in activities. They’re loners.”
She sighed. “I’m a loner, too, in my own way. But I don’t stand on the sidelines and glare at people all the time—or, worse, pretend they’re not there.”
“Is that Boone’s latest tactic?” he mused, chuckling. “He ignores you, does he?”
“He did until I argued about Bailey’s condition.”
“Thank God you did,” he said fervently. “Bailey belongs to Boone, but we all love the old fellow. I’ll never understand why Boone didn’t realize what had happened to him. He’s a cattleman—he’s seen bloat before.”
“His girlfriend convinced him that I was trying to get attention, using Bailey to lure Boone to my place of work.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” he burst out. “Boone’s not that stupid!”
“Well, apparently my mother’s been telling him that I have a crush on him, and now he thinks everything I do or say is an attempt to worm my way into his life,” she said bitterly.
“Ella told him that?” he exclaimed.
“Yes. And she told him that I’m sleeping with Bentley.”
“Does Bentley know that you’re sleeping with him?” he asked innocently.
She laughed. “I don’t know. I’ll ask him.”
He burst out laughing, too. “That’s more like it, kid,” he said. “You have to learn to roll with the punches and not take life so seriously.”
“It feels pretty serious to me lately,” she replied. “I feel like I’ve hit a wall tonight.”
“You should push your mother into one,” he told her. “Or better yet, tell her what a lousy mother she’s been.”
“She doesn’t listen when she’s drunk, and she’s mostly away from home when she’s sober.” She pursed her lips. “I work for veterinarians. I’ve been professionally taught to let sleeping dogs lie.”
He smiled. “Have you, now?”
“Where are you taking me?” she asked when he took a state highway instead of the Jacobsville road. “I thought we were going to a movie.”
“I’m not in the mood for a movie. I thought we might go to San Antonio for shrimp,” he replied. “I’m in the mood for some. What do you think?”
“We’ll be very late getting back,” she reminded him worriedly.
“What the hell,” he scoffed. “You can tell your mother you’re sleeping with me now instead of Bentley and she can mind her own business about when you come home.”
Her eyes almost popped.
He saw that and grinned. “Which brings to mind a matter I need a little help with. I think,” he added, “that you and I can be the solution for each others’ problems. If you’re game.”
All the way to San Antonio, she wondered what he meant, and how she would fit into his “solution.”
Chapter Three
The restaurant Clark took Keely to was one of the most exclusive in town, famous for its seafood. Keely was worried that she was dressed too casually for such a grand place, but she saw people dressed up and dressed down for the evening out. She relaxed and followed Clark and the hostess to a corner table. They were seated and provided with menus. Keely had to bite her tongue at the prices. Any one of these dishes would have equaled a day’s salary. But Clark just gave her a grin and told her to order what she wanted. They were celebrating. She wondered what they were celebrating, but he wouldn’t say.
Keely had eaten earlier, so she just had a very light meal. After she’d finished, she wondered if it was really the food that drew him here. He couldn’t take his eyes off the waitress who took their orders. And the waitress blushed prettily when he stared at her.
“Do you know her?” Keely asked softly when the waitress went to turn in their orders.
“Yes,” he said, grimacing. “I’m in love with her.”
Immediately Keely recalled Boone’s attitude toward his siblings becoming involved with someone from a lower economic class. He’d been vocal about it in the past. The look on Clark’s face was painful to see. She knew without asking that he was seeing the hopelessness of his own situation vividly.
“Is she the one you took to supper at the ranch?” she asked, remembering something she’d heard from Winnie.
He nodded. “Boone was polite to her, but later he asked me if I was out of my mind. He sees all working women as gold diggers who can’t wait to marry me and then divorce me for a big settlement.”
“Not all women want money,” she pointed out.
“Tell Boone. He doesn’t know.”
“That woman he goes out with seems to be obsessed with it,” Keely muttered.
“She doesn’t count, because she’s rich in her own right.”
“Yes. She’s beautiful, too,” she added with more bitterness than she realized.
He studied her across the white tablecloth with its fresh flowers, candles and silverware. “Think about it—would a man like Boone stick his head into the same noose he escaped once? That woman walked away from him when he was lying in a hospital with shrapnel wounds that could have killed him. She didn’t like hospitals. She thought he might be crippled, so she gave him back his ring. Now she’s in San Antonio and wants to go back to where they started. How do you think Boone feels about that?”
For the first time, she felt a glimmer of hope. “Your brother doesn’t forgive people,” she said softly. It was what she’d said once to Winnie.
“Exactly. Much less people who stick pins in his pride.”
“Then why is he taking her around with him?” Keely wanted to know.
He shrugged. “She’s beautiful and she has polished manners. Maybe he’s just lonely and he wants a showpiece on his arm. Or,” he added slowly, “maybe he has something in mind that she isn’t expecting. She wants to marry him again. But I don’t think he wants to marry her. And I think he’s got a good reason for going out with her at all.”
“God knows what it is,” Keely murmured.
“God does know. He probably doesn’t like it, either.”
“You think Boone is working on revenge?”
“Could be. He doesn’t often share his innermost thoughts with Winnie or me. Boone plays his hand close to his chest. He doesn’t give away anything.”
“What was he like before he came home wounded?” she wanted to know.
“He was less somber,” he told her. “He played practical jokes. He laughed. He enjoyed parties, and he loved to dance. Now, he’s the total opposite of the man he used to be. He’s bitter and edgy, and he won’t say why. He’s never talked to any of us about what happened to him over there.”
“You think whatever it was is what changed him so much?”
He nodded. “I miss the brother I had. I can’t get close to the man he’s become. He avoids me like the plague. More so, since I brought Nellie home with me for supper. He gave me a long lecture on the dangers of encouraging hired help. He was eloquent.”
“So you’re uneasy about taking her out on a date.”
“I’m uneasy about Boone finding out that I’m dating her,” he confessed. “Which brings me,” he added with a glance, “to the solution I need your help with.”
She gave him a wary look. “Why do I get the feeling that I shouldn’t have agreed to come here with you?”
“I can’t imagine.” He leaned toward her, smiling. “But if you’ll just cooperate in my little project, I’ll return the favor one day.”
She noticed that Nellie, waiting on another table, was sending pained looks toward Clark, who was oblivious to her interest. “This is upsetting Nellie,” she pointed out.
“Not for long. I’ll speak with her before we leave. Listen, you’re my best friend. I need you to be a friend and help me divert Boone from guessing how involved I am with Nellie. We’re going to pretend to get involved, if you’re game.”
“Involved?” Keely squeaked. “Listen here, Boone already thinks I’m sleeping with Bentley, thanks to my mother. He won’t believe I’m turning my attention to you. He hates me!” she exclaimed. “He’ll go out of his mind if he thinks you’re serious about me, and he’ll stop it any way he can. I’ll lose my job and have to stay at home, my mother will drive me crazy—”
“Your mother will be thrilled if you go out with me, because I’m rich,” Clark said sardonically. “She won’t cause trouble. And Boone will spend his time trying to think up ways to get you out of my life, unaware of what’s really going on.”
“Boone isn’t stupid,” she worried. “He’s going to wonder what you see in me. I’m poor, I work at a menial job…”
“I’ll take care of all that,” he said, smoothing it over. “All you have to do is pretend to find me fascinating.” He grinned. “Actually I am fascinating,” he added. “Not to mention highly eligible and charming.”
She made a face at him.
“But my brother can’t know it’s not for real,” Clark added seriously. “He’s got control of all my money until I turn twenty-seven. Then I can get to my trust. That’s next year. I can’t afford to tick him off just yet. But I’m not giving up Nellie.” He glanced toward the young waitress, who blushed again at his interest and almost overturned a tray looking at him. “You have to help us,” he told her. “You helped Bailey and he’s just a dog. I’m a kind, thoughtful man who treats you like a little sister.”
“That’s it, play on my heartstrings,” Keely muttered.
He grinned. “Come on. It will drive Boone nuts, you know it will. You’ll love it!”
Thinking of the way Boone had treated her, she had to admit that the deception would pay dividends in the form of revenge. But Boone was a formidable enemy and Keely was uncertain about making one of him. That was funny, considering his hostile and condescending attitude toward her. He was her enemy already.
“I’ll save you if it gets too rough,” he promised.
She knew it was a bad idea. She was going to regret giving in. “If I agree to do it, I have to tell Winnie the truth,” she began.
“No,” he said immediately. “Winnie can’t keep a secret, and she’s afraid of Boone, too. If he puts on the pressure, she’ll tell him everything she knows.”
Keely grimaced. “I just know this is going to end badly.”
“But you’ll do it, won’t you?” he asked with a cajoling smile.
She sighed. She grimaced. Clark had been her friend as long as Winnie had. He’d helped her out of half a dozen scrapes involving her mother. “Okay,” she said at last.
He grinned from ear to ear. “Okay! Now. How about dessert?”
Before they left the restaurant, he introduced her to Nellie and explained to the waitress who Keely was and what her place was in his life. Nellie brightened at once. She was glowing when Clark added that Keely was going to be the red herring so that he and Nellie could go on dates without Boone knowing.
Keely noticed that the other woman was very demure and meek, and Clark seemed to love that attitude. But Keely noticed something that he didn’t; there was a faint glint in Nellie’s eyes that didn’t go with a meek demeanor. She couldn’t help but be apprehensive. Maybe Nellie’s allure for him was Boone’s disapproval; in many ways, he’d only just started to try the boundaries of his big brother’s control. And Nellie had to know that the family was rich. She was a working girl, like Keely. If she turned out to be a gold digger, Keely stood to be burned at the stake by Clark’s older brother for her part in this. She wished she’d refused. She really did.
They were very late getting home. It was one o’clock in the morning when Clark drove up at Keely’s front door.
Until that moment, she hadn’t remembered her mother’s vicious words. They came back with cruel force when she saw the living-room light still on. She didn’t want to go inside. If she’d had anywhere else to go, she wouldn’t set foot in the place.
But her choices, like her salary, were limited. She had to live with her mother until she could make better arrangements.
Clark was watching her with open sympathy. “She probably doesn’t even remember saying it,” he murmured. “Drunks aren’t big on memory.”
She glanced at him, curious. “How would you know that?”
He hesitated, but only for a minute. “After Boone’s fiancée threw him over, he went on a two-week bender. He didn’t remember a lot of the things he said to me, but I’ve never forgotten any of them. The crowning jewel,” he added with taut features, “was that I’d never measure up to him and that I wasn’t fit to run a ranch.”
“Oh, Clark,” she sympathized. She could only imagine being a man and having Boone as a big brother to try to live up to. Those were very big shoes to have to fill.
“He sobered up and didn’t remember anything he’d said to me. But words hurt.”
“Tell me about it,” Keely sympathized.
He turned to her. “We’re both in the same boat, aren’t we? We’re people who don’t measure up to the expectations of the people we live with.”
“Winnie and I think you’re great just the way you are,” she replied doggedly.
He laughed, surprised. “Really?”
“Really. You’ve got a wonderful sense of humor, you’re never moody or sarcastic and you’ve got a big heart.” Her eyes narrowed. “If I’d told you that Bailey needed emergency care immediately, you’d have packed him into the car and taken him right to the vet.”
He sighed. “Yes, I guess I would have.”
“Boone thought it was a pitiful plea for attention on my part,” she added sadly. “I guess my mother’s said a lot of things to him about me.”
“Apparently. She doesn’t like you, does she?”
“The feeling is mutual. We’re sort of stuck together until I can get a raise or a second job.”
“How would you manage a second job?” he asked.
“Getting away from my mother’s constant abuse would make me manage. I can’t imagine living in a place where nobody makes fun of me.”
“You could work for me,” he suggested.
She shook her head. “Thanks, but no thanks. I want to be completely independent.”
“I figured that, but it didn’t hurt to ask.”
She smiled. “You really are a nice man.”
“I’ll pick you up next Saturday morning. We can go riding at the ranch. We might as well make a start at getting on Boone’s nerves,” he added with a dry chuckle.
“Take all his bullets away before I get there,” she pleaded.
“He’s not so bad,” he told her.
She shivered. “Sure he isn’t.”
The front door opened and Keely’s mother came out onto the porch. “Who’s that out there?” she drawled, hanging on to one of the supporting posts. She was wearing floral silk slacks with a fluffy pink robe. Her hair was disheveled and she looked sleepy.
“Don’t pay her any attention,” Keely advised Clark with a sad little sigh. “She doesn’t even know what she’s saying. I’ll see you next Saturday.”
“Thanks, Keely,” he told her with sincere affection.
She shrugged. “You’d do it for me,” she said, and smiled. “Good night.”
“Good night.”