Lone Star Rising
Knowing he’d pleased her gave him a rush of pleasure. One indulgence down, a million more to go, if he had his way.
They settled on comfortable bentwood chairs at a little white spindle-legged table near a high bow win-dow that looked out over an overgrown backyard. The narrow, bare kitchen looked slightly cheerier in the daytime, even though the skies outside were gray and threatening rain. She had lit a candle on the table and she placed the teapot on a brightly patterned quilted hot pad between them.
“And thank you again,” she said, smiling as she poured his tea, “for taking all this time and trouble to fix my window.”
“No trouble.” He studied her in the milky afternoon light. Faint bluish circles under her eyes indicated that she was tired. Her hair was drawn back in the braid she often wore to work. She was wearing a baby blue maternity top with jeans. Watching her perform the simple task, he suddenly realized who it was she favored, at least in his mind. Nicole Kidman. Except Robbie’s hair had streaks of a deeper, purer red. But there was something about the way her full rosy lips contrasted so vividly with her pale skin and her faint freckles. He wondered how she’d react if he told her she looked like the actress.
He realized he was staring at her and turned his gaze out the window. “It really wasn’t any trouble,” he repeated. He stole a glance at her and frowned, finding that he still couldn’t tell her about the autopsy and the fire marshal’s conclusions. Not now.
The heat pattern, the trailers of gasoline on concrete, the pour patterns. It all added up to one thing: arson.
It seemed abrupt to drop a bomb like that on a pregnant woman while they were just sitting here, having tea at her quaint little table. Just the two of them, alone. That’s what really gave him the willies. Being alone with her, pregnant or not, gave rise to all kinds of conflicting emotions in him.
She raised her cup and sipped cautiously, noticing that he was watching her, eyeing him over the rim. She had probably already figured out he hadn’t come to the house on a social call last night, and she was undoubtedly waiting for the other shoe to drop.
“How are you feeling?” he asked. Was that too personal a thing to say to a pregnant woman?
“Fine. This is my fourth, after all. There are no surprises.”
That hit him with a jolt. Here he had been entertaining all these idealistic, quasi-romantic memories about the perky redheaded Robbie McBride last night, when the reality was she was pregnant Robbie Tellchick, experienced mother of three.
He sipped his tea. “This stuff’s pretty good.” He took another sip, stalling, angling for something to say. “So. How’s your new job working out?” He’d been watching her at the café since she started waitressing there. He missed a few days when he’d worked an extra 24-hour shift and then he’d had a hardwood floor to lay for a woman over in Wildhorse. The job had taken him two solid days because the woman, a pretty-enough blonde, kept coming around to chatter. He had wondered if the other guys had tipped Robbie adequately in his absence.
“Fine. Everybody there is so nice to me. The whole town’s nice to me, though I suppose there are some folks that think I’m crazy for going to work as a waitress and moving into this old rattletrap. They probably wonder why I don’t take my boys out to my parents’ farm and stay out there like my mother wants me to.”
“Your mother and dad live out by the river, too, right?”
“Yes.”
“That’s a really nice farm out there.”
“Not to me.”
Zack gave her a quizzical look which she didn’t answer. “Still,” he offered sensibly, “that might have been easier on you.” Though a selfish part of him was glad to have her right here in town where he had some hope of seeing her more often. It would be pretty hard to come up with excuses to drive all the way out to the McBride farm on a regular basis, and he had already taken to eating breakfast at the Hungry Aggie as often as possible. Lunch, too. Even dinner if she was doing that shift. Why not? Who was to question the eating habits of a bachelor firefighter?
He was making a regular pest of himself, probably, being too obvious about laying down those huge tips under the saltshaker. Occasionally he’d gotten that pretty smile of hers to emerge. “Why did you move into town, if I may ask? That’s a pretty little farm you’ve got out there, too.” Zack knew the property well. He’d coveted it, truth be told.
“It’s a pretty little place that was falling down around my ears.” She sighed heavily, and Zack didn’t like the sound of it. “It’s a long story. In any case I couldn’t keep the farm up by myself, and there were…ugly circumstances that made it untenable to go live at my mother’s house.”
“Ugly? Like what?” He downed the remainder of his tea, and she filled his cup right away. It seemed like she was enjoying this little break, maybe even his company, he hoped.
“I don’t want to bore a man like you with the McBride family’s dramas.”
A man like him? What did that mean? “I’m interested.” He wanted to add, “in anything having to do with you,” but thought better of it. He smiled at her. Just a couple of minutes more of this, Lord. Please. Just a little more normal conversation.
“Well, you knew my sister just got married?”
“Right. I saw the pictures in the paper. To Justin Kilgore, the congressman’s son, right?”
“Um. Well, she and Justin were…sweethearts as teenagers. And my mother came between them years ago. She lied to them.”
“Oh. That is kind of heavy.”
“Kind of, yes. I still haven’t forgiven my mother for what she did. There’s a lot more to it, but I’m not sure my sister would want me to share the details.”
“I understand. Where is your sister these days, by the way?” Last night Zack had decided that having the sister around when he dropped his bomb might not be a bad idea. Robbie was so vulnerable right now. Markie McBride had seemed really levelheaded the few times Zack had talked to her, and she seemed genuinely concerned about helping Robbie.
“She’s on her honeymoon in Aruba, but she’ll be back in a couple of weeks. She promised to help me get this place in order when she gets home.” The heavy sigh came again. “I have to admit I could sure use the help.”
“I’d be glad to offer mine.” He wondered if he could get the fire marshal to keep his findings away from the media for a little while longer. He wondered if the bad news had to go in the papers at all, in fact. It was a common thing. Losers torched their own worthless barns and outbuildings all the time, then called the fire department when they were ready to put out the fire. He looked Robbie up and down, not liking the look of those shadows under her eyes. How could he make this easier for her? “I mean it. I’ll be glad to help. I thought about talking to your landlord for you, too. He needs to do some repairs around here.”
“Oh, I couldn’t ask you to do that,” she said.
“I don’t mind. Mestor’s not somebody you should have to even be in the same room with, much less confront.”
“Well, you shouldn’t have to confront him, either.”
Zack smiled. “Oh, but I like to. We’ve had words before. It makes my day. By the way, I meant to check when I was here last night. Has he got smoke detectors installed here?”
Robbie slapped her forehead. “Oh, man. Here I am fretting about mercury in tuna, and I didn’t even think of that.”
“We keep some at the fire station. I’ll bring a couple over right away. And we can get started on those boxes.”
“I’ll take the smoke detectors. But as for the rest of this mess…” Her eyes traveled to a cluster of half-unpacked boxes in the corner. “I just couldn’t ask you to use your time off helping me unpack. I’m sure you’ve got better things to do. Besides, I never knew of a man who could get stuff organized the way women want it, anyway. My sister and I are pretty good at this kind of thing when the two of us get going. We learned it from our mother, who’s so organized it’s scary. I’ll just wait ’til Markie gets back.”
He nodded and smiled. “Whatever makes you the most comfortable.”
Waiting for the sister, both of them. Too bad she was all the way down in Aruba. With Robbie Tell chick working over at the Hungry Aggie, it would be tough to protect her from rumors for long. Still, Zack figured he had to try. He swallowed the last of his tea. “Well, I’d better get going. I don’t want to tire you out. I imagine you want to put your feet up before those boys come home from school.”
“Thank you, again.” She pushed up from the table. He was glad she was sensible enough not to argue about needing her rest. She walked him to the front door. When they got there, she lingered, clutching the knob. “Listen, Zack,” she said. “I’m sorry. I mean, I really wish I could pay you, but—”
Before he could think about it, he clasped a palm around her arm to stop her. “No.” The instant he touched her he knew the feel of her would haunt him. Her skin felt like warm silk. An unbidden vision—running his hands all over her body—assailed him. He dropped his hand and cleared his throat. “Like I told you. I wanted to help.”
“Well, I was going to say I’d love to cook dinner for you sometime. I mean, would you want to maybe come over and have spaghetti with me and the boys sometime?”
“Thank you, but I couldn’t impose.” He wasn’t about to eat this woman’s food when she was barely getting by.
She gave him a little wincing frown. “Zack…you don’t feel…you’re not…” She seemed to be struggling to find the right words. “This isn’t because you’re feeling guilty about what happened to Danny or something?”
Guilt? Because he’d failed to save a man with three kids and another on the way? Because he’d just touched that man’s wife and immediately wanted to do more than touch—a whole lot more? Because he was lusting after a pregnant woman, for crying out loud? Guilt? Guilt was hardly a strong enough word. All of a sudden he found he couldn’t look in her eyes.
Wind gusted into the open doorway and thunder rumbled across the cloudy sky as his eyes fixed on the scarred wood floor of her entry hall, then on the stairs behind her, then traveled up searching, scanning aimlessly. One of the banisters was missing. Not safe. He’d be sure to come back to fix it. He couldn’t answer her question because the truth was, yes, a part of him had felt more than guilt, a gnawing helpless frustration, over his failed attempt to save Danny Tellchick’s life. But that should have changed now, in light of the findings of the fire marshal and medical examiner. That wasn’t why he wanted to help her.
His motives were far less pure, some might say. I’m hopelessly attracted to you, his heart admitted when his eyes finally came back down to meet with hers. Always have been. But under the circumstances, he sure couldn’t tell the woman that, now could he?
“I was a fatherless boy myself, once,” he allowed quietly. It was true, though if he were honest, he’d have to admit that that had little to do with his reasons for helping out these boys, either. “I just want to do whatever I can to make your lives easier right now.”
She smiled, and the sincerity and innocence of it went right through him. “That’s really decent of you. I just…I just wanted to be sure…you know. Well…”
“I’d better get going.” He stepped onto the porch.
“Yes. I’ll let you go before it starts pouring.” The heavy oak door creaked on its hinges as she made to close it.
He flattened a palm on the door to stop it. “Will you be working at the restaurant tomorrow?” he asked.
She nodded. “Bright and early on the breakfast shift.”
“Good.” He smiled. “I’ll see you then.”
She nodded again and closed the door.
Zack, old buddy, what are you doing? He trotted down the uneven sidewalk toward his pickup, fat, cold raindrops smacking his face and hands as he unlocked the driver’s side door.
He was pursuing her, that’s what. A woman so pregnant it practically hurt to look at her. A woman with three boys. A woman who was undoubtedly still in love with her dead husband. He climbed in his truck and swept his wet hair back in frustration. A woman who, it turned out, just happened to be Zack Trueblood’s lifelong ideal.
CHAPTER FOUR
UP EARLY. Despite bouts of insomnia, I keep telling myself I’m doing better day by day. I only think of Danny every day now instead of every hour. I can’t figure out if all widows do this, or if it’s worse for me because I’m carrying Danny’s child, but it’s like I can still feel him with me sometimes.
Like yesterday, when Zack Trueblood was leaving. I swear, I got the funniest feeling, like a subtle presence or something. As if Danny’s ghost was swirling around us or something. Danny used to get so jealous if I so much as talked to another guy. And when Zack grabbed my arm, I felt the strangest conflicting sensations. Like I was too aware of how good it felt to be touched again, and then immediately I felt sort of guilty, like I was still married or something.
Maybe it was just all this static electricity in the air. We had thunderstorms all night. I woke up about a kazillion times. Kept hearing noises. I have like a double whammy of paranoia—the usual kind that sets in when your pregnant and anxious about anything that might threaten your baby, plus a good dose of the usual widow’s insecurities on top of that. It got really windy again a minute ago and now there’s lightning like crazy. Well, time to quit scribbling in this diary and get ready for work, storm or no storm.
I hate leaving the boys to get themselves off to school when the weather’s like this.
And you, little baby, you just stay all tucked away safe and sound, right here inside your mommy. Whatever am I gonna do when you decide to come out?
ROBBIE CLOSED the cover on her journal—a cheap thing with a picture of a puppy on it. She tucked it under her pillow, then she swung her feet over the side of her bed. A chill ran through her as she pulled free of the soft sheets and her toes touched down on cold floorboards. She vowed again that she would find her area rugs and spread them out tonight. But each day her good intentions slipped through her fingers like shifting sand, where one urgent thing morphed into another and no task was ever completed until finally, each and every night, she fell into bed, exhausted.
Taking this job was probably a bad idea, but what choice did she have? If she had waited, Parson would have been forced to fill the position with somebody else. A twist of resentment curled up again as she thought how irresponsible she’d been to let Danny cut corners by dropping his life insurance. But after years of marriage she’d been worn down, arguing with the man about every single hare-brained decision he made.
In the bathroom adjoining to the cavernous, high-ceilinged master bedroom, she studied herself in the oval mirror above the pedestal sink. She’d slept a little better last night—a few hours—with that window properly repaired, but even so she was developing permanent dark circles under her eyes.
This bathroom—there were two upstairs, one downstairs, and none of them were in good repair—was dingy, as bland as clabbered milk. White on white on white, from the tile to the tub to the limp curtain someone had left hanging crookedly at the narrow window. She made some mental notes about adding color as she washed her face.
Most small towns in the Hill Country had old houses like this one: rambling nineteenth-century monstrosities that had devolved into bleak rentals, passed from hand to hand. In the towns where historic restoration caught on, these houses got rebirthed into awesome show-places. Painted Ladies, the civic-types called them. Robbie could envision this one that way, a beauty that shone with civic pride, only three blocks off Main Street.
After she patted her face dry, she attacked her hair with a big brush. Then her fingers went to work, efficiently plaiting the masses of reddish blond curls into a neat French braid.
As she braided, Robbie continued envisioning the house through artistic eyes. What this bathroom needed was one dramatic focal point. Like a giant stained-glass window instead of that scratched-up square of frosted Plexiglas that covered the window above the tub.
And wouldn’t it be cute, she thought, to find an old velvet straight-backed sofa to tuck under the high windows in the kitchen? Wouldn’t it be nice to refinish all these deep window boxes in this house in a coat of purest white and just leave the panes bare and let the sun pour in? Wouldn’t polished mahogany countertops set off those high kitchen cabinets?
When she caught herself thinking like this, she always brought herself up short. Number one, she wasn’t living in an HGTV show. This was life on the broke side of widowhood. Number two, old man Mestor, the crook, would never consent to doing anything expensive or upbeat to the house. Number three…baby.
The little darling kicked as Robbie pulled the stretchy panel of her well-used maternity jeans up over her belly. For a top she pulled on a boxy white shirt. Yesterday, Parson had gently objected to the overalls. Whatever.
She struggled into a pair of thick white socks and slipped her feet into her athletic shoes, and when she had trouble bending to lace them, she suffered a brief sting of tears. Danny had always tied her shoes for her this late in her pregnancies. Stop it, she told herself. You have a lot to do before you go to work.
Downstairs, she chugged down a glass of orange juice. Breakfast could be grabbed at the diner later. She put out bowls and spoons for the boys’ cereal, set out the sack lunches she’d made the night before and stapled a detailed note with instructions to Mark’s, then put the stapler right back where it belonged in her “grand central,” her super-organized lap desk. She had done the tole painting that decorated the flip top herself. Very cute, she often thought—an elaborate pattern, a sort of blend between country quilt and Mexican mandala. Inside the lap desk was the simple system she’d been using to run this family for years and it had never failed her. With her sudden move to town, she was grateful that the whole thing was portable enough to be tossed onto the seat of her minivan.
Lightning flashed, and when hard rain lashed at the window Zack Trueblood had installed only yesterday, Robbie’s thoughts went back to him. She had to admit she longed to see him, if she was honest with herself. Lord, she hated this business of being alone. She had never spent one day alone in her life. Danny had asked her to go on a hayride when they were in the eighth grade and they’d stayed together like hand-in-glove ever after.
Other guys had tried to get her attention, even tried to win her affections, but Robbie was loyal to Danny, always—even later when his irresponsibility began to let her down. Now that he was gone, she felt incredibly disloyal for the way she had been thinking about Zack Trueblood. But my gosh, that firefighter had the dreamiest coal-black eyes on God’s green earth. Well, this was plain silly.
She grabbed her jacket and headed out into the storm. The rain, a driving Hill Country deluge that would flood hard-packed roads and wash out rocky ravines, hit her face and wet her hair despite the hood on her little red jacket. Her front got soaked, too, because the jacket was too small to cover her belly.
She slammed the door of her van and plucked at the soaked white fabric where her belly button poked out like a gumdrop. Nice. Thank God she would slap on an apron as soon as she got to work.
The minivan had to be cranked three times before it sputtered to life. A new worry: car trouble. She couldn’t afford that now. Then it hit her. Who would drive her to the hospital when the time came? She only had five weeks. The days were racing by like ticks of a second hand. Daddy would come, of course, whenever she called him, day or night. But the McBride farm was a good seven miles out of town, and with a fourth baby, labor could be shockingly rapid.
Besides, if she called Daddy, Mother would insist on coming with him. There would be no peaceful labor and delivery then. Oh, no. Mother would boss. She’d boss Daddy. The nurses. Maybe even the doctor. Most of all Marynell would boss Robbie.
Peering out the rain-sheeted windshield and thinking of her mother’s pinched face, Robbie muttered aloud, “Hurry up and get back, Markie. I’ll feel a darn sight safer then.” She could not wait until her sister returned from her honeymoon. Everything would be all right then. None of Robbie’s other babies had come early. Markie would be home in plenty of time and then her strong, competent sister would help her.
It was only three short blocks to the gravel alley that ran behind the Hungry Aggie, but still Robbie breathed a sigh of relief as she pulled into the small lot out back, amazed that she’d made it without stalling out in high water. She slammed the van door again and dashed around rivulets of water and enormous puddles to the back door, where Parson stood holding it open.
“Come on, girl!” he hollered over the din of the pattering rain. “Before you catch your death.”
“You ought not to have come in on a morning like this,” he scolded when Robbie got inside. He was already helping her out of her jacket. For decades, Virgil Parson had been the only black man living or working in Five Points. But Parson never mentioned that fact, and neither did anybody else. He actually lived in another town with a sweet wife and numerous kids and grandkids. He drove to work in Five Points because at the Hungry Aggie he got to do what he did best—dish up food like an old-time chuck wagon cook, though he’d actually learned the art of slinging out large quantities of food for hungry men while serving in the Navy.
“I know how these rainy mornings go,” Robbie said as she smoothed back her damp, frizzy hair. “All the farmers will come into town to get away from their wives. And they’ll end up sitting right here in our booths, jawing ’til the rain stops. We will be busy filling coffee cups until noon.”
Parson chuckled as if that idea plumb tickled him. “That’s a fact. And it’s why I came in early to make some extra pies.” His black eyes sparkled in a face as furrowed as a fresh-plowed field.
Virgil Parson loved nothing so much as being prepared and making money. And he made buckets full off the regulars at the Hungry Aggie, not to mention the seasonal tourists who wandered from town to town in the Hill Country, looking for that perfect piece of chess pie. At the Hungry Aggie they found the chess pie and much more. Barbecued chicken, baked ham, sweet potato pudding, red beans and rice, hot rolls with peach peel jelly.
Robbie tied on one of the clean white aprons that the efficient old cook had already hung on hooks next to the walk-in refrigerator. Her wet shirt felt clammy against her tummy, but she was relieved that the moisture didn’t soak through the starched apron.
“You’re getting better at this, girl. You even beat old Nattie Rose in here this morning,” Parson informed her.
Robbie gave Parson a grimace. Nattie Rose was not old. She went to high school with Robbie’s younger sister, Markie. And Nattie Rose was never late. “Hope she’s not trapped out on some low water bridge,” Robbie said. Nattie Rose and her husband Earl lived on Earl’s family’s ranch, way out on a remote ranch road. Without Nattie Rose as a rudder, Robbie’s job would be hell today.
She and Parson fell into the rhythm of work in the brightly lit kitchen. He cut biscuits. She filled the two big coffeemakers. Together, they laid out bacon strips onto large jelly-roll pans. Parson always slow-baked the bacon in the kitchen’s huge cast-iron ovens because he claimed that was the aroma that brought in “The Boys,” as he called the customers.
When they’d gotten things organized, Parson pulled up a stool for Robbie to perch upon. “You and Hootcheecoo better take a load off while you all can.”
Parson, who made up a nickname for everybody, had taken to calling the baby Hootcheecoo, which amused Robbie, since she hadn’t been able to come up with a proper name for the baby yet. In the same way that Frances, Roberta and Margaret McBride were named after their aunts, Robbie’s three sons had been named the masculine versions of the McBride sisters. Frank after Frankie, Rob after Robbie, and Mark after Markie. Robbie supposed she would be breaking up the family rhythm with this fourth surprise baby.