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A note of pleading crept into her voice that she couldn’t repress. “Tell me you won’t move Rosatech.”
For the first time he hesitated, almost as if he were waging some sort of private war with himself. “I’m not making any promises until you’ve had time to think over our conversation.”
She drew a ragged breath. “I want to go home now.”
“All right.”
“I left my purse inside.”
“I’ll get it for you.”
She stood alone in the garden, trying to take in what was happening to her, but the situation was so far outside her realm of experience that she couldn’t absorb it. She thought of her son, and her blood went cold with fear. If Bobby Tom ever found out about this, he’d kill Way Sawyer.
“Are you ready?”
She jumped as he touched her shoulder.
He immediately withdrew his hand and offered her the purse. “My car’s in the front.” He gestured toward a brick path that wound around the side of the house, and she moved toward it before he could touch her again.
When they reached the front, she saw his BMW instead of the Lincoln his chauffeur had driven and realized he planned to drive her home himself. He opened the door and she slipped inside without a word.
To her relief, he didn’t attempt conversation. She closed her eyes and tried to imagine that Hoyt was beside her, but tonight he seemed impossibly far away? Why did you leave me? How am I supposed to face this alone?
Fifteen minutes later, he stopped his car in her driveway and, looking over at her, spoke quietly. “I’m going to be out of the country for about three weeks. When I get back—”
“Please,” she whispered. “Don’t force me to do this.”
His voice was cool and distant. “When I get back, I’ll call to hear your decision.”
Suzy jumped out of the car and raced up the sidewalk to her house, running as if all the hounds of hell were nipping at her heels.
Sitting behind the wheel of his car, the most hated man in Telarosa, Texas, watched her disappear inside. As the door slammed, his face contorted with anger, pain, and the barest hint of longing.
12
For the first time all evening, nobody was shoving a cocktail napkin under Bobby Tom’s nose for an autograph, or asking him to dance, or poking around for details about the golf tournament. He finally had a few minutes to himself, and he leaned back into the corner of the booth. The Wagon Wheel was Telarosa’s favorite honky-tonk, and the Saturday night crowd was enjoying itself, especially since Bobby Tom had been buying all the drinks.
He set his beer bottle down on the scarred table and stubbed out one of the thin cigars he occasionally permitted himself. At the same time, he watched Gracie make a fool of herself trying to line dance to a new song from Brooks and Dunn. It had been two weeks since her make-over, so he thought people should be used to her by now, but everybody in town was still fussing over her.
Despite all the improvements in her appearance, she wasn’t even close to being prime-cut gorgeous. She was cute, no denying that. Pretty, even. In the land of big hair, that little flyaway cut of hers might very well be Shirley’s masterpiece, and he got a big kick out of the way it fluffed around her face and glimmered all warm and coppery in the light. But he preferred his women blond and flashy, with legs up to their armpits and porn star breasts. Real live sex trophies, that’s what he liked, and he wasn’t going to apologize for it either. He’d earned those sex trophy females on the bloody battlefields of the NFL. He’d earned them in bruising drills and brutal two-a-day practices; he’d earned them by taking hits so violent he couldn’t remember his name afterward. They were the spoils of gridiron warfare, and giving them up would be the same as giving up his identity.
He took a deep swig of Shiner, but the beer didn’t fill up the empty place inside him. He should be starting the season now, but instead, he was prancing around in front of a movie camera like a damn pussy and pretending to be engaged to a bossy lady who wouldn’t ever be mistaken for a sex trophy.
Not that Gracie didn’t have an alluring little figure in those jeans that were so tight Len Brown couldn’t seem to keep his eyes off her butt. He remembered telling his mother to make sure Gracie had a couple pair of jeans, but he didn’t recall giving her permission to buy ones that were going to give her leg cramps.
The subject of Gracie’s clothes made him scowl. He couldn’t believe it when his mother told him Gracie had insisted on paying for her own clothes and they had ended up shopping at the outlets. He should have bought those clothes! It was his idea, wasn’t it? Besides, he was rich and she was poor, and he damn well expected any woman he was supposed to be marrying to have the best. The two of them had gotten into a big argument about it when he’d found out, an argument that had escalated after Shirley sent him back the money he’d given her for Gracie’s hair and makeup because Gracie had insisted on paying for that herself, too. Damn, she was stubborn. Not only did she refuse to take anything from him, but she actually had the nerve to tell him she intended to give him rent money.
He was going to have the last word, though. Just yesterday he’d gone into Millie’s Boutique and picked out a dandy black cocktail dress for Gracie. Millie had promised to tell her she had a strict no return policy if Gracie tried to bring it back. One way or another, he intended to have his way on this.
He picked at the beer bottle’s label with his thumb. Maybe he’d better have a talk with Willow. It had begun to occur to him that he needed to make damned sure Gracie never figured out who was funding that pitiful little paycheck of hers.
He glowered as Gracie missed some more steps. What in the hell had his mother been thinking of, advising her to wear that vest tonight? Right after he’d told Gracie he was taking her to the Wagon Wheel, he’d overheard her telephoning Suzy and asking what she was supposed to wear to a honky-tonk on Saturday night. Now he understood why he’d heard her say, “All by itself?”
Thanks to his mother, Gracie was wearing a gold brocade vest that didn’t have anything under it except skin, along with tight, black jeans and a new pair of cowboy boots. The vest wasn’t exactly immodest. A row of pearl buttons held it together, and the brocade fell in twin points over the waistband of her jeans. But there was something about the idea of wearing a fancy vest without anything under it that made her look like bimbo material, which couldn’t have been farther from the truth, despite Len Brown’s wandering eyeballs. Poor Gracie was probably embarrassed to tears right now knowing what a display she was making of herself.
The Brooks and Dunn song came to an end, and the music shifted to a slow ballad. Resigned to being a gentleman, he rose so he could rescue her before she ended up being a wallflower. He hadn’t taken more than three steps, however, when Johnny Pettibone pulled her away from Len and they began to dance. Bobby Tom came to a stop, feeling vaguely foolish, and then told himself he’d have to remember to thank Johnny for being so nice to Gracie. Everybody had been real nice to her. Not that he was surprised. The fact that she was Bobby Tom Denton’s intended h
ad guaranteed everybody’d treat her like a queen.
