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“We’d appreciate it if you took it,” Emma said kindly. “It’ll be best for everybody.”
Before Meg could tell them all to go to hell, the restroom door swung open and Sunny sauntered in. “Is there a party?”
Shelby quickly slipped the check back in her purse. “It didn’t start out that way, but we got to talking.”
“And now we need your opinion.” Torie deliberately turned to the mirror and pretended to look for mascara smears. “Charlize Theron or Angelina Jolie? Which one would you go gay for?”
“I say Angelina Jolie.” Kayla pulled out her lip gloss. “Seriously. Any woman who says she wouldn’t is either a liar or in deep denial. That woman oozes sex.”
“In your opinion.” Zoey, who’d been so morally righteous earlier, began fussing with her hair. “I’d choose Kerry Washington. A strong black woman. Or Anne Hathaway. But only because she went to Vassar.”
“You would not go gay for Anne Hathaway,” Birdie protested. “Anne Hathaway’s a great actress, but she’s not your sexual type.”
“Since I’m not gay, my sexual type isn’t the point.” Zoey grabbed Kayla’s lip gloss. “I’m merely commenting that if I were gay, I’d want a partner with brains and talent, not just beauty.”
Emma straightened her sunflower shirt. “I must admit that I find Keira Knightley oddly compelling.”
Kayla retrieved her lip gloss. “You always go for the Brits.”
“At least she got over her thing for Emma Thompson.” Torie tugged a paper towel from the dispenser. “What about you, Meg?”
Meg was more than a little sick of being manipulated. “I prefer men. Specifically hunky Texas men. Do you have any ideas?”
All around her, she could hear mental wheels grinding as the crazy women of Wynette tried to figure out how to respond. She headed for the door and left them to ponder.
By the time she’d returned to the table, she’d reached three conclusions: Ted’s problems with Sunny were his own to resolve. She would handle Spence on a day-by-day basis. And nobody was going to drive her out of this horrible town until she was good and ready to leave.
Chapter Thirteen
Meg saw Ted on the course the next day, but he was playing with Spence and Sunny, and he steered clear of her drink cart. When she got home that evening, she found a delivery truck parked at her front steps waiting for her. Ten minutes later, she’d sent the truck, along with its load of furniture, on its way.
She stomped into the hot, airless church. People kept trying to give her things she didn’t want. Last night Shelby had slipped the getaway check into her purse, leaving Meg to tear it up. And now this. Granted, she needed furniture, and when she’d spotted the portable air conditioners, she’d almost set aside her principles. Almost, but not quite.
She threw open the church windows, turned on the fans, and poured a glass of iced tea from the refrigerator. This was the second time in a week that somebody had tried to pay her to leave town. If she let herself think about it, she’d get depressed, and she didn’t want to be depressed. She wanted to be angry. After a quick shower, she pulled on shorts, a tank, slipped into a pair of flip-flops, and set off.
Stone pillars marked the entrance to the Beaudine estate. She wound through a grove of hardwood trees and crossed an old stone bridge before the road branched into a series of meandering lanes. The main house was easy to identify—low and sprawling, built in the Texas hacienda style of limestone and stucco with arched windows and doors framed in dark wood. Behind a low wall, she glimpsed a spacious pool, pool house, courtyard, gardens, and two smaller buildings in the same hacienda style, probably guest cottages. This wasn’t so much an estate, she realized, as a compound, and everywhere she looked, breathtaking views spread before her.
When the road circled back on itself, she chose another lane but found only a putting green and maintenance buildings. She tried again and came upon a small stone and brick ranch with Skeet Cooper’s pickup visible inside the open garage door. Nothing like keeping your caddy close by.
The last lane wound uphill where it opened onto a rocky bluff. And there it stood, a modern structure of perfectly balanced cream stucco rectangles topped by a butterfly roof. Sweeping sheets of glass faced south, along with sharp overhangs to shade the interior. Even without the small, sleek wind turbines mounted on the roof, she would have known this was his house. Its beauty, inventiveness, and functionality spoke volumes about its owner.
The front door opened before she could ring the bell, and he stood before her barefoot in a black T-shirt and gray athletic shorts. “Did you enjoy your tour?”
Either someone had tipped him off or security cameras monitored the property. Knowing his love of gadgetry, she suspected the latter. “The mighty ruler of the Kingdom of Beaudine is indeed all-knowing.”
“I do my best.” He moved back to let her in.
The house was open and airy, decorated in pale shades of gray and white—a cool, calming retreat from the punishing summer heat and the equally punishing demands of being Ted Beaudine. The furniture sat low, each piece carefully chosen for both its comfort and quiet, unimposing beauty. The most startling feature was a glass-enclosed rectangular room suspended above the soaring living area.
The house was almost monastically spare. No sculptures stood in the corners; no paintings graced its walls. The art lay outside in the views of river bluffs, granite hills, and distant, shadowed valleys.
She’d grown up in grand houses—her family’s rambling Connecticut farmhouse, their Bel Air home, the weekend house on Morro Bay—but this was something quite special. “Nice digs,” she said.
As he crossed the bamboo floor, a foyer light that had come on when he’d admitted her automatically shut off. “If you’ve shown up for sex, I’m bored with you,” he said.
“That would explain the large bed on the delivery truck, along with those comfy, man-size chairs.”
“And the couch. Don’t forget the couch. Not to hurt your feelings, but your place isn’t too comfortable. And from the phone call I just got, I hear you want to keep it like that. Why did you send that truck away?”
