Authors: Kathleen O'Reilly
“Life, darling. Life happened.”
It was such a pitiful answer that Gillian blew a raspberry. “Does everybody fall for that stupid line of bull?” she asked, deciding to let him in on her disapproval of his conduct.
Austen laughed. “It’s what people expect. Meaningless chatter because silence is awkward, and nobody likes the gap.”
“Your social skills have improved,” she noted, not exactly a compliment.
“Don’t sound so surprised.”
“I’m not. I’m just not sure I like it.”
“You prefer the earlier version. Awkward, cowardly, letting the world beat him on the ass?” He laughed again, the sound as cold as the song of a crow. She shivered and wondered what had happened in his house growing up, and what they had all overlooked. People had felt generally that the Harts weren’t any of their business. There was a comfort in ignorance, the idea that Gillian didn’t have to work to include father Frank in her world.
“The baby-shower planning was pretty pathetic,” she admitted, deciding it was time that she brought him into her world, as a friend and peer, not a charity case, not a red-hot bed partner.
A man.
She waited for him to respond, to participate, to reciprocate in kind, but he merely drove on in silence. Well, hell, so he wanted to make this inclusion thing difficult? Gillian straightened in her seat and put on her game face.
“Mindy said Brad wants to move to Plano,” she told him, not bothering to hide the disdain in her voice.
“It’s not hell,” he replied, surprisingly gentle for someone who didn’t give two hoots about her, her friends, or her home.
“It’s close,” she scoffed, folding her arms across her chest.
“Am I connected to this?”
“Of course not,” she lied.
He turned, gave her that soulless look, the one that she hated. Of course, it worked. “There are jobs in Plano,” she said with a sigh.
“Unlike the bustling metropolis of Tin Cup? I’m sorry, Gillian.”
She heard the guilt in his voice, and it bothered her. Bad things seemed to follow Austen like a cloud. To be fair, yes, some of them he deserved, but not everything. “I could blame you for the economic woes of downtrodden little communities across this great county, but I think I’d be overstating your part in the problem. Besides, it’s nothing that can’t be corrected.”
And just like that, just when she tried to say something nice, the chameleon was back. He flashed her a grin, the one that made women swoon. “We’ll see, sugar.”
“Can you not call me sugar?” she asked, trying not to sound irritated when on any other day, from any other man, she wouldn’t care. But today, from him, it grated, and she knew that he knew it, and she knew that he was doing it to make her not like him, and it made her wonder why.
“I considered sugar-tits, but thought that was a little crass.”
Oh, he was making this difficult. Did she care why? She didn’t need to care why. “Your daddy called me that. Once.”
It was true, Frank Hart had yelled it out to her, right after she’d been elected to the sheriff’s department. After his name-calling, she had made a perfect line of shotgun holes in his beloved ol’ rusted Ford pick-up. Frank Hart had never called her sugar-tits again.
Austen’s smile wavered. “That never came from me.”
“I didn’t think it did. You were too closed-mouthed to be telling tales. Besides, everybody knew how you felt about the old man.”
He kept his eyes straight ahead, and his voice was flat. “Then you know why I had to leave.”
“Why don’t you tell me?”
He flipped on the radio station, static filling the air.
Gillian wasn’t intimidated. She knew what this was about. “Is this one of those awkward silences where you’re supposed to start cracking sexist blonde jokes?”
“Did you hear the one about the cheerleader—” He took a look at her face, and wisely shut up.
“Silence never bothered me,” she continued, perfectly content to do whatever she needed to for however long it took. She had a captive audience for the next four hours.
Austen finally broke down and chuckled. “No, you could out-sway, out-talk anybody.”
Not you, she thought. “What sort of lobbying do you do?”
“I hang out in seedy bars and pass envelopes full of cash.” He didn’t sound proud, didn’t sound pleased, more defiant. Daring her to make a judgment.
“No hookers?” she asked, not meaning to be shallow and judgmental, not wanting to believe the worst, but this was Texas after all. Precedent was there.
“You worried that’s what this will come down to? Hookers and bribes?”
“Nah.” Then she frowned. “I don’t want to get you in more trouble than you’re already in.”
He touched her hand, a small tap on the wrist, but it made her smile. “I was making a joke.”
“You think we can do this?”
“Not a chance in hell.”
“That’s a joke, too?”
Slowly he shook his head no, the endless highway stretched out in front of them. Miles to go, and for what?
Hell.
A
USTEN BOOKED HER
a room at the Driskill. Four stars and fancy roses for Gillian. It was ten years too late, but he didn’t tell her that.
When they walked into the towering lobby, she oohed and aahed over the marble columns, the stained glass windows and the fashionable Victorian furnishings. Her eyes were big as stars, and he told himself he hadn’t done it to impress her.
Oh, yeah, right.
The room was on the eighth floor and he lugged her bag upstairs because the bellman looked shifty and Austen knew from personal experience that Gillian was an easy mark.
While she was pondering the up-close-and-personal view of the capitol building, Jack Haywood finally deigned to return his call.
“I was wondering if you were going to thank me or throw me to the wolves.”
“Aw, Jack…” Austen laughed into the phone. “The wolves would mess up that pretty face of yours, and then, well, you’d just be another sad number on the Texas unemployment line. I’ve got a bigger heart than that.”
“No, you don’t, you worthless hack. What did you want?”
Austen looked over at Gillian and gave her a “don’t shoot me” wink. “I got a hot blonde who wants to see how the movers and shakers live. She wants to see the sausage factory that we call statehouse politics.”
“A female, huh? Is she a professional hit lady, hired just because you’re pissed? No, wait. If she’s hot, I don’t care.”
Austen laughed his good ol’ boy laugh. “I didn’t think you would. We used to go to high school together, and I was giving her the business on what a lobbyist does and I might have exaggerated things a bit—”
“The size of your tool?”
“I knew you’d been looking in the men’s room.”
“Don’t tease me, Austen. So I’m supposed to make you look good so that you can get laid?”
“Yeah, that’s pretty much the story. I was greasing the skids, talking about my copious amounts of political suction, possibly mentioning that I could just snap my fingers and get anything I wanted.”
“And she bought it all?”
“I’m a really good liar, Jack.”
“Don’t I know it, but that’s not why you want to talk to me. What are you really after?”
“Railroad tracks. She loves the trains.”
“Hell, Austen. Do you know how much ass-kissing I did to make Carolyn happy? And did I get laid? No. I got a freaking invite to green bean salad at the Governor’s mansion. Goddamn rabbit food. So, now, you want me to go and take back all my marbles, just so you can get laid? Do I look that stupid?”
“Oh, come on, Jack.”
“No. You’re not getting crap from me, my friend,” he said with a soft chuckle, but Austen didn’t miss the hard note in his voice.
“You got some skin in this game?”
“You really want to know?”
Austen laughed. “Hell, Jack. You’re the master. The man I want to emulate when I get old and flabby and wind up wearing mismatched socks.”
Jack was quiet for a second and Austen wondered if he’d overplayed his hand. It was always a careful dance. A little bit of bullshit, a little bit of steel. Eventually Jack answered.
“I tell you what, and I’m only doing this because I feel sorry for you and I know women don’t treat you nicely. You bring the blonde out to Bobby Trasker’s barbecue tonight. I’ll make you look good.”
Gillian was watching him, disapproving, but still willing to wade into the mud. He only hoped it was worth it. “And the railroad?”
Jack chuckled, and Austen’s heart fell at the sound, but he kept the smile on his face. “You think I can un-scratch four state legislator’s backs, revoke one prison contract and ungrease three new developments in environmentally sensitive areas of Houston, all in one night?”
Austen made himself chuckle. “Guess not. Guess you’re just not that good. I’ll have to find me another mentor to learn from.”
“You are one vile S.O.B.”
“Yeah. I know,” Austen answered softly. Bullshit and steel. Whatever it took.
T
HAT AFTERNOON
Austen’s phone rang nonstop and Gillian found a certain morbid fascination in watching him work.
“Hey, stranger. How’s it going?” he said, as he and Gillian were walking out to retrieve the car.
Gillian soon found a cute sofa and sat down in the lobby because Austen had winked at her, held up a wait-a-minute finger, and then started to chat. The man could talk. And talk. And never say anything at all. Amazing.
“How’s Edie?”
Edie? Enquiring about someone’s well-being? That was new. Obviously this was someone important. Restlessly she crossed one leg over the over, heel bouncing to the beat of a symphonic Beatles tune that was filtering through the lobby speakers.
“Eight hours of surgery?” he was saying, and Gillian looked over, more than a little concerned at someone being in surgery that long, but Austen was still wearing his life-is-beautiful grin.
Noticing her curious expression, he moved behind the marble column and pitched his voice lower, but Gillian was in law enforcement and believed that supersonic hearing was a job requirement. Her mother called it being nosy, but Gillian wisely dismissed that.
Idly Gillian laid her arm across the carved back of the sofa, cocking her head to one side in order to further her hearing abilities.
“I don’t know when I’ll be up to New York, Ty. Yeah. I signed the papers yesterday. Town was great. Same little speck on the map. I had pie at Dot’s and she didn’t even recognize me. Started flirting. Dude, it freaked me out.”
Ty? Gillian’s mind leaped to the obvious. Tyler Hart?
Deciding that polite discretion was not the be-all, end-all that her mother believed, Gillian rose and came to stand next to him so that he couldn’t mistake her interest in the conversation.
“Gotta go,” he said to the cell, “The ladies are calling. Hang loose, bro.”
After he hung up, he blinked at her innocently, but she knew that clueless bimbo look. She had perfected the clueless bimbo look and she was no clueless bimbo, and neither was he.
“That was your brother?”
He nodded once, and some of the cluelessness fell from his eyes.
“I thought he was at Huntsville. The state Pen. The newspaper said drugs. Crystal meth. They said he had some trailer in Lockhart that exploded when he was cooking, blinding one old man in the process. An army vet.”
Probably to tick her off even more, he flipped on his sunglasses. Boldly she flipped them off, tapping the overpriced pair of designer shades against her thigh.
Austen stayed silent, but his eyes were furious with her. That made two of them, because right then, she was furious with herself.
“Austen, where is your brother?” she asked, in a calm voice, a patient voice, a voice that bore no hints of impending bodily harm.
“New York.”
“Is he currently a convicted felon, or has he ever been incarcerated by the state of Texas or any other government entity?”
“No.”
“Has he ever been involved in the drug trade?”
Austen smiled, hard. “Sometimes he prescribes them.”
She rolled his answers over and over in her mind, and there was only one conclusion.
There are moments, humbling moments when the brain clicks to some new, revised reality where the Wizard is nothing more than a short little egomaniac, where Sweet Valley High is not a true and accurate accounting of anyone’s high school years or the times in a criminal investigation where the most likely suspect is not necessarily guilty.
Her stomach pitched to a new low level. It was a reptilian feeling, like crawling, your belly scraping the ground. “Is Tyler in the medical profession? Ambulance driver? EMT?” There was a hint of desperation in her voice, a please-don’t-let-me-have-screwed-up-that-badly tone. She tried to remember Tyler Hart, but she could only picture a somber face that most people said covered a criminal mind that was Godfather-like in its brilliance.
Austen laughed at her. Laughed. At. Her. “He’s a cardiothoracic surgeon, living in Manhattan, and he’s got four surgical procedures named after him. They’re working on an off-line heart pump for transplants, plan to patent it next year, but I’m not supposed to know about that, so you can’t tell.”
Gillian stared, open-mouthed, and more than a little upset that he hadn’t bothered to educate her on the actual truth of this matter.
His finger lifted her chin, closing her jaw, and then he plucked his sunglasses from her lifeless hand.
“Ready to go, sugar?”
Oh, hell, no. She was not going anywhere. Not yet.
Heels clicking on marble, she ran after him and grabbed the back of his suit jacket, stopping him in his tracks.
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
Austen stared, stonewall calm, and she could feel the accusations shooting from every pore of his taut body. Often being on the judgy end of the interrogation process herself, Gillian immediately recognized the look. It wasn’t fun.
“Did you care, Gillian? You don’t even remember my brother.”
“Vaguely,” she replied, not bothering to defend herself, not really deserving to, but he should have told her. “You should have told me. You could have told me.”