Lone Tree (16 page)

“How do you know Jackie Lyn?” The suppressed
violence in Carl’s question must’ve caught Leroy’s attention. His gaze snapped
back.

“Don’t know her,” he clarified. “Knew her daddy.
Went to school with ’im.” Appearing wary, Leroy started to inch away. “Saw
’im,” he explained. “Maybe a year ago, him and his family—got two girls, looked
like. They was checkin’ out the Pecos Museum. Recognized the older one, seen
her with you. Leastways, thought I had. Sorry if I’m out o’ line here.”

“That’s it? All of it?” Carl felt lighter now, but
Leroy retained the look of a man riding the edge of a storm that might break
out in any direction if he didn’t take care. “You’re telling me you never saw
her otherwise,” Carl continued. “Just that once. With her kin.”

Leroy hesitated.

Carl Henry reached out and bunched the collar of
Leroy’s coarse prison-issued garb in his fat hand. The man’s body went rigid.
Carl waited.

“Yeah,” Leroy said. He sounded like his mouth had
gone dry. “Well, no. One other time. Just one.”

Carl’s fingers tightened in the cloth. Leroy
flinched as if he’d been struck. “It was just about a week after I seen her in
Pecos. That’s how come I remember.” He couldn’t talk fast enough now. “I was in
Farber, just walkin’ along, and she drove up and parked. A sedan, green, looked
really nice, and she got out and went in...in a place there.”

“What place?”

“Business place. Real estate, I think. Desks in
there, lots o’ people.”

“And?” He made a syllable out of each letter in the
one word.

“Then she come out again with someone. He had his
arm around her. She was smilin’, like he just said somethin’ funny, and they
got in her car. He was drivin’. She gave the keys to him. They drove off.”

Carl Henry turned stone cold inside. He didn’t move,
didn’t breathe. Then he drew in one quiet breath. “Name.”

“Don’t know it.”

The fist tightened.

“Don’t know ’im. Never did. Never saw ’im ’cept that
one time.”

“What did he look like?”

“Uh, tall, six feet maybe, young, younger than me.
Like you, maybe. Light-haired, dark-blond like, thin but not skinny. Dressed
well, wore his clothes real good.”

Carl Henry waited but there was no more. Leroy’s eyes
bulged.

“Name of the place. Address.”

“Don’t remember the street’s name. Not downtown
Farber, kinda on the outskirts. The name of the place was...was quality
something. Quality land, quality development. Something.”

Carl decided Leroy had no more information. If he
did, he would’ve spit it out.

He settled back, one degree at a time, his fingers
untangling from the fabric of the man’s shirt. He rose to his feet and walked
away.

He wanted someplace quiet, no one else around. He
had thinking to do. And planning.

Miles’s seventy-fifth, milestone birthday was August
9, and it fell to Lainie to coordinate a proper shindig. He wanted the works;
the guest list numbered more than a hundred.

She spent two days looking for The Good Ol’ Boys, a
local group that Miles wanted, until she overheard a conversation between Rosalie
and Angie and realized that was Miles’s name for them, but
not
their
official title. It then took her ten minutes to find them and book them. She
hired a catering firm and a bartender, ordered the booze, and found a florist
with sound decorating ideas.

Then she hit the menu, and realized this part was
going to be even more difficult than finding a group with a name that didn’t
exist.

Rosalie would be preparing Miles’s favorite dishes
and was supposed to work jointly with the catering service. But she refused to
entertain suggestions, recommendations, or anything else from them. The
caterers were getting uptight, and Lainie was getting a headache.

Miles also wanted prawns, the giant ones,
half-peeled, with rich, spicy sauce on the side. Good choice, Lainie thought,
until she discovered he didn’t consider the prawns to be appetizers. He thought
they’d make an excellent main course if any of the hundred or so desired.

That was a lot of prawns.

After much negotiation—by Miles, not Lainie—Tom
Forrester had okayed a ceiling of five grand. Lainie thought that was way too
much for anyone’s party and was certain she could bring this in under budget.
Until the prawns came up.

Miles wouldn’t listen or even look at her figures.
“Don’t worry about it.” His face wrinkled in annoyance.

“But all I want to do is cut the order back. Half of
that would be more than enough.”

“I’m not the only one who likes the things.” The
frown deepened. “Anything left over, we’ll finish off the next day.” He
swiveled his chair, faced the computer that sat on the short end of the
L-shaped desk and clicked into a solitaire game. End of discussion.

Rosalie was no help. “That’s Miles for you,” she
said with a shrug. “He wants what he wants.”

Lainie even considered talking to Reed, but that was
stretching his job description.

So she called Tom Forrester and discovered that his
manner was just as abrupt over the phone wire as in person. “I don’t see what
the problem is,” he said. “If he wants prawns, he should have prawns.”

“But I’d hoped to bring this in under five grand,
and now I might go over that instead. And I don’t want to cut them out anyway.
Just cut them back.”

When he hesitated, she could almost hear the cash
register ringing. She should’ve called him in the first place. “Uh, how much
more?” he asked. “We could go a little higher if need be.”

So he also liked prawns. Lainie stared into space.
Was she the only sane person left in this part of Texas? “Okay, Tom. The order
stands. Bye.”

Two minutes after she hung up, the phone rang. She
rolled her eyes,
what now
? and then answered it.

“Dang printer stopped working,” Reed’s voice said.

“Uh, what?”

“I’m emailing an attachment. Print it for me. I’ll
pick it up later.”

“Sure.”

“Obliged.”

“You’re wel—”

The phone clicked in her ear. “Welcome,” she finished,
and then clicked into e-mail.

Because she needed a break from prawns, she
delivered the printout in person. When she got no answer to her knock, she
tentatively opened the door. “Special delivery,” she called out.

“Come on through,” he hollered. “I’m in the back.”

His house was laid out similar to hers, and his
furnishings were solid male. Sand-colored sofa with a sturdy-looking coffee
table fronting it, an armchair in brownish-green tweed next to a solid wood end
table, and an ottoman that matched the chair.

She walked through and found him squatting on his
heels outside his back door tying up cherry tomato plants. “Hi,” she said.

“Put it on the table there,” he answered, looking
up. “And thanks. Didn’t mean for you to have to bring it. But now that you’ve
finally given me a chance to play host, how about some coffee? Seems too early
for that beer.”

She hesitated, tempted to spend some time with him
without a horse or the dining room in the background. But it probably wouldn’t
be wise.

“Best not.” She placed the printout on the glass-topped
patio table, anchoring it under a bowl that held a miniature cactus.

His gaze traveled down her outfit—blue shirt tucked
into the waist of a short denim skirt with red-trimmed pockets—to her feet. She
wore backless, toeless sandals that matched her bright-red toenails but offered
no protection against the elements or legless varmints. The appreciation in his
eyes turned to disapproval. She waited, expecting the usual criticism, but got
a forbearing look instead. “Can’t talk you into anything, it seems.”

She shrugged, giving him a half-smile.

He was an exceptional man, full of challenge,
strength, will, even a touch of domesticity as evidenced by the vegetable
garden and the propane grill that stood off to the side. She doubted the grill
got much exercise, but he must know how to use it if he had it. And all that
was wrapped up in an amazingly appealing physical package.

He returned her shrug, eyes reflecting a mixture of
attraction, annoyance and patience, then he turned back to his tomato plants.

As she turned to leave, she noticed the lariat
hanging next to the back door. She fingered the rope. Cowboys made roping look
so easy, but she hadn’t the slightest idea how to use a lasso.

Or maybe she did.

She looked at Reed’s back, impulse growing. Did she
dare? He’d threatened to use it on her once.

The longer she thought about it, the more difficult
the impulse became to resist. Slipping the rope off the peg, she quietly walked
back. In a fluid motion she lowered the noose around his shoulders, yanked,
then ducked back inside the house in a flash.

First a gasp, then an exasperated laugh, then in two
seconds flat he bolted inside the house and out the front door after her,
lariat in hand. But she hadn’t gone that way. She’d flattened herself against
the wall inside the back door, and as soon as he went out the front, she went
out the back and hightailed it around to the back entrance of the main house.

It didn’t take long for Reed to figure out her
route. Scant minutes later he casually strolled into Miles’s office through the
patio doors. She looked up from the file cabinet, and was relieved to note he
no longer held the lariat.

Miles looked up, and then appeared surprised when
Reed nodded in greeting, but passed him on his way to Lainie.

Reed stopped, leaving the opened file drawer between
them, and gave her a look that had her heart rate rising a notch. She wasn’t
entirely sure what he was capable of, and right now he appeared capable of
anything. She didn’t want to challenge him—not any more than she already had—yet
she guessed a touch of the imp that had lassoed him still showed in her eyes.

He closed the drawer.

Stepping closer, he leaned down and whispered, “I
told you one time before you’re pushin’ it. You just keep it up, Lainie Sue.”

He straightened, nodded to Miles, sauntered to the
door and left. The imp in Lainie made it difficult to keep a straight face. She
glanced at Miles, then quickly away. She doubted he’d heard Reed’s words, but
he’d followed the interplay between his foreman and secretary with interest.

*

The next day repairmen arrived—in the hottest part
of the afternoon, of course—to upgrade the air-conditioning system and had to
turn it off to work on it. Lainie retreated to her cottage.

When supper chimes sounded, she was just stepping
out of the shower and she jerked to attention. It was that late? She’d get
there in time to eat, but would miss the prayer, and she liked the practice of
saying grace; that was a tradition her mother had carried with her.

Air conditioning was back on when she entered the
main house, and she sighed in relief. Everybody but Carter was seated, so she
joined him at the sideboard. Even Glen Charles, who seldom ate supper at the
ranch because his family lived nearby, was working on a salad. Randy was the
only one missing.

Carter smiled in greeting. “Appears Rosalie cooked
special for Reed tonight,” he said before making his way to the table.

Instead of the usual cole slaw, a huge tossed green
salad sat on the sideboard, which Lainie assumed must be a favorite of Reed’s.
She also liked it so scooped up a big helping. Two tamale pies sat next to it
and each had been spooned into. Wondering why one hadn’t been kept aside until
the first was emptied, she helped herself from the smaller dish to finish it
then took the chair next to Carter.

Glen Charles and Luke had returned from riding
fence, and Luke was filling Reed in on a section that needed special attention.
Miles was listening while unenthusiastically working on dessert, a bowl of
Jell-O, which apparently wasn’t a favorite.

Finished with her salad, she started on the meat
dish. The instant she put the fork in her mouth, she froze. Her fork clattered
to the plate. She grabbed the glass of iced tea, took a big gulp, but it didn’t
put the fire out. She fished in the glass, sloshing the drink out the side, and
got a handful of ice to toss into her mouth. Downing the tea had made her
swallow the mouthful of meat, and she wished she hadn’t done that. Now her
stomach was on fire, too.

“What—” said a chorus of voices, and six pairs of
eyes trained on her. Randy had arrived and stood opposite her with a stupefied
expression, his plate and steaming cup of coffee in hand. She wondered if it
was possible to live through this assault upon her mouth and tongue and
esophagus and stomach.

“Reckon she got the wrong dish,” Carter said mildly.
She’d used up all her ice, so he helpfully pushed his glass toward her. She dug
in it and popped another handful of ice into her mouth. “Must’ve got some of
Reed’s.”

“But it’s not that bad,” Reed said, glancing at his
plate. He seemed personally affronted.