One Track Mind (12 page)

“Ah, Lori.” He sighed. “When you die, they better chisel
a warning on your tombstone: ‘Back Off. She’s Probably As Spunky As Ever.’”

He turned and started toward the main entrance. She put her hands on her hips and called after him. “Kane? You said you’d tell me more about what you know about the sudden interest in real estate up here. When?”

He stopped and glanced over his shoulder. “Tonight. After the barbecue. When we’re alone.” He had the nerve to wink at her. Then turning his back to her again, he sauntered off and disappeared inside.

Alone,
she thought, anxiety tumbling through her.
What did he mean—alone?

T
HE EVENING
was a smash hit. For the first time in years, the Halesboro Speedway sprang to life again, throbbing with the sense of excitement.

At the barbecue after the autograph session, Kent Grosso gave a short, funny speech and Dean a longer, heartfelt one of his memories of the track. The Bluegrass String Band played the Appalachian music most people had known all their lives, sometimes happy, sometimes haunting.

The food from This Little Piggy was proclaimed ambrosial: the ribs were succulent, the chicken savory and the sandwiches scrumptious. The baked beans were stupendously good, the coleslaw luscious.

When it was over and the Grossos retired to Kent’s motor home, the last guest gone home, Lori felt the bone-deep exhaustion of a hostess whose party has been a success, such a success that it had given the illusion of being effortless. Few people realized how much planning and labor it had taken.

Now, with the parking lot mostly empty again, Lori sat alone on a bench, looking up at the stars. The night seemed so peaceful that the chatter and the laughter of the crowd now seemed like a quickly fading dream.

She knew she was supposed to meet with Kane in his office, but she wasn’t ready to face him. She needed a breathing space, a time, at last, to be alone.

A touch on her shoulder jolted her from her solitude. She whirled around to stare up at Kane. He had a bottle of wine in the crook of his left arm, and two glasses dangling from
his left hand. “I thought you’d be out here somewhere,” he murmured. “And I got tired of waiting for you.”

“Just needed to catch my breath,” she murmured. She stared off again into the night.

He sat down beside her. She supposed he didn’t need to be invited; it was his track now, the parking lot
his
parking lot, the bench
his
bench.

He showed her the bottle. “I brought some cabernet sauvignon reserve. You could probably use a drink.”

“That’s expensive stuff,” she said softly.

“You earned it. The whole ‘festive’ affair? You slammed it out of the park.”

She smiled. “You really think so?”

“Absolutely,” he said, starting to pour a glass. “Got everything right. Including the tone. Downhome, but still kind of upscale. Folksy, but first-rate. Here.”

He handed her a glass and filled another. “It must have been tough to pull off. But you did it. I drink to your greatness.” He tapped his glass against hers.

They each took a sip. It was excellent wine, subtle and complex. “My greatness,” she echoed wryly.

“You know the town, you understand the kind of people drawn here tonight. I expected you to do well, but you exceeded expectations.”

“My mother was a good hostess,” she said. She tried not to fidget. His praise made her tingle with restlessness.

“She probably hated me, right?”

Lori didn’t have the strength to lie. “Well, yes.”

Her mother Kitty had once come home early from a practice at the track and found them talking in the garden. She gave them a disapproving look, but said nothing. Still, her appearance chilled them both and made them try hard to seem casual.

When A.J. broke the news about Kane and Lori, Kitty slapped Lori across the face. It was the first and only time she ever did it, but she was appalled and furious. “You told me you were just being nice to that…creature. And I believed you
because you always went around adopting baby birds that fell out of the nest or abandoned puppies or stray kittens.”

Kitty had started to cry then. “You deceived me. I thought you just felt sorry for him. I didn’t want to imagine you’d feel anything else for such a lowlife. He’s a guttersnipe, a hooligan, a long-haired piece of riffraff—”

In tears, Lori ran upstairs and locked herself in her room, feeling she had betrayed everyone, including herself. It took her years to comprehend that her mother barely understood sexual feelings because she’d had none herself. She’d been taught that such feelings were evil, and she believed that sex was a wife’s duty; she told Lori this when Lori got engaged to Scott.

But now Kane acted as if the past held no pain. “Your father probably hated me, too, right?”

She nodded but wouldn’t look him in the eye. “He liked you. He said you were a good worker. He had no notion that…that…”

“That I’d
aspire
to you?” he asked, giving the word a sarcastic flip. “That you’d stoop to someone as lowly as I was?”

“He wasn’t happy about it,” she said. That was a masterpiece of understatement. He’d watched her suspiciously until she got married. She’d lost his trust; she guessed, in a way, she was still trying to deserve it again. But Kane hadn’t been “lowly”—she’d been the flawed one, betraying everyone, even herself.

“The hired help should keep in its place,” he said, out of the corner of his mouth. He looked her up and down. “So tell me. What went wrong between you and Scott, the all-American boy?”

What went wrong is that he wasn’t you,
she thought, still not looking at Kane. She said, “I kept dating him because my folks liked him. When I went to the same college as he did, it seemed natural to keep going with him. And we sort of drifted into marriage. And then we drifted out. We were supposed to have everything in common, but really there was nothing.”

“I heard he’s in Raleigh now.”

She took two sips of wine, wishing it would steel her; she didn’t like talking about Scott. “He went to work for his older brother. His brother owns a golf course there. That was the love of Scott’s life. Golf. He worked at the insurance company for years, the head of auditing. But there was less and less to audit. When his brother offered him the job, he was ecstatic. I didn’t want to move. A.J. was gone, and Daddy was starting to fail. So Scott and I agreed there wasn’t anything left that resembled a real marriage.”

“So he ran away to the golf course?”

“Yes. And also with a nineteen-year-old waitress from Spartanburg. I thought he’d been spending a lot of time at night on the computer. He was trolling for women.”

Kane’s eyes narrowed as if disbelief. “He married this chick?”

She nodded. “And divorced her a year later. Then he married again. A college girl who worked in the golf shop at the course. I hear he’s happy at last.”

“I always suspected he was a jerk,” Kane said in disgust. “Now I know it.”

His statement made her nervous. “Very gallant of you,” she said and took another drink. “But enough about me. Tell me why people are suddenly interested in Halesboro real estate. Hardly anybody buys property here.”

“
I
did. So did the guy on the hill.”

He nodded toward the mountain where Uncle June’s castle stood. The construction company had installed lights to discourage anyone who was tempted to become a thief in the night. The trees around the castle gave the edges of the light a greenish glow, and in the center the pale stone towers shone.

The sight, with Kane here so close beside her, made her remember how intense their romance had been, more than half a lifetime ago. “Do you know who bought it?” she challenged. “I suspect if anybody knows besides the buyer, you would.”

He shrugged. “The first rule of real estate is there’s a buyer for every property.”

“Sometimes a buyer takes a long time coming. Who
did
buy it?”

“How would I know that? You should ask Liz, right?”

“Liz can’t figure it out. And if you won’t talk about the castle, explain all the other queries about the other properties. It’s time for you to lay your cards on the table.”

He gave a sigh of resignation and put his arm along the back of the bench. It was so near her shoulders that her spine prickled with awareness. He said, “Sometimes things just seem ready to fit together. Like the planets align or something.”

“Are the planets aligning so that the Hornings intend to buy the mill buildings?”

He gave her a smile that was too intimate, too seductive. “You always were such a
smart
girl.”

“Not me. Liz, the detective.”

“Smart to have a detective for a friend. Now this is confidential, all right? I mean it. The future of the speedway could depend on keeping this quiet for the time being.”

“My lips are sealed.”

He gazed at her lips with interest. “All right. The Hornings were in Charlotte. I’d met them before. And I volunteered to show them around. Zoey wanted to see Halesboro…”

Lori tensed. “Because you’d lived here?”

“Whatever,” he said with another vague shrug. “So Papa Horning, D.B., noticed the mill buildings right off. And that the speedway was for sale. He saw that this was a beautiful spot, and we started kicking ideas around. One thing led to another. D.B.’s most profitable property is in Branson, Missouri.”

Kane paused and with his free hand refilled her glass and his. His other hand accidentally touched the skin of her shoulder, bared by her green tank top. She sucked in her breath as if a live wire had brushed her, shooting electricity through her system. She quickly took another sip of wine.

“Ever been to Branson?” he asked, leaning just a bit closer. His hand was so near her shoulder that she could feel the heat radiating from it, a highly distracting sensation.

“Um. Yes. One long weekend.” Scott and his brother had wanted to try out some of the Branson golf courses. They let their wives fend for themselves. And, of course, the first place that she and her sister-in-law had gone was the outlet mall.

“Branson was once a sleepy little town. Not much going on,” Kane said. “But then certain elements came together. The only tourist attraction was a cave outside the city limits. A speculator bought the cave and built a theme park. He put on a musical show.”

The cry of a hoot owl drifted down to them, and sounded very near. Kane looked up and smiled. “Wow. That brings back memories. Remember when we’d hear the hoot owl up at Uncle June’s?”

He leaned nearer so that his forehead nearly touched hers. “You w-were saying?” she stammered. “He put on a music show? Yes?”

“It was a success. More music came to Branson. A theater opened on its main strip. And then another, and another. Today there are over fifty theaters and a hundred live shows. The town had two attractions, the theme park and the music shows.

“A third element came—the malls. Now Branson had three things that drew people, the park, the shows, and the shopping—”

“Wait a minute,” she interrupted. “You’re not saying—”

“I think you know what I’m saying. The Horning family owns the biggest outlet mall in the town. And D.B. knows the family who owns the theme park, the Tomlinsons. Like D.B., they’ve got similar parks in other locations.”

“I see where you’re going,” Lori said, alarm rising. “There are three caves around here. Even one on Uncle June’s property.”

“Tomlinson knows how to use a cave as a draw,” he said. “And he’s interested. Plus, both the Hornings and Tomlinson know Karl deKooning. He owns one of the biggest theaters in Branson. He’d like to expand, especially if he could get in on the ground floor somewhere.”

“The Military Theater!” Lori exclaimed. “Is he the one interested in the Military?”

“I can’t comment on that,” he said. “But let’s say it’s not beyond imagination.”

“What else is going on?” she demanded. “What about the shops, the pharmacy? And what else? There are plenty of empty stores on Main Street.”

“Exactly,” he said. “Bargains at the mall, but more unusual stuff on Main Street. Centered around the themes of the mountain traditions, crafts, racing, and—”

“Stop!” she ordered. “You’re overloading me with information. And I don’t like all of it. Business is sagging here, and people are anxious to sell. But to be taken over, to become some sort of commercial playground, that’s really going too far. I’ve seen—”

“Excuse me, I’m trying to explain—”

“You’re trying to rationalize.”

“Your lips are supposed to be sealed.”

“Only about telling other people what—”

He leaned nearer still, and his hand grasped her shoulder. “I’ll have to seal them for you.”

His mouth was on hers, insistent and searching. She felt an instant of shock mixed with outrage, but it transformed into the strangest sensation—as if, after years of wandering alone, she’d finally come home.

K
ANE HADN’T MEANT
to do this, but it had just…happened. Her lips had always fit perfectly against his; he used to marvel at it. Now he marveled again and kissed her more deeply. She didn’t resist. For a moment she responded, kissing him back with shy hunger.

Then, suddenly she pulled away, turning her head so she wouldn’t have to look at him. She pushed his hand away and stared off into the distance, in the direction of Uncle June’s castle.

“We can’t go back to what was,” she said, a quaver in her
voice. “And I don’t want to go back. It’s past. It’s been over for years.”

Has it? It doesn’t feel over.
But he couldn’t say that, couldn’t make himself vulnerable again. Grudgingly, he drew back from her and stared at her profile, her chin up, nose in the air. She crossed her arms and tapped her foot.

Did she think she was still a princess and he was her court fool? “Sorry,” he said. “Just wondered if it would be the same. It wasn’t, was it?”

“Thank heaven we broke up. I never knew you could be so arrogant,” she retorted.

“You’re so damned stubborn you wouldn’t let me finish a sentence. Why argue when matters are out of your hands? If Horning wants to buy the mills, he’ll buy them. Likewise, Tomlinson and land for the theme park. Or would you rather the town and the speedway curl up and die?”

She turned and tossed him a challenging glance. “Malls and music and a theme park? That’s supposed to help the speedway?”

“The track was the one main reason that outsiders came to Halesboro. If this works, and the track’s renovated, NASCAR might rethink things. Put in a NASCAR Nationwide, NASCAR Camping World Truck, or NASCAR Whelen All-American Series race or another race from one of NASCAR’s other developmental series. Because people will
want
to come to Halesboro. They’ll come by the busload.”