“You want me to take him for a whole summer?”
“Why not?” Ginny said grimly. “Let him see what his father is really like. Let him see what a failure you are now. It might be more effective than all the expensive therapy in the world. Come and get him, Matt. I really can’t take any more.” She hung up the phone without waiting for an answer.
Slowly Matt replaced the receiver, absorbing the ramifications of the three A.M. call. It changed everything. He knew that tone in Ginny’s voice. She was at the end of her tether and she was struggling to hold on to the financial and emotional security she had found with Paul Martin. She’d established her priorities and Brad was now second on the list.
There had been several years during which the boy had ranked higher. Brad’s birth had brought with it the vast approval of Matt’s parents along with a considerable flow of cash from them. At the time of the divorce Colonel and Mrs. August had made it clear they sided with the mother of their grandson. And after Matt’s career disaster their sympathies had grown even more entrenched. Matt had made little effort to change the status quo. He couldn’t even remember the last time he’d called his folks.
Ginny’s marriage had apparently realigned everyone’s priorities, including her own. Brad was apparently no longer an asset.
Matt sat naked on the edge of the rumpled bed and studied the lights of the cruise ship down in the harbor. It was a different ship from the one that had been in port the night he had met Sabrina, but it made him think of her.
A lot of things had made him think of her during the month since she had left.
Getting to his feet, Matt walked over to the window. There was no option. He would have to go to Houston and collect Brad. He’d seen Ginny when she got close to the edge emotionally. She would convince herself that her first priority was to protect herself. And maybe she was right.
Coyne wasn’t going to be pleased, Matt thought. He’d said he’d wait a month for the answer to his offer of a job, and Matt knew he’d fully expected that answer to be in the affirmative. Until this morning he’d had every reason to assume that.
Matt wasn’t altogether certain why he had been on the brink of accepting Coyne’s offer. It had something to do with priorities, with proving himself. Getting his life back in focus had become increasingly important since Sabrina Chase, tourist, had gone back to Dallas, Texas. The need to do so had been eating at him, prodding him, pushing at him. Coyne’s offer had been dangling out there, a possible beginning point.
Priorities.
Until three this morning Matt had assumed he would have to work at figuring out if he even had any. Now he knew he did.
Brad was waiting for him in Houston. Matt moved away from the window, frowning into the darkness. Brad was his reason for going to Texas. But there was someone else in Texas. Someone who ran a shop with a stuffed bull in the window. What would Sabrina say if he looked her up before he headed back to Mexico?
***
“Tacky, Alex. Very tacky.” Sabrina eyed her assistant with misgivings as he sauntered into work one minute after nine. Alex Kyle had strong feelings about having to be at work on time. He asserted his independence by consistently being one minute late. Sabrina accepted his small rebellion because he was incredibly good at selling brass cowboy-boot paperweights and silver belt buckles. And because she completely understood his need to assert himself against her power as his boss. She’d done it often enough with bosses in the past.
“You don’t like the outfit?” Alex contrived to look hurt. He glanced down at the skin-tight leather jeans, leather vest, and high-heeled cowboy boots he was wearing. A watermelon-colored Western-style yoked shirt embroidered with sequins at the cuffs completed the eye-opening ensemble. “I only did it for the sake of business, Sabrina.”
“Uh huh.” She gave him a skeptical glance as she unsealed a forty-pound box labeled GENUINE INSTANT TEXAS PANHANDLE CHILI. The chili was specially formulated for her shop by a firm in New Jersey. “You did it because you found out the Association of Gay Writers of Western Fiction is holding its annual convention in the hotel.”
“Like I said, business.” Alex smiled blithely as he removed the white Stetson with the lizard-skin hatband and sailed it adeptly toward the left horn of the bull in the window. Beneath the hat his hair was cut with a razor-sharp precision that cost him a small fortune every other week. His carefully styled mustache was equally perfect.
In fact, Sabrina had often thought, just about every inch of Alex was perfect. He worked out three times a week at a health spa to maintain that degree of well-molded grace, and he had an eye for expensive clothes. Alex was good for business. Little old ladies from Indiana thought he was just about the cutest thing to come down the pike in forty years. Small children thought he was the embodiment of a television cowboy. Young women fantasized about saving him, and a surprisingly large number of males dropped in to buy Genuine Texas Panhandle Chili and fantasize, too.
“Good Lord, are you wearing that tin necklace again today?” Alex demanded, narrowing his bedroom-dark eyes as he studied the piece of jewelry around Sabrina’s neck.
“To each his own,” Sabrina said, eyeing his sequins. “There’s something about this necklace that appeals to me.” Sabrina began stacking packages of chili on a shelf.
“I can’t imagine what it is. The thing’s turning green. You’d better be careful or it will start eating away your skin.”
“At that point I’ll throw it in the garbage,” she promised.
“You must have had one heck of a good time in Acapulco a month ago. It’s not normal to be so hung up on a souvenir. Especially when you’re in the business yourself.”
“Maybe that’s the appeal of this thing,” Sabrina observed, fingering the necklace briefly. “Professional admiration. The guy who sold it to me was a consummate souvenir salesman. I actually thought I was getting genuine silver. Isn’t that fantastic? You’ve got to admire that kind of skill, Alex.”
“You’ve got a point. Any word from Oregon?”
“Not yet. Can’t be long now, though. Nolan skipped his Sunday-evening phone call last night, so I have hopes that things have gotten serious.”
“I don’t see you as an aunt,” Alex mused as he dusted the glass case full of ashtrays embossed with little oil-well designs.
“Well, I’m the only one the kid’s going to get from his father’s side of the family. Actually, I envision myself as the relative who always sends books for Christmas.”
“I had one of those,” Alex nodded. “Aunt
Milly
. She always sent a classic on my birthday and at Christmas. I don’t think my mother has ever forgiven her for sending Little Women one year.”
“I thought I’d start with Nancy Drew.”
“Even if the baby’s a boy?”
“Especially if the kid’s a boy.”
The phone rang just as Sabrina was crushing the chili carton and stuffing it into the storage room at the back of the shop.
“What do you want to bet that’s Nolan?” she asked excitedly, grabbing for the phone. “Hello? I knew it was going to be you. Is this the big announcement?”
“It’s a boy!” Nolan’s paternal excitement was audible through his normal banker’s reserve. “Healthy and huge. Mary’s just fine, says to tell you hello. We’ve all decided you ought to try it yourself sometime.”
Sabrina ignored the last remark. It was constitutionally impossible for one of the men in her family to talk to her on any subject without throwing in a word of advice on what she should be doing with her life. “If you’re going to name him Nolan Bennet the Second, I’ll lodge a severe protest.”
Nolan laughed. “I wouldn’t inflict that on my own kid. James Bennet Chase. How does that sound?”
“Like a banker.”
She could almost see Nolan nodding, pleased. “We thought it had a nice ring.”
“When is Mary going home from the hospital?”
“Tomorrow. Which brings me to the next point. When are you coming out to see your new nephew?”
Sabrina hesitated a fraction of an instant. “Soon. Sometime this summer, I hope.” Deliberately she kept the answer vague.
“We’ll be expecting you,” Nolan said bluntly. “Dad is looking forward to having you out for a visit, too.”
“Yes, Nolan, I’m aware of that.”
“How about the end of June?”
“That’s three weeks from now!” Sabrina protested.
“Texas is terrible in the summer. You’ll enjoy getting out of there. Oregon is perfect right now. You could spend some time at the cabin.”
“I’ll see, Nolan.”
“After Texas the woods up here are going to look great,” Nolan assured her with an older brother’s certainty. “We’ll plan on the end of June.”
“I’ll let you know, Nolan,” Sabrina said firmly. “I have a business to run, remember?”
“You have an assistant,” Nolan reminded her carelessly. No one in the Chase family had considered running a souvenir stand exactly a profession. Ergo, it didn’t require from others the respect a profession demanded.
“I’ll see how it goes.” Sabrina realized she was beginning to grit her teeth, and she began to inhale with the slow, rhythmic breaths she’d learned in a quickie meditation class. “Are you calling from the hospital?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Put Mary on the line.”
A moment later her sister-in-law took the phone, her voice glowing with tired satisfaction. “It’s fantastic, Sabrina. You can’t possibly imagine what it’s like until you’ve had one of your own! It’s got to be the greatest thrill in the world.”
“You know me, Mary. The original coward.”
“Nonsense,” Mary said breezily. “It didn’t hurt at all.”
“Hah!” Sabrina said good-naturedly. “That’s a myth put around by new mothers who want to con another woman into going through the same thing.”
“Trust me.” Mary laughed, and handed the phone back to her husband.
“Congratulations, Nolan,” Sabrina said sincerely.
“Thanks, Sabrina. I’ll talk to you soon.”
“I know. Next Sunday night at six.” Nolan always called precisely at six on Sunday evenings. Just before the weekend rates changed. Her father, on the other hand, preferred Saturday mornings. Jeffrey usually opted for alternate Wednesday nights. All three of them tended to get upset when she didn’t happen to be at home to receive the calls.
Sabrina hung up the phone, still practicing her breathing exercise, and then relaxed. She grinned across the distance of the shop at an expectant Alex. “Find me the biggest, fattest, handsomest stuffed armadillo we have in stock!”
“I thought you were going to be the aunt who always sent books.”
“I’ve changed my mind. I’m going to be the eccentric relative in the family. Might as well prepare the kid for the facts of life in the Chase clan.”
“Boy or girl?” Alex started digging through a heap of stuffed armadillos.
“I didn’t know those armadillos were sexed.”
Alex threw her a derisive glance. “I meant the kid.”
“Oh, big, healthy, bouncing baby boy. A little future banker. James Bennet Chase. Doesn’t that have a nice professional ring to it?”
“I can see it on the chairman of the board’s door now. Going out to see the kid?”
“The summoning has begun,” Sabrina replied with a groan. “Every Saturday morning, Sunday evening, and alternate-Wednesday-night phone-call I get from here on will contain another request to hit the Oregon trail. The thing is, I really would like to see the little future banker. It’s just that I know as soon as I get there I’m going to have to defend my own childless, husbandless state.”
“It gets hard, doesn’t it?” Alex selected a plump armadillo from the pile and brought it over to the counter. His beautiful dark eyes held commiseration. “How do you think it’s been for me?”
Sabrina grinned. “I’m sure you could always find yourself a husband if you tried.”
Alex threw the armadillo at her just as the front door opened. The first wave of the daily stream of tourists, visitors, and shoppers had hit the huge, glass-domed mall. Sabrina put aside the armadillo to be wrapped later and turned around to sell some Lone Star Extra Spicy Barbecue Sauce.
She wondered briefly what it would be like to hold her own small, cuddly baby in her arms. But the momentary image came and went without eliciting any lasting regrets. Not every woman was cut out to be a mother, and Sabrina had long ago accepted her own lack of interest in motherhood. It was a pity her family hadn’t accepted it, too. It would make things so much easier. The Chase men were beginning to panic, she knew. They had started the day she had turned twenty-nine. A month ago when she had turned thirty, grim determination had set in. The pressure would be on now to get her out to Oregon. Secretly everyone would be convinced that when she held James Bennet in her arms, her maternal instincts would finally surge to the fore.
Sabrina knew differently. She was cut out to be an eccentric aunt, not a mother. A baby would not satisfy the sense of restlessness that had always disturbed her —even more acutely since she had returned from Mexico.
***
The bull in the window was complete in every anatomical detail, Matt noted as he stood outside in the covered mall gazing into the shop. And the guy behind the counter wearing the tight leather pants appeared equally anatomically correct. Sabrina’s employee? Or more than just an employee? Matt closed one hand slowly and then opened each finger in a deliberate stretching action that was supposed to loosen the muscles.
“Why do we have to stop here?” Brad complained. He had been complaining ever since Matt had explained that they weren’t going straight back to Mexico.
Matt turned to glance at his sullen-faced son, meeting hazel eyes that matched his own. He was getting used to the way the kid dressed. The clothing was straight out of an Army-Navy surplus store, from the camouflage fatigues to the combat boots. Those boots, Matt knew, must be hotter than hell. Not that Brad would make any comment to that effect. At thirteen the impression was more important than personal comfort.
“I told you I want to see someone. If you’d rather not meet her, you’re free to go browse in that record shop we passed. I’ll meet you in half an hour in front of the hamburger place at the other end of the mall.”