“Tom, this is Kate Chilton. Randall's here, and I think that he's all right. I cleaned up his cuts, and he's taking a bath.”
“Thank God.” Tom's voice held noticeable relief. “I kept wondering when I would hear about a smash-up involving a Jaguar.”
“I'll try to keep him off the road, although he seems sober.” Kate hesitated a moment. “Has he ever mentioned a bar called Dobie's to you?”
“Dobie's?” Tom was silent as he thought. “Yes, I think he used to go there to drink when he was underage.”
“That's where he was in Texas. He said he smelled like it.”
“Why would he go to some dive in Nowhere, Texas?”
“Maybe he wanted a drink,” Kate said. “He won't talk about anything yet, but I'll keep trying. He seems… depressed.”
“I can't figure this out. I finally got hold of one of the Mason Bank VPs, and he says that Randall backed out of the acquisition. No explanation, no negotiation. He left without even going to the bank. He's been watching this bank for years, waiting for the right time.” Tom sounded upset and frustrated.
“I'll take care of him, Tom.”
As she hung up, she puzzled over the business deal. She remembered Randall's story about the wrong oil wells that he had bought anyway. Something very serious had to have happened if he had cancelled a long-standing deal.
Kate heard the floor creaking as Randall shifted in the tub. Then his footsteps traveled back and forth between the bedroom and bathroom several times. By the time she heard the door open, Clay and Patrick were debating the relative merits of different combinations of toppings on the brick oven pizzas they had voted on for dinner.
Randall walked into the family room looking vastly improved. Nothing could hide the black eye, but he had shaved and his damp hair was brushed neatly away from his face. He was wearing charcoal gray slacks and a white button-down shirt with a thin maroon stripe that he had left open at the neck. He dropped his overnight bag in the corner. “Good evening, Patrick, Clay. How's the hand doing?”
“It's going to be great, thanks to you and Dr. Lane,” Clay said. “I'm really grateful...”
Randall held up his hand. “Your mother has already thanked me so often that it's not necessary to say another word. I'm glad you're on the road to recovery.” He moved to a chair with a return of his usual fluidity and sank into it. “Did I hear the word pizza being bandied around?”
“I'll be happy to grill you a steak,” Kate said quickly.
“I'm in the mood for pizza,” Randall said. “What toppings do they have?”
Patrick took the menu over to him and then stood waiting as he examined Randall's battered face. “Were you in a fight, sir?” he asked politely.
“Patrick!” Kate and Clay spoke simultaneously.
Randall gave a half smile as he gingerly touched his cheek. “Your mother wants to know the same thing.” He paused, then sighed. “I was in a place where I had no business being anymore, and yes, I got in a fight. But I didn't start it, and I doubt that I could have ended it,” he said, ruefully inspecting the marks on his hands. “Some people with more brains than I have persuaded me to leave before I really got hurt.”
“What was the fight about?” Patrick persisted.
“I have absolutely no idea. And I'm sure that there's a moral in there somewhere, but I'm too beaten up to figure it out.”
“Don't get between two fighting dogs or two fighting men,” Clay offered wryly.
Randall gave a short laugh. “We are a pair.”
Patrick had opened his mouth to say something else, but Kate quelled him with a stern look. “I'm going to go order the pizza,” she said.
“Good, I'm starved,” Clay said.
After pizza, the boys decided to play poker, so Kate set up the card table. Randall was stretched out in a chair with his feet on an ottoman, but when Patrick shuffled the cards, he stirred. “Don't get up,” Kate said quickly.
He ignored her and rose stiffly. “Poker's my game.”
Poker might usually be his game, Kate thought, but his heart wasn't in it tonight. He only won when he was the dealer, so ordinarily she would have suspected him of cheating. Tonight, though, she concluded that he simply wasn't focused on the game except when he had to be. In fact, she often caught him watching her with an odd expression on his face.
“Last hand,” Kate announced after glancing at the clock. “You have school tomorrow, Patrick, and Clay needs some rest.”
Randall pushed what was left of his poker chips into the center of the table and shuffled the cards several times.
“Let's try a game of real skill: high card, winner takes all,” he called. Everyone laughed and shoved their chips into the pile. Randall fanned the cards on the table. “Patrick, you have the draw. Now Clay. Kate. And myself.” He chose a card and laid it facedown. “Ladies and gentlemen, display your cards,” he said in his thickest Texas drawl.
Patrick turned up a king and cheered. Clay had a ten and Kate a three. With a flourish, Randall flipped over the Ace of Spades. He then proceeded to draw from the spread deck the Ace of Clubs, the Ace of Diamonds and finally the Ace of Hearts.
“Wow.” Clay breathed. “How did you do that?”
“I stacked the deck. I'm good at that,” Randall said with an edge in his voice. “Good night, young men. Thank you for your company.”
Kate stood up. “Patrick, upstairs and get ready for bed. Clay, I'm going to give you one of those painkillers to make sure you get a good night's sleep.”
“Aw, Mom, I don't need one.”
“I know, sweetheart, you're very tough, but I don't want to stay up all night worrying about whether you're sleeping or not, so take it for me.”
Clay muttered but he swallowed the pill and trudged up the stairs.
“I'll be right up to give you a hand with your hand,” Kate joked. Then she turned to Randall. “Let me get them settled, and then I'll be back down.”
Randall was slotting poker chips into their stand. “Don't worry about me.”
“I just don't want you to disappear while I'm upstairs.”
He looked up at her. “You've been talking to Tom. He thinks I've gone off the deep end.”
“He's concerned,” Kate corrected. “You're lucky to have such a good friend.”
Randall snorted and went back to sorting poker chips.
TwentyOne
Kate got the boys in bed and walked back to her bedroom to pick up a sweater. She started as she saw Randall standing beside the bed, putting on his watch. He looked up. “I remembered that I left my wallet and watch on the bedside table.”
“But not your phone?” Kate teased.
“I got rid of that in San Antonio.”
“I hope you get free replacements from that telephone company you own.”
Randall didn't smile.
Kate closed the door softly behind her. “Would you like to tell me what happened down there?” she said, walking to the chaise longue by the window. She perched on the foot and looked up at Randall expectantly. “I'll never repeat anything you tell me to anyone – not even Tom,” she said with a slight smile.
“I know that,” Randall said sharply. He adjusted his watch with great precision, then sat down on the edge of the bed. He leaned his elbows on his knees and clasped his hands. Keeping his gaze on his hands, he said, “I went to Texas to destroy a man.”
Kate let the silence go on for a while before she decided that he needed help. “The man at Mason Bank?”
Randall glanced up at her. “Tom told you that?”
“Just the name of the bank.”
Randall stared out the window. “Tom knew the deal stank from day one. He didn't understand that I had no intention of making a profit from the bank; I intended to take it apart piece by piece and wipe it off the face of the earth.”
“Why?” Kate whispered. She was shocked by the hatred in his voice.
Randall's laugh was as unpleasant as his expression. “I wanted
to take everything away from Gill Gillespie because he took everything away from me. Mason Bank was more than his job; it was his heritage. His granddaddy started it, his daddy made it solid, and Gill grew it. I couldn't just fire him; I had to ruin the bank, too.”
“I don't understand. You have so much. What did he do to you?”
“He got me thrown off the football team.”
Kate almost laughed, thinking that he was joking. But Randall was staring straight ahead with no sign of amusement on his face.
“I guess you really loved football,” she said lamely.
That made Randall look at her. “Yeah, I loved football, but I loved the scholarship it got me to Texas University more. I had to lead Mason County High on to another championship if I wanted to go to college. Gill and his father made that impossible. Gill didn't need a scholarship; he just wanted to play quarterback his senior year. And for that, he destroyed my future.”
Randall got up and walked to the window before turning to face Kate. “I worked my ass off to get that scholarship. It was my ticket out of the dirt and the squalor and the shame of a mother who everyone knew was an alcoholic. My brothers and sisters left as soon as they could lie about their ages and get a paying job. And I was right behind them. But I was going to do it better; I was going to get a college education.”
“But you did get a college education. You went to Princeton.”
Randall swung back to the window. “That's another long story. It took me six years of struggling to get through Princeton. I wouldn't care to repeat the experience.”
“But you did it. And look where you are now.”
“I'm looking,” Randall said with a mean edge to his voice. The edge was gone when he continued. “The scholarship wasn't the only thing Gill took from me. He also took Lucy, the only good thing in my life from age twelve on.” He stared out into the night. “And for twenty-three years, I thought that he took my daughter, too.”
Kate's eyes widened. “You have a daughter?”
“Evidently not. But I thought I might.”
His voice was so bleak she longed to put her arms around him for comfort. His stance was so rigid she was afraid he wouldn't welcome being touched.
“Tell me about Lucy,” she urged softly.
“It's a sordid story.”
Kate lifted an eyebrow. “I've been through sordid myself. I can handle it.”
Randall gave her a humorless smile in acknowledgment, then sat back down on the bed. “It starts further back than twenty-three years. Lucinda Nelson was a year younger than I was and just as poor. But her parents didn't drink. Some weeks, I spent more time at her house than at mine.
“She was a pretty girl: blond, tall and slender, green eyes. She had a real talent for making her house pretty, too. We made all the usual plans young lovers do. I'd go to college and then come back and marry her. We'd move to San Antonio and have a family and a house. That was what kept me going, in spite of my mother and the teachers who thought I was nothing but trouble. My idea of heaven was to have a house in San Antonio with Lucy in it to make it pretty and to be the mother of my children. She had a sweetness that I knew would make her a good mother – and a good wife.” His expression hardened. “But Gill got it all instead.”
Once again, Randall stood up, this time to pace around the room.
“It was the summer before my senior year. Lucy came to my house crying because she was pregnant.” Randall stopped in the middle of the room. “I can still feel the kick in the gut that gave me. I hadn't told her that I had lost the only hope I had of getting both of us out of Mason County.” His lips twisted in self-mockery. “I thought she was counting on me, and I was trying to be the big man and find another way.
“I told her that we'd get married right away, and I told her about losing the scholarship. But we loved each other and everything would work out.”
Randall started pacing again. “Three days later, she told me that I was off the hook. She was going to marry Gill Gillespie.”
Kate gasped.
Randall sent her a sardonic look. “Exactly. It was an ugly scene. I told her that I didn't want someone else raising my child. She told me that it wasn't mine, but I didn't believe her. I figured that since my future looked dim, she was going for the sure thing with the banker's son. When she pointed out that Gill was in a better position to support a wife and child than I was, I stopped arguing.”
He sat down again. “On graduation day, I collected my diploma and got on a bus out of there. I swore not to come back until I could make Gill pay for what he had taken from me.”
“So you left and made your fortune and then went back to exact retribution,” Kate prompted.
“I made my fortune in order to exact retribution,” Randall corrected her.
“You created RJ Enterprises just so that you could take revenge on the man who got you thrown off your high school football team and married your pregnant girlfriend twenty-some years ago?”
“Yes.”
“I don't believe that for a minute,” Kate said, standing up and facing him.
Randall stood up, too, and ground out his words. “I've been watching Mason Bank since the day I left, waiting for the perfect moment to pick it off. Not a day has gone by that I haven't looked at some piece of information about that bank.”
“You just got into a bad habit.”
His laugh was short as he turned away. “Why am I arguing with you? For the last twenty-four hours I've been trying to convince myself that I haven't wasted most of my life.”
“Why would you think that?”
“Because I spent twenty-three years planning my payback, and I threw it away!”
Kate sat down again. “How did you throw it away?”
“I cancelled the deal. I left Gill with his bank and his house and his wife and his daughters.”
“In other words, you did the right thing,” Kate said.
“Yeah, I did the right thing,” Randall said with contempt in his voice. He spun on his heel and came back to her. “Because of you.”
“Because of me?” Kate's voice went up an octave in astonishment.
“Gill invited me to his house. I saw Lucinda there, and she filled me in on some of the details. Like the fact that she knew all along that her baby wasn't mine.” He seemed to notice that Kate was leaning back in order to look up at him and he took a step away. “Lucinda and I were finishing our enlightening conversation when I took a stroll around the room and saw a photo. It was a picture of her three daughters in soccer uniforms with their arms around each other, holding trophies and grinning at the camera.”
Randall took a deep breath. “The soccer uniforms and the grins reminded me of Clay and Patrick. I realized that I wouldn't be destroying a man; I'd be destroying a family. And I couldn't do that after knowing you and your boys. I just couldn't God damn do that. So I went out and got drunk.”
He walked slowly back to the bed and sank down onto it. “So now what do I do, Kate?”
She got up and went over to him, kneeling in front of him to cup his face with her hands. “You had your dream before Gill Gillespie intervened: You were going to get out of Mason County and go to San Antonio. Revenge had nothing to do with that. Lucinda and Gill just nudged you along the track. And you've gone so far beyond that first dream.”
She dropped her hands and sat back on her heels. “You're an extraordinary person, Randall. Remember, I watched you run straight toward a burning gas tank to rescue two men because they worked for you, and you felt responsible for them. You put all your resources at the disposal of a twelve-year-old who got bitten by a dog.”
He made a sound of protest, but Kate continued.
“You just sacrificed what you believed was your moment of triumph, the ultimate goal of your life, for three girls who played soccer.” She stood up. “You're not a destroyer; you're a builder.”
Randall dropped his face into his hands, threading his fingers up into his hair. Kate rose and sat dow
n beside him.
“It may take some time to get used to the idea that you aren't some sort of an avenging angel, but I know you'll find another project to focus on.” She moved her hand up to massage his neck. “You could spend more time on that charitable foundation of yours. Or join Habitat for Humanity.” Kate was warming to her theme. “Run for president!”
“Win the Nobel Peace Prize,” Randall's voice emerged from the depths of his hands. “End world hunger.”
“That's the spirit,” Kate approved.
When he lifted his head, he was smiling. He turned slightly so that he could take Kate's face between his hands, and he kissed her on the forehead. Then his gaze dropped to her lips. He shifted toward her ever so slowly, giving her all the time in the world to pull away.
But she met him halfway. He had trusted her with the story of his past. He had come to her for help and she loved him all the more for it. She wanted to touch him as much as he needed to touch her.
He began the kiss like a desperate man, pressing his mouth hard against hers, his tongue forcing entrance. Kate had to grab his shoulders to brace herself against the onslaught.
Then suddenly the attack ended. He gently brushed her lips with his and traced her mouth lightly with his tongue. Kate moaned as she released his shoulders and slid her hands up into his hair.
He pulled her hard against him for a long minute. Then he gently lowered her onto the bed and stretched out beside her. Propping himself on one elbow, he looked at her with a half-smile. “We're going to go slowly for a change.” Then his expression clouded. “I don't want you to make love to me out of pity.”
“Don't be an idiot,” she said affectionately, as she reached up and unbuttoned his shirt.
Randall's eyebrow quirked upward, and then he laughed and buried his face in the crook of her neck. “Oh God, I love you, Kate.”
She went still for a split second, then drew in a steadying breath. She realized he hadn't meant it as a declaration; it was the sort of statement he would make to a friend who made him laugh at a difficult moment.
All such thoughts scattered when Randall lifted his head and began to unbutton her blouse. As he released each button, he ran his fingers lightly over the new area of skin that was revealed. “I want to see every inch of you this time,” he said.
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