Desert Rain with Bonus Material

by Elizabeth Lowell

  Won’t he?

  “Holly? Are you okay? You look kind of odd.”

  “Just a little tired.”

  “You sure?”

  Holly nodded.

  Beth hesitated, then headed for her own bedroom, packages in hand. She stopped in the hall and looked over her shoulder.

  “Are you sure you won’t let me pay you back?” Beth asked. “Daddy left me money in my own name, even though Linc controls it until I’m eighteen.”

  “That outfit is my homecoming present for you.”

  “It’s an awfully expensive present.”

  “Don’t worry, honey,” Holly said, smiling. “Every penny of it is going to come out of Sandra’s hide.”

  “Yeah, Linc told me about that. What a bi—er, witch. She even kept my letters from you.”

  Holly’s smile vanished. Without it, she looked remote, unapproachable, every inch the fighter life had forced her to be.

  “You wrote to me, too?” Holly asked softly.

  “Sure. Except for Linc, you were the only one who ever loved me.”

  Holly crossed the kitchen and hugged Beth hard, packages and all.

  “I still love you,” Holly said fiercely. “And I wrote to you.”

  Beth’s eyes were bright with emotion.

  “I love you, too,” she said. “I wish Sandra had never come. Linc would have been happier and so would I.”

  “So would I,” Holly said, releasing Beth.

  Smiling, Beth looked at her.

  “You know,” Beth said, “if it hadn’t been for Sandra, I bet I’d have been an aunt by now.”

  And Shannon would never have been born, Holly thought immediately.

  Strangely, the idea disturbed her.

  From the first, the glamorous Shannon mask had made Holly uneasy. That was why she had chosen to work under a name other than her own.

  But the name itself was part of Holly—her middle name, her mother’s maiden name.

  Shannon.

  From the beginning, Shannon had grown out of Holly’s own needs, whether she admitted it at the time or not. Whatever Holly wasn’t, Shannon was.

  Shannon had never been orphaned at sixteen. Shannon had never wept to be beautiful so that the man she loved would notice her. Shannon had never been awkward or too tall. Shannon had never been lonely.

  The list of their differences was endless.

  Or is it? Holly asked herself for the first time.

  Shannon didn’t fall in bed or in love with the men who pursued her. Neither did Holly.

  Shannon didn’t want to be purchased and worn like a life-size charm on a rich man’s bracelet. Neither did Holly.

  Shannon dreamed of Linc, felt his skin beneath her palms, tasted him on her lips. So did Holly.

  Shannon was intelligent, hard-working, and responsible. She wanted to be the best, and she was. She was the Royce Reflection.

  And so am I, Holly thought.

  Slowly, imperceptibly, the two expressions of her personality had grown together.

  Or maybe it’s just that I grew up, she thought. I’m finally able to accept all of myself. I’m plain Holly and fancy Shannon—and so is every woman.

  But the essential inner person was the same no matter what the outside trappings, plain or fancy. The woman beneath the changing exterior was herself unchanging.

  And that woman loved and wanted to be loved by only one man.

  Lincoln McKenzie.

  “Is the idea of having babies so boggling?” Beth asked.

  Holly blinked, called out of her own thoughts. She smiled.

  “Not at all,” she said. “I’ll just have to get Roger to design a line of maternity clothes.”

  “Your boss designs clothes?”

  “No more questions about my boss or my work until midnight tomorrow,” Holly said quickly.

  “Ask you no questions and you’ll tell me no lies?” Beth said, smiling, yet somehow tentative.

  “I wouldn’t lie to you. I haven’t lied to Linc.”

  “Thank God,” Beth said. “He hates that most of all.”

  Holly sighed.

  “Well, I haven’t told Linc all of the truth, either,” she admitted. “But then, if your dear brother had twenty-twenty vision instead of blind prejudices, I wouldn’t have to!”

  Beth looked shocked, then laughed aloud.

  “You’re going to be good for him,” Beth said. “He’s too used to being the boss all the time.”

  Still laughing, Beth hurried off to her own room to hang up her prized new clothes.

  “Come to my bedroom when you’re finished,” Holly called after her. “I have something to show you.”

  Holly took her own luggage and makeup case to the guest room. Beth came in moments later. She poked through the makeup case while Holly unpacked.

  By the time she was finished hanging up her clothes, Beth was elbow deep in makeup. When she looked up and saw Holly watching her, the expression on Beth’s face was a combination of apology and sheer stubbornness.

  Instead of saying anything, Holly sat down next to Beth on the bed.

  “Well?” the younger girl asked defiantly.

  “Well what?”

  Beth looked at herself in the makeup case’s mirrored lid.

  “I like it,” Beth said firmly.

  Privately, Holly thought Beth looked wretched. Black eyebrows, black lashes, scarlet lips and cheeks, powder everywhere, burying her skin’s normal healthy glow.

  The makeup had been applied without thought to age, natural coloring or to the individual lines of Beth’s face.

  But Holly said nothing aloud. She had learned that using makeup correctly, like cooking or painting, was a learned skill. No one was born with it.

  “Let me try something,” Holly said in a mild voice.

  She turned the mirror aside so that Beth couldn’t watch what was happening. Then Holly removed makeup from half of Beth’s face, sorted through the available cosmetics, and chose different colors.

  “In class,” Holly said, “we were told to put our normal makeup on half our face. Then the teacher came around and made up the other half.”

  As Holly talked, she worked quickly, her years of practice showing in each deft stroke.

  “Makeup is as individual as the person wearing it,” she said. “What I’m using on you now would look odd on you at twenty-five, ridiculous at thirty-five, and pathetic at forty-five.”

  Beth continued to look stubborn.

  She and Linc are a real pair, Holly thought dryly. But then, I’m no fragile little flower, either.

  “Each age has its own unique needs and beauty,” Holly said. “But what I’m using now would look terrible on me at any age, including fifteen.”

  “Why?”

  “The same reason most of the colors I wear would look terrible on you.”

  “What do you mean?” Beth asked.

  “I’m dark,” Holly said matter-of-factly. “You’re blond. I have light brown eyes. You have light blue. My nose is off-center. Yours is perfect. You have lovely full lips. I don’t. My cheekbones and eyes are too slanted—”

  “Too slanted!” Beth interrupted in disbelief. “There’s no such thing.”

  Holly just smiled.

  “My face is triangular,” she continued. “Yours is oval. In short, we need different makeup to bring out our special qualities.”

  “I don’t have any ‘special qualities’ to bring out,” Beth muttered gloomily.

  “Sure you do. But you won’t see them if they’re buried under piles of makeup.”

  Holly worked in silence for a few more moments, concentrating on the mascara. She added a touch more blush to bring out Beth’s cheekbones, examined the results, and nodded.

  “Can I look now?” Beth asked.

  “Sure.”

  Beth grabbed the makeup case and lifted the lid. For a long time she studied the two halves of her face.

  “Boy,” she said finally. “You know a lot more about make
up than I do.”

  With that the younger girl grabbed tissue and cold cream and wiped off the makeup that Holly hadn’t applied. Then Beth studied her face again. Carefully she compared the right side, which had makeup, to the left side, which had none.

  While Beth looked in the mirror, Holly undid the girl’s right braid, leaving the left braid untouched. She brushed the freed half of Beth’s shining, waist-length hair until it was smooth. Then Holly pulled the hair back from Beth’s face and began styling it in different ways.

  Finally Holly made loose French braids on the side and crown to keep the hair from overwhelming Beth’s face. The remainder of the hair on the right side of her head was left free to fall in honey waves down the center of her back. The result was a simple yet sophisticated style that brought out the oval perfection of Beth’s face.

  “A shampoo and some hot rollers will take out the kinks from wearing pigtails,” Holly said. “I have some earrings that will be perfect with your new skirt.”

  Belatedly she realized that Beth wasn’t listening.

  “Beth?”

  “Huh?”

  Then Beth blinked as though waking up and tore her glance away from the makeup mirror.

  “Is that really me?” she whispered to Holly. “My eyes look so blue. And big. And my hair—I even like my hair! What did you do to my cheekbones? I don’t look like a kid anymore. How did you do it?”

  “Yes,” said Linc’s cold voice from the doorway. “Do tell me how you turned a sweet young kid into a tart.”

  Twelve

  Beth froze, looking guilty and defiant at the same time.

  Holly kept her back to the door and spoke as though Linc wasn’t there.

  “Hold the mirror so that you can watch,” she said to Beth. “I’ll show you what I did.”

  She put her fingers under Beth’s chin and turned the pigtailed, plain side of her face toward Linc.

  He drew in a swift, hard breath as he measured the difference in the two halves of his sister’s face.

  A closed, savage look settled over Linc’s face. His whole stance changed. He was a stranger again, staring scornfully at a woman whose beauty offended him.

  Holly’s stomach turned to ice.

  My God, she thought. Linc knows Beth! He knows that she isn’t selfish or cruel, yet he’s looking at her like he hates her.

  It’s the way he looked at Shannon.

  It’s the way he’ll look at me when he finds out.

  Only the helpless pleading in Beth’s eyes kept Holly from losing her temper or crying out of despair.

  Willing her hands not to tremble, she began applying a sheer foundation to the left side of Beth’s face.

  “No,” Linc snarled. “You’ll make her look like a two-dollar slut!”

  The sound Beth made stopped him abruptly. Swearing beneath his breath, he fought for self-control.

  It had never been harder for him to find it.

  Without pigtails and a scrubbed face, Beth was the image of her beautiful, adulterous mother.

  As though nothing had happened, Holly continued applying makeup with sure strokes.

  “No more,” Linc said curtly.

  Holly didn’t even pause. Nor did she look up from Beth’s face.

  “Holly, damn it!” he said.

  “Are you calling off our truce?” she asked.

  “If anyone is calling it off, you are,” Linc retorted with cold fury.

  In silence she compared the foundation she had just applied to what was already in place on the rest of Beth’s face. The match was good. Holly picked up the pale brown eyebrow pencil.

  “I’m not arguing,” she said evenly. “You are. I haven’t even raised my voice.”

  It took every bit of her professional poise to appear casual as she set aside the eyebrow pencil, picked up pale turquoise eye shadow, and turned back to Beth.

  “A two-dollar floozy,” Holly continued in a neutral voice, “wears brassy makeup and puts it on with a trowel.”

  “My point exactly,” Linc shot back.

  “This makeup,” she said, “is chosen for subtlety and there isn’t a trowel in sight.”

  His face became completely expressionless. He crossed his arms and leaned against the door. He looked unreasonably big, filling the opening.

  “Beauty is as beauty does,” he said flatly.

  “No argument there,” she said.

  She reached for a pale, warm-toned eye shadow to blend with the turquoise.

  “But you’ve done your best to keep Beth as plain as possible, haven’t you?” Holly pointed out.

  “You can bet on it.”

  “Why?” Holly asked softly. “Don’t you trust her?”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  Beth stirred at the whiplash of her brother’s voice.

  Holly pressed a hand over the younger girl’s arm, silently urging her to stay where she was.

  “I mean,” Holly said, “that you’ve chosen Beth’s clothes and hairstyle with an unerring eye—”

  “Thank you,” Linc interrupted sarcastically.

  “—toward hiding the natural beauty that is coming to Beth as she grows older,” Holly finished.

  His expression became even harder.

  “She looked fine the way she was,” he said coldly.

  “To you, obviously. Beth wanted a different look.”

  “She isn’t old enough to know what’s good for her.”

  “And beauty can’t be good?” Holly asked softly. “Is that what you’re saying?”

  Linc’s mouth flattened into a line that was as thin and unyielding as a steel blade.

  “Can’t you see that even though the outside of Beth changes, the inside is still worthy of love?” Holly asked quietly.

  Silence was his only answer.

  “My God, Linc,” Holly said, appalled. “You raised Beth. She’s like your own daughter!”

  “She is also her mother’s daughter,” he said savagely, “and her mother was a worthless slut.”

  “I hate you!” cried Beth.

  She leaped up and ran out the door, tears streaming down her face.

  Saying nothing, Linc and Holly listened to Beth race down the hallway to her bedroom. A door slammed shut. Hard.

  With shaking hands, Holly packed up the case containing her cosmetics.

  “Do you really think Beth is a slut?” she asked, her voice vibrant with rage.

  “Of course not!”

  “Then when you both cool off, I suggest you tell her that.”

  Holly snapped the makeup case shut. Then she stood and confronted Linc, holding the case protectively against her body. Her face was drawn into lines as unyielding as his.

  “And what about me?” she asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “When I get out of my childish clothes and hairstyles, when I put something more than soap on my face, will I become magically degraded in your eyes?”

  “Holly—”

  “Will a stylish dress,” she continued relentlessly, “and a few strokes of an eyebrow pencil turn me into a worthless, lying, cheating slut?”

  “Holly—”

  “Will it?” she asked, her voice rising.

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “Beauty is as beauty does, right?”

  “Always,” Linc said.

  “Except,” Holly said, “when beauty interferes with your prejudices. Then no matter what beauty does, beauty is a beast.”

  “I thought we had a truce,” he said coldly.

  “I’ll gamble my own future on a truce,” Holly shot back, “but I’m damned if I’ll gamble Beth’s!”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “The way you’re hounding Beth, you’ll push her into tight clothes and back seats before the year is out.”

  “That’s crap!”

  “It’s the truth,” Holly cut in. “Beth is becoming a woman.”

  “Jesus, do you think I haven’t notic
ed?”

  “Then stop trying to turn back the clock.”

  “She’s only fifteen!” Linc snarled.

  “Nearly sixteen. Just how old did you say I was when you first noticed me as something other than a child? Fourteen?”

  “That has nothing to do with Beth.”

  “It has everything to do with her. Girls mature more quickly than boys. Beth wants to be as beautiful as she can be for her young man.”

  “I want her to be Beth, that’s all,” Linc said. “Just Beth. That’s good enough for any man.”

  “We’re not talking about men,” Holly said. “We’re talking about Beth. Her desire to catch Jack’s eye is as simple and natural as breathing. If you try to make Beth hold her breath, you’ll get a backlash that could ruin her life.”

  “That’s exactly what I’m trying to avoid and you know it.”

  “Yes. But you’re going about it in the wrong way. Beth is a good, bright, loving, very stubborn person. Show her how to be the kind of woman a man can trust with his love.”

  “I’m trying to,” he said evenly.

  “By keeping her in pigtails?”

  “By keeping her from turning out like her mother.”

  “Haven’t you been listening? Beth is not like her mother.”

  “Then why are you trying to make her look like she is?” retorted Linc. “Any man worth the name can look past Beth’s outside.”

  “Assuming that he sees Beth in the first place.”

  “What?”

  “How many good, kind, plain women have you given a second look to?” Holly asked sweetly. “Besides me, of course.”

  He said nothing. There was nothing he could say, and both of them knew it.

  She laughed without humor.

  “Then there’s Cyn,” Holly said. “She wears enough paint for a barn. Why is it all right for her to be beautiful and all wrong for Beth or me?”

  “Cyn can wear paint and tight clothes and rub all over men because she’s a . . . toy. No grown man will fall in love with a toy, no matter how perfectly it’s wrapped. So,” Linc said, smiling narrowly, “why not enjoy the wrappings?”

  “I see your point,” Holly murmured. “Having a plain wife would be so boring a man would need to unwrap some fancy toys from time to time.”

  “That’s not what I meant at all!”

  Linc crossed the room and put his hands on Holly’s arms as though he was afraid that she, too, would run away from him.