The Complete Novels of the Lear Sister Trilogy

by Julia London

  Aaron’s eyes narrowed. “That right? Just what did you hear?”

  Robin laughed nervously. “Well he heard about you from me—you don’t think he’s fool enough to tell you now, do you?”

  Aaron slowly shook his head, despising the man already. “No. I don’t think he’s a fool at all.”

  Manning was too smooth to let Aaron know what he thought about that. He was expressionless, just extended his hand again. Aaron reluctantly shook it, then gestured for Robin to step aside, away from his chair, so he could sit down again. He noticed the kid was staring at him, like he had two heads or something, and scowled at him to let him know he did have two heads.

  “Robin?” Bonnie called as she came out the front door, Rebecca on her heels. She eagerly embraced her oldest daughter, kissed her on the cheek. “Oh, honey, I’m so glad to see you,” she exclaimed, then looked at Jake, and damn her if she didn’t smile broadly. Just as broadly as Rebecca. Women.

  “Who have we here?” Bonnie trilled.

  Jesus Christ, impressed with a pair of pecs.

  “Mom, Rebecca, this is Jake Manning and his nephew, Cole.”

  “Pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Lear. Rebecca.” He grabbed the boy by the shoulder and pulled him around. “Cole, you want to say hello?”

  The kid muttered something unintelligible, but that didn’t stop Bonnie and Bec from beaming ear to ear.

  “Well, it’s a pleasure to have you and your nephew at the Blue Cross Ranch, Mr. Manning,” Bonnie said giddily.

  “Please . . . call me Jake.”

  Please call me Jake, Aaron mimicked behind his back.

  “Well then, you must call me Bonnie!”

  “So you’re the one who is redoing Robin’s house?” Rebecca asked.

  “That’s me.”

  “I can’t wait to hear all about it!” Bonnie exclaimed. “Why don’t we sit down? Would you like something to drink? Iced tea? What about you, Cole? Lupe!” she called as she simultaneously ushered everyone to seats around a large wicker table.

  “Jake, tell them about the brick,” Robin said. Manning nodded like a good little puppy dog, Aaron thought, and began to tell them what he was doing to her house. Aaron sat off by himself, refusing to listen, miserably ill and even more miserably disillusioned. He watched his daughter’s face as the guy talked, the way it lit up with laughter when they talked about someone named Zaney, the way she hung on every word the handyman said.

  And he watched Manning, the easy way he used his hands to talk, the easy way he laughed. Evan was right—the guy was too blue collar for Robbie. She could have her pick, dammit, so what in the hell had possessed her to pick up with this guy? More important, how long would it be before she saw what he and Evan saw, what Bonnie and Rebecca would surely see once they got through drooling? That every time this Manning fellow looked at Robin, he saw one big fat dollar sign?

  Too disgusted and too sick to think, Aaron finally got up to go take a nap. He gave the kid a good hard glare in the process. He thought it strange that the kid sort of smiled.

  All the misgivings, all the anticipation of doom he had had before coming here had been right on. Aaron Lear made Jake feel about as welcome as a snake.

  The man’s total lack of hospitality pissed Jake off royally, no doubt about it. But at the same time, he could grudgingly understand it. If he were Robin’s father, he’d want better for her, too. Only Lear was overlooking one very germane and fundamental fact—Jake loved Robin. Yet that couldn’t make up for his feeling so uncomfortable at Blue Cross Ranch.

  First of all, the place was immaculate, more of a castle than a ranch house. It was huge, sprawling along the banks of the river, with room upon room for which he couldn’t imagine the possible uses. He’d never seen such rich furnishings in his life. Overstuffed leather chairs and couches, chandeliers suspended from longhorns in the ceiling, gold-plated fixtures everywhere. He was so nervous that Cole might break something he could not afford to replace that he dogged the poor kid, whispering at him not to touch, not to sit, not to do anything.

  Robin’s sister Rebecca—a very pretty woman with a soft countenance—took pity on Cole and borrowed him away from Jake for a while to take him down to the stables. Cole was eager to see horses, but even more eager to escape Jake’s vigilant eye.

  Which left Jake with Bonnie and Robin. They talked about the work on Robin’s house, about Jake’s efforts to earn a degree. He felt slightly embarrassed that he was, at thirty-eight, just now in school, but Bonnie seemed quite impressed by it and applauded him for his determination. Her praise stood in stark contrast to his own mother’s conviction that it was too late for him.

  When Rebecca and Cole returned from the stable—Cole’s face upturned in a rare wreath of smiles (“You can touch the horses!”)— Bonnie announced they should prepare for dinner, which would be served in the south dining room at eight. Jake felt a moment of panic; but Robin quickly informed him that he needed only a collared shirt as she showed them to the guestrooms. Guest rooms. Adjoining rooms connected by a huge bath he and Cole would be sharing. “If that’s a problem, I can borrow one from Dad,” Robin said about the shirt.

  Jake quickly threw up his hand. “That won’t be necessary.” That would never be necessary. He would die before borrowing anything from Aaron Lear, especially a shirt.

  Robin looked at Cole and frowned slightly. “Do you have anything but T-shirts?”

  Cole shook his head. “No. That’s all I got.”

  “Come on,” she said and took him by the hand, led him down the huge corridor, disappearing in a room beneath a large portal window. When they returned, Cole was wearing a salmon-colored button- down shirt tucked into his oversized cargo pants. He looked ridiculous, like a mango stuffed atop a cantaloupe.

  But Robin seemed awfully pleased with herself, and smiled admiringly at Cole. “There are a few things various guests have left behind. It’s a little big, but it will work, won’t it, Cole?”

  He turned a mortified gaze to Jake.

  “Be sure and wash your hands,” Robin blithely continued, then glanced at Jake. “You, too. I’ll see you downstairs,” she said and left them to finish dressing.

  Jake and Cole looked at one another.

  “It’s pink,” Cole said helplessly.

  “I know,” Jake said, just as helplessly, and the two of them stared at each other in dismay.

  Jake somehow convinced Cole he could stand to wear it this one time, made a mental note to get the kid a white button-down shirt as soon as possible for emergencies such as this. They worked on Cole’s cowlick for a time, but both of them finally conceded there was nothing to be done for it. Jake was wearing a black polo, tucked into a pair of off-white Levi’s, which he hoped wasn’t some dress code faux pas. The two of them proceeded nervously downstairs, careful not to touch anything.

  They had to wander around a bit to find the south dining room, past huge rooms with even more leather furniture and thick rugs and rustic furnishings that looked as if they had walked straight out of a magazine. “We already came this way,” Cole complained once. Yes, Jake knew that, but he wasn’t about to admit he was lost. It was the sound of polite, distant voices that finally led them to the right place, and they entered the room like two wayward children.

  The room was paneled in white, the windows hung with heavy floral chintz drapes that matched the upholstered chairs. The table had been laid with china, crystal goblets of varying sizes and shapes, mounds of silverware, and real, honest-to-God linen napkins. Bonnie, Rebecca, and Robin, all dressed in expensive-looking summer dresses, were milling about a sideboard where there looked to be appetizers of some sort. Mr. Lear was seated at the table wearing clothes that instantly reminded Jake of Slickpants (save the baseball cap), his shoulders slumped, staring at a veritable pharmacy lined up in front of his plate. He glanced up as Jake and Cole walked in, gave Jake a cold once-over, then looked again at the array of bottles, scowling mightily.

  Feeling extremely
out of place, Jake put his arm around Cole’s shoulders and nudged him forward.

  “Look who’s here!” Bonnie sang happily, hurrying over. She stopped mid-stride to admire Cole first. “My, don’t you look handsome!”

  Cole blushed furiously.

  “And so do you, Jake,” she added, with Robin beaming over her shoulder, and damn it if he didn’t blush.

  “We’re eating light tonight, I hope you don’t mind,” she said airily and took Cole’s hand, leading him to a seat next to Mr. Lear. “It’s already so hot, isn’t it? Here, Cole, you sit here, sweetie.”

  Robin slipped her arm through Jake’s and forced him to the table, too, seating him between Cole and Bonnie. She sat directly across from him, Rebecca next to her. Bonnie smiled happily at the group. “What a wonderful treat!”

  “Get on with it, Bonnie,” Mr. Lear said gruffly.

  Bonnie sighed, picked up a little bell, and tinkled it. Instantly, like genies out of a bottle, a man and a woman appeared, the man with a bottle of red wine, the woman with a bottle of white, and for Cole, a bottle of Coke. They moved gracefully from person to person, asking wine preference in a whisper as Bonnie launched into a tale, for Jake’s benefit, of how they had come to acquire Blue Cross Ranch many years ago. “We were so lucky to have found it. I always wanted to get back to this area,” she said, after telling Jake how they had stumbled on the property. “My father’s people come from around here.”

  “El?” Jake asked, perking up a little. “I thought he was from Houston.”

  Bonnie gasped with delight. “You know my father?”

  “Mom,” Robin groaned. “How could he not? Grandma and Grandpa might as well live with me, they’re over so often.”

  “Oh, Robbie, you know how they adore you.”

  “Actually, El has been a great help to me,” Jake said, earning a frown from Robin and a giggle from Rebecca. “He’s been helping out with the renovation. In fact, he helped me take down a wall just the other day.”

  “Elmer Stanton?” Mr. Lear asked, disbelieving.

  “Really?” Bonnie asked, clearly delighted. “Oh, Jake, that’s so wonderful of you. You can’t imagine how much that means to my father—he’s so desperate to be of some help,” she gushed.

  “Mom, stop. It’s embarrassing,” Robin protested. “Grandpa is not a charity case!”

  “He comes closer to being a basket case,” Mr. Lear said.

  “Dad!” Rebecca chastised him.

  Bonnie glared at her husband, then turned a smile to Jake. “You’ll have to forgive my husband, Jake. He and my father have fought like two old yard dogs for thirty-five years. And Aaron’s a little cranky these days.”

  “You’d be a little cranky, too, if you were drinking this shit,” Mr. Lear snapped.

  Beside him, Cole giggled at the cuss word, which made old man Lear scowl at him, and in turn, made Cole giggle more.

  “Just goes to show you what trouble Grandpa stirs up even when he’s not here,” Robin said and took a long, fortifying drink of wine.

  Once the food was served, Mr. Lear lost interest in everything around him and concentrated on the eating. Jake noticed he took small bites, then would put his fork aside and close his eyes, chewing carefully. His expression was so pained that Jake had the image of knives sliding down the man’s esophagus. Speaking of pained—Jake spent most of his meal nudging Cole to sit up, to remove his bare hand from the food on his plate, to wipe his mouth (with a napkin!), to take smaller bites, and for God’s sake, say nothing about what Jake was fairly certain was a part of a pheasant, which apparently was what Bonnie considered light summer fare.

  Bonnie did most of the talking, peppering her daughters with questions they both seemed terribly disinclined to answer (Have you talked to Bud, Rebecca? So, Robin, have you and Jake been to visit his parents?). By the end of the meal, it seemed to Jake that everyone was exhausted from trying to make conversation or avoid it.

  When the genies reappeared to clear their dishes away, the family retired to the front room—a huge bay centered on a massive limestone fireplace, over which a longhorn steer’s head hung. The paneled walls were lined with bookshelves, a smattering of leather couches, and big overstuffed pillows were grouped around the cold hearth. A large, furry white rug lay atop polished wood floors. To one side there was a large oval table—a gaming table, judging by the green felt covering and the chessboard shoved off to one side.

  Mr. Lear headed straight for a long, narrow cabinet and a silver tray with several crystal decanters filled with amber liquids. The women filed in behind Jake, choosing various seats. Cole stood at Jake’s hip, and as Jake moved, Cole moved, shadowing him. Jake chose a couch. Cole sat directly next to him.

  “Anyone for a scotch?” Mr. Lear asked gruffly, unstopping one of the decanters.

  “Aaron, do you really think you should?” Bonnie asked and shook her head when Mr. Lear glared at her. She held out her hand to Cole. “Come here, young man—I want to show you something.”

  With a furtive look to Jake, Cole got up, head down, and allowed Bonnie to lead him to the gaming table. She went to a hidden cabinet in the paneling and extracted a box. “I hope you like games!” she said cheerfully. “Robin? Rebecca? Think you can beat your mom at a game of Yahtzee?”

  Yahtzee? This was beginning to look a little like Beaver Cleaver land. But then Mr. Lear finished pouring drinks and plopped down across from Jake holding two glasses. And here was Ward Cleaver on acid, Jake thought wryly.

  Mr. Lear leaned forward with some effort and handed him a glass of amber liquid. “You’re man enough to drink scotch, aren’t you?”

  Now! In this corner, the contest of the biggest balls! Jake smiled wryly, took the drink, tossed it down his throat, and handed the empty glass to Mr. Lear.

  Mr. Lear smiled. “Good for you—now you’ve shown me you can be a jerk. That’s one-hundred-fifty-year-old scotch; it should be savored.”

  Prick. “Is that what you were trying to accomplish?” Jake asked calmly. “To make me out to be a jerk?”

  Lear shrugged, sipped at his scotch. “I’ll pour you another—”

  “Don’t bother. Wouldn’t want to waste any of that fancy scotch on me, now, would you?”

  Lear’s clear blue eyes—Robin’s eyes—sparkled with twisted glee. “At least you’re man enough to admit it.”

  “Admit what?”

  “That you aren’t good enough for her.”

  “I’d be the first to say it,” Jake agreed and leaned back, casually slinging one arm across the back of the couch. “No one is good enough for her. But at least I’m willing to do whatever it takes to try.”

  “Ah, poetic,” Lear said, nodding appreciatively. “Nice touch.”

  No, this wasn’t going to work, old man. Jake had lived far too long on the streets of Houston to be a man who was easily intimidated, not even by the lofty likes of Aaron Lear. He glanced across the room, to where Robin was sitting. She was looking at them, a worried frown on her pretty face.

  He smiled reassuringly.

  “You’re good at this, I’ll give you that,” Lear continued. “But you damn sure aren’t the first one to come sniffing around my daughter looking for a free ride. Sadly enough, you probably won’t be the last.”

  “I’m not looking for a free ride,” Jake said evenly. “Robin and I have a relationship—”

  “Right,” Lear interrupted him. “A relationship that goes something like this: You spend every dime of your pathetic little paycheck on her, make her feel like a princess with your presents and compliments, maybe even manage to move into her house for all intents and purposes. And all the while you are dreaming about the day she and all of her money agrees to be your wife, and you figure your bonus is going to be a good one, seeing as how her old man is dying of cancer. That sound familiar?”

  “Yeah, as a matter of fact, it does,” Jake said, smiling at the look of surprise on Lear’s face. “Sounds exactly like what your boy Evan is up to.” />
  That caught Lear off guard; his eyes narrowed and he slowly took another sip of scotch. “You better watch yourself, hotshot. You’re not nearly as slick as you think.”

  Robin stood up, started in their direction. “I never thought I was slick, Mr. Lear. I’m an honest man who happens to love your daughter—”

  “Spare me your crap.”

  Jake shrugged. “You don’t want to listen to what I have to say? Fine,” he said and turned a blindingly false smile to Robin.

  Whatever her father had said to Jake, she was not going to have it from Jake, that much was obvious. They had stopped talking when she’d joined them, and in fact, Dad had complained of nausea and had retired early. But she had seen the look on her father’s face, knew that look all too well.

  Jake would only smile when she asked. “Your father loves you,” was all he would say.

  The next day, after a cowboy breakfast Mom insisted on serving on the veranda (all to impress Jake, hello), they piled into the Jeep with Rebecca and drove to the far side of the ranch to see if any new calves had been birthed. There were two, still wobbly on their legs, bleating at their mothers.

  Cole was mightily impressed. “Can we ride the horses now?” he breathlessly asked Rebecca when they piled back into the Jeep.

  “Yes! Want to come along, Jake?” Rebecca asked, looking at him in the rearview mirror.

  Jake laughed. “No, thanks. I’ve never ridden a horse, so I’m not sure it’s a good idea to start at my age.”

  “You’ve never been horseback riding?” Robin exclaimed, punching him playfully in the arm. “Then you must go!”

  “No, no, no.” He shook his head. “Maybe some other time.”

  “Now’s as good at time as any,” Robin disagreed. “To the stables, Bec.”

  And over Jake’s protestations, Rebecca drove them down to the stables.

  There were three horses in the stables; a half dozen more were out grazing. They began in a paddock, where Rebecca and Robin showed them how to approach a horse, how to get on, how to dismount. Cole was far better at it than Jake, swinging up like an old pen rider. Rebecca showed Cole how to rein the horse and took him around the paddock a few times until Cole was doing it on his own. In the months Robin had known Cole, she had never seen him smile so broadly, had never seen him enjoy himself so much.