by Julia London
Chapter Two
I like work: It fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours . . .
JEROME K JEROME
Austin, Texas
Six months later
When Rebecca left Colorado, all pumped up and ready to kick some ass, she had immediately set out on her newly defined path. Which meant that she and Grayson had moved to her lake house near Austin and she had begun to send out résumés. Okay, admittedly thin résumés, but résumés nonetheless, because Moira said there was no such thing as an unmarketable person.
What Moira did not say, however, was that there was such a thing as an unqualified person. Fortunately, The Unqualified Applicant: Obtaining Employment in a Competitive Market, a new addition to Rebecca’s ever-expanding arsenal of self-help books and tapes, had cleared all that up for her. And here was something else Moira did not say: Years of tennis and shopping had not exactly qualified her for the real world.
Seated on a park bench on the grounds of the state capitol in Austin, a bench that, incidentally, was just across the street from the Fleming and Fleming Employment Agency, Rebecca decided that her lack of experience in general was, like the rest of her miserable life, all Bud’s fault for three reasons: on general principle; for having convinced her to be a social butterfly and waste her life; and for then cheating on her and leaving her high and dry. Asshole.
Then again, she really couldn’t lay it all at Bud’s jacked-up feet. Yes, he was an ass, capital A, capital SS, but it wasn’t as if he had chained her to a stove or anything. In the end, he was hardly ever home; she could have flown to the moon and back for all he cared. No, she was the one who gave it all up for Bud. She’d dropped out of college with nothing more than a Miss Texas crown to fall back on. She’d put up with his affairs. And somehow, she’d come up with the brilliant idea that if she had everything neatly and perfectly arranged, then life would be perfect. Her marriage would be perfect. She’d be perfect.
It had not exactly worked out that way.
Rebecca sighed, cast a faint sneer at the shiny doors of the Fleming and Fleming Employment Agency, and recalled how Marianne Rinebergen, the less than helpful employment associate, had kindly suggested she take a class or two before seeking employment. “It will help qualify you for, ah . . . positions.” And then she had smiled very sympathetically.
Rebecca had wanted to reach across the desk and rub that sympathetic smile from her face, but because she was always so unfailingly polite she walked away, wondering if there was anything on this planet she could do. In something of a fog, she had continued on across the street to the lovely capitol grounds, exchanged a greeting with a smiling state trooper who stood at the gates, and plopped down on one of the wrought iron park benches that lined the walks.
And there she almost gave in to the feeling of despair until she recalled what her self-help book Surviving Divorce: A Woman’s Path to Starting Over said about pity parties: Poison! Concoct antidote immediately and recite three positive things about YOU! So Rebecca smoothed her hair, adjusted her jacket, and folded her hands in her lap.
Hmm . . . okay, it was a reach, but here was something positive: She knew it was over with Bud for at least two years before it actually ended, which meant she wasn’t a total loser. She even managed to think this with only a slight roll of her eyes. It was amazing to think two people who had once been so madly in love could somehow come to loathe each other, but that was exactly what she’d felt for so long that it was almost a relief when Bud had made his grand announcement. (Not that she wanted to think about the loathing too terribly hard, because it always made her wonder why she hadn’t ended it much sooner herself, and that was a dark and slippery little slope, wasn’t it?)
Moving on to Positive Thing Number Two: She stood her ground during the divorce and did not let Bud railroad her. Sort of. Okay, the truth was that in spite of being the heir to the Reynolds Chevrolet and Cadillac dealership dynasty, apparently Bud was so glad to be done with their fifteen-year history that he gave her pretty much whatever her lawyer demanded, which was: the lake house (and if she never went back to Dallas again, it would be too soon, thank you); generous child support (guilt money to make up for his lack of visitation with Grayson); the Range Rover (because he had always hated it); her jewelry and personal articles (because he had no idea what they were). And then something about an equitable splitting of mutual assets, blah-dee blah blah bleck.
Could she really count that as a positive thing? Because by the time the Big Divorce Moment rolled around, Rebecca had been dead inside for so long that she had lost all interest and had wanted nothing more than to get away from Bud, their Turtle Creek mansion, and their friends, who, she had inadvertently discovered, had already become well acquainted with the soon-to-be Mrs. Reynolds the Second. Women she had once thought were her friends had dropped off like so many flies, ending with Ruth, who said, “Sorry, honey, but you know Bud and Richard are tight. I have to go along to get along.” And then she proceeded to throw a very posh dinner party welcoming Mrs. Reynolds the Second into their fold.
That was when Mrs. Reynolds the First ceased to care, which infuriated her attorney, selected for her by her father, naturally. “He’s a rich man!” her father had shouted at her in a fit of frustration one afternoon. “Everyone knows him! He’s on the goddamn radio or TV probably fifty times a day for those stupid cars, and you’re not going to take advantage of that? Do you know what he’d give to keep this out of the public eye? What are you going to do, depend on your beauty queen titles to feed you? Go for the jugular! Demand alimony!”
At the end of his rant, Rebecca had politely but firmly declined. She did not want Bud’s money. She had just wanted to cast off all the nasty trappings and the life with Bud like a larva and become a butterfly. She had wanted to start over, to become a better person, a better mother, daughter, sister—someone who was not so stiflingly perfect and neatly arranged. And because she had been so unhappy and so uncommonly bored for so long, when her Partners in Transformation suggested starting over in Austin, she saw the brilliance in their thinking—it would be startlingly invigorating.
And it was invigorating. For a whole week.
Rebecca looked up to the tops of the stately old pecan trees. It was so hard to become a butterfly. When marital strife and high society were lifted from her calendar, she discovered she really had little to keep her occupied. She worked relentlessly on the lake house, rearranging things, cleaning, and rearranging again, marveling at how she had managed to live for so many years filling one empty moment after another with such meaningless pursuits as shopping and spas and dinner parties. Now that she was alone, friendless, and living forty-five miles from the nearest civilization (unless one counted Ruby Falls, which, even on International Lawn Mower Race Day, could not be considered civilization), she struggled to fill those empty moments, and discovered how pathetically ill-equipped she was to live life. She realized she had been someone’s daughter or wife for so many years that she couldn’t even find Rebecca in the wreckage that was now her life.
Thus had begun her maddening, so-called transformation to her place in this stupid world. “Meditation,” Rachel had recommended. “Clear your mind of all the negative vibes. But definitely keep up with the transformation therapy, so you can stay in touch with your alter ego. And it doesn’t hurt to have a box of Oreos lying around, either.”
Grand advice, only Rebecca didn’t have a clue about what ego she was in touch with, if any. The job idea was more concrete; it was the best way to rediscover the confident girl in her she had buried fifteen years ago when she latched on to Bud, the girl who wanted to be an artist and dance in the ballet and raise horses and didn’t care if her spice rack was alphabetized or the stripes on her couch lined up with the stripes on the couch pillows. Having spent the better half of the last decade making sure her life and heart didn’t break in two, Rebecca had beaten that girl down and left her feeling worthless and numb.
In theory, a job
seemed the perfect answer to rebuilding her self-esteem—the problem being, of course, that she didn’t have any actual job skills. Her résumé was landing in round file after round file. No one called. No one returned her calls. She had hoped that Fleming and Fleming would have the answer—Placing individuals in esteemed positions of employment since 1942, their ad said. But Marianne said, “There are lots of people out of work right now, blah blah blah,” and “You’re not really quite qualified, blather blather blather.”
Clearly she was going to have to face the fact that she could not get a job in Austin . . . unless she wanted to leap into the fire and call Dad.
Eeew.
Nothing against Dad—she knew that deep down, he loved her. And she loved her father somewhere deep down there, too. But he was and had always been a hard-ass, and she honestly didn’t like him very much. She kept him in the Men to Avoid category. But, she told herself, it’s just a phone call. It didn’t mean she’d owe him anything, an extremely important point, thank you, as she had no intention of living off anyone ever again. Especially a man, because in her reading of Protecting Our Inner Child While Searching for the External Woman, she had come to realize that all her life, she’d been letting men take over and then answered to them, answering and answering, until there was nothing left of Rebecca.
That life was thankfully behind her now, she reminded herself as she watched a vendor roll his cart to the gate, open an umbrella, and hang a sign that said: Dogs, Quesadillas, Tacos.
She was a new woman, right? She could make her own way in this world and she didn’t need a man . . . well, technically, she needed Dad at the moment, but it was just for a moment, and Moira would say to quit dancing around the campfire and just do it. Okay. This was her, just doing it.
Rebecca got a cell phone from her purse, noticed in passing that more people were wandering into the park as the clock passed the noon hour. She punched the auto dial for the number at the family ranch.
“Hello?” Dad answered immediately on the first ring, and she had an unnerving image of him sitting and staring at the phone, waiting for it to ring.
“Dad?”
“Rebecca! Did you get my message?”
“No . . . what message?”
“Where is your mother? I need to know where she is. I need to talk to her.”
Oh geez, not again. This little on-again, off-again thing Mom and Dad had going on was really trying. First, they’d been separated for centuries. Then Mom found out Dad had cancer, and they reconciled. Things had been good until the shock of having cancer wore off and Dad became Dad again and Mom couldn’t take it any better than she ever had before he got cancer. And of course they had a huge fight about Robin, just like the good old days of high school, at which point Mom had walked out for what she swore was the last time. Only Dad always had to have the last word. “I haven’t talked to her,” Rebecca said.
“What do you mean you haven’t talked to her? Seems like none of you girls ever talk to your mother anymore,” he groused. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think she was trying to avoid me.”
News flash—Mom is trying to avoid you. “So Dad, how are you feeling?”
“I’m fine! I wish everyone would quit asking me that. Where’s Grayson?”
“He’s still in school.”
“I really wish you’d bring him down to see his grandpa,” Dad grumbled. “You know that boy needs some familiar ground. Maybe you don’t see it, but it’s not like he’s had an easy time of it with the divorce and changing schools and moving,” he continued, always happy to dispense unsolicited advice. Her father also liked to remind her that he thought she was a less than perfect parent, too, what with moving and taking Grayson away from Dallas.
“And he was way too dependent on that nanny, if you ask me. But it’s all water under the bridge now,” he said with a heavy sigh, wrapping up today’s free advice segment.
“Dad, listen, I need to you ask you something.”
“Do you need money?”
“Dad!” Rebecca cried indignantly. “I wouldn’t call for money—”
“I’m not talking a lot. Just enough so Grayson won’t want for anything—”
“He doesn’t!”
“You could have gotten a lot more if you would have listened to that high-dollar attorney. Anyway, I think you ought to come out here to the ranch and stay with me for a while.”
That was so not going to happen. “I can’t come to Blue Cross right now. But you could really help me out in another way,” she quickly continued, before he could begin the full litany of her faults when it came to his grandson. “I need a favor,” she said, wincing. “Just a small one.”
“What kind of favor?” he asked suspiciously.
Rebecca took a deep breath, blindly fixed her gaze on the bench across from her. “You know people in Austin, right?” she asked. “Could you maybe just call a friend and see if they might have something I could do? I mean, as in a job? Just something that would help me get my foot in the door somewhere, that’s all. If you could do that, I’d take it from there. I’m not after anything fancy, just a place to start.”
Her request was met with a long moment of silence, then a terse, “No.”
Augh! He had to be the most exasperating man on the planet.
“Now, before you get all upset, you know how I feel. If you’re really determined to try and enter the workforce, I don’t think you should do it until Grayson is in elementary school. And besides, I want you to make your way and stand on your own without my help.”
“Stand on my—you just offered me money.”
“For Grayson. Now look, I’ve said this until I’m blue in the face, but I’ll keep saying it until it sinks in with you girls. I am dying. Who knows how long I have? I’m not gonna be here for much longer and I won’t be able to make calls for you then, will I?”
“You’re not dying, Dad. You’re in remission, remember?”
“You want to work?” he went on, ignoring her, but what else was new? “Then you need to figure out how to do it. But I’m gonna remind you once more that you got a pretty good settlement, enough for you to sit back and relax and take care of Grayson instead of leaving him in some nasty day care where the Lord knows what goes on.”
She could really despise her father at times, like now, and considered just hanging up on him. But dammit, she was too polite to do it.
“That’s the one thing I regret the most, you know, not being there for you girls.”
“This really isn’t about you, Dad,” she snapped. “I’m just asking for a leg up. It’s not like I’m going to start some company and be away all the time. I’m just looking for something to do. For me. Is that so hard for you to understand?”
“I understand. And whether you recognize it or not, I am helping you out by making you learn to find your own way. You’ve had a hard row here, there’s no denying it, but the answer is not to fall back on me.”
Why, oh why, had she ever talked herself into calling him?
“Now come on, tell me when you’re coming out to the ranch. You’re just a stone’s throw now.”
How does a cold day in hell sound? “We’re really busy now. Oh, look at the time. I really need to run.”
“Listen—stop worrying about this job thing. Good things are going to happen for you, sweetheart. When the time and place are right, good things will happen.”
She wanted to ask him if a little leprechaun was going to appear or something, but just said, “Okay, Dad. I’ll talk to you soon.” She clicked off before he could offer any other pearls of wisdom for her to choke on, and tossed her cell phone into her bag in disgust.
She folded her arms tightly across her middle, glanced around, and noticed that the park was now teeming with people. She watched the line at the taco-quesadilla vendor for a moment and decided that it was a glorious spring day, and a quesadilla could go a long way toward cheering her up.
At the taco stand, she bought a plain cheese quesadi
lla and picked up some napkins. But when she turned around, she saw that her bench had been taken by a couple. In fact, all the benches that lined either side of the walk were filled, save one. Rebecca snagged it, put her purse beside her, as well as the wrapped quesadilla, and pulled out the paper to review the want ads. But when she reached for the quesadilla to unwrap it, the thought occurred to her that it might be spicy hot; she hadn’t thought to ask. She couldn’t eat spicy hot without something to wash it down, and wished she’d thought to buy a bottle of water.
Rebecca eyed the vendor’s cart; he wasn’t very far away and the line had dwindled to one guy. She could leave her paper and quesadilla to mark her spot, run over and get a drink, and run back before anyone could take it. Rebecca neatly folded the paper, put it down, the quesadilla plainly on top of it, then picked up her purse and hurried to the vendor’s cart, where she bought a bottle of water.
When she had shoved her change back into her purse, she turned back to her spot—but stopped mid-stride, absolutely stunned. A very nice-looking, well-dressed man was sitting on her bench, reading her paper and holding her quesadilla.
Rebecca gaped at him; her mind could not even absorb such appalling behavior. How could anyone be so . . . so cheap? What an inconsiderate, cheap-ass thief! The quesadillas were only a dollar, for Chrissakes!
That was the last straw for the day. Rebecca’s blood began to boil—this was exactly the sort of thing she was learning to overcome. Here was someone who was walking all over her, taking her for granted, using her things to get what he wanted. The old Rebecca would have walked on, indignant. The new Rebecca, however, was not going to take this lying down. She was not a doormat! She did not provide quesadillas and newspapers to the citizens of Austin at large.
The man glanced up as she sauntered toward him with a sly smile on her lips. He looked surprised, and smiled a little uncertainly as he put the quesadilla down. When Rebecca stopped directly before him, his smile broadened. It was, she noticed, a very nice smile on a very handsome face, which just made him all the more reprehensible.