The Complete Novels of the Lear Sister Trilogy

by Julia London

  “God, where do I start?” he asked with a laugh as smooth as silk, and Rebecca smiled in spite of herself. “Actually,” he said, “I was just calling to see if you’re okay.”

  “I’m fine! Why do you ask?”

  “I don’t know—I guess it’s just that the last time I saw you, you seemed a little . . . befuddled.”

  “Befuddled?” Rebecca laughed. “What sort of word is that?”

  “The best I could think of.”

  “And I suppose you thought I must be befuddled because I left you holding the bag, right?”

  “No, Miss Priss,” Matt drawled. “Because you lost your panties.”

  An intoxicating heat flooded her face and neck; grinning, Rebecca pushed her hair behind her ear and slid down into the pillows. “So . . . this is like a panties check?” she asked softly.

  “Yeah. Wearing any?”

  “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

  Matt made some sort of guttural sound that was half laugh, half groan. “I would. But don’t tell me—let me imagine. Come on, Mork, imagine with me.”

  “Matt . . .”

  “Okay, I’ll go first. I am imagining you lying there with some pretty and skimpy little thing on, and I imagine you’re completely naked underneath—”

  “Matt!” she exclaimed, laughing.

  “And you’re getting all hot and bothered thinking about me—”

  “I am so not doing that,” she insisted gaily, and hugged her knees tighter, lest she get too hot and bothered.

  “And now your skin is flushed and you feel all warm inside, and you’re squirming a little, because all you can think about is when I was kissing you down—”

  “MATT!” she cried, instantly pushing herself up.

  “Okay,” he said, and added a long and exaggerated sigh. “I’ll just have to imagine by myself.”

  “Do you have some pretty little thing on?” she asked.

  “Darlin’, I’m just plain ol’ buck naked,” he said confidently. “Just me and my enormous and hard—”

  “Okay, okay!” she said as the heat spread down to her toes.

  Matt laughed low and knowingly. “I can take a hint, believe it or not. So you’re okay?” he asked once more. “Haven’t signed up for rehab or anything rash like that, right?”

  Rebecca laughed. “I’m fine. But thank you for checking.”

  “Sweet dreams, Rebecca,” he said softly, and clicked off.

  But with an image of naked Matt dancing about her brain, it was a while before Rebecca could sleep.

  Early the next afternoon, on the day of the Tom Masters Bingo Bash for Charity, Grandma and Grandpa, who had invited themselves to the event, arrived at the lake house in a huge RV.

  Grayson, Rebecca, Jo Lynn, and of course, Bean, Frank, and Tater, all came out onto the front porch to watch as the monster bus rumbled down the gravel road to her house. Grandpa was the first out, clumping off-kilter around the front of the RV in his haste to get at his great-grandson, in tan Sansabelt slacks and a Players polo shirt with a single red stripe across the breast pocket, which, Rebecca thought, was spruced up for Grandpa. Grandma wasn’t far behind, wearing tan pants with elastic in the waist that matched her taupe shoes, a pink knit henley top, and a denim vest that said LET’S BINGO! across the back. In addition, Grandma was carrying her bingo bag, which was really a beach bag lined with compartments that looked as if they might hold water bottles to the average Joe, but were actually intended for the brightly colored bingo dabbers. Inside the bag were a variety of tiny stuffed animals that Grandma swore brought her luck while at the very same time complaining that she never won.

  When they were through smothering poor Grayson, Grandma and Grandpa came forward to smother Rebecca. She managed to introduce Jo Lynn in spite of the usual Inquisition (Grandma: You’re too skinny, honey, don’t you ever eat? Is that the way you are wearing your hair now? Grandpa: How much did this place set you back? How much did they want for that Range Rover? What the hell is the matter with that big yellow dog? He damn near walked into the porch.)

  “Why the RV?” Rebecca asked.

  Grandma and Grandpa simultaneously turned and looked at the huge RV, perhaps already having forgotten that they had driven it all the way from Houston. Grandma shrugged. “You just never know, do you?” she said, as if that explained everything, and smiled at Rebecca, her octagonal pink-rimmed glasses making her blue eyes look like enormous fish eyes. “When are we going to get over to the bingo hall? I want to make sure I get a good spot.”

  “It’s two o’clock in the afternoon, Grandma,” Rebecca said. “The event doesn’t start until seven.”

  “Well then, I need to fix you something to eat,” she said, pushing past Rebecca into the house while Grayson took Grandpa around back to see where the dogs slept.

  The rest of the afternoon was spent on phone calls to Gunter (what a shame Heather couldn’t make it tonight!), who required several directions from the airport, then barking dogs and trying to keep Grandma from rearranging her kitchen (or Grandpa from rearranging her toolshed), and of course, avoiding the continuing Inquisition. Rebecca loved her grandma, but if she gave her an inch, she’d demand all the details of her life. Fortunately, as Rebecca was on and off the phone, Grandma had to limit herself to quick, short observations about Mom. “She’s just running away from her problems out there in Los Angeles, if you ask me,” she said, shaking her head. “She needs to poop or get off the pot, and decide if she’s going to leave him or come on home.” This, with an emphatic nod of her blue-tinted head.

  When it came time to go, Rebecca emerged from her bedroom dressed in a conservative gray Ralph Lauren pant suit. Grandma took one look at her and shook her head. “You don’t play a lot of bingo, do you honey?” Rebecca changed to a slinky long black skirt, black cowboy boots, and a brown suede jacket with fringe, which Grandma said was a little too dressy, but Grandpa said was perfect.

  They drove over to pick up Jo Lynn, then on to the Elk Lodge, whose parking lot was full when they arrived a half hour before the scheduled time. “I knew we were going to be late,” Grandma moaned, and was the first one out of Rebecca’s Range Rover, Jo Lynn close on her heels. The two of them rushed forward, their bingo bags knocking into each other as Grandpa, Rebecca, and Grayson hurried behind.

  The smell of brisket and beans blasted them as they walked into the lodge, where they were greeted by a veritable sea of nylon and polyester, all beneath cotton-ball heads. A heavyset woman with a pink cotton-ball spotted them, broke away from a group, and came racing toward them astride a motorized scooter at such a speed that Grayson fearfully ducked behind Rebecca. The woman slammed her scooter to an abrupt halt, her dentures gleaming pearly white in a broad smile. “Welcome to the Senator Masters Bingo Bash for Charity!” she exclaimed. “I’m Francine McDonough, the president of the Silver Panthers.”

  “Ms. McDonough, I’m Rebecca Lear.”

  “Well, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle!” the woman cried, slapping her handlebar. “E-mail just doesn’t tell you what a person looks like, does it? Honey, I thought you were some old-timer from Lakeway.” She laughed uproariously.

  Ignoring the fact that she came across as an old lady on e-mail, Rebecca pulled Grayson from out behind her. “This is my son, Grayson.”

  “Oooh, what a cutie!” Francine exclaimed. “Come here, sweetpea, and let or Francine have a look at you!” Rebecca pushed a reluctant Grayson forward. Francine leaned over her handlebars in a gravity-defying move and pinched his cheek. “You are such a cutie,” she said through clenched teeth, and abruptly let go.

  “And this is my grandfather, Elmer Stanton.”

  “I practically started the Silver Panthers,” he said.

  “Did you?” Francine asked, clearly skeptical. “The place looks good, doesn’t it?” she said to Rebecca before Grandpa could continue. “You know, when you wrote me about this party, I thought you were out of your mind. Ask a bunch of Silver Panthers to a bingo party, and you
are asking for trouble!” Francine laughed, braced her pudgy hands on her pudgier thighs. “But here we are, ready to go! Now all we’ve got to worry about is that the caller had to cancel.”

  Rebecca was with her right up until her last statement. “What?”

  “That boy you had lined up called here not a half hour ago and said some emergency had come up, so he ain’t gonna be here.”

  She said it so cheerfully that Rebecca wondered if she’d heard her correctly. “Then who is going to call the bingo?”

  “Hell if I know,” Francine said with a jolly laugh, then suddenly craned her neck to see behind Rebecca. “Well, will you lookie here, there’s my old friend Mary Zamburger! Pardon me, sugar!” She hit the accelerator of her scooter so hard that Grayson knocked into Rebecca trying to get out of the way.

  “But . . .” Rebecca said, her voice trailing off as she whirled around to say something more to Francine—and saw Gunter and his photographer cowering near the entry.

  “Now don’t you worry, Becky,” Grandpa said, patting her arm. “I’ll call the bingo.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  If you can find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn’t lead anywhere . . .

  FRANK A CLARK

  Chips and salsa were now the official state snack of Texas, thanks to the diligent efforts of Senator Masters.

  Tom was really beginning to confuse the hell out of Matt. He had shepherded some good, decent legislation through the senate this session, but unfortunately, the only item to hit the papers was that stupid chips and salsa bit, and it made Tom look like a redneck. Matt’s opinion which was shared by Doug, and the two of them had plotted how to undo Tom’s damage that afternoon, with no help from Tom, who argued that he would get mileage out of any bill. “If you send a press release on anything that matters, there’s always a loser, which means someone to get bent out of shape. You know what happened to me on the campaign finance reform bill I authored—they might as well have nailed me to a cross on the capitol lawn. And besides, you can’t deny that every red-blooded Texan loves his chips and salsa. I know I do.”

  “But they don’t love candidates who have nothing better to do with their tax dollars then sit around making up meaningless legislation,” Matt responded.

  “Well, good God, Parrish, you sound like a damn Yankee!” Tom had laughed, clapping him on the back.

  The whole thing had made Matt question his motives again, and what it was he hoped to achieve on this campaign. He was dreading the Silver Panthers event that evening, and probably would have skipped it altogether, taken some time to get his head on straight, had it not been but for one tiny little thing. Yep. Her again. The sexually repressed wacko.

  He was, for reasons that could not possibly be less clear to him, feeling discouragingly protective of her. Or maybe it was possessive. Whatever it was, he didn’t like feeling it, particularly since, for all intents and purposes, she’d essentially had given him the ol’ heave-ho. In the aftermath of that, his assessment of what had happened (a full twenty minutes, a new personal best) between him and Miss Priss last week was that it had been an aberration in the space and time continuum. Nothing else would explain it. He knew she was trouble, that he was better off with women who actually liked him. So what if Rebecca was beautiful and sexy and just this side of odd? There were lots of intriguing women out there. There were.

  Just as he never took a case with too many screwy twists, he never took on a woman with too many screwy twists, either. He was quite comfortable doing the casual dating thing, and frankly, not since his college days had he engaged in a relationship that wasn’t based primarily on fucking, to put it bluntly. Rebecca wasn’t like that, and she’d made it perfectly clear that she definitely was not his type. So why, then, had he given in to the senseless urge to call her? He might as well paint a big giant red F on his chest for FOOL. It was that four-year thing, he decided. He just couldn’t forget it. There was something very alluring about it, on many, dusty and precarious Matt levels . . . not to mention the silk panties he’d found that were still on his dresser.

  So it was with a great deal of uncertainty and reservation that he said good night to Harold and told him he’d be out at the Lakeway gig. Harold (whose fingers were flying across the computer keyboard at a perfect 120 words a minute) said, “Tell Miss Lear hi for me,” without so much as a pause in his maniacal typing.

  When Matt walked into the Elks’ Lodge an hour later, the room was packed with what looked like so many plain sno-cones. Row upon row of white heads (interspersed with the occasional jet black or reddish purple) were bent over big white sheets, marking with fat, bright neon markers. Some of them were manning more than one sheet, and some of them had surrounded their sheets with a variety of stuffed animals.

  In a smaller room to his right, another dozen or more sno-cones were seated around tables gnawing on some sort of meat amid a littering of pink TaB cans.

  Cautiously, Matt stepped deeper into the lodge and noticed two elderly women, wearing identical green vests, seated behind a stack of big white sheets and colored markers. One of them eagerly waved him over, but Matt was too stunned to move, because the bizarre scene hadn’t quite registered. He had expected some sort of meeting, a solemn, serious event, but this looked like . . . except that it couldn’t be, could it? Nah . . . it would be next to impossible to pull this off.

  “N-45! We all remember ‘45! N-45!”

  “Bin-go!” A woman shouted, and popped up like a jack-in-the-box, her paper skin swinging loosely under her arms as she woo-hooed to everyone’s applause.

  “We have a winner!” The announcer was sitting with one extra-large hip half cocked onto a bar stool, looking like some senior citizen lounge lizard. Next to him, a machine popped white bingo balls like a giant snow globe. “Come on up here, honey, and let’s make sure you won that twenty-five-dollar pot!”

  “I’m definitely in the wrong place,” Matt muttered to himself, and pivoted around, only to be stopped cold by a huge banner sagging across the door:

  Welcome to the Masters Bingo Bash for Charity!

  Thank you Senator Masters!

  “What the hell?” he breathed as the winner did a little cha-cha through the tables on her way to the dais to claim her prize.

  “Matt, right?” a male voice asked, causing him to jump a good foot in the air as the announcer asked for the winner’s sheet to double-check the numbers. It was Gunter, dressed in all black again.

  “Gunter,” Matt said with a sigh of relief, extending his hand.

  “That’s a bingo, all right,” the announcer said. “Okay, doll, what charity are you going to donate to?”

  “I’m going to donate it to the Arthritis Foundation.”

  “That’s a good one! I could use a little of their help myself. Okay, folks, line ‘em up, we got us a forty-dollar pot coming up!”

  “They’re really into bingo here,” Gunter said stoically.

  No shit. “Where’s Tom?” Matt asked.

  “Are you ready? Got your cards lined up? Ready to play a little B-I-N-G-OOOH?” the announcer sang.

  “Hasn’t shown up yet. But there goes Rebecca,” Gunter said, and nodded at a figure darting through the crowd toward the dais.

  That was Rebecca, all right, but it was little wonder Matt hadn’t noticed her before now—her hair was coming out of its braid, a towel or something was hanging like a handkerchief from her pocket, and she was carrying what looked like a giant eraser. She raced up the three steps to the dais platform and a big white erase board there, which she frantically rubbed as the announcer pulled a ball from the popping bingo machine.

  “The first number in game four is B-11. That’s Beeee-eleven. Which reminds me—and I don’t think I can say this often enough—Joe Hampton has warned that we all stay away from the beeeeeans. Says they’re delicious but lethal.” The crowd laughed as Rebecca wrote, in perfectly straight and giant letters, B-11 on the white erase board.

  “You’re kidd
ing me,” Matt said flatly.

  “I’m not kidding,” Gunter said as he crossed his arms over his concave chest.

  “What happened to a meeting?”

  “Hey, I’m just here for the pics, dude.”

  Well, he was here for a meeting, and Matt was instantly striding for the dais. When he reached it, he stood off to one side, by the stairs, just below Rebecca. “Rebecca!” he hissed as the old guy called I-20.

  She hardly even spared him a glance as she erased the board and wrote I-20. “Where’s Tom?” she hissed back at him. “He promised he’d be on time!”

  “I-20, where I almost met my maker once, pulling a fifth-wheel trailer.” Appreciative moans went up from the audience as everyone carefully marked their I-20’s.

  “Perhaps Tom was confused,” Matt loudly whispered back. “Perhaps he expected a real meeting and not a bingo game!”

  “Bash.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “It’s a bingo bash,” she corrected him. “And it is a real meeting.”

  “Ready, gang? The next number is O-66. Get your kicks on oh-six-six . . .”

  Rebecca dutifully erased the board and printed a neat O-66.

  “I thought you said you got Tom a gig in front of the political committee of the Silver Panthers, not their bingo club!”

  “I did get him in front of them, if he’d only show up!”

  “In here?”

  The announcer looked over his shoulder at Matt and Rebecca; Rebecca quickly walked to the edge of the dais and squatted down. A hint of her perfume wafted over Matt, and damn it if it didn’t instantly stir up all the stuff he’d worked so hard to push down. And she looked, he noticed, very rattled, which instantly made him feel weirdly protective of her all over again. “Matt,” she said, with what sounded like a tinge of hysteria in her voice, “I’ll be done in a moment. Jo Lynn was going to do this, but she wanted to play a few games first—”

  “Jo Lynn?”