“Give it some time, dear. Away from the others. There’s a real spark between the two of you. I saw it the second you looked at each other. Hell, I felt it clear across the room.”
Rose didn’t ordinarily contradict anyone in her family, but her own need to survive had changed some of the rules. “You were in the other room the second we looked at each other,” she pointed out.
As with most of her life, Beth shifted course to accommodate the current. “Like I said, I felt it. And the spark went on long enough for me to walk into the room.” She took her niece’s hand between both of hers, forcing Rose to look at her. “Sweetheart, don’t let some silly feud that has nothing to do with either one of you ruin what could be a beautiful future.”
Rose sighed, pulling her hand away. “It’s not just the feud, Aunt Beth. And even if it was, it’s not silly to my father.”
Beth snorted, waving a dismissive hand. “Archy always was incredibly loyal to all the wrong things.” She slipped a conspiratorial arm around Rose’s slim shoulders, reaching up a little as she did so. Rose was a good three inches taller than her. “Darling, do you think that if the woman he loved was a Carson, he’d let some ancient feud stand in his way?” She laughed, remembering the man her brother used to be before stability and age had forced him to bury his wild streak. “Not when he was Matt’s age. Your father was a hellion back then. If he’d fallen for a Carson—”
“But he didn’t,” Rose pointed out. “I did.” And that made all the difference in the world.
Beth smiled from ear to ear, resting her case. “Uhhuh, see, you admit it.”
The woman had tricked her, Rose thought. She might be eccentric, but that didn’t mean Beth wasn’t crafty. “Maybe,” she partially conceded. “But that doesn’t mean that I don’t realize it’s a mistake.”
The look in Beth’s eyes, as violet as Rose’s, became dreamy as she remembered some of her earlier marriages and affairs.
“Love is never a mistake, dear. You’re like Romeo and Juliet.” She gave her a confident look. “Except you’re going to have a happier ending.”
Rose could have sworn Beth was making her a promise, but that was impossible. No one could promise that. She knew better.
“No, we’re just going to have an ending,” she said firmly. “Starting here and now.”
Beth opened the door and was already beginning to walk away. “Can’t hear you, dear. You must be talking into my bad ear.”
Rose raised a suspicious brow. “You told me it was the other ear yesterday.”
Beth turned toward her, unfazed. “These things have a tendency to switch, Rose, honey. You know how eccentric I am.”
Moving quickly, Rose placed herself in front of her aunt. Beth wasn’t going to leave the room until she promised not to interfere.
“Aunt Beth, do you remember the details of the feud?”
“Remember it?” She laughed. “It was drummed into my head almost every day when I was a child. I was ten years old before I realized it wasn’t one of Aesop’s fables.”
Rose took hold of her aunt’s broader shoulders to hold her in place. “All right, then, remember how Jace Carson proposed to the mayor’s daughter just because he thought she was going to have his baby? He didn’t love her, but he was ready to do the honorable thing.”
Beth held up a finger, interrupting. “He didn’t, though. The baby turned out to be the gardener’s. The mayor’s daughter was afraid her father wouldn’t approve of him, so she kept it a secret until she couldn’t contain it any longer, then blamed Jace. But everything turned out all right, except for poor Lou Lou.” She’d always wanted to write a play about the feud and play the part of Lou Lou Wainwright, the woman who committed suicide when she found she couldn’t marry her lifelong sweetheart, Jace Carson, and started off the feud.
Beth was straying off the path. Rose quickly redirected her attention to what she was trying to say. “The point is, Jace was going to marry her to do the right thing.”
Beth looked at her niece, trying to second-guess her. “And you’re afraid that if Matt knows, that’s what he’s going to do.”
“Exactly.”
Funny how two people could be in love, Beth thought, and still be so blind about the other person. It rather reminded her of the way she and Garrison had been about each other.
Beth quickly caught herself before her thoughts took her off in another direction.
“Not that I don’t think your young man isn’t honorable, dear, but I don’t think anyone could make him do what he didn’t want to do.”
“That’s just the point,” Rose insisted. “He’d want to be honorable.”
Beth cocked her head, trying to follow Rose’s thinking. “And you don’t want him honorable?”
“I don’t want him marrying me to be honorable, or to give the baby a name.” She swung around to face Beth as she made her point. “I want him to marry me because he loves me, because he wants a baby with me, not because he accepts me for his wife because I happen to be the mother of his baby. Do you see the difference, Aunt Beth?”
“Yes, I do. And if you don’t think that that boy loves you down to the soles of his worn cowboy boots, then you and I need to have a serious conversation.”
Rose held up her hand. “No, no more talking. Please. I just want him to leave so I can get on with my life.”
Beth was thoroughly convinced that young people didn’t know how to love these days. They kept insisting on getting in their own way.
“Now that I’ve had a gander at that boy, Rose, it doesn’t seem like much of a life without him.”
Before Rose could launch into another argument, Beth left the den and swept majestically into the living room.
She beamed down at Matt, who immediately rose in his seat. Good looking and polite. She knew a great catch when she saw one. The thing of it was, to make Rose realize it, too.
“Sorry to leave you alone for so long, Matt.” Beth saw that he’d opened the gold-bound book on the coffee table and had been leafing through it. She jumped at her opportunity. “Oh, you’ve found my scrapbook.”
Nostalgia had her sinking down beside him on the sofa, ready to page through the book with him.
Only sheer will restrained Matt from doing a double take. The page opened in front of him was of an apparently nude, nubile woman who had strategically arranged feathers to cover all the important places. He looked from the page to Beth.
“This is you?” he asked.
“Yes.” She was eighteen then and fresh from the ranch. It seemed like a million years ago now. And just like only yesterday. “I was on Broadway. Off-Broadway, actually. Way off.” She’d worked her way up to the legitimate theater, and acquired many wonderful memories and almost as many men along the way. Beth sighed. “It’s been a wonderful life.” And then she smiled at Matt. “But you’re not here to listen to me reminisce.”
It occurred to him that he felt comfortable with this woman he’d never met before. As comfortable with Beth Wainwright Montgomery Cannon Williams Smith, et cetera as he was with Rose, or had been before she’d dumped him. Maybe it was a family trait, he reasoned. Although Rose was far less outgoing and flamboyant than her aunt. Truthfully, he was glad of that, because if she’d been like Beth, he would have had to stand in line instead of keeping her all for himself.
Matt sensed an ally in Beth and as such, felt that it was only smart to encourage her to continue. “No, please, go ahead.”
Beth patted his hand, her violet eyes sparkling like newly uncorked champagne poured into a fluted glass. “Not just handsome, but smart, too.” She laughed as she looked at Rose over Matt’s head. “This one’s a charmer, Rose.”
“Yes,” Rose said, looking pointedly at Matt. “But charm eventually wears thin.”
The remark hit him straight in his heart, like a well-aimed arrow. What was he doing here, humbling himself in front of a woman who had walked out on him, who’d all but told him that she’d had her fun, but the excite
ment was gone and now it was time to return to their previous lives?
Where the hell was his pride?
“Since I’m here,” he heard himself saying, “I might as well take a long overdue vacation. But this place is so damn confusing,” he confided to Beth, ignoring Rose completely, “I’m going to need someone to be my guide.” He waited for the offer he thought was inevitable. When it didn’t come from Beth, he urged, “How about you? Are you up for it?”
To his surprise, Beth shook her head. “Oh, my dear, I would be more than up for it, but I’m right in the middle of teaching an acting class.” Then she beamed as if suddenly struck by a thought that he suspected had been there all along. “But Rose is free.”
He spared Rose a glance. “I don’t expect she knows very much of the city.”
“She knows a great deal more than you give her credit for, Matt.”
He shifted in his seat, turning to look at Rose who was on his other side. Was it his imagination, or did she suddenly look pale? “All right, how about it? Will you show me around?”
Why were they playing these games? Why couldn’t he just go home? “You don’t really want to see the city,” Rose replied.
Matt could feel his temper heating again. There was no doubt about it, Rose could set him off like nobody he knew.
“I said I did, didn’t I? Why do you always have to contradict what I say?”
She was in no mood to be diplomatic. “Maybe it’s because you never say what you mean.”
Beth clapped her hands together three times before she managed to get their attention.
“Children, children, stop fighting this instant and make nice or I’ll send you both to your rooms without any supper.” A complete pushover, even in jest, she rethought that. “Well, that’s too harsh, but without dessert at any rate.” She winked.
Rose folded her hands in front of her and let out a deep breath. She supposed she had sounded like a child, arguing just now. And since it looked as if Matt wasn’t about to leave unless she agreed to some kind of a tour of the city, she decided that this was the lesser of all evils.
“All right, I’ll show you around the city if that’s what you really want.”
“I always love a warm invitation,” he said sarcastically.
Beth intervened. “Make up and say yes, dear, before I show you your room.”
Almost in shock, Rose stared at Beth and then Matt, praying that Beth was using some like of poetic license. “He’s staying here?”
“Well, there was a suitcase in the hall next to his foot and I assumed it was his,” Beth told her.
It could stay in the hallway for all Rose cared—along with him. “Just because he has a suitcase doesn’t mean he has to put it here. This isn’t a hotel.” The moment she said it, she regretted it, knowing what was coming.
Beth didn’t disappoint her. “No, of course not, but I took you in, didn’t I?”
Rose tried to rally and dig herself out of the hole she’d fallen into. “I’m family.”
Beth merely nodded sagely. Her near-death experience on the operating table several years ago had made her reestablish communication between herself and a higher power.
“We’re all one big family in God’s eyes, dear.” She turned to Matt. “And Matt obviously needs a room, don’t you, dear?”
He rose to his feet. “I was going to a hotel.”
Leaning on the arm of the sofa, Beth pushed herself upright. “I’ll save you the trouble. Third door on the left. Guest bedroom. I love having guests,” she confided.
“Ms. Wainwright—”
“Call me Beth, please. And I won’t hear another word about it. Keep arguing and you’ll hurt my feelings. You wouldn’t want to do that, now, would you?”
Matt shook his head in compliance, but Rose opened her mouth to protest. “But—”
“Good.” Rose clapped her hands together. “Then it’s settled. You’re staying. It’s a big apartment. We won’t get in each other’s way.”
Unless, of course, I orchestrate something, Beth added silently.
Four
Rose was keenly aware that Matt was in the next room, settling in.
There was another guest bedroom on the other side of her aunt’s room. Why hadn’t Beth given him that one? Why the one next to hers? What was she trying to do to her? Rose thought moodily. It was hard enough dealing with emotions and hormones that were completely out of kilter because of her condition without having to put up with barbarians not only at the gate, but storming through those same gates, as well.
Matt had told Beth that he was planning to stay in New York about a week or two. He’d been looking at Rose when he’d said it, as if the length of time depended strictly on her.
If that was the case, he should be on a plane for home right now, Rose thought, frustrated.
Making up her mind to convince Beth to withdraw her invitation to Matt, Rose left her bedroom and went looking for her aunt.
Instead she ran into a mini army of people carrying covered dishes toward the terrace.
Following their path with her eyes, Rose found Beth. She was holding court on the terrace. Right in the middle of things, as always, stood Beth, pointing and issuing soft-spoken orders like a general mantled in a flowing caftan.
Rose stepped out of the way of a young, trim-waisted man in black livery carrying a small box. Feeling like someone in the middle of Atlantis moments before the fatal earthquake, she made a beeline for her aunt.
“Aunt Beth, what is all this?”
“Right there will be fine, dear,” she said to the young woman with the salad bowl. Beth spared Rose a quick glance over her shoulder. “Why, it’s dinner, darling. What does it look like?”
There were crystal goblets, a very fancy bottle of what appeared to be ginger ale, another of champagne. Covered entrée dishes sat atop a table graced with a cream-colored lace cloth and overlooking the park that dusk was slowly covering.
“Throwing a couple of steaks in the frying pan and tossing in a salad is dinner,” Rose informed her. “This is a conspiracy.”
Beth laughed and patted Rose’s cheek. “Nonsense, Rose, there’s no conspiracy.” She leaned into her niece, lowering her voice. “You know, it’s a known fact that some women in your condition start becoming paranoid.”
Rose stiffened and turned around, looking toward the living room to make sure that Matt wasn’t anywhere in the vicinity.
“Aunt Beth—” she said between clenched teeth. This was supposed to remain a family secret and here Beth was, talking about it in the middle of a circus of strangers.
Beth lowered her voice even more. “I’m whispering, honey. Even you can’t hear me.” She came to attention as another man came out on the terrace with a small, narrow box in his hands. “Oh, put that right there. I’ll take care of it.”
Ignoring the crisis Rose was going through, Beth began putting out long, tapered candles.
Rose’s eyes widened. “Candles?” she cried as her aunt lit first one, then the other. “You ordered candles? Since when are candles part of dinner?”
“There’s dinner,” Beth told her, raising, and lowering her delicately sculptured eyebrows mischievously, “and then there’s dinner.”
And it was obvious that she was supposed to be the main course.
“This is not going to happen,” Rose protested.
Beth put the lighter into the deep recess of her pocket.
“Dinner?” she asked innocently.
As if her aunt didn’t know. “No,” Rose insisted, “what you’re trying to achieve with dinner.”
Her expression was suddenly completely without a trace of guile as her aunt turned to look at her. Rose could see how Beth had easily been regarded as a consummate actress in her time.
“Full stomachs and smiles, my dear,” Beth told her. “That’s my only goal.” She looked at the minions she had summoned from her favorite restaurant, Claude’s, and nodded, obviously well pleased. “Perfect.”
> Looking at the table as the servers backed away, melting into the background like dutiful fairy godmothers, Rose suddenly honed in on a glaring fact.
She looked accusingly at Beth. “Why are there only two places set?”
Beth’s answer was simplicity itself. “Because only two people are eating.”
It was bad enough when she’d thought this was for the three of them. A sinking feeling took over the pit of her stomach as she asked the question to which she already knew the answer, and hoped against hope that she was wrong. “Which two people?”
Beth looked no older than Rose as she replied, “Guess.”
“Oh no.” Beth shook her head adamantly. “I’m sorry, but no, I am not going to be left alone with him. I absolutely refuse.”
Beth was apparently oblivious to the desperation behind Beth’s words.
“It can’t be helped, darling. I have a class to teach at the college.”
Desperate, Rose looked for a way out. “Then I’ll go with you. I’ve never heard you teach.”
Beth waved a hand at the thought. “Long and boring. You wouldn’t like it.”
Rose had no intentions of giving up easily. “So I’ll fall asleep. I could use the rest.”
Beth looked at the table.
“No. You could use the nourishment. You’re eating for two, you know.” She slipped her arm around Rose’s shoulders. “That’s a very nice man in the other room, dear. He’s not going to leap over the table and have his way with you.” And then she stepped back and grinned wickedly as she glanced at Rose’s trim figure. A figure that was going to expand very soon. “From where I stand, it looks like you’ve already both had your way with each other.”
Rose remembered now how her father used to rant about how stubborn and headstrong his older sister was, not to mention unorthodox. Except that he’d called it flaky. For once, her father had understated a problem.
Rose felt a headache coming on. All over her body. “Aunt Beth, you’re not helping.”
Texas Rose Page 4