“I guess I don’t have to worry about whether I can wake you.”
Trudy jumped and squealed. She smacked her knee on the underside of her computer desk and whirled around to face…Eleanor.
Eleanor shook her gray head and frowned. “You might be able to get by with four hours of sleep, but don’t you think you should rest tonight, considering you were beaten up in a parking lot?”
Trudy glanced behind her at the clock on her computer. She looked back with a grimace. “I lost track of the time.”
Distant thunder rolled. She’d been writing for two hours, and her head brimmed with ideas. The writing exhilarated her more than usual.
“Liz will be here before you leave in the morning.”
Trudy thought of the woman she’d hired as her personal assistant six months ago. “Eleanor, that’s just mean.”
Eleanor smirked, a gleam in her eye. “She’s going to see that you’re exhausted, and she won’t be pleased. And you know what she’s like when she’s not pleased.”
“Don’t act like you agree with her, El. I know you can’t stand her.” Trudy didn’t want to go into how much she regretted hiring Liz.
Eleanor shrugged. “Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. In this, Liz would be right.”
“I’m done for the night.” Trudy gave Eleanor her most sincere smile. “I’m glad you interrupted me. I got lost in the work.”
Eleanor’s oh-right look told her she was unimpressed with Trudy’s acting. “Whose ox are you going to gore this time, sweetie?” Eleanor leaned forward and studied the laptop screen.
“The usual. Almost everybody’s.”
Eleanor’s eyes moved to the scrape on Trudy’s cheek. Like a good girl, Trudy endured the inspection, enjoying Eleanor’s loving concern.
Meeting anger with gentleness and turning the other cheek were Trudy’s talking points, but she was so sheltered, she seldom got the chance to actually do them. She didn’t know first hand if her ideas worked, except, of course, for the grateful e-mails and letters from people she’d helped.
There was no time to commission a scientific poll tonight. “I’m going to bed, I promise.”
Eleanor’s eyebrows lifted.
“I’ll save my work and shut down for the night. Even if I can’t sleep, I can rest, right?” She said the last part before Eleanor said it to her. It was one of Eleanor’s favorite maternal platitudes.
“Besides, it’s going to storm soon. I have to shut the computer off to protect it from power surges.”
“I’m waiting here until that beast is off. I’m tempted to confiscate it.” Eleanor crossed her arms and planted her feet. She was a sweetheart, but some of Trudy’s bully book might be suited for the little tyrant.
Trudy narrowed her eyes and tried to look as if she were boss.
“But I’ll leave the computer and settle for a promise.”
Trudy was beaten. “I promise.” She always kept her promises, and Eleanor knew it. Turning, Trudy realized she’d written fifty pages of her book in a single night. She shut down tomorrow’s bestseller with a smug grin.
“Good night then, my girl.” Eleanor left.
Trudy walked to the window. Lightning lit up the quiet beach. The approaching fall had begun to cool the night air. She cranked the window shut. The rolling hills glowed like a black jewel as the sky flared with light. Her backyard opened onto the beach of a small lake surrounded by multi-million dollar homes like hers. She owned her own private stretch of it.
As the storm tossed surf of the lake rolled in to shore, a bolt of lightning split the sky and a dark form standing on the beach moved to avoid the incoming water.
Jumping away from the window, her heart pounding, Trudy leaned against the wall beside the window. He’d seen her. He couldn’t have helped it. The window crank rattled and hers was certain to be the only light on in the long strip of old mansions along the beach.
She dropped to the floor, her skin crawling. It had to be Watson. She scrambled on her hands and knees to her bed and hit the lights, plunging her room into darkness broken only by lightning.
Trembling, she climbed into bed and pulled the covers up to her chin. Eleanor was ruthless about locking the house up tight. Trudy’s window was on the second floor with no way up.
She willed her heart to stop hammering. Use your head, for heaven’s sake. It could have been anybody. It could be another insomniac neighbor.
She didn’t think so. Wide-eyed, she stared at the darkened walls where her Monets roosted. The night stretched endlessly before her.
She tried to settle herself down by playing mind games. They didn’t help, but they kept her from going completely crazy.
Genesis
Exodus
Leviticus
Numbers
Deuteronomy
Joshua
Judges
Her bedside clock clicked over to three a.m. and there was no sleep in sight.
Ruth
I Samuel
II Samuel
I Kings
II Kings…
6
Ben drove up to the gate and wondered if Tru had meant for him to let himself in. He punched in the front gate code, curious about what kind of security she had.
Driving up the majestic curved driveway to the pink mansion, he enjoyed the cool Long Pine morning, the air washed clean by last night’s rain. He wondered, too, if she was even out of bed yet. He’d left after eleven, after all.
He parked, hopped out, and walked to the front door. Testing things further, he turned the knob and discovered the door wasn’t locked. Jaw clenched in irritation at the reckless behavior of a supposedly smart woman, he slipped inside.
“Tell me you lock your doors at night, Tru-Blue,” he muttered as he snapped the lock and turned to the foyer, talking to the cascading chandelier showering him with light from a couple hundred tiny bulbs.
“No one is that careless in this day and age, right?”
He walked in the direction Eleanor had gone last night to get medicine and bandages. Maybe he’d find faithful Eleanor in the kitchen, wrapped in protective padding, tossing raw meat to the killer Dobermans—which would come out to attack him just as soon as they’d been fed. That would explain everything and he’d be forced to rethink his looming decision that Tru was an idiot.
He entered the kitchen.
No Eleanor. No dogs.
Great smelling coffee, though.
He took the time to search the huge kitchen for mugs and poured himself a cup. The steaming pot told him that somebody lived here.
“Just how much are you going to let me yell at you, Tru, and still turn the other cheek?” Ben muttered as he wandered the house, fighting his rising temper. Sure, she was naïve, but maybe she’d never dealt with stalkers and crazed assailants, before. Or cops.
Tru might be one of the lucky people who had never been touched by ugliness. She still wore rose-colored glasses and wrote sweet little books, didn’t she? Maybe there was a scant possibility that with normal people, her theories might occasionally work.
As he went back to the front entrance, peeking behind every door on the way, he asked God to forgive him for his methods. “I’m not going to baby her. I’m going to push her and push her until she wises up, God. I’m going to test her limits.”
He stood at the bottom of the stairs and yelled, “Does anybody live here?”
Nothing answered him except the echo of his own voice in the cavernous entryway. Where was she? Had the assailant from last night come back?
Before he could panic, he heard water running. He glanced at his watch. If she’s just now taking a shower, I’m going to be late and she’s going to be sorry.
The front door behind him swung open. He turned, bracing for an attack, expecting to see the assailant from the parking lot last night.
But a middle-aged woman with a key to the front door walked in, sucking hard on a cigarette. She tossed it, leaving it glowing on the front step, and
shut the door. “Who’re you?”
“I was here first. Who’re you?” Ben waited.
“But I belong here and you don’t.” She reminded him of a bumblebee, with her yellow-and-black-striped sweater on a short, circular body. Her pasty-white face was lined with smoker’s wrinkles. Her short, black, spiky hair spewed from gray roots, and bore an unfortunate resemblance to antennae. She marched toward him as if she intended to attack, but Ben had studied human nature and he suspected she was more the type to talk someone to death.
He assumed the cop stance, legs spread, arms crossed. “I’m a friend of Tru’s.”
The bumblebee continued advancing. Ben almost took a step back. The woman seemed to be boring into his brain with her angry eyes.
“I know Trudy’s friends.” When she frowned, her entire face deepened into wrinkles that would make a bulldog jealous, wrinkles that had eroded into her face from a lifetime of scowling. “You’re not one of them. And no one calls her Tru, which means you’re not her friend. So, I repeat, who are you?”
“I call her Tru. And I’m a new friend. Your turn.” Ben wondered if the woman would be interested in working for the police department, scaring criminals into confessing. Fear was a commodity with cops, and this woman had cornered the market.
After a few seconds of high-powered glaring, the woman turned away from Ben and shouted upstairs. “Trudy, you get down here right now!”
Ben would have obeyed her in a heartbeat. A gargantuan bumblebee slash bulldog mix, with all the worst qualities of both. Genetic engineering gone horribly awry.
Trudy appeared at the top of the stairs, dressed in a black turtleneck sweater, black slacks and a maroon blazer. Her sleek blonde hair pulled back in another tidy barrette at the base of her neck. She carried black heels by little straps. “Liz, you’re here. Good.”
Good? Ben didn’t think there was anywhere, not even some parallel universe, where the presence of a cranky, three-hundred-pound bumblebee in an entryway could be considered good.
Tru nearly fell over her feet rushing down the stairs as if she were a naughty child, afraid to face her angry mother, but more afraid not to.
“What’s he doing here?” Liz strode over to Tru and grabbed her chin. “And what happened to your cheek? We’ve got a photo shoot coming up.”
“When?” Tru allowed the woman to twist her face left and right as the bumblebee studied her from every angle. “What photo shoot?”
“There’s always a photo shoot. Just plan on it and don’t get yourself beat up. How are we supposed to cover these bruises?”
Ben clenched his fingers into fists to keep from pulling the woman off Tru.
“Don’t worry, Liz. I’m sure make-up will cover it.”
Ben flinched when he listened to Tru take the cranky old bat’s criticism and try to calm her down with excuses. If the old bat had touched him like that, she’d be lucky to get all of her fingers back.
“Really, Liz, it’s not deep. We’ll just—”
“Did you do something that will bring us bad publicity? You have an image to maintain. Barroom brawls wreak havoc on sales.”
“No, I didn’t do anything that—”
“Give me a straight answer right now, Trudy, or I’ll call the police.”
Tru shook her head with wide-eyed fear. “No, Liz, don’t do that. He is the police.”
Ben thought he was a little more than that, what with saving her life last night and being her personal bodyguard today, but he’d take that up with Tru in private.
Bumblebee turned on Ben, he could almost imagine a stinger quivering. “Why do we need the police?”
Ben waited for Tru to defend him, tell this old bat how he’d saved her.
“We don’t need the police for anything, Liz. He’s a student in one of my classes.”
Liz sneered. “Been left back a couple dozen times, pal?”
Glowering, Ben opened his mouth.
“He’s giving me a ride to the campus today.”
“Why?” Liz gave him one last glare, then refocused her laser eyes on Tru as if she were planning to perform brain surgery. Liz crossed her arms across her rotund belly and tapped her foot.
Tru’s jaw dropped. “Uh…”
Ben wondered if there was an answer anywhere on the planet soft enough to turn away the wrath of the giant bumble bee.
With a snort of disgust, Liz jerked out the purse hiding in the folds of fat under her arm, opened it, and pulled a pack of Camels out. She slapped the pack.
“Liz, please, I’ve asked you not to smoke in here.”
Liz lifted her eyes as she pulled a cigarette out of the pack, and pinned Tru like a bug on a science fair display board.
“Liz, no smoking.” Eleanor appeared at the top of the steps. She marched down the stairs with so much vigor, Ben hoped the risers had been fully reinforced. “Put that away unless you’re planning to step outside. I don’t even want it lit in here on your way out the door.”
It occurred to Ben that Tru, a world-class wimp, surrounded herself with strong-willed people. No soft answers coming out of their mouths. He wondered if he could work that tidbit of news into the twenty-page term paper she’d assigned him.
Liz’s eyes narrowed as Eleanor reached the bottom step and crossed her arms.
Ben decided Liz was under control now, and he was more than ready to get out of this mad house. “Are you ready to go, Tru-Blue?”
“Don’t call me that.” Tru turned on him, the only person she sassed.
He tried to convince himself that made him special.
“Grab your shoes, and let’s hit the road. I’m running late. You need a purse or anything?”
Tru looked around, spotted her briefcase and the books Ben had dropped off last night. She snatched the stack into her arms.
Ben relieved her of the load and decided to give the killer bee one tiny break just to help speed things up. “Look. I gave Tru a ride home last night, and I’m here to take her back.”
Ben rested a hand gently but firmly on Tru’s back and urged her out the door.
Ben heard Liz huffing along, following them. He glanced back and saw her pause to fire up her cigarette and take a long drag.
As she blew out a smoky cloud, she pointed the two fingers holding the cigarette at them. “Get back in here right this second.”
Tru dug in her heels to stop. Ben hustled her along. The old bat was still yelling when Ben drove through the gate.
“Why did you do that? She’s furious now.” Tru looked at him, her eyes wide with fright.
“Who is that old bat?”
Tru gasped. “Don’t talk about her that way.”
“Why not?”
“Because she’ll get mad.” Tru looked behind her. They had left the driveway, but maybe Tru thought they were still too close. “And you wouldn’t like her when she’s mad.”
Ben shrugged. “I don’t like her now.”
Tru flinched. “Next time you see her, be nice to her.”
“No.” Ben hit his blinker and pulled the truck into the fast lane.
“Please, Ben.” Tru clutched her hands together as if she were prepared to beg. “Do it for me.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m scared of her.”
“Why?”
Tru was silent for a minute. “Because she’s scary.”
Ben had to give her that. “So, who is she and why did she have a key to your house?”
Tru gasped. “She used her key? I left the door unlocked for her. She gets upset when she has to use her key.”
“I locked it when I came in. And, it looked like she came pre-upset so what difference does the lock make. Who is she?”
“She’s my business manager.”
Ben swerved. For a second, he thought he was going airborne off an overpass. He got the truck back in in its lane to the sound of blaring horns.
“You mean she works for you?” His voice was so loud, it hurt his eardrums.
“Of course. Why else would she have a key to my house?”
“I wondered if she was your mother.”
Tru gasped so loud it was almost a scream. “That woman is not my mother.”
“At least if she were your mother, it would explain why you put up with her. Since she works for you, and you’re terrified of her, here’s a thought: why don’t you fire her fat, striped…”
“I can’t fire her.”
“Is she blackmailing you?”
“No. I just can’t fire her because it would be…”
Ben knew what she was going to say. “She’s your case study for all your books. Man, that must be exhausting. You have to practice giving a soft answer to all that wrath, all the time?”
Tru nodded. “Besides, she needs the work, and she’s good at her job.”
“What does a business manager do?” Ben thought if the woman did only bookwork and accounting, maybe Trudy didn’t cross paths with her too often and, if Liz was honest and hard-working and could add and subtract, then…
“She arranges appearances on radio and television shows for me. She’s my go-between with my agent and editors. She answers fan mail and talks to the people who call my hotline asking for counseling.”
Ben stepped hard on the brake. Forty miles an hour was as fast as he dared drive during this conversation.
“You let that woman talk to actual, reallive people?”
“Well, Ben,” Tru answered, crossing her arms. “What other kind of people are there?”
He eased onto the Interstate and headed north without coming even close to crashing but then he was a highly trained professional.
“Tru, she has got to be sending out exactly the wrong signals to everyone who wants to work with you. They call, expecting kind, soft-spoken Tru ‘Intervention’ Jennings, and they get Liz
‘Killer Bee’ Borden.”
“Stop speaking so disrespectfully about her. She’s my friend.”
Ben snorted. The sound reminded him of class last night.
“And,” she added, “snorting is unbecoming of a police officer.”
It must have reminded her of class, too.
“Great, you yell at me but Liz gets a pass.” Ben pulled off the Interstate and headed toward the university.
Loving the Texas Lawman_A Texas Lawman Romantic Suspense Page 5