by Anna Jeffrey
Their lack of enthusiasm was a tear in his parachute, but he hadn’t hit the ground yet. Self-confidence was the keystone of his success. As long as they hadn’t said no, he could still pull a deal together. “It’s my own damn fault,” he mumbled. He hadn’t shown enough enthusiasm himself. Throughout the meeting he had been preoccupied with how he would tell Marisa and her mother, and even Bob Nichols and Mandan Patel, if Larson’s said, It’s a deal.
Leaving Midland with Marisa and Raylene Rutherford still on his mind, he spotted a Walmart up ahead on his right. Almost as if his truck were being steered by one of Bob Nichols’ aliens, he turned into the parking lot. He came out of the giant retail store with watercolors, brushes and art paper. Sitting alone all day in a singlewide mobile home with nothing to do was no life for even a woman whose brain was out of order.
With a good feeling he couldn’t quite define or justify, he put Larson’s Truck & Travel Stop on the back burner and began to think about the second phase of his plan, Ledger Ranches retirement community. Phase I didn’t necessarily have to depend on Phase II and vice versa. He hadn’t yet met Lanny Winegardner, but there was no time like the present. When he came to the XO Ranch’s caliche road that intersected the highway, he made a right turn.
Two hours later, he came away from a meeting with Lanny Winegardner with more than a little hope and excitement. No question that Winegardner would sell. They only had to come to a meeting of the minds on a price and hammer out an agreement on mineral rights.
And he only had to figure out how to get the money to make the buy. His bankers had always had confidence in his developments, but he feared their reaction to this one. To quote one of Larson’s team members, “This place is pretty far off the beaten path.” For the first time ever, Terry wondered if his moneyman would go along with him. In the loneliness of his crew cab, traveling the long, empty highway from Midland to Agua Dulce, doubt he didn’t normally feel at the beginning of a new development crept in.
At last he saw Pecos Belle’s beat-up sign. Having not eaten since early morning, he was starved. He pulled into the place where he ate most of his meals lately. A dozen people sat at the tables and the lunch counter eating. He took a stool at one end of the counter and set his Walmart package on the floor.
Marisa spoke to him as if he were a friend rather than just another customer and took his order for a chicken salad sandwich. She was dressed as usual--tight jeans and boots, a belt with a big buckle and a bright yellow T-shirt with a black and white CRUEL GIRL logo across the front. Typically, he didn’t pay close attention to the color of clothing women wore, but the bright yellow shirt seemed to set off Marisa’s olive skin, black hair and light brown eyes. She looked beautiful
On closer observation he saw weariness in her eyes, but her mouth smiled at her customers and at him. Something new hummed between them, a connection resulting from their meeting yesterday. He ate slowly, enjoying the excellent sandwich, watching her and waiting out the departure of the last straggling customer.
After clearing off the last table, she came to him. “Dessert? Devil’s food cake with fudge frosting. I made it fresh this morning.” She threw her dish towel across her shoulder and grinned. “It’s full of real butter and heavy cream. Guaranteed to clog your arteries.”
“Sounds great. Might as well live dangerous.”
He watched as she lifted the glass dome off the dessert plate and sliced a thick wedge off a tall, three-layer cake. Her hands looked delicate, but fragile hands didn’t construct scrumptious pies and cakes and the delicious meals Marisa served in the café. Her outward appearance only served to remind him she had stores of inner strength.
“Something tells me living dangerous isn’t new to you,” she said, amusement lighting up her eyes as she looked him in the face and set the dessert and silverware on the counter in front of him.
Topaz. Mexican topaz. That was the color of her eyes. “How’s your mom today?” he asked.
“Better than yesterday.” She poured a mug of coffee and set it beside his plate. “Can’t have cake without coffee.”
He sliced a bite off the cake and savored it. The texture was moist and fudgy and the frosting melted in his mouth. Marisa Rutherford was wasting her talent in a café in Agua Dulce.
Excited to show her the art supplies, even before he finished his cake he picked up the Walmart sack. “I brought something for your mom.”
“Oh?” She set the coffee carafe on its burner and returned to where he sat.
He pulled out his purchases—a tin of more than a dozen dry watercolors in little round trays, four brushes and two pads of watercolor paper. Like some kid seeking a pat on the head, he spread the items on the counter. “What do you think?”
She didn’t say anything at first, just picked up the brushes and stroked the bristles. “Wow. This is for Mama?” She looked up, her eyes bright.
Tears? Oh, hell. He hadn’t meant to make her cry. “I just thought it would give her something to do.”
She smiled and blinked away the wetness in her eyes. “It might be good for her, at that. Hey, thanks. I’ll ask Tanya to show her how to use them. She likes Tanya.”
Terry smiled back, thrilled in a silly way to have pleased her. “If you’ve got some time, can I show you something?”
“Show away. I’m here, captured, you might say.”
“I mean, in my trailer.”
A grin tipped one corner of her mouth as she began to return the art supplies to the sack. “This wouldn’t be one of those old-fashioned come-ons, would it? Like, ‘let me show you my etchings’?”
He chuckled. Women flirted with him, they chased him, once or twice they had even stalked him, but women never teased him. “Well, truthfully, I would like to show you my drawings, but they’re bluelines, not etchings.”
“What’s bluelines?”
“Blueprints. Of my plans for Agua Dulce.”
“You’re kidding.” Her hand splayed against her chest. “You’re going to show those to li’l ol’ me?”
He lifted a shoulder in a shrug. “Why not?”
“You said you don’t discuss your plans.”
“Change of heart. Since you’re the mayor, I figure you should know more details.”
“I’m not the mayor, but I’d like to see what’s going on. Maybe after I close. I have to make supper for Mama and help her with a bath, but after she goes to sleep, I can walk over.”
“After dark?”
“It’ll be that late before I finish.”
“You shouldn’t be walking around the desert in the dark. There isn’t even a moon tonight.” He wrote his land-line number and his cell phone number on a napkin and handed it to her. “Just call me when you’re ready. I’ll come get you.”
The corner of her mouth quirked. “Okay, I guess. But I walk around after dark all the time.”
“Not tonight.”
Terry returned to his mobile home, elated in spite of the disappointing outcome of his meeting with Larson’s. He tidied up the place, washed the few dishes he had left in the sink and wiped away the ever-present sand on the flat surfaces. Then he shuffled through his CDs. He had brought a CD player from Fort Worth to take the edge off the nighttime silence. She probably liked country, so he picked one by George Strait. All women liked George Strait.
Before leaving Walmart, he had bought a bottle of white wine. He stuck it in the fridge to chill, then showered, shaved and put on a pullover sweater against the coming cool of the evening. When dusk faded to dark, he began to worry that Marisa wouldn’t call, but just after nine, the phone warbled.
Lightning flashed on the horizon and the air smelled of rain as he pulled up at the Rutherford mobile home. Marisa was waiting outside. She climbed into his pickup, filling the cab with clean feminine fragrance. She was wearing a pure white sweater made of something fuzzy that made her look soft and cuddly.
Her first words when she settled into the passenger seat were, “You’ve bought the XO, haven�
�t you?”
Was she psychic along with all of her other attributes? “Okay, Sherlock, you got me. Not yet, but I’m trying to.”
She turned her head and stared into the night. “I had a hunch. I can’t believe it. Do you know the history of the XO Ranch?”
“No. Do you?”
“I know a little. I know a Winegardner has owned it since 1920, before the oil boom. Can you imagine what it must have been like before they discovered oil? I’ll bet no more than fifty people lived in this whole county. Lanny himself has operated it for over twenty years. It’s always had really good cattle. Purebreds, I think.”
He heard gloom in her tone and felt a need to reassure her. He forced a smile. “Nothing stays the same. Have you ever thought about it becoming something better?”
“No. I guess I don’t adapt well to change.”
Back at his mobile home, they stepped into the soft light provided by the one lamp in the living room and the light over the kitchen sink. George Strait was singing about all his exes living in Texas.
“You like George Strait?” he asked her.
“Sure. Who doesn’t?”
“There’s more CDs.” He pointed to a storage box shoved against the wall at the end of the breakfast bar. “Take a look. Pick one.”
She shuffled the plastic cases. “Oh,” she said, selecting one. “I love this guy. He has a great voice. He sang in Arlington all the time. I saw him a couple of times.” She handed over a CD and Terry put it on to play. Steve Holy’s rich voice filled the room with a ballad, “The Hunger.” She watched the CD player and Terry watched her. She looked up at him as the song ended and smiled. “You must like him, too, if you have his CD.”
“I like all good music....Listen, I’ve got a bottle of wine in the fridge.”
“Gosh, I haven’t had wine in ages. I guess I could have some.”
He poured the wine into two tumblers and they laughed about his lack of proper serving glasses.
“So, show me,” she said, ambling over to the dining table where the blueprints lay.
With some pride, he spread his blueprints and architect’s renderings of Ledger Ranches retirement community over the table and the breakfast bar for her to peruse, determined to convince her that his ideas for Agua Dulce were constructive.
As she studied them, he explained over her shoulder, “There’ll be five different-style houses homeowners can choose from, all in keeping with the architecture typical of the Southwest desert. The colors will blend into the landscape. There’ll be a clubhouse and a pool and a rec room. Tennis courts adjacent to the clubhouse.” He pointed to a blank area near the clubhouse. “This is where I’ll eventually build a small strip center with spaces for shops, maybe even a theater. I’m undecided about a golf course. Depends on how much good water we come up with.”
“Wow,” she murmured and looked up at him. She didn’t need to say anything at all. The light in her eyes told him she was impressed.
A deep sense of satisfaction rippled through him. Weird. He had never required the validation of another person for any of his developments. “I’m thinking of changing the name from Ledger Ranches to Agua Dulce. It seems a shame not to keep such a poetic name.”
She smiled at him again, nearly melting his knees. “It is poetic. Mama would love that. She used to introduce herself as the mayor of Agua Dulce because she liked the rhythm in the words. It’s Spanish. It means ‘sweet water.’”
“I know.”
She began to shuffle through the renderings. “Everything’s so pretty. I wish—I wish Mama could see and know what’s happening. Agua Dulce has always been her little world.”
An emotion curiously like envy passed through him, a sense of something he had missed long ago. He could recall nothing he had ever wished his own mother could see, doubted if she would have bothered to look even if he had laid out his every dream in a blueprint. Obviously Marisa’s mother was different. To have earned so much loyalty from her daughter, Raylene Rutherford must have been a strong, special woman. Since he still didn’t know what to say about her, he only gave a nod. “Your mother must have been quite a person before...well, before.”
Marisa’s perfect lips tipped into a wistful smile and something inside him longed to be the inspiration for that smile every day. “If you only knew,” she said. “My mama had an answer for every question, a solution for every problem.”
She took a baby sip and he suspected she had only accepted the wine to be polite. Suddenly he remembered the jug of Jack Daniel’s he had shoved onto the top shelf of his cupboard. “I’ve still got that bottle of Jack Daniel’s you left. Would you rather have a mixed drink?”
She smiled. “I figured you drank that.”
“I’m not much of a drinker of the hard stuff. Even if I was, I’d choose something with a little less bite than Jack Daniel’s.”
“I’m not a drinker, either. That jug belongs to Ben, but he sure doesn’t need it. You can just keep it. Maybe you’ll have company who’ll like it.”
He nodded at her glass. “If you don’t want that, you don’t have to drink it.”
“That’s okay. It’s just that it doesn’t take much for me to get silly.”
“So finish about your mom.”
Her head inclined and she continued to study the renderings. “What can I tell you? What’s really sad is she used to know so much. She read a lot, all kinds of books. I grew up surrounded by books. As you can see, we don’t have much in the way of outside entertainment around here. When I was a little kid, she would assign me reading projects. She used to say, ‘You must learn to read well, Marisa. As long as you’re a good reader, you can learn anything, do anything.’”
She inhaled and let out a deep breath. As much as he wanted to be an honorable man, he couldn’t keep from seeing the shift beneath her sweater.
“Yep, Mama was a free spirit,” she said. “Comfortable with who she was and curious about everything. Seeing her now, you can’t keep from thinking of how she used to be.” She looked up at him again, her eyes bright in the low light. “It was nice of you to think of her, Terry. I appreciate it.”
The depths in her eyes left him tongue-tied. Lord God, she was a beautiful woman. He shrugged and almost croaked, “No problem.”
The soft thrum of rain that began to resound against the roof and she looked up at the ceiling. “We need that,” she said. As the shower escalated into a downpour, she turned her attention back to the drawings. “So how’re you going to build houses in the middle of the XO’s many oil wells?”
“The XO’s a big place. Plenty of the land doesn’t have wells. The mineral rights are the biggest obstacle in our negotiations at this point. I suspect the oil profits have already been tapped, but I can’t develop a subdivision if I don’t own the mineral rights under it. I can’t risk having Lanny or some of his kin lease their rights to a wildcatter, then have a homeowner wake up and see a drilling rig set up in his backyard.”
“That wouldn’t be too cool, would it? How could they do that? Is it legal?”
“Afraid so. In Texas, mineral rights override surface rights.”
“Hunh. I didn’t know that.” Her eyes angled at him in a sly look. “You met with those people today, didn’t you? Your deal really will wipe out Mister Patel, won’t it?”
“You’ll be happy to know Larson’s team wasn’t that excited about this location.”
“Good for Mr. Patel. But bad for you, right?”
“Well, it’s not great. I was halfway counting on the money from selling to them to kick off my subdivision. They haven’t said no, but they’re gonna take some coaxing. It’ll work out.”
The beep of the pager on his belt interrupted. He stopped himself from swearing aloud at the lateness of the call. He recognized the number as that of the Mexican from Kermit to whom he had offered a job as a landscaper and groundskeeper last week. He returned the call and arranged for the man to come to work tomorrow. When he disconnected, Marisa was looking a
t him with a question in her eyes.
“That was a landscaper,” he explained, hoping to continue the cozy vein of the conversation they were having. “Since I’m keeping the RV park open a while longer than I planned, I’m hiring a professional to spiff up the grounds.”
“That’s good. That’ll make Gordon happy.”
“Income’s income,” he said, plumping the maps lying on the breakfast bar into a neat stack. “Might as well attract all the tourist business I can. I agree with what you first told me about the RV park and about Tubbs. The park’s profitable and Tubbs does a good job.”
“I’m glad I can stop worrying about Gordon.”
He braced a hand on the breakfast bar, only feet away from her. “He’s not part of your family, is he?”
“No. Why do you ask?”
“I don’t get why you’ve been so worried about him.”
“I worry about all the people here.”
“But why?”
“Oh...”—she looked past him, but remained silent for seconds. “It’s too hard to explain,” she said at last, looking down instead of at him. “If you knew them you’d understand.
End of subject. He took the hint and steered the conversation in a new direction. “That landscaper I just hired? I talked to him about doing some things around the mobile where you and your mother live. Plant some flowers, do some dressing up. Maybe put up a fence. We could—” He stopped himself. We? When had he started thinking of himself and Marisa as we?
She looked up at him and he almost fell into her whiskey colored eyes. “Uh, I could pour a sidewalk between the mobile and the café’s back door,” he managed.”{ Concrete would be a smoother path than the stone walkway that’s there now.”