by Sandra Brown
"Look, mon cher, do you know what these are? Tickets. Train tickets. See, didn't maman tell you? He wants us to come live with him in a wonderful place called Belle Terre." Bubbling and animated with emotion, she had covered Cash's face with eager, exuberant kisses.
Two days later, which was all it had taken to finalize their affairs and pack their meager belongings, they dressed in their best clothes and boarded the train. The ride hadn't lasted long enough for Cash. He had loved it. When they arrived at their destination, he had stood warily against the belly of the steam-belching engine, suspiciously eyeing the man his mother ran to.
She flung herself into his arms. He lifted her up and swung her around. Cash had never seen a man so tall or so strong. Monique threw back her head, laughing more musically than Cash had ever heard. Her dancing, dark curls had glistened iridescently in the sunlight.
She and the man kissed for so long that Cash thought his mother had forgotten him. The man's large hands moved over her, touching her in ways that she wouldn't let the customers of the barroom touch her. Many kisses later, she disengaged herself and eagerly gestured him forward. Taking reluctant baby steps, he moved toward the towering man. He smiled down at Cash and ruffled his hair.
"I don't think he remembers me."
"He was just a baby when you left, man cher," Monique said softly. Her eyes brimmed with shiny tears, but her mouth was wide and smiling. Cash's young heart lifted. His maman was happy. He had never seen her so happy. Their lives had taken a new direction. Things were going to be just as she had said—wonderful. They would no longer live down a dark, dingy hallway in a roach-infested apartment. They were going to live in a house in the country surrounded by grass and trees and fresh air. They were finally at Belle Terre.
But the house Cotton had driven them to wasn't quite as wonderful as Monique had expected. It was a small gray house sitting on the banks of a bayou that he called Laurent. The sunny atmosphere had turned stormy. Monique and Cotton had had a shouting match. Cash had been sent outside to play. He grudgingly obeyed but went no further away than the porch, still distrustful of this man he'd just met.
"It's a shack!" Monique said in a raised voice.
"It's sturdy. A family of moss harvesters used to live here, but it has stood vacant for years."
"It smells like the swamp."
"I can help you fix it up. See, I've already started. I added a bathroom."
Monique's voice had cracked. "You won't live here with us, will you?"
After a short pause, Cotton sighed. "No, I won't. But this is the best I can do."
Cotton had married a lady named Macy and Monique didn't like it. She yelled at him and called him names Cash had overheard in the barroom, but had been forbidden to repeat. She lapsed into her native "Frenglish" and spoke it with such heated emphasis that even her son, who was accustomed to hearing it, could barely translate.
As darkness fell, he gave up trying and concentrated on catching lightning bugs. His mother and Cotton went upstairs to the bedroom and stayed a long time. He fell asleep curled up on the rough board of the porch. When they finally came downstairs, they had their arms around each other's waists. They were smiling. The tall man bent down and touched Cash's cheek, then kissed Monique good-bye and left in his car.
They watched it disappear into the dark tunnel of trees. Monique draped her arm around Cash's narrow shoulders. "This is our home now, Cash." And if she didn't sound very happy about it, at least she sounded content.
Monique worked wonders on the house. In the months that followed, she turned it from an empty, dreary place into a home full of color and light. Flowers bloomed in window boxes. There were rugs on the floor and curtains on the windows. Just as she kept her secret heartache hidden, she disguised the shortcomings of the shanty.
It seemed they had lived there for a long time before Cotton finally gave in to Monique's pestering and walked them through the forest to see the plantation house.
The day would forever stand out in Cash's memory because, up to that point, he'd never seen a house so large. It was even grander than the estates on St. Charles Avenue that Monique had pointed out to him from the streetcar. He was awed by how clean and white Belle Terre was. In his wildest imagination, he couldn't have fathomed a house like Belle Terre.
Standing in the shadows of the trees, with moss serving as a screen, Monique rested her cheek against Cotton's chest as she stared at the large house. "Tell me about it. What does it look like on the inside?"
"Ah, it's beautiful, Monique. The halls have floors that are polished as smooth and shiny as mirrors. In the dining room, the walls are covered with yellow silk."
"Silk?" she had repeated in a reverent whisper. "I wish I could see that."
"That's impossible." Cotton set her away from him and sternly looked down into her face. "Never, Monique, do you understand? The house is Macy's domain. You and Cash can never go beyond this point right here."
Monique's glossy head bowed. "I understand, Cotton. I was just wishing I could see something so fine."
Cotton's face changed. He clasped her to him fiercely. He hugged her tight, lowering his head to cover hers. Cash gazed back at the house, wondering what it would hurt if he and his maman went inside to see the yellow sOk walls and why they couldn't because of this Macy woman. It was probably because she was married to Cotton.
"Does she dress up for supper?" Monique wanted to know.
"Yes."
"In fancy clothes?"
"Sometimes." Monique inched closer to Cotton, as though to prevent him from seeing her plain cotton dress. He lovingly stroked her riotously curly hair. After a moment, he placed his finger beneath her chin and tilted it up. "Speaking of supper, didn't you tell me you had cooked jambalaya for me?"
She gave him a brilliant smile. "Oui."
"Then let's go back. I'm starving." They turned as one and headed back toward the bayou. "Cash, you comin', boy?" Cotton called back when he realized that Cash wasn't following them.
"I'm comin'."
But he remained where he was, transfixed by the beautiful house. Belle Terre. . .
* * *
Rhoda's mouth was avid. She was unaware that Cash's mind wasn't on her, only on the sensations she coaxed from his body. When he swelled to the fullest proportion, when everything went dark around him, when he squeezed his eyes shut and focused only on release, when he bared his teeth in a gripping climax, it wasn't Rhoda's name, but another, that rang in his head.
Chapter Twenty
Schyler's head dropped forward. Closing her eyes, she stretched the back of her neck, then rolled her head around her aching shoulders to work out the kinks of fatigue. Trying to refocus on the fine print of the contracts in front of her proved to be impossible. Her tired eyes refused. She left the desk and moved to the coffee maker across the room.
She poured a cup, more for the distraction and the exercise than because she wanted the coffee. She only took a few sips before setting down the mug and restlessly walking to the window.
She had hired a cleaning team to attack the landing office. They had washed the grime off the windows, but the view was no more encouraging through clean glass. She stared at the inactive platform. Even the railroad tracks were collecting dust. Trains avoided the spur because there was no Crandall timber to pick up and haul to market.
It had been three days since she had asked the newspaper to print a notice that Crandall Logging was open for business. She had anticipated having to turn independent loggers away, thinking she would be unable to buy timber from all of them until she had several contracts in hand. Her optimism had been misplaced.
As yet, not a single one had brought a rig loaded with logs to the landing. She had personally notified the former employees by telephone. None had come to reclaim his job. Without an inventory to sell, it would be senseless to contact the markets.
Dejectedly, she rubbed her bloodshot eyes. Last night she had stayed late at the
hospital, hoping to catch Cotton awake. She had only had the opportunity to speak to him that one time. Then he had turned away, not caring that she had returned home to see him. Every time she thought about it, she despaired.
She suspected that he was faking the deep sleeps he lapsed into whenever she was at the hospital. Dr. Collins's prognosis was still guarded but basically favorable. Tricia and Ken had each engaged Cotton in brief conversations. But to Schyler, he still had nothing to say.
Her trips to the hospital were washouts. So was each working day. She spent hours in this office at the landing, waiting for something to happen. Nothing ever did. But she refused to give up. She had to succeed at this even if it meant hiring a forester, someone to coordinate everything, someone who talked the loggers' language, someone who could motivate them to work harder than they'd ever worked in their lives.
It meant rehiring Cash Boudreaux.
His name cropped up everywhere. Like the proverbial bad penny, it kept coming around. She'd heard it so many times in the last few days, she had begun hearing it in her sleep. It was the first thing that came to her mind when she woke up.
The first saw hand she had telephoned said, "You want me back at work? Great! Soon as I hear from Cash, I'll—"
"I'm afraid that Mr. Boudreaux isn't coming back."
"Whadaya mean, Cash ain't coming back? He's the main man."
"Not any longer."
"Oh, well, uh, see, I got this temporary job."
And it had gone downhill from there. By the time she had reached the fifth name on her list, word had apparently gotten around through the grapevine, which had it all over Ma Bell as far as transmitting information expeditiously went.
"Now, Cash, he—"
"I always work with Boudreaux. He—"
"Boudreaux ain't working for you no more? Well, ya see, he—"
She had called every logger Crandall Logging had ever had on its payroll but with no success. She got nowhere. Out of frustration, she had consulted Ken. "I'm beginning to think all Cash Boudreaux had to do was look at a tree and the damn thing would fall down. Exactly what did he do for Crandall Logging?"
"Generally caused trouble."
She curbed her impatience. "Specifically."
"Specifically he. . ." Ken made an encompassing gesture. "He more or less did everything."
"Do you mean at the sites, at the landing, in the office? What?"
"Hell, Schyler, I don't know. My office is downtown. I rarely go to the landing. I wasn't in on the day-to-day operation. Mine is a white-collar job."
"I realize that, Ken. Sorry to have bothered you. Thank you for the information and forgive the interruption." She turned to leave, uncomfortable now every time she was alone with Ken.
"Schyler?"
"Yes?"
Ken seemed to debate with himself before saying, "I overheard Cotton say. . ."
"Well?"
"I once overheard him say that Boudreaux has forgotten more about forestry than other foresters ever knew."
"Coming from Cotton, that's a staggering compliment," Schyler mused out loud.
"But he's a born troublemaker. He continually kept the loggers riled up over something. A day hardly went by that he and Cotton weren't at each other's throats. If you ask me, we're better off without him."
At the time, Schyler had thought they were better off without him, too. He was a disruptive force, especially to her. On principle, she would never approach him about working for her family again.
Staring out the window now, watching the rigs rusting in the garage when they should have been loaded to groaning capacity with timber, she admitted that she couldn't afford to avoid him any longer. The X's on her calendar were multiplying toward the deadline. No amount of principle was going to get Belle Terre out of hock. If getting the money meant humbling herself in front of Cash, then she would be humble. All other alternatives had been exhausted.
Before she lost her nerve, she locked the landing office door behind her. The mare was still tied to the tree across the wide yard, grazing on the short grass in the shade. Schyler mounted. She and Mark had ridden together occasionally, but not so regularly that she wouldn't be saddle sore tomorrow. She didn't care. The muscular discomfort would be well worth the thrill of riding over the acreage of Belle Terre as she had since she was old enough to sit in a saddle and duplicate Cotton's patient instructions.
She set out. The best place to start looking for Cash Boudreaux was at his house. If he wasn't there, she would leave a note. It was damned aggravating not to be able to call him on the phone. Sooner or later she would be forced to look into his gloating face.
Rather than take the roads, she cut across the open fields, wending her way through copses of trees. As the mare daintily picked her way through a particularly dense patch of forest, Schyler heard the whine of a chainsaw. Curious, she led the mare in that direction.
Cash saw her the moment she cleared the trees, but he didn't acknowledge her. He returned his attention to the chain saw he was applying to the branches of a felled tree. Piqued because he had so blatantly ignored her, Schyler drew the mare up but remained in the saddle, watching him.
He wasn't wearing a shirt. The skin of his back and chest was baked a deep brown. His face was beaded with sweat, despite the handkerchief he had tied around his forehead to act as a sweatband. His biceps bunched and strained as he held the saw steady while it ate its way through the pine and sent up a plume of acrid blue-white smoke. Sawdust was sprayed against his shins and over his boots.
When the last major branch had been severed, he cut the power and the saw's whine silenced. He took it in one hand. It weighted down his arm, stretching the skin so thin that Schyler could see each strong vein standing out. He raised his free arm and wiped perspiration off his brow.
"I should have you arrested for stealing timber off my property."
A white grin split his grimy, tanned face. "You should thank me for getting rid of this blowdown for you."
He set the chain saw on the ground beside the trunk of the tree. Over his jeans he was wearing the knee-length suede chaps that served to protect a saw hand's thighs from mishap, at least theoretically. From a wide leather belt around his waist hung a plastic bottle of chain saw propellent. There was a tape measure, used to record the length of felled trees, attached to a back belt loop and riding above his hip pocket. He had on work gloves, which, disconcertingly, only called more attention to his bare torso.
He sauntered to the mare's side and propped an elbow up on the pommel of the saddle. "You want damaging bugs eating away at your forest, Miss Schyler?"
To keep from looking at his chest and its sexy covering of damp, curly hair, she eyed the dismembered pine. "When was it blown down?"
"We had a bad storm about two months back. There's already larvae under the trunk. I checked."
"What are you going to do with it?"
"I'll bring a skidder down here tomorrow and drag it out." He glanced up at her again. "If I can borrow a skidder that is."
She was determined not to be provoked. "I need to talk to you." "Not from up there, you don't."
"Pardon?"
"I don't look up to anybody. Get down."
She was about to protest when he peeled the yellow leather work gloves off his hands and dropped them to the ground. He extended his hands up to her. "I can manage," she said, swinging her right leg over the saddle and landing on her right foot. She lifted her left foot out of the stirrup and turned around. He was still standing close, allowing her no extra room.
"Funny-looking britches."
She had on black twill jodhpurs and smooth brown leather riding boots. "I left them behind when I moved to England."
"Yeah, from what I hear you left in a big hurry."
Difficult as it was to ignore that, she did. "I'm glad I did. Left the riding clothes, I mean. They came in handy today." A horsefly buzzed past her nose. She fanned it away. Cash didn't move a muscle. "They're a lit
tle hot though."
"You used to ride barebacked and bare-legged."
Schyler began to notice another kind of heat. It spilled through her system, making her veins run as hot as rivers of lava. "Mama made me stop doing that. She said it didn't look ladylike."
His eyes lowered to the delta of her thighs, then unhurriedly climbed back up. "Your mama was right. It looked downright dirty."
"How do you know what it looked like?"
"I used to see you."
"Where?"
"Everywhere. All the time. When you didn't know anybody was watching."
Schyler moved away from the horse, away from the man. Both seemed to emanate a musky, animalistic scent. The atmosphere was redolent with sexuality and she couldn't say why, except that the last time she had stood this close to Cash, he'd been kissing her.
Every time he looked at her, his eyes seemed to remind her of that. He remembered that kiss, and knew that she did, too. Restlessly, she rolled back the wide sleeves of her white shirt and pulled away the collar to allow air inside.
"Want a drink?" He bent at the waist to pick up his discarded gloves and tucked them into his low-riding waistband.
"No, thank you. I came here on business."
He walked to the bed of his pickup. It was parked nearby in the shade. The tailgate was down. There was a large, blue thermos sitting on it. He uncapped it and dipped a plastic glass inside. It came up full to overflowing with ice water. He gulped it down thirstily. Some of it ran down his chin and sweaty throat. It formed glistening drops on his chest hair, drawing strands of it into wet clumps.
Intentionally looking elsewhere, Schyler's eyes fell on the hard hat with the screened visor. It was designed to protect a logger's eyes from flying wood particles. "Your hard hat isn't doing you much good in the back of your truck. Why aren't you wearing it?"
"Didn't feel like it."
"But if you had gotten hurt on my land, you would have sued me."
"I don't hold anybody responsible for me, but me, Miss Schyler."