by Janet Dailey
Fiesta San Antonio
Janet Daily
ONE
THE BLACK velvet sky was studded with diamond stars, a cloudless Texas night, warm and languid. But there was a crackle of excitement in the air as the eyes of the crowd lining the banks of Paseo del Rio focused on the river parade.
A man stood in the crowd, but he was not a part of the festive throng. Tall, whipcord-lean, he stood aloof, expressing an aura of detachment. The cold, chiselled lines of the handsome face belonged to a man who rarely smiled, who had found no reason to smile for a long time.
Thick light-brown hair fell with careless attraction over his forehead, the slight waves streaked with burnished gold from long hours in the sun. The teak-dark tan of his complexion emphasised the impression that the face had been carved from wood, dispassionate and indifferent, without a soul. His eyes seemed to hesitate between green and blue, but there was always a frosty tint to their colour.
A gaily decorated barge floated under the stone footbridge, its bright lights blazing for the benefit of the crowd gathered along the river’s bend at Arenson River Theatre. A murmur of appreciation rippled through the spectators. The young girl standing in front of the man glanced quickly at him, her blue eyes feverish with excitement.
“Look at that one, Daddy,” she breathed in awe. “Isn’t it beautiful?”
“Yes.” There was a suggestion of an impatient sigh in his clipped agreement, but the girl’s attention had returned to the parade.
His gaze flickered uninterestedly over the float and back to the child in front of him, a single, long brown braid nearly touching the waistband of her dress. How old was Missy? Colter Langston wondered idly, then silently cursed that he couldn’t remember if his own daughter was ten or eleven.
He snapped a gold lighter to his cigarette, the brief flame throwing his arrogant features into sharp relief, inhaled deeply, then cupped the burning tip in his hand. What was he doing here? His eyes swept the crowd in contempt. People stood elbow to elbow, craning their necks for a glimpse of the floats when they could have remained at home and had an unobstructed view of the parade on their television sets.
“Observing the Fiesta is not participating.” Unbidden Flo Donaldsen’s statement came to him.
Yes, it was his aunt who was to blame for his presence in the crowd, his aunt and the prickles of conscience over the years of his neglect of Missy. Not neglect, Colter corrected silently. His daughter had never wanted for anything. She had beautiful clothes, plenty of food, a home. He had never sent her off to any boarding school. She had lived under the same roof with him since the day she had entered this world. What more could the child want from him? he thought impatiently.
This shy, quiet withdrawn child with her thin, sensitive face was his daughter. Yet Colter Langston felt no surge of emotion at the knowledge. He cared for her — as much as he could, but there was no bursting warmth of pride to fill the emptiness within him. With his usual cynicism, he decided that parenthood was vastly overrated.
Grinding out the half-smoked cigarette beneath the heel of his boot, Colter Langston glared resentfully at the slow-moving minute hand of his watch, knowing the parade had barely started and wishing it was over. There was an ominous tightening of his lean jaw as he realised he had committed himself to accompanying Missy to all the activities of Fiesta week, the celebration marking Texas’s independence of Mexico. The River Parade was the first major event and he was already bored. Idleness didn’t appeal to him.
With a self-mocking movement of his mouth, he admitted that there was little that didn’t bore him. An only child, a son, born the heir to the vast Langston holdings in the Texas hill country north of San Antonio, he had been denied nothing as a child, a wild teenager, or a young man. Now, at thirty-four, he realised his senses were satiated. Life held no more illusions. Sex, love, marriage, all were coldly dismissed. The happiness and satisfaction that were supposed to exist in those items were the products of writers’ and poets’ imaginations. Colter had tried them all and found them wanting.
For the last five years, since his father’s death, he had been the sole owner of the Langston Ranch and its numerous investments. The power of the Langston influence was his to command and he was accustomed to being obeyed.
Matt Langston had taught him that every man had a price, monetary or otherwise. Colter had admired and respected his father, but they had never been close. His mother had died when he was six and he had only photographs to recall what she looked like.
As for his wife Caroline, she had married the Langston name. It hadn’t taken Colter long to realise that. The daughter she had died giving him within the first year of their marriage had been her means of cementing a permanent link with the Langston power and wealth. Her diary had callously stated that she had never loved Colter, only his money and name. Looking back, Colter realised that he had never loved her, only the perfection of her beauty. He had married her to satisfy the lust she aroused while adamantly withholding herself.
He had never loved anyone, not even himself. No one loved him. Missy tried, just as Colter had tried to love his father. Perhaps the one who came closest to caring for him had been his aunt Flo. When his mother had died, Matt Langston had brought her widowed sister to Langston Ranch to look after his son. She had stayed on to care for Missy.
But no longer. His mouth moved into a grim, forbidding line. At the end of this month, Flo Donaldsen was leaving, figuratively if not literally. She was a strong, proud woman who spoke her mind and Colter had received an unfaltering share of it before he and Missy had left for San Antonio.
“I don’t like what you’ve become, Colter,” she had told him. “You are cold, insensitive and sometimes cruel towards other people’s feelings. You show more kindness and attention to your horses than you ever do to your own daughter, and it isn’t right! You’re cynical! Your heart has turned to stone — if you ever had one. Missy needs her father, not an ageing aunt. And if you can’t be the parent she needs, then you should provide her with a mother. You’ll not shirk your responsibility off on to me any longer. According to your father’s will, the cottage by the creek is mine whenever I want it, along with a pension. I’ll be moving into it at the end of the month.”
Colter hadn’t argued. Eventually he knew he could work his way around her. He had no qualms about using the affection she held for him and his daughter to gain what he wanted. Yet he had to admit that perhaps Missy deserved a mother.
Deirdre would relish the role. Granted he found her company to be stimulating and enjoyable, at least for the time being, but Colter knew that Deirdre only tolerated his daughter. The sensually attractive redhead was a man’s woman, definitely not the domesticated type. When the physical attraction Deirdre held for him passed, as it undoubtedly would — as it had with all the other women he had known — she would probably take her vengeance out on Missy. No, he would not marry Deirdre.
Candy tossed from a float landed at his feet, missing the outstretched hands that tried to intercept it. As Missy bent to retrieve it, a set of small fingers reached it first. A pair of dark brown eyes peered through the mop of thick brown hair falling over his forehead, their expression reluctant and hopeful.
“Was this yours?” The little boy’s clenched fist opened to reveal the paper-wrapped candy, offering it hesitantly to Missy.
Colter watched the movement of his daughter’s mouth into a refusing smile, noticing her lack of inhibition towards the child who was half her age.
“No, you can have it,” Missy assured the little boy.
The tiny palm remained outstretched as the boy fixed his gaze longingly on the candy. “Nonnie said I wasn’t supposed to take things that belonged to someone else, and I’m not supposed
to take things away from girls.”
Missy cast Colter a shy, adult smile before turning a solemn face back to the boy. “You found it, so you can keep it.”
Bright brown eyes studied her face for an instant longer, then small fingers closed protectively over the candy. For precious seconds he held it in his fist before he reverently began unwrapping the paper.
“My name is Ricky,” he said importantly after he had carefully placed the candy in his mouth. “What’s yours?”
“My name is Missy and this is my father,” she replied.
The boy named Ricky had to tilt his head way back to look up at Colter’s face. One corner of Colter’s mouth turned up in wry amusement at the open inspection he was receiving. He rather liked the boldness of the boy’s look, forthright and not easily impressed. Nor intimidated, it seemed.
“I don’t have a father,” Ricky announced, “but some day I’m going to have cowboy boots, too.”
The two thoughts did not correlate for Colter, but obviously they did for the boy. Briefly Colter wondered whether he and Missy would have been closer if she had been a boy instead of a girl. He doubted that. He would probably have been irritated by the constant demands of a son.
“Did your mother bring you to the parade?” Colter heard Missy ask.
He was a bit surprised at her interest in the boy. She had never seemed to display much interest in the other children she went to school with, although she had seemed fond of little Josh Harris. Still, Colter had presumed she was a loner like himself, the one trait they shared.
“Nonnie brought me,” Ricky nodded, adding with a shrug, “but I think she got lost.”
“Are you sure you’re not the one who’s lost?” Missy smiled.
“I don’t think so.” A small frown drew his brows together. “I know where I am, but I don’t know where Nonnie is. So she’s the one who’s lost,” he reasoned.
It was Colter’s turn to frown as he saw his daughter touch the little boy’s arm and bend slightly towards him in a solicitous movement.
“Yes, but you see, Ricky, your Nonnie knows where she is, but she doesn’t know where you are. I’ll bet she thinks you’re the one who’s lost,” Missy explained.
The corners of his mouth pulled down. “I’ll bet she’ll be mad again,” Ricky sighed.
“Where did you last see her?”
Colter guessed the trend his daughter’s questions were taking and the last thing he wanted to do was become involved in a search for the boy’s mother. If the boy was lost then it was his mother’s fault for not keeping a closer eye on him.
“Over there somewhere.” The boy’s hand waved in the general direction of the footbridge. “I was thirsty and she was going to get me a drink.”
“And you were supposed to wait for her,” Missy concluded astutely.
More brown hair fell forward as the boy shamefacedly tucked his chin into his neck and answered a very small “yes.”
“Give me your hand,” Miss instructed quietly, “and we’ll go and see if we can find her.”
“Missy!” Colter’s voice rang out sharper than he intended as his hand closed over her shoulder. He lowered his voice quickly to a firmer, less abrasive tone. “We are not going to search this crowd for the boy’s mother,” he said emphatically.
There was the hurt look of a wounded animal in her accusing eyes. “We can’t just leave him. He’s only a little boy, Daddy,” she argued anxiously.
“I’m not so little,” Ricky inserted proudly. “I’ll soon be six.”
Colter flashed him a silencing look of ice blue, then turned back to his daughter. She had withdrawn again into her shell, a remote resentment clouding her more calm blue eyes.
“Look,” he sighed, his lips thinning with impatience at being backed into a corner. “We’ll take the boy to that policeman over there. His mother has probably already discovered he’s lost and will have notified them.”
“Couldn’t we take a few minutes to look first?” Missy suggested, glancing hesitantly at him through upcurving lashes.
“It isn’t any of our business and we’re not going to get involved,” Colter snapped harshly.
His jaw tightened as Missy flinched from his tone. Fleetingly, he had to acknowledge that Flo was right when she said he hurt people without meaning to do it. Tact had never been one of his virtues. He abruptly released her shoulder and turned to the boy.
“Come on,” he ordered crisply. “We’ll take you to the policeman. He’ll help you find your mother.”
But Ricky held back. “They don’t know where Nonnie is.” His lower lip jutted out in a mutinous pout.
Colter stared at him for an instant, then reached down and swung the boy into his arms. Bright brown eyes curiously studied the face now at eye level. Unlike Missy, Ricky was not intimidated by the forbidding set of his jaw.
Nothing was revealed in Colter’s expression, yet inwardly he admired the impertinent look. The discovery had barely registered before the hint of green in his eyes returned to the cold, harsh blue. The child meant nothing to him. He pivoted sharply towards the distant man in police uniform, aware that Missy’s feet were dragging as she followed him. As far as he was concerned it was enough that he had brought her to the Fiesta. It was ungrateful to involve him with this lost stray.
A small hand balanced itself on Colter’s shoulder while Ricky took in his improved view of the crowd and the parade. Fingers tightened for a biting instant.
“Wait,” Ricky ordered imperiously. His forefinger pointed to Colter’s left. “There’s Nonnie!”
Colter turned in the direction Ricky indicated, his alert gaze immediately picking out the woman frantically searching the crowd. As she drew nearer, a brow rose thoughtfully. Ricky’s mother was hardly a woman. If Colter was any judge, she was barely out of her teens, and Ricky himself had asserted that he was almost six.
The girl was attractive, Colter decided, above average, despite the signs of exhaustion and strain etched in her features. The harried look had not occurred tonight but had accumulated over a period of months.
Then the hazel eyes, almond-shaped and slanted upwards at the corners, unusually attractive with their gold flecks, spied Ricky in Colter’s arms. A wide smile of relief spread across her sensuously full lips as she hurried towards them. There was a vaguely untouched look about her that kindled a fleeting fire of desire in his loins until he remembered the boy in his arms. Women were available to him in abundance. He didn’t need the entanglement of a small boy.
The crowds were so thick that Natalie was more terrified than she cared to acknowledge when she discovered Ricky was not where she had left him. He usually did exactly what he was told, although he might question the order. The excitement of the parade must have been too much for his adventurous nature to ignore.
Somehow she had known he wouldn’t stray out of sight of the footbridge. Her fear had been that she would walk by him in the crowd and not see him. Only by the merest chance had she seen Ricky in the stranger’s arms out of the corner of her eye.
“Oh, Ricky!” she exclaimed with a laughing cry as the stranger handed him to her, “I thought I told you to stay by the bridge.”
Her relief at finding him unharmed was too great for Natalie to be as angry as she should have been with him. Tears filled her eyes, tears of relief and wretched tiredness. She brushed them away and proudly raised her head to thank the stranger.
Her breath caught in her throat, her body automatically stiffening at his bold appraisal of her slender form and the suggestion of jeering contempt. His aura of self-assurance bordered on arrogance. Natalie’s initial impression had been that the man was handsome, but the unrelenting hardness of his face negated its effect.
The strange blue-green eyes seemed to strip away her pride. The expensive leisure suit of brown stitched with tan spoke of money and his gaze was too discerning not to recognise her clothes as bargain store purchases.
“I want to thank you for finding Ricky.” Her
expression of gratitude lacked sincerity, the result of his derisive look.
“You’re holding me too tight,” Ricky whispered loudly in her ear.
It was his way of saying that he was too big to be held like a baby in her arms. Reluctantly Natalie let him slide to the ground, keeping a firm hold of one small hand. Her shaking fingers clutched a paper cup in the other hand.
“He was no trouble.” The low-pitched masculine voice drawled lazily, a contradiction to the alertness of his gaze. “We were taking him to the policeman on the corner.”
Yes, Natalie thought with a kind of grim resentment, this arrogant stranger wasn’t the type to involve himself more than superficially with the problem of a lost child, certainly not to the extent of participating in a search for her.
Ricky tugged at her hand. “They threw candy from the floats. I found a piece and Missy let me keep it. Was that all right? I’ve already eaten it,” he added as an afterthought.
“Missy?” Natalie repeated blankly.
She followed his pointing finger, for the first time seeing the young girl standing beside the stranger. “That’s Missy,” Ricky explained, “and that’s her father.”
Compassion touched Natalie’s heart. If the girl’s father was as arrogant and callous as he looked, it was no wonder Missy seemed so sensitive and withdrawn. The girl was just reaching that awkward age when she needed the reassurance that somebody cared. Natalie remembered those heartbreaking years. If it hadn’t been for her brother — But she had had her brother, and Natalie could only hope that the girl’s mother was a vast improvement over her father.
“May I have my drink?” Ricky demanded.
“There isn’t much left, I’m afraid,” Natalie answered as she handed him the paper cup half-filled with water. “I spilled most of it looking for you.”
He drained it dry and handed the empty cup back to her, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. At that instant, Natalie noticed the marked silence of the stranger and realised he was probably very anxious for her to take Ricky and leave. Squaring her shoulders, she turned to him.