“It’s a pathetic news day. Besides, footage of kids licking ice cream cones boosts ratings. Throw in a couple disgustingly cute pets, and I’ll even use one of your sound bites in our next promo campaign.”
“I don’t know…” He racked his brain for what he’d say to Laura if he saw her again. They’d ended last night on semi-friendly terms. Maybe he should leave it that way.
“Come on, Michaels, you owe me.”
“For what?”
She hesitated, obviously scrounging for a reason. “For not bringing this hoedown to my attention in the first place.”
“Screening press releases for the weekend reporters is not my job. Try again.” Although, he thought, since he and Laura were on friendly terms, there wasn’t any reason he shouldn’t see her. Besides, what were a few more hours in Beason’s Ferry now that he was there?
“All right, jeez.” Connie took another raspy drag. “How about this: I’ll owe you. One favor, your choice, to be called in at some point in the future.”
“Ha!” Brent snorted. “Too bad I’m not taping this.”
“Hey, I’m trustworthy.”
“Yeah, right,” he scoffed as his mind raced. Laura would be at the reenactment. She’d probably organized most of it. A live report would be good publicity for the whole town. He owed Laura that much. “Okay, Rosenstein, just don’t conveniently forget we had this conversation the second we hang up.”
“Are you saying you’ll do it?” Connie choked.
“For two and a half minutes of airtime? What the heck?” he shrugged. Even if it was a throwaway piece any first-year intern could handle, Laura would love it.
“Great.” When Connie caught her breath, she rattled off some possible angles and leads for the story.
“Connie,” he chuckled, “if you want me to do the story, at least let me write my own lead.”
“Yeah, sure, I just thought—”
“Good-bye, Connie.” He ended any more discussion by hanging up. The moment he did, his mind went back to Laura.
Should he really act as if last night had never happened? His friendship with her might not have been active over the last years, but he still valued it. Did he want to jeopardize that in order to—to what? Have a romantic entanglement that would lead nowhere? She lived in Beason’s Ferry. He lived in Houston. He couldn’t exactly see her driving into the city every Saturday to spend the weekend with a man. And he sure as hell wasn’t coming back to this stifling little town so he could take her to the City Diner and then kiss her chastely good night at her father’s front door.
He thought briefly of a motel on I-10 but banished the thought just as quickly. Laura deserved better than some sleazy affair at a No-tell Motel. She deserved candlelight dinners, soft music, and a chance to relax and get to know her date: which was how yesterday evening had started out.
So why had she insisted they go to a dive like Snake’s Pool Palace? Everything about her behavior last night surprised him—especially the erotic scene in his car. He’d barely had a chance to ease into the kiss before she was arching against him and kneading his chest with her hands. He could almost hear that sexy catch in the back of her throat and her breathy sigh when he’d cupped his hand between her legs. She’d been so unbelievably hot and wet when he pressed his finger inside her. And tight. God, she’d been tight.
For one horrifying moment, he’d wondered if she was a virgin. Words like Virginity and Innocence were right up there with Commitment and Marriage on his list of things to avoid.
He liked his women, when he had time for them, to be worldly, sophisticated, and blasé about sex. He didn’t have time to worry about things like corrupting or, heaven forbid, breaking some fragile heart.
No, Laura was right. The best thing for them to do was to pretend last night never happened. He should be glad she’d offered him such an easy out. This way, they could keep the memory of their friendship untainted by any prurient complications.
Yes, that was the best course of action.
So why did he suddenly feel so hollow inside?
Maybe it was just the hangover. What he needed was something to eat—something more than the fruit juice and pastries served at a bed and breakfast. He needed a greasy plate of hash browns, eggs, and sausage, served with a gallon of black coffee at the City Diner.
With that in mind, he showered, dressed in slacks and a golf shirt, and left the Boudreau Bed and Breakfast by way of the back stairs. As he turned to cut across the gravel parking lot, he came to an abrupt halt. Bending over his Porsche as if to admire the inside was Sheriff Bernard Baines.
“Shit,” he muttered. So much for pretending last night never happened.
The sheriff straightened with a deceptively friendly grin. “Why, hey there, Zartlich.”
“Morning, Sheriff.” Having little choice, Brent crossed the small lot to shake Sheriff Baines’s hand. The man had always reminded Brent of a dark-skinned Pillsbury Doughboy: a very large Pillsbury Doughboy who had played left guard the year the Beason’s Ferry Bulldogs went to the state finals. Bubba Baines’s fumble recovery and touchdown had won the Bulldogs the title of state champs. It was a claim to fame that had later helped him win the office of county sheriff.
“I heard you were back in town.” Pushing back his gray Stetson, the sheriff turned back to the Porsche. “Who-ee, this sure is some car you got here.”
Brent never had bought into the poor-dumb-country-boy act. Bernard Baines was as sharp as they came. And Brent had the feeling he’d just walked smack dab into some well-laid trap.
“So what kind of an engine you got under that hood?” Bubba asked, stepping around the front. “A two-eighty-two?”
“No, the nine-eleven comes with a three-fifteen,” Brent answered, leaving off any mention of the minor adjustments he’d made that bumped the horsepower up closer to four hundred.
“Three-fifteen.” The sheriff whistled. “I bet a car like that can really fly.”
“She’ll do zero to sixty in six seconds flat, and stop just as fast,” Brent answered impatiently. He wondered how long the man intended to toy with him before the jaws of the trap snapped shut.
“You know,” the sheriff said as he continued his circuit around the sleek yellow convertible, “it sure is something to have one of these beauties come through my jurisdiction like this, but two in one weekend downright boggles the mind.”
“Two?” Brent blinked.
“Well, sure, hadn’t you heard?” Bubba flashed a white-toothed grin. “It’s all over town how a nine-eleven Porsche convertible finally whooped JJ’s Mustang in a street race last night. Now, the couple dozen folks who witnessed it firsthand all say it was you driving. But I say they’d all had too much rotgut. Why, last night, you were on a date with Miss Laura Beth. And I’m thinking, a smart fella like you has surely got more sense than to take a nice girl like Laura Beth hot-rodding down by Snake’s Pool Palace.”
“Yes, sir.” To Brent’s astonishment, he realized the sheriff meant to let him off the hook in order to spare Laura’s reputation. It shouldn’t have surprised him. Aside from the fact that Laura came from a prominent family, she had always been the kind of squeaky-clean kid authority figures adored; while Brent was the type to get slapped with the whole book for nothing more than jaywalking.
“Speaking of Miss Laura Beth…” Sheriff Baines stepped around to Brent’s side of the car as he pulled a ticket book from his back pocket. Brent’s moment of relief died a quick death. “She helped me and the deputies organize a raffle to buy Little League uniforms for underprivileged kids. She even got the Ladies Auxiliary to donate a handmade quilt.”
“Raffle?” Brent frowned at the ticket book. What did Little League uniforms have to do with him getting a speeding ticket? And could the sheriff really write him a ticket this long after the fact, even if he had two dozen witnesses?
”Now I knew you’d want to buy some of these here raffle tickets.” Bubba lifted the ticket book. “So I thought I’d save
you the trouble of tracking me down.”
“Raffle tickets?” Brent took a closer look at the book and nearly laughed. He couldn’t believe he was going to get out of paying for last night’s foolishness for nothing more than the price of a few raffle tickets. “Sure, I’ll be happy to buy some,” he said, reaching for his money clip. “How much are they?”
“Two dollars a piece,” the sheriff said. “Or twenty dollars for a dozen. ‘Course, knowing how generous you celebrities like to be, I took the liberty of bringing along a whole book.” Bubba held the ticket book up as if displaying the top prize in a game show.
“I see.” Brent narrowed his eyes at the book. “And the whole book costs…?”
“Two hundred dollars.”
“Two hundred dollars!”
“For a hundred and fifty tickets.” The sheriff’s smile stretched from ear to ear. “Cash or check is fine with me. And of course, it’s a tax-deductible donation.”
For one heartbeat, Brent nearly told Sheriff Bubba Baines where to shove his raffle tickets. But pissing off a county sheriff was never a wise move. At least this way no speeding ticket would go on his record, which would save him a lot more than two hundred dollars on his insurance. And Laura’s reputation would remain unscathed. Not to mention what would happen if the news wires got ahold of this story. He could just hear the report on the rival station KTEX now: KSET NEWS ANCHOR FINED FOR RECKLESS ENDANGERMENT.
With angry jerks, Brent pulled four fifty-dollar bills out of his money dip. For Laura’s sake, he should thank the sheriff for his discretion, he really should, but somehow he couldn’t work up much gratitude.
“That’ll do it,” Sheriff Baines said as Brent handed him the cash, “Me and the boys surely do thank you for your generosity.”
“Think nothing of it,” Brent grumbled as he accepted the book of raffle tickets.
The sheriff started to leave, then turned back, his expression more serious. “You know, it sure is a shame about that sweet Laura Beth, though.”
“What do you mean?” Brent frowned.
“Well, you know how people are around these parts. Once they get a meaty piece of gossip between their teeth, they like to gnaw on it till there’s nothing left but bone. Now normally I don’t pay it much mind, but it sure does pain me to see folks talking trash about that Morgan girl.” Bubba’s eyes zeroed in on Brent. “I can only hope, once this nonsense dies down, nothing like it ever happens again.”
Brent’s anger toward the sheriff spread to include the whole town—and himself. “I assure you, if I have anything to say about it, it won’t.”
Baines held his gaze a moment longer, then nodded. “I reckon that’s all a man can do.” He started to leave, then turned back. “Oh, and rest assured I’ll be on the lookout for the driver of that other yellow convertible. He ever comes speeding through my county again, I just might have to haul him in on a DWL. Thing like that can be mighty hard for a man to live down. Even a hotshot celebrity, if you get my meaning.”
“Loud and clear, sir.”
Sheriff Baines’s grin returned. “Reckon I’ll be leaving then.” He hesitated again. “Oh, just one thing more.”
Now what? Brent nearly snapped. “Yes, sir?”
“You might want to check under the hood before you go starting that fancy engine. Looks to me like you’re leaking oil.”
Brent glanced under the car at the huge oil patch staining the ground by the right front tire. His heart constricted as wild thoughts ran through his head. Had the sheriff vandalized his car? No, Baines wouldn’t do that, but Jimmy Joe might. He dropped to the ground to look underneath. A small hole marked the center of a huge dent in his right oil heat exchanger.
“Damn!”
“You find the problem?” the sheriff asked.
“I knocked a hole in one of the exchangers.”
“Now I wonder how that could happen with you driving on a nice paved road.”
Brent scowled up at the sheriff, who knew perfectly well how it had happened. Brent had hit a rock or a chug hole when he’d veered off the paved road to avoid getting caught.
“Mmm-mmm.” Sheriff Baines shook his head. “Like my momma used to say, one way or the other people always pay when they do wrong.” With that pearl of wisdom, the sheriff ambled away.
Brent dropped his head to the gavel. Staring up at the oily undercarriage, he felt his heart break right in two. My car. How could I do this to my sweet, beautiful car?
Chapter 10
Between arguing with the tow-truck driver and the garage mechanic, neither of whom seemed to know how to treat a car with reverence and respect, Brent barely had time to tape a few sound bites on the courthouse square. Snippets from those pretaped interviews would run as promos throughout the day—minus the irritating questions his interviewees kept asking him about Laura Beth and last night’s race. Of course, now even his coworkers at the station knew about the race, since they were the ones editing the tapes.
How in the world was he supposed to pretend last night never happened when everybody within three counties had heard about it?
By late afternoon, his concentration was shot. He stood at the top of the hill that overlooked the park and tried to compile some semblance of a story before the camera started rolling. Fifteen minutes away from his cue, and he still hadn’t written his intro.
“Hey, Michaels,” Jorge, the cameraman—or in this case, camera kid—hollered, “Ms. Rosenstein is asking for a mic check.”
Brent glanced up from his notes to fit the IFB into his ear. A similar one fit into the cameraman’s ear, but they were tuned to different frequencies so the producer could talk to them together or separately.
“Michaels, you there?” Connie’s gravelly voice ground into his ear.
“With bells on,” Brent answered, and ran through the sound check by rote.
When Connie turned his earpiece off to talk to Jorge, Brent’s gaze wandered toward the city park clubhouse. He could see glimpses of Laura through the window of the kitchen. She’d been there since he’d arrived at the park half an hour ago. His first impulse had been to go right to her and ask how she was holding up under the onslaught of wagging tongues. But he feared that if he made any attempt to approach her in public, a hush would fall over the entire town and every ear would strain in their direction.
The image brought his temper to a slow simmer. How could normally decent people be so desperate for excitement that Laura’s one fall from grace constituted headline news?
God, he hated this town. He hated it as passionately now as he had fourteen years ago. He wished he could do now what he’d done then: get in his car and drive away without looking back. Only his car was being held hostage in a garage by a bunch of morons who claimed it couldn’t be fixed for at least a week, maybe two.
“Michaels.” Connie’s voice once again came though his earpiece. “Give me a run-through of your cues.”
As if he had any. Deciding to wing it, Brent raised the microphone so both Connie back at the station and the cameraman before him could hear. “Okay, Jorge, start close on me. I’ll say something to the effect of ‘During the terrifying days that followed the fall of the Alamo, the Texas militia fled for the safety of Louisiana with Santa Anna’s troops close on their heels. Directly in the path of both armies lay the frontier town of Beason’s Ferry.’ On that, pull back and swing enough to my left to show the crowd sitting on the slope behind me. When I start talking about the reenactment being an annual event, move in on the cabin that’s set up in the clearing at the bottom of the hill.”
“You mean that pile of logs they just soaked with kerosene?” Jorge asked with one eye to his viewfinder.
Brent gave him a disgruntled look. Just what he needed: a cameraman with a sense of humor. “Okay, move in on the pile of logs stacked to look like a cabin.”
As a prelude to the reenactment, a man and boy, dressed in billowing white shirts and knee pants, were pretending to work in a “field” around the c
abin. Closer to the cabin, a woman in an apron and gingham dress hung up laundry while a little girl played at her feet. A doll, which played the exciting role of the woman’s baby, slept peacefully on a blanket, oblivious to the drama about to play out.
“Okay, Jorge, when I refer to the ‘forerider,’ I want you to zoom in on the hill behind the cabin.”
“Hold up, George,” Connie interrupted. “Michaels, unless that forerider is actually going to appear while you’re talking, this is going to get real boring real quick with no people in the shot. George, stay back enough to keep Brent in the picture throughout the feed. As long as we’re paying a fortune for that gorgeous mug of his, we might as well use it.”
“You got it,” the kid answered.
Used to such remarks about his looks, Brent went on without pause to describe how the rider would come galloping over the rise, shouting that the Mexicans were right behind him.
“After warning the settlers,” he said, “the rider will charge off to warn the next homestead while the man and boy abandon their tools in the field. The mother will gather her daughters in her arms and flee on foot. They’ll travel east toward Louisiana, which, at that time, was the closest gateway from the Mexican state of Texas into the United States.
“The husband and his son will stay behind to set fire to the cabin, burning everything they own. With nothing left but the clothes on their backs, they will take off on foot to help their neighbors burn down the town and the ferry crossing for which it was named.”
“You gotta be kidding,” Connie scoffed. “You guys torched your own town?”
“Better that than let it offer shelter or aid to the Mexicans,” Brent explained.
“Don’t say Mexicans,” Connie said. “Say Hispanics. It’s politically correct.”
“But inaccurate,” Brent pointed out. “Santa Anna didn’t lead the Hispanic Army. He lead the Mexican Army.”
“Then say Mexican Army. That sound okay to you, George?”
“Fine with me.” Jorge rolled his eyes at Brent. “’Sides, my ancestors fought with the Texans, along with a lot of other ‘Hispanic’ guys.”
Drive Me Wild Page 9