by Anna Jeffrey
Kate gave her shoulder a little shake and they parted. Now Amanda couldn’t hold back sniffles. “We will. I’m sure we will….” When she looked into Kate’s face, her eyes, too, glistened with tears. “No kidding, Kate. I’m sure we will.”
Kate nodded. “Well, I gotta go.”
“Thanks again for the plant.”
“Sorry it’s so pitiful. But hey, it was the best that flower shop in Drinkwell had to offer.”
“Kate, it’s fine. It’s lovely. I love African violets.”
Amanda stood on the porch watching Kate drive away, waving at the two security guards who now obviously watched over her. They no longer even tried to be subtle. Chris had told her what had happened at the old house and they believed everyone was in danger. Her life had taken on even a more surreal quality.
She walked back into the house and to the kitchen, leaned a hip against the kitchen counter as she read Pic’s bold printing:
DEAR AMANDA. I’M NOT MUCH OF A WRITER, AS YOU KNOW. TRIED TO CALL YOU, BUT GOT YOUR VOICE MAIL. I’M OUT OF TOUCH NOW. WON’T BE BACK BEFORE TUESDAY ORWEDNESDAY, DEPENDING ON HOW THINGS GO.….I KNOW YOU’RE MAD AT ME. YOU WERE MAD EVEN BEFORE THE PICNIC, BUT WE NEVER GOT TO THE BOTTOM OF IT. I’M ASKING YOU NOT TO LEAVE BEFORE WE GET A CHANCE TO TALK. LOVE, PIC.
Love? Had he really printed the word love? Had he been bucked off his horse and hit his head? Good grief! After writing that word, his fingers might have fallen off. The tears came again, but she dampened a sheet of paper towel and dabbed at her eyes.
She owed it to him and to herself to talk.
But that didn’t mean she was giving up the job in Odessa.
****
Time dragged until Saturday. Ten days since Amanda had last seen pic at the Double-Barrel family picnic and five days since Kate’s visit.
She crouched at the end of the pool in her racing pose, then plunged into the water and swam with all her strength and ability. For a week, she had exhausted herself physically—running in the early morning hours to beat the heat, swimming all out later in the day, trying to force herself not to think about Pic Lockhart.
As he had done every day, her bodyguard Chris dutifully sat at the end of the pool watching her. After she finished, he would dutifully follow her home. Now, with the enhanced security, he was parking across the street in front of her house and his partner had taken the position in front of the vacant lot down the street until some other mysterious person relieved him. All that they did only reminded her of Pic.
She touched the opposite end of the pool and turned into a backstroke. She should have been timing herself. She had surely set a record.
But exciting as that possibility was, she couldn’t think about it for thinking about Pic’s note. She couldn’t let herself read too much into his signing it with the word “love.” He had said he would be back to the ranch Tuesday or Wednesday and now it was Saturday and she hadn’t heard from him.
She’d had a dozen conversations about Pic with that voice in her head. Some had been repeats and three-peats of discussions already held. Reassurance hadn’t come from any of them. At one point after his note, she had even convinced herself she should be the one to call him.
But every time she came close to pressing in his number, she remembered that Pic hadn’t been open and honest about the beautiful woman from Austin. He hadn’t spoken a lie, but he had lied by omission. Amanda couldn’t erase the memory of Zochi’s hand on his forearm and the lure in her eyes as she looked up at him. He had been practically speechless looking back at her. What had passed between them had had been profoundly prescient. Every time she thought about it, the image sent her into tears again.
She had done the right thing. She had faced the truth. Again. Even if Zochi weren’t a part of the picture, the time would never come when some woman was not giving Pic the eye. Just like his big brother, he was smart, good-looking and fun, not to mention his being one of the sexiest men she had ever known. And practically everyone in Texas knew who he was, that he was single and an heir to a fortune. No fairly ordinary woman like herself could defeat that combination and she might as well face that fact.
She still didn’t know exactly what the crisis at the old house had amounted to. Chris had told her the vandals had thrown a dead calf into the cistern, but Gail had told her that Pic had gone down into the cistern to get it. It was the talk of all the hands at the ranch. If that were anything more than gossip, Amanda would be shocked. Pic was terrified of water that was more than knee deep. She had seen him go out of his way to walk around a puddle. She had coaxed him into the shallow end of the pool once and gradually led him toward the deeper water. He had panicked, fearing he was drowning when his feet could no longer touch the bottom and she had practically had to rescue him.
Bill Junior and Betty had done him and Drake a disservice by not getting counseling for them after Johnny Mize’s drowning. But in typical Lockhart macho bullshit fashion, Bill Junior’s attitude had been that the boys needed to “man-up.”
She was running out of time. Eric would be calling in a few days for her final decision. She had already had one conversation with him and all but given him a “yes.” Indeed she was moving on. The thought filled her with emotions she couldn’t describe.
She finished her swim late in the morning. As she left the pool tired, but on an endorphin high, Chris fell in step beside her. He reached for her gym bag. “Let me carry this for you. After a workout like that, you must be tired.”
She handed it over. As anxious and miserable as she was, she managed a smile for the first time in a week. “Thank you. It must be awfully boring for you sitting around watching me swim.”
“Not at all. I enjoy watching a good athlete. I’ve been wanting to ask you, did you ever compete?”
“In college in Lubbock. I was on their swim team.”
“Texas Tech University, right? Now you’re a coach, right? What are you doing in a place like this?”
She had never had more than a few words of conversation with Chris. All she knew about him was that he had done something dangerous in his military service. Pic must have told him facts about her. “This is my hometown. Grew up, graduated from high school, the whole nine yards. I came back to take care of my dad when he was sick and I’ve been here ever since. I guess you could say I sort of got stuck.”
“Watching you is like watching the pros. You’re wasting your ability in a podunk town like this Drinkwell.”
“Thank you for saying that. Actually, I do have a job offer from a larger school.”
“You should take it, ma’am.”
“I’m having a hard time deciding to stay or go. I’ve got a couple of girls I’ve been grooming to get scholarships.”
“Lucky girls. And Mr. Lockhart’s lucky to have you in his life. Hope he appreciates that.”
She stopped and looked up at him. He was a good-looking guy. He was almost as tall as Pic. She had rarely seen him without sunglasses, but she knew he had blue eyes like Pic’s, had calculated he was about Pic’s age. For the first time, she wondered if he were single. “Can you tell me where Pic has been?”
“Yes, ma’am. Until a few days ago, he was out at an area called Crowfoot overseeing some cowboys rounding up cattle.”
That sounded like a rehearsed answer. “I meant the last few days.”
“I don’t know that, ma’am.”
“Did one of your people go to Crowfoot with him?”
He opened the door to her backseat and placed her gym bag on the seat. “Marcus was with him, ma’am and a couple of our guys. Mr. Lockhart took an extra horse. Marcus knows how to ride a horse if he has to.”
Small relief. She nodded. “Thank you.”
He moved a few steps, opened the driver’s door for her and she scooted behind the wheel. As he closed the door, he lifted his sunglasses, smiled and said, “Drive safely.”
Oh, my gosh! Male attention. The first she’d had outside of Pic’s for a very long time. Was Chris attracte
d to her? Her spirits felt a little boost. She had an urge to straighten her hair, wished she were wearing makeup.
She stopped off at the grocery store and picked up a few needed items. Chris trailed along with her without his sunglasses. More than one woman gave them a long look. She had read about some of the military types having groupies. Was he one of those guys?
At home in her driveway, just as she was stepping out of the car, a florist’s delivery van with a Fort Worth address on the door pulled in behind her. Instantly, Chris’s black SUV came to a stop behind it with a squeak of tires and he exited, his hand on his belt where she knew he carried a pistol inside his waistband just like Pic did. For a fleeting second, she thought about how she used to be afraid of armed men. Nowadays, almost every man she knew carried. Since school violence had become a campus concern, a few teachers carried guns. Even Gail was contemplating taking gun-owner classes and shopping for a small weapon to carry in her purse.
The van’s driver looked out at Chris wide-eyed, as if a mad dog confronted him. Indeed Chris was a dangerous-looking guy. With mirrored sunglasses that hid his eyes, a short-sleeved polo shirt that showed his wide shoulders and heavily muscled arms, he looked as if he could break a skinny florist delivery truck driver in half. Before he reached the driver, Amanda hurried to the van and said, “It’s okay. You can get out. What are you delivering?”
The driver eased the door open and cautiously stepped down, sidled his way alongside the van to the backend and opened the double-doors, keeping a wary eye on Chris. He pulled out a tall vase holding the most incredible roses she had ever seen. Blood red, perfectly shaped, barely-opened buds. Their fragrance permeated the air around her. She quickly counted two dozen. Adrenaline shot through her and her heartbeat went wild. Of course they were from Pic. Who else did she know who could afford such an extravagant bouquet?
She swallowed the tears that sprang to her throat and eyes. “Thank you,” she said, accepting the flowers with trembling hands.
Chris climbed back into his SUV and backed up, allowing the van to leave the driveway. Then he parked in the driveway himself and got out. “Sorry, ma’am, but no way to tell if that delivery van was a ruse. Pretty flowers. Those from Mr. Lockhart?”
Him confronting the florist truck driver was uncalled for. She looked up at him. “I’m sorry, Chris, but I just don’t think I’m in any danger. As you might or might not know, I’m no longer a part of the Lockhart group. I’m giving you and your partner permission to stop guarding me.”
“Can’t do that, ma’am. You’re not the one who hired me or set my agenda. And I haven’t been informed that you’re not a part of the group we’re protecting. Besides, that bouquet doesn’t look like you’ve been extracted from the group. Would you like for me to carry those for you?”
His words had left her unable to speak without bawling. She shook her head, hanging onto the vase more tightly.
Inside the house, she set the roses in the middle of her small dining table. They almost touched the light fixture that hung over the table. She plucked the card from the greenery and read the note:
I’LL BE IN TOWN AT 2. HOPE YOU’RE GONNA BE HOME. PIC.
She sank to a chair, overwhelmed and worn out by the emotional roller coaster she had been riding for more than a week. Chris’s words came to her: …Until a few days ago, he was out at an area called Crowfoot overseeing some cowboys rounding up cattle….
So he had been back at the Double-Barrel for a few days. He’d had time to call her. He could have sent her a text. He had chosen not to communicate. She thought about the many times he had chosen to do something else rather than spend time with her. For two and a half years she had been available at his beck and call and at his convenience. Being a take-charge kind of man who had more than his share of self-confidence, he had always determined their schedule and activities.
Stop it, Amanda! You’re being as juvenile as your teenage students.
She glanced up and caught the time on the oven clock. After one o’clock. She was a mess. Bad hair, no makeup. Running shorts and a holey T-shirt. A part of her had an urge to dash to the bathroom and try to put herself together.
Instead, she dug her cell phone out of her purse to send Pic a text. She typed in a few letters, then deleted the message. Started over. Deleted the second message. Damn. She had to come to grips with her emotions. But first, she had to figure out what they were.
Well, she had to see him. After waiting anxiously for his call, she was thrilled to hear from him. After a few beats, she texted him back:
FLOWERS R BEAUTIFUL. THANK U. I WILL BE HOME. A.
And her dining table was where she still sat at precisely two o’clock when through the storm door, she saw him step up onto her porch. He was dressed in ironed and creased khakis, a starched white button-down and boots, his very definition of being dressed up, even if the temperature was a hundred and ten. A frisson snaked up her spine and scrambled her brain worse than it already was.
She opened the door and let him in. She was so glad to see him she had a hard time holding back from climbing his body. He lifted off his hat and set it on its crown on the table at one end of the sofa, where he always set it. His blue, blue eyes held a troubled expression, but he smiled down at her. “How ya been?”
She strained to make her voice sound normal. “Fine. How have you been?”
“Good.”
But to someone who knew him as well as she did, his eyes said otherwise. In a perverse way, that pleased her. “That’s good, right?”
He nodded and stood there, his hands resting on his hips as he looked around the room at the cardboard boxes. His gaze came back to her face. “You’re packing?”
“Yes, I—”
“Amanda, can we sit down a minute?”
Those tears had come back into her throat in a mushy ball. She cleared her throat. “Uh, of course.” She turned and led the way toward the kitchen. She gestured toward the roses in the middle of the table. “Those are beautiful flowers, Pic. You had them delivered from Fort Worth?”
She almost mentioned the cost of that, but bit her tongue. This tête-à-tête wasn’t their usual fun-filled banter.
He shrugged. “Not much of a flower shop in Drinkwell.”
Had he been in Fort Worth since his return from Crowfoot. Was that why he hadn’t called? “Would you like something to drink? A beer?” she asked stiffly.
“Little early for me,” he said.
She knew that. Serious drinkers, Pic and his brothers were not. She nervously lifted a glass out of the cupboard, then turned to the refrigerator and fumbled with the ice maker for ice cubes. As she filled her glass with tea, she looked at him. “Do you want some tea?”
“No, thanks.” He dragged a chair back from her dining table and eased down to the seat. His size dwarfed her small table and chairs. He looked as if he were sitting on doll furniture. “Can you sit down with me a minute?”
She carried her own glass to the table and took the chair adjacent to him. “I was sorry to hear about the homeplace. Both Chris and Gail told me something about it, but I haven’t heard the details.”
He rested an elbow on the table, the opposite hand braced on his thigh. “Not much to tell. Everything inside was pretty much trashed. White paint all over. A damn shame. I sent a crew down there to clean it out and haul everything off. Don’t know yet what we’re gonna do about the paint.”
“Oh, my gosh. Who would do such a thing? Was that beautiful quilt your mom made still on the bed?”
“Torn all to pieces, along with the mattress. Remember that little red woodstove that was in the corner?”
“The one you thought was so cute?”
He nodded. “They stole it.”
Looking into his troubled eyes, she slowly shook her head. “Is it true that you went down into the cistern to get a dead calf?”
His chin ducked and he gave a nervous laugh. “Yeah. You probably can’t believe I did that.”
“Oh,
Pic. You must have been so scared.”
“Well….I don’t want to admit it to everybody I know, but I’ll tell you. I was scared shitless. I don’t ever want to do something like that again. But it had to be done. I got the calf out. Made Dad happy. He thinks I’m a hero. Now I’ve got to get a scientist down from Fort Worth to help me figure out how to purify the water again.”
“Is the water so important? If you removed the gutters from around the house, wouldn’t the cistern eventually dry up?
“It’s not that important to me and for sure not to Drake. He thought we oughtta take a bulldozer to the whole cistern and fill in the hole. But Dad wants it back like it was.”
“Did Drake help you?”
“He helped me get the calf out, yeah.”
Amanda’s brow tented. Drake was as much afraid of water as Pic was. “Oh, no. He was down in the cistern, too?”
“God, no. There was barely room for me down there. One thing I learned is I’m not only scared of water, I might be scared of tight places.”
“My God, Pic, that must have been horrible for both of you.”
Pic chuckled. “Believe it or not, my tough big brother was more scared than I was. He stayed up top and talked me through it, brave man that he is.”
For the first time, she found a chuckle, too. “Where were Troy and your dad?
“Dad was there. Don’t know where Troy was. He took off before we ever left the picnic.”
“What an awful thing to do, to kill a poor calf just to be mean. Does anyone have any clues at all?”
“Blake says at least two stout men. Maybe three. It was a spring calf, so it weighed about five hundred pounds. Unless he was Goliath, one guy couldn’t have gotten that much dead weight up off the ground and over the edge of the cistern without help. There wasn’t any evidence that equipment was used. We had to use the wench truck to hoist it out.”