by Arlene James
“Scrubbing the shower equates to picking up after yourself?” Dale queried skeptically.
Merrily rolled her eyes. “It does when I’m the one who got the shower dirty to begin with.”
Dale dropped a look on Royce. “Women are so strange.”
“Some are stranger than others,” Royce said. He looked at her and added, “Some are so delicious you don’t care whether you ever understand them or not.”
Merrily bent down and kissed the top of Royce’s head, noticing that the tips of his ears were slightly sunburned. He caught her by the wrist and pulled her down onto the chaise next to him.
Dale sighed and parked himself in the chair. “I must be doing something wrong.”
“Oh, there’s a girl out there for you somewhere,” Merrily predicted. “You just haven’t found her yet.”
“Either that or someone else found her first,” Dale muttered.
“Pessimist,” Merrily accused.
“It’ll happen when you least expect it,” Royce counseled. “In the meantime, it would help if you’d quit trying to steal my girl.” He folded his arm around Merrily’s neck and dragged her head closer for a quick, but not too quick, kiss.
“Got you worried, have I?” Dale teased.
“I’ve been worried about you for a long, long time,” Royce drawled, turning his face up to the sun again.
Merrily laid her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes. The evening sun blanketed them with muted-yellow light and warm peace. It was the perfect time of the year for sitting on the deck and soaking up some rays. Warm but not hot, the air felt soft and substantial on her skin. Soon it would grow crisp as the days cooled and drew deeper into autumn. Would she cuddle here in the chaise on the deck with Royce then?
“Well, for once in a long, long time, I’m not worried about you,” Dale was saying to Royce.
Royce and Merrily both lifted their heads and looked at him. He sat there grinning like an idiot, staring at the two of them. Royce tipped up his shades and wryly teased, “Why, Dale, I didn’t know you cared.”
Dale ignored that and said, “As much as I hate to say it, you two are perfect together. You know that, don’t you?”
Merrily traded a look with Royce, who then dropped his glasses back in place and said, “You’re certifiable, but you do have your moments of brilliance.”
“Of course, your mother doesn’t see it that way,” Dale said pointedly.
Merrily groaned in concert with Royce. “My parents deigned to visit again day before yesterday,” Royce said, “and after Mother made her usual snippy, snide remarks about Merrily, I sort of got fed up.”
“What he means is that he flaunted our relationship,” Merrily added, quoting, “’Darlin’, angel, sweetheart, baby doll.’ I almost clobbered him over that one. By the time they left, Katherine was livid and Marvin goggle-eyed. I’m sure his mother thinks I’m a gold digger now.”
Royce looked at Dale and surmised, “Mother called you.”
Dale chuckled happily. “Fit to be tied.”
Royce cursed under his breath. Merrily whacked him lightly for it. “It’s your own fault.”
“Well, she made me mad, calling you ‘that unfortunate child’ and ‘girl.’ I wanted to strangle her.”
“Instead you waved me under her nose like a red flag,” Merrily pointed out. “Honestly, if her snide remarks don’t bother me, why do they bother you?”
“They just do,” he grumbled. “She’s so damned shallow that if she was a river we’d pave her over.” Dale clapped his hands and hooted with glee. “What’d you say to her, anyway?” Royce wanted to know.
“Told her I was cheesed off that you’d beat me out or words to that effect.”
“Oh, great!” Merrily huffed. “I’m sure that elevated me in her opinion.”
“Sugar, for that to happen you’d have to learn to kiss butt in the same league as Pamela,” Dale told her dryly.
“Surely she doesn’t approve of Pamela,” Merrily scoffed.
“Why, according to my mother it’s bad form to get upset about little things like infidelity, threats and abuse,” Royce said, the lightness of his tone belied by the underlying edge. “Divorce is so tacky, and of course once these things are in the public record one can never quite live them down again. Better to suffer in silence and put up a good front. After all, Pamela looks the part.”
“And I do not,” Merrily muttered, truly insulted now. “I don’t think I like your mother very much.”
“Angel, that makes two of us.”
“Three,” Dale said, holding up the requisite number of fingers.
“But I’m crazy about you,” Royce told her silkily.
“Two,” Dale announced, putting down one finger.
Merrily laughed and said, “I think you’ve both had too much sun.” That reminded her of her earlier observation, and she switched her gaze to Royce, adding, “By the way, darling, the tops of your ears are turning red.”
Royce reached up with his left hand to feel the top of one ear. “No wonder they’ve started burning. I thought it was just Dale’s envy boiling over.”
“Possible,” Dale teased dryly.
Merrily shook her head and got to her feet, saying to Dale, “Take him inside, will you? I want to take the trash down before I start dinner.”
“Oh, I’ll take down the trash for you,” Dale offered, quickly popping up out of his chair, but Merrily waved him off and started for the top of the stairs.
“No, no, you’re wearing a business suit,” she told Dale. “I’ll take care of it. I won’t be a minute, and when I’m done I’ll put together some dinner.”
“Yes!” Dale rubbed his hands together eagerly.
“Is there no one else who will feed you?” Royce gibed as he grabbed hold of Dale’s arm and pulled himself up.
“Sure,” Dale said, “but you have the best-looking cook.”
Chuckling, Merrily went on her way. She lifted the black garbage bag by the top with one hand and opened the gate at the head of the stairs with the other before starting down to the back driveway below. Only moderately heavy, the bag contained mostly nonrecyclable paper products, the odd tin can, coffee grounds and few food scraps not suitable for the garbage disposal, but Merrily took her time, nevertheless. Whenever she did this, which was every few days, she thought about Royce falling down these same stairs, and a shiver ran up her spine.
She reached the bottom of the stairs and turned toward the large refuse container tucked out of sight beneath the stairwell. Lifting the hinged rubber top with one hand, she dropped the black plastic bag on top of the two others already deposited there. Trash pickup was scheduled for the next morning. As she straightened and let the lid fall again, movement on the edge of her peripheral vision made her turn her head in that direction. Gasping, she stepped back just as Pamela reached out and clamped a hand around her wrist.
“I want to talk to you.”
Merrily yanked her arm away, mind racing. “You’d better not let Royce see you here.”
Dressed from her chin to her running shoes in form-hugging, gray knit athletic apparel, Pamela still managed to look chic and stylish. In jeans, canvas shoes and a T-shirt tucked in at the waist, Merrily felt positively grungy by comparison. Pamela widened her stance.
“I said, I want to talk to you.”
“You have the telephone number.”
“What I have to say needs to be said face-to-face.”
Merrily folded her arms. “So say it already. I have to start dinner.”
Pamela mimicked her gesture, emphasizing the hefty proportion of her bust, and walked in a circle around Merrily. “You’ll never hold his interest.”
Pamela’s tone left no doubt that she knew of the affair, and once again a chill kissed Merrily’s spine, but she maintained her composure. “Okay. Anything else?”
“What’s he told you?” Pamela abruptly demanded.
“About?”
“Don’t be coy with me,
Nurse Gage. I know where you live.”
“Is that a threat?”
“You don’t want to underestimate me, little nurse. I’ve spoken to your brothers, you know.”
“And that obviously did you a lot of good.”
“I also spoke to your supervisor at the hospital.”
Anger at the other woman’s high-handedness warred with humor at the absurdity of her assumptions, but Merrily refused to show either to Pamela. “Is there a point to this conversation, or is this just about sizing up the competition?”
The smooth beauty of Pamela’s face abruptly contorted into a mask of malice. “You dare put yourself on the same plane with me?” She raked her gaze up and down Merrily in disdain. “You are nothing and no one, without enough sex appeal to so much as rate a second look from the average male.”
“Is that so?” Merrily retorted smugly. “Funny, Royce doesn’t seem to agree with you.”
Anger flared white-hot in Pamela’s gold-dominated hazel eyes, but the next instant they had gone as cold as the metal itself. “Don’t delude yourself. Sex means nothing. It’s an itch that’s easily scratched. You’re convenient for Royce, too convenient, but that’s all it is.”
“If that were so,” Merrily reasoned, desperately trying to hide her despair, “you wouldn’t be here.”
“On the contrary,” Pamela rebutted smoothly. “That’s precisely why I am here. I want you out of this house.”
“Which proves that you just can’t stand the competition,” Merrily said.
“I want you gone because you’re a convenience to him,” Pamela insisted, “a convenience he doesn’t deserve.”
“And who appointed you his judge and jury?” Merrily wanted to know.
“He did,” Pamela answered, “when he married me.”
“He divorced you, too.”
Pamela took a menacing step forward. “Do you think that gets him off the hook? He deserves to pay for what he’s done to me!”
“For what he’s done to you?” Merrily scoffed. “He didn’t push you down the stairs!”
“So? He’s hurt me in other ways. Do you know how many doors closed to me when I ceased to be his wife? People who used to be my friends turned their backs on me—people who matter.”
“People whose names get mentioned in the society pages, you mean,” Merrily sneered, “people as vacuous and insincere as you and Kathryn.”
“People with money!” Pamela exclaimed. “You wouldn’t know what it’s like to live as they do. You can’t even imagine it because you’re so far beneath them.”
“And you’re not?”
“I was meant for that world,” Pamela declared, the fervency in her eyes bordering on the fanatical.
“And being a Lawler, Royce was your ticket in, wasn’t he? Well, you should’ve thought of that before you cheated on him.”
“It was just sex!” Pamela snapped.
“Oh, really? All those people who supposedly turned their backs on you don’t seem to think so.”
“It wasn’t the affair!” Pamela contended hotly. “It was the divorce! People like that, people like us, aren’t bound by the same silly conventions as the rest of you. We’re beyond that.”
“Guess not,” Merrily rebutted succinctly.
“And whose fault is that?” Pamela hissed. “He cost me everything!”
“You did that to yourself!”
Pamela lifted her fists to her temples in frustration. “What I did shouldn’t have mattered! Love is unconditional!”
“That works both ways,” Merrily pointed out.
“I loved him!” Pamela exclaimed. “He’s everything I ever wanted, wealthy, handsome and from one of the best families in Texas. He’s invited to all the best parties, all the best homes. You should see the way they fawn over him. And he couldn’t care less!”
“But you do,” Merrily muttered, finally understanding the depth of Pamela’s distorted reasoning. In truth, it bordered on insanity. “You can’t understand that a man like Royce would never place value on something as shallow as that.”
“Shallow?” Pamela sneered. “How would you know? I bet you were one of those girls around school that hardly anybody even noticed. I was the most popular girl in high school. I was the most popular girl in college! I should’ve been the most popular girl in San Antonio!”
“Don’t you see that those people aren’t worth agonizing over?” Merrily asked. “They only accepted you because you were married to a Lawler.”
“As I was meant to be!” Pamela insisted. “Don’t you get it? He ruined it for me. Well, I warned him. He’ll either fix it, or he’ll pay.”
“He’ll never take you back,” Merrily said bluntly.
Pamela’s face hardened. “Then he’ll pay,” she gritted out.
Frustrated, Merrily threw up her arms. “You’ll only wind up hurting yourself. What are you going to do? Arrange another accident for him?”
Pamela reacted just as Merrily had always known she would, her eyes growing wide with alarm, perfect face paling. The next instant, however, a self-satisfied confidence replaced the flash of fear. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Come off it,” Merrily retorted. “We both know you pushed Royce and that Tammy saw you do it.”
To Merrily’s dismay, Pamela put her head back and laughed. “My, my, you are as dumb as you look.”
Shaken, Merrily snapped, “Even if Royce won’t let her testify against you, one day it will come out!”
“My daughter,” Pamela stated with chilling confidence, “will never tell anyone what happened that night.”
It seemed incomprehensible to Merrily that Tammy would not eventually feel compelled to tell what she knew, but she sensed that Pamela believed wholeheartedly her daughter would never betray her. “And why is that?” she wondered aloud.
Pamela turned sly. “Because she understands how dangerous her father is, of course.”
“Royce isn’t dangerous.”
“You’ve no idea what he’s capable of,” Pamela insisted, eyes slitting. “If Tammy wasn’t afraid, she could have him locked up for the rest of his life.”
“That’s a lie!”
“Is it?” Pamela asked coyly. “If a little girl said her daddy did something bad, wouldn’t you believe her?”
Merrily felt physically ill. “Tammy would never say such a thing.”
“She will if I tell her to.”
Merrily shook her head, suddenly very afraid for Royce. “You’re sick. You know that, don’t you? You need help.”
“No!” Pamela cried. “Don’t say that!”
Merrily backed up a step, whispering, “You should be in a hospital.”
“No-o-o!” Pamela suddenly flew at her. Nails raked Merrily’s cheek and arm. “No! No!” She yanked at Merrily’s hair, punched and kicked. Merrily threw up her arms, shielding herself as best she could, momentarily stunned. She remembered what Royce had said about Pamela attacking him and how he’d dared not fight back, but no such constraint applied to Merrily. Suddenly all her rage at the unfairness of what Royce and his children and now she herself suffered at the hands of this woman boiled over. She hadn’t grown up the baby sister of three older brothers for nothing, by golly.
Hooking one foot behind Pamela’s heel, Merrily shoved the flailing woman backward. Pamela went down like a sack a grain, but she flew up again, enraged, and ran smack into Merrily’s fist. The blow merely glanced off Pam’s shoulder, but it gave Merrily the chance to grab Pam’s wrist, twist under her arm and flip the larger woman over her back just as she’d done her brothers countless times before they’d all grown too big to tussle. Pamela landed with a grunt and lay stunned. Merrily placed a foot square in the middle of her flat stomach and held her down. Bending over her, fists clenched, she laid down the law, just as she had once done to a teenage Jody when he’d smacked around Lane for no good reason she could see.
“Now you listen, and you listen good,” she snarled, determined
to penetrate Pamela’s madness, “if anything, and I mean anything, the least harmful ever again happens to Royce or either of those kids, for that matter, I’ll have you put away.”
“Y-you can’t do that!”
“Oh, yes, I can,” Merrily bluffed. “You’re not dealing with a man constrained by his own decency or a confused, frightened child now. I can give as good as I get, and I know people, doctors, who can put you away, have you committed. Do you understand me?” Pamela just glared at her, but the fear in her eyes was answer enough for Merrily. Stepping over the woman, Merrily moved a safe distance away.
Pamela scrambled up. “You don’t know anything,” she whispered, as if trying to convince herself of that.
Suddenly Dale called out from above. “Merrily? What’s taking so long?”
Pamela ran, yelling over her shoulder, “You don’t know anything!”
“Merrily!” Dale cried urgently, pounding down the stairs.
“I know enough,” Merrily muttered at Pamela’s retreating back. She lifted a hand to her burning cheek just as Dale skidded to a halt next to her. He took one look at her disheveled hair and yanked her protectively into his arms.
“I heard Pam. Where is she?”
“Gone.”
The tires of a car screeched on pavement in the distance, punctuating Merrily’s assertion. Dale turned her face up to the light. There at the foot of the hill, with the sun sinking behind the horizon, the shadows had deepened considerably over the past moments but not enough, apparently, to obscure her injury.
“You’re hurt!”
Merrily glanced at her arm. Angry, red welts streaked down her skin. Blood flecked her sleeve. “It’s looks worse than it is,” she muttered, “but that’s good enough.” Looking up at him, she said firmly, “Pamela attacked me. I want to press charges. I’ve seen it done with less evidence than this.”
Dale examined her arm, concern furrowing his brow. Finally he looked at her. “What happened?”
“She was waiting for me when I came down with the trash. We argued, and she attacked me. She’s everything you said she was. You were both right, you and Royce. She’s crazy, and she’ll do anything to hurt him—unless we stop her.”