Secrets in the Sand

by Carolyn Brown

  “Did I ask you to marry me?” She looked up at him. “Go on to the Dairy Queen where all you popular kids hang out. I wouldn’t want you to miss out on being with Melissa and the rest of your friends. Forget all about us. About everything we did this summer. Go have a happy life,” she had said in a voice just barely above a whisper, hoarse with emotion.

  “Don’t you tell anyone that I got you pregnant.” Clancy’s eyes had flashed anger and the deep cleft in his chin had quivered. He’d raked his hand through his dark-brown hair, and he hadn’t known whether to walk away or sit down and talk some more.

  “I’ll tell whoever I want.” Angela had turned her back on him.

  “I’ve got five hundred dollars of my graduation money left. I’ll give it to you for an abortion,” he had offered.

  “Just go away, Clancy. I don’t know why I ever thought I loved you, anyway. It’s a cinch you never did love me.” She stood up and grabbed her shorts.

  “Sit down,” Clancy had said in a desperate tone. “Listen to me. There’s a solution. Bob got Janie pregnant last year and they told everyone they were going to the mall in Oklahoma City and to the movies, and then he was taking her to her girlfriend’s house for the night. They got a motel room and stayed in it after the abortion. Nothing bad happened.”

  Angela buttoned her shorts and sat down beside him. She put her feet in the water and watched the tiny fish nibble on her polished red toenails. “I didn’t do this on purpose,” she declared.

  “Don’t worry about it.” He sighed. “My checkbook is in the car.” He nodded toward the Camaro his parents had given him for graduation. “I suppose you can get someone to take you.”

  “Forget it.”

  “What are you going to do?” he asked. “Maybe you could marry Billy Joe Summers. You know he’s been in love with you since we were little kids,” he said sarcastically.

  “I’m going home,” she said as she got to her feet again. “I haven’t really been in love with you, Clancy. I was in love with the boy I thought you were. Don’t worry about this baby. Don’t let the thought of it ever cross your mind again. It’s not yours… It’s mine, and I’ll take care of it. Just go on home.”

  “Oh hell, Angela, use your brain. You’re smart even if you are—”

  “What?” She had scowled at him. “Poor? Well, that didn’t stop you from kissing me and making love with me all summer, did it? I’ve been a complete fool about you, Clancy. Someday you’re going to look back and think about tonight, though. And I hope your heart hurts when you do. I hope it aches just like mine is aching right now. But between now and then, don’t ever think about this baby we made again.” Angela walked away from him without looking back.

  “Don’t worry, honey,” Granny had told her that night when she’d gone home crying. “He’s a rich kid and he’s not about to do right by you. He’ll marry some stuck-up girl when he’s had his fun and gets ready to settle down. We’ll take care of ourselves. We’ll be movin’ tomorrow just like we planned, and you’re goin’ to college this fall on that grant money you got. Things look tough tonight, but it’ll work out, Angela. Stop your weepin’ and learn your lessons.”

  “But I love him, Granny,” she had sobbed.

  “I hope you do,” her grandmother snorted. “Be a terrible thing if you didn’t. But cryin’ ain’t goin’ to make anything different. We’ll manage and nobody will ever know.”

  Angel shook her head, clearing the memories, and threw back the covers. She crawled out of bed, threw the covers over the pillows, and picked out an old pair of jeans from the closet. She wiggled down into them and jerked a T-shirt over her head. She pulled her curls up into a ponytail, put on a pair of sneakers, and was ready.

  “Got a guest,” Hilda said when she reached the kitchen. The housekeeper smiled in an odd way, and Angel wondered what had happened while she’d been sleeping.

  “Where?” Angel asked.

  “Out there on the swing. Asleep. Lot of man to be curled up like that. I told him to get out of here when I come in to work, but he said you knew he was there, and he wasn’t leavin’ until you talked to him. So I just ignored him. He’s been asleep about two hours. Just sat there swinging most of the mornin’. He’s been out there for hours,” Hilda said.

  “Clancy is a determined man, all right.” Angel smiled.

  “Oh,” Hilda said. “So that’s Clancy Morgan out there, is it? You should kick him off that swing and tell him to go to hell. I wouldn’t give that man the sweat from my brow if he was dyin’ of thirst.” Hilda fumed as she picked up her broom and started toward the fireplace to sweep the flagstone in front of it.

  “See you later. I’m headed to work. When he wakes up, tell him that I changed my mind. I don’t want to talk,” Angel whispered and eased out the back door.

  ***

  Hilda counted to ten slowly, then went out to the front porch where Clancy was snoring loudly on the porch swing. So, this was the sorry bastard who’d caused her Angel to be single at the age of twenty-eight…who’d made her cry when she was younger, and who’d upset her today. He wasn’t a bad-looking fellow—tall, well-built, dark hair, dark stubble starting to show on his face where he needed to shave.

  Hilda loved Angel like a daughter, and it broke her heart to see her upset, especially on Sunday afternoons when she came home from her precious baby son’s grave. She hooked the broom handle in the back of the swing and shoved with all her might.

  One minute Clancy was dreaming of having the sweet angel he used to know in his arms beside the creek bank, and the next he was flying across the porch, grabbing at the air for something to hold on to. Then his eyes sprang open just in time to see the wooden floor as he landed facedown.

  “Why did you do that?” he sputtered as he sat up.

  “Me?” Hilda looked shocked.

  The old green pickup he remembered from high school roared around the end of the house and out onto the dirt road headed west. “Where’s she going?” He sat up, checking his nose to see if it was bleeding.

  “I wouldn’t know, you dirty scoundrel. She said to tell you that she’d changed her mind and she doesn’t want to talk. You’d best haul your butt on out to that fancy car of yours and get out of here.”

  “Kept my promise,” Hilda spoke to herself as she watched him leave.

  Chapter 5

  “Good mornin’,” Patty greeted Angel when she opened the door to her office. “Have a good weekend?” She tossed her long, straight hair over her shoulder and opened another letter with a silver dagger.

  “Had a helluva weekend.” Angel took her sunglasses off, revealing red and swollen eyes. “I’ve cried buckets and buckets, and Hilda has used every cuss word she knows.”

  “What happened?” Patty’s brown eyes were round as saucers.

  “Call the rest of the girls for a meeting in my office,” Angel said, adding, “Just us, not the rest of the board.” She opened the heavy double doors into her private office and poured steaming hot coffee into a mug with the Conrad Oil Enterprises logo on the side. Bless Patty’s heart, she was more than the best executive assistant in the world. She was also a good friend.

  “Okay,” the five of them said in unison as they sat down around the table. “What happened?”

  “He followed me to the cemetery”—Angel leaned back and pinched the bridge of her nose with her finger and thumb—“and now he knows everything,” she told them. “I should have closure, but I don’t. I spent the whole weekend crying my stupid eyes out.”

  Angel looked around the table at the faithful friends who had stood by her all these years. They had come a long way since she’d met Allie in the university library ten years ago. Angel had been five months pregnant with Clancy’s baby and working on a geology assignment. The two young women became instant friends. Before long, Allie had introduced her to the rest of the gang, and every one of them
had cried with Angel when the baby was stillborn.

  “Damn him!” Mindy swore. “Just when I thought I had you on the right track. Just when you were starting to do some serious dating. Why did he have to come back in the picture now? Lord, we haven’t got time for this. We’ve got a wedding to plan for Bonnie and a divorce for me to get through, and Lord knows Susan is going to wake up someday and say yes to Richie. Seems like he asks her to marry him at least once a week.”

  “And I’m pregnant,” Allie said bluntly. “Guess there ain’t no time like the present to announce it. We seem to be having a group confession.”

  “Well, hallelujah.” Angel smiled and her eyes began to twinkle. “I’m glad to hear that. You aren’t goin’ to quit work, are you?”

  “Hell no. Next to you, I’m the best damn geologist in the great state of Texas, and I’m not even thinkin’ about quitting work. I’ll strap my baby on my back and tell those drillers how to do their jobs, and my kid can grow up knowing everything there is to know about oil wells,” she said. “But what are you goin’ to do if he comes back again? He knows where you live and where your company is,” Allie said.

  “I don’t know. I thought it was all behind me. I thought I could go back to that alumni banquet, strut my stuff, show off the band, and leave feeling fine, but it didn’t work that way. The minute I saw him, my insides turned to jelly and that old ache was right back in my heart,” Angel told them. “I just wanted you all to know the situation up front. One part of me still wants to kiss him, and the other part wants to watch him die a slow and gruesome death.”

  “If you want to watch him die, I won’t let him past my part of the building if he shows his face here.” Susan gave her a thumbs-up. “Don’t worry. First office is my territory. If he gets past me and my big old double-barreled shotgun, then Mindy can head him off at the pass.”

  “Sure.” Mindy nodded. “I’m in a bad situation. You know, this divorce stuff is for the birds. I’ve decided sex is a misdemeanor. The more I miss, de meaner I get. Clancy Morgan better not try to sweet-talk his way past my office, or he’ll find out he’s dealin’ with PMS and abstinence at the same time. Don’t worry, we’ll toss him out of the second-floor window on his handsome face, and then your insides won’t turn to jelly when you look at him.”

  Angel laughed and shook her head. The whole Clancy Morgan thing had seemed like such a big mountain this morning, but the girls were whittling it down to the molehill that it really was. “You’re good for me,” she said. “Guess we better dry our tears and run this oil business now. The big boys would just love to see me blubbering over a lost love, wouldn’t they? They said I’d never make it in a man’s world, but I’ve got you all. Six of us can outdo the work of a hundred men.”

  “Hell, one of us can outdo that many,” Patty swore. “We’ll manage, Angel. We’ve lived through marriages and rumors of marriages, war and peace, and I betcha this don’t keep the sun from coming up either.” Angel went back to her office and turned on her computer. It was time to get out of the rut she’d allowed herself to wallow in for the past two days and to get back to work. That’s what she needed—good, complicated, exhausting work to erase Clancy Morgan’s face from her mind.

  By noon, she’d argued with the board of directors, had a meeting with Mindy concerning the wording on a multimillion-dollar contract, and met with Susan about advertising in The Oklahoman. The phone rang, and Patty answered, “Conrad Oil Enterprises. May I help you?”

  “Whoops.” She put her hand over the receiver and pressed the intercom button into Angel’s office. “Guess Susan is out to lunch. Seems like the monster has gotten past her double-barreled shotgun.”

  “What?” Angel whispered back.

  “It’s Clancy on the phone,” Patty said. “Want me to tell him to drop dead or that I’m putting a contract out on his hide? How about I tell him you’ve left for a month on your honeymoon?”

  “I’ll talk to him,” Angel said. “I hope he’s been as miserable as I have.”

  “Yeah, for a whole weekend,” Patty said sarcastically. “That isn’t ten years, you know.”

  Angel frowned at Patty and shut the door between their offices.

  “Hello, Clancy. You do realize that this is called stalking. Am I going to have to put a restraining order on you?”

  “Angela?” His voice sounded weary.

  “Yes, this is Angel,” she said.

  “I owe you one hell of an apology. I’m so sorry. I’m miserable from it all, and I don’t even know what to say. I’ve been a jackass and there’s no excuse for what I did back then. I was just a scared kid and a jerk, and I deserve anything that you want to heap on me…”

  “Am I supposed to forgive you?” she asked.

  “I don’t deserve your forgiveness, Angela,” he said in a broken voice. “I don’t deserve anything from you. I was prepared to meet a little kid that might look like me, or for you to tell me you’d given it away to a couple who couldn’t have children. I would like to talk to you in person, and then I promise I’ll get out of your life and never bother you again.”

  “Is that a real promise or one of those like you used to make?” she asked.

  “It’s real, and it’s coming from a broken heart,” he said. “Can I meet you or pick you up for dinner?”

  “Sure,” she said. “You can pick me up right here in my office at five o’clock this afternoon. But you’ll have to be seen with me in public this time, since I don’t think we’ve got time to go to Pennington Creek like we used to.”

  “I’ll be there,” he said tersely.

  She punched the intercom and said, “Patty, tell Susan and all the girls to hold their fire. Clancy is coming at five o’clock, and I don’t want a single shot in him when he gets to my office. I don’t think even Hilda could get the blood out of these carpets. When he walks in, Susan is to meet him at the door and take him back down the hall… Mindy gets him there, and you know the rest. I want him to see every office and talk to every one of us before he gets up here. We’re going to settle this thing, and somehow, I’m going to get him out of my life and my heart. When the sun comes up tomorrow, Clancy Morgan is going to be forgotten as far as I’m concerned.”

  Patty hid a smile. She’d be willing to bet her brand-new pickup truck against a wagonload of horse manure that by tomorrow Clancy would still be swaggering around looking like a million dollars, and by the end of the month, Angel would have a mended heart.

  ***

  At five o’clock, Clancy pushed the door open to the first floor, and one of the members of the band met him with a fake smile plastered on her face. “Welcome to Conrad Oil Enterprises, Incorporated. My name is Susan. I’m in charge of PR and advertising. Maybe you remember me from the alumni concert we gave last week. I play the fiddle.” She stuck out her hand and shook his firmly, hoping to intimidate him.

  “Who died and left this company to Angela?” he asked bluntly.

  “No one,” Susan said. “Follow me, please. Angel is a top-notch geologist, and she knows as much about the oil business as anyone. She majored in geology and minored in business, and she’s a hellcat on wheels when it comes to making deals. She played a hunch right out of college and drilled a well on the property she inherited from her grandmother. People all told her she was crazy. There wasn’t any oil in that part of the state. But she ignored them and bet every last cent she had on that hunch. It paid off, and then she invested the money wisely, and in a few months, she owned her own company. When the Texanna Red Oil Company wanted to move their base to Louisiana, they offered to sell this building to her, and she bought it.”

  “Hello, Mr. Morgan.” Mindy met him at the open door to her part of the building. “These are our directors’ and lawyers’ offices. Follow me, please. By the way, I want you to keep in mind that I could shoot you between the eyes and enjoy watching you die a slow and painful death,” she
said, in the same matter-of-fact tone she would’ve used to order a tuna-fish sandwich for lunch. “You’ve made Angel miserable and she’s my best friend.”

  “I realize that, Mindy,” he said. “Am I going to have to talk to everyone in Conrad Oil before I get to her?”

  “Yup. That’s the only way you get to the top in one piece and alive,” she said. “Angel takes care of us all, and we take care of her. So, you better watch your step or I’ll dream up some crazy lawsuit to bedevil you with,” she added sweetly.

  Clancy just nodded.

  “Hello, Clancy.” Allie met him at the top of the stairs on the second floor. “So, you’re the infamous rich boy who—”

  “Nice to meet you too.” He gritted his teeth. “This is ridiculous.”

  “But necessary,” Allie said firmly. “Shall we continue the tour? This is the geology department, where we decide when, if, and where to drill. Angel spends a lot of time here since she’s the only geologist in the whole state of Texas who has better intuition than I do. There’ve been times when my call would have netted us a million dollars’ worth of dry well. She’s got a sixth sense when it comes to drilling. Too bad she doesn’t have one when it comes to you.”

  He scowled but said nothing.

  “Clancy Morgan, I do believe.” Bonnie took over next. “I’m glad to finally meet you, and I think maybe I owe you a pat on the back. If you hadn’t been such a rat to Angel ten years ago, not one of us would be where we are today. She’s kept us together and we love her. So, say what you have to, then back out of her life.”

  “If I ever get to see her,” he said flatly. “I didn’t know I had to run the gauntlet to reach the top floor. I thought I’d just ask where she worked, get on an elevator, and find her office.”

  “Well, that’s what you get for depending on your own shallow thinking,” Bonnie said as she opened the door marked with a brass plaque that read ANGELA CONRAD, PRESIDENT. “Patty, he’s all yours,” she said.