Kitabı oku: «Hard-Headed Texan», sayfa 3

Antonia worried her lower lip with her teeth. There had been no way to keep her whereabouts completely secret, of course, unless she had completely cut off all ties with her family and friends back home. And just because Alan knew she had been going to A&M didn’t mean that he knew anything else about her. Texas was a huge place; he couldn’t know that she lived in this small town…except, of course, that over time, her mother would probably mention the peculiar name of the town in talking to her friends, and those people might mention it to someone else, and after a while, just like the information that she was in vet school at A&M, the fact of where she lived would be floating around in the circles in which Alan moved. Circles, she added bitterly to herself, that had obviously not ostracized Alan for committing the small and pardonable sin of abusing his wife.

“Dear, I think you worry too much about whether he knows where you are. I mean, the fact that he knew where you were in school and never bothered you should reassure you, I would think.”

“That’s true,” Antonia admitted. It had been four years since their divorce, and once she had moved away from Virginia, Alan had not tried to see her again. After all this time, he would not go to the trouble of tracking her down, she told herself. There was no reason to think that the caller this morning had been Alan. “No doubt you are right, Mother. Still, it makes me feel more secure, knowing that he doesn’t know where I live.”

“Well, I won’t tell him, Antonia,” Elizabeth said in a patient tone that was guaranteed to set Antonia’s teeth on edge. “Let’s talk about something more pleasant. What’s going on in your life?”

“I saved a foal’s life today, maybe the mother’s, too.” And I met a very handsome man, and he kissed me, and I felt as tingly as a schoolgirl, and I’m not sure what to do about it—if, indeed, there is anything to do.

“That’s nice, dear. It sounds quite rewarding.”

“It was.” Antonia felt guilty. Her mother was trying, after all. It wasn’t her fault that she didn’t understand her daughter. Perhaps she should confide in her mother about Daniel Sutton. Take the initiative to bring about a closer relationship.

At that moment there was a click, and Elizabeth said, with a note of relief in her voice, “Oh, there’s another call. I’m afraid I have to get off, Antonia. Faith Morton is supposed to be calling me with information about the June Gala.”

“Of course. I’m glad you called. Goodbye.”

Antonia hung up the phone and turned back to the table and her supper, no doubt cold by now. She found Mitzi crouched on the table, chowing down on the choicest bits of meat on the tray.

“Mitzi! Oh, well, I’m not hungry anymore anyway.” Antonia’s stomach was alive with nerves now. Talking about her ex-husband had a way of doing that to her.

She thought about the phone call that morning. It had the markings of one of Alan’s calls—jolting her from a sound sleep, the unnerving silence, the hang-up. But then, she reasoned, the same could be said of a dozen other kinds of calls, including a simple wrong number and embarrassed dialer. There wasn’t any reason to believe that it was Alan after all these years.

Still, she went to the kitchen door and checked its bolt, then continued around the house, checking each window and doorknob. She had forgotten to set the security system—one of her first acquisitions whenever she moved into a new place—and she punched in the keycode now, watching as the reassuring red light began to blink.

She went to the window of the living room, which looked out on the front yard. The blinds were closed, as they always were at night, but Antonia lifted the edge and looked out. The moon was full and cast a bright light across the scene, outlining trees and cars. Nothing moved.

For a long time she stood there, gazing into the darkness, thinking about the past, about how she had gotten here. About Alan.

Chapter 3

Marrying Alan Brent had been the first thing Antonia had done in her life that her mother had approved of wholeheartedly. Antonia had never fit into her parents’ country club world, no matter how much her mother had tried to mold her daughter in her own image. The only thing that Antonia enjoyed about her privileged upbringing was the riding. Horses and riding had long been a part of the “aristocratic” Virginia image. She started taking riding lessons when she was seven; riding was even part of the curriculum at the exclusive girls’ school she attended. From the moment Antonia was introduced to the huge creatures, she loved them and had no fear of them.

However, even her interest in this one aspect of her life was not enough to reassure her mother, for Antonia did not approach riding as a social activity at which one needed to be competent, but as a passion. Moreover, she was interested in everything about the animals, not just in learning the proper way to mount and ride. And the one thing concerning horses in which she had no interest was the local hunt club.

Before Antonia finished high school, she knew that she wanted to be a veterinarian and specialize in horses. For that reason she campaigned to go to a respected state university instead of the proper ladies’ college that her mother had attended. She had traded making her debut for attending the college she wanted, wading through the tedious balls, parties and teas for the requisite year. After that she had dived headlong into her schoolwork, concentrating on the science courses and academic standing that would get her into veterinary college. It had been her ambition to go to North Carolina State University for her professional training. Then she had met Alan Brent.

It had been during her junior year of college. He had been a senior, blond and blue-eyed, handsome, yet able to blend in with everyone else. She had met him at a fraternity party to which she had reluctantly gone with the son of one of her mother’s friends. Her date had gotten so thoroughly drunk that he had passed out under the table in the dining room of the fraternity house, and Alan had politely offered to drive her home. She had been amazed and delighted when he called her the next day and asked her out.

Though she had been told by more than one person that she had blossomed into a beauty, Antonia had never quite gotten rid of the inner feeling that she was the tall gawky wallflower she had been in middle school, when she had spent every tortuous cotillion seated against the wall, waiting for the night to end. Moreover, she was still accustomed to towering over many of the young men she met. Alan, however, was as tall as she, as long as she wore flats, and he was popular, poised and handsome. She was tongue-tied and terribly flattered by his attention, and by their fourth date, Antonia was hopelessly in love with him.

To her amazement, he seemed to be equally in love with her, and by the end of the year, they were engaged. Antonia’s mother was almost as delighted as Antonia. Alan Brent’s background was as blue-blooded as he appeared to be. The only fly in the ointment, as far as Antonia was concerned, was that Alan was planning to attend Washington and Lee law school. Faced with the prospect of spending the next three years apart from him, she agreed with Alan that the intelligent thing to do was for her to put off her postgraduate plans until he had finished law school. She would get a job while he attended law school, and once he had his degree, they would move to Raleigh so that she could attend vet school.

She sped up her college plans by going to summer school and taking a heavy load the next semester, enabling her to graduate in December. There had been a December wedding, and she had started to work.

Within two months, they had gotten into a fight, which had ended with Alan hitting her and walking out. Antonia, astounded and sick with unhappiness, had cried herself to sleep. The next day Alan had returned, full of remorse and promises. It was the stress of law school, he told her, and it would never happen again. Antonia, eager to believe him, agreed to stay.

That had begun the pattern of their married life. Confused, in love, and steeped in a lifelong habit of guilt for not being the child her parents thought she should be, Antonia had fallen into the classic syndrome of the abused wife. She blamed herself and made excuses for Alan; she hid her bruises and believed each promise that he would change. Living in a new town, she was cut off from her family and friends, and too embarrassed to reveal her problems to any of the people she met at work. They socialized primarily with Alan’s classmates, and even if she had felt close enough to any of his friends’ wives or girlfriends, she was far too loyal to Alan to reveal him in a bad light to those close to him.

She struggled on, growing more and more isolated, more and more unhappy. Concurrently, Alan’s violence escalated. Gradually, she grew to fear and hate him, but she felt trapped, even after they moved back to Richmond. Not surprisingly, when he graduated, Alan had decreed that it was counterproductive to move to Raleigh for Antonia to go to school. He had gotten a splendid offer from a Richmond firm, and, after all, Antonia did not need to get an advanced degree. He would be earning more than enough money for both of them; she wouldn’t even have to work anymore if she didn’t want to.

Finally, almost two years after they moved to Richmond, Alan had gotten drunk and beaten Antonia up and shoved her down the stairs, giving her a concussion, several cracked ribs and a broken arm. A sympathetic policewoman, unable to get a statement against Alan from Antonia, had given her the name of a psychologist specializing in domestic violence. Four months later, with the help of the psychologist, Antonia had left Alan and filed for divorce.

When she left him, Alan had started a program of harassment that included phone calls at all hours of the day and night, some silent, some filled with verbal abuse, and even more disturbing surprise visits in which he screamed and threatened and pounded on her door. It had culminated, finally, in his breaking into her apartment one night and beating her so badly that neighbors had called the police and Antonia had been taken to the hospital in an ambulance.

As she had lain in the hospital, she had made a vow never to let herself be in a position where such a thing could happen again. When she was released from the hospital, she had gone to her grandmother’s house in the Shenandoah Valley. Her grandmother, a faintly eccentric woman who always seemed a trifle surprised that she had produced a son as conservative as Antonia’s father, took Antonia in, informing her somewhat gleefully that she had exchanged free rent for her tenant in the cabin up the road from hers in exchange for his protecting her granddaughter. The tenant, a Vietnam vet, had agreed to patrol the road and house after dark; it was, her grandmother pointed out, a great deal for him, as he had trouble sleeping, anyway. The thought of a stranger with a gun roaming around outside in the dark unsettled Antonia at first, but once she had met the quiet, solid man, she had liked him as much as her grandmother did and had been able to get a good night’s sleep for the first time since she had gone to the hospital.

While she was recuperating in the mountains, she had applied to Texas A&M veterinary school. She was determined now to have the life she had always wanted, the life interrupted by Alan. North Carolina State, she decided, was too close, and it was somewhere Alan might guess she would go. Texas was far away and not a place where Alan would think of her going. He, like her parents, would assume that she would want to stay on the Eastern Seaboard.

Her grandmother had generously offered to pay for her schooling, and in the fall Antonia had moved to Texas. She had not even told her parents where she was moving, and it was some months before she contacted them in any way except through her grandmother. Finally the nightmares and fears had receded enough that she had told her parents of her whereabouts, but only after their promise to tell no one.

She had known there was the probability of one or the other of them letting slip a reference to her location in a conversation with friends. However, it wasn’t too likely that any of them would mention it to Alan, and she hoped that it would take long enough for the information to work its way back in a general way to him that she would already have gotten through with her training and left College Station. When she had moved to Houston and then to Angel Eye, she had tried to impress on her mother yet again how serious and important it was not to reveal where she lived. Her mother swore that she had not told Alan, but obviously, from what her mother had said, Alan had learned through the grapevine that she lived in Texas.

Hopefully that was all he would ever know. Orwould ever want to know. Surely by now, she thought, he would have given up his obsession with her. She had not seen or heard from him in four years. Even if he had not straightened himself out, as he had told her mother—and Antonia had grave doubts about the truth of that statement—she could not help but think that he would have moved on. It might rankle that she had gotten away from his control, but it seemed unlikely that he would have strong enough feelings about it that he would go to the trouble of tracking her down this far away.

Still, she could not help but think of that phone call this morning. It had been very much in his style. An involuntary shiver ran down her spine.

No! Antonia clenched her fists. She refused to let the least little thing turn her into a frightened creature again. She had worked long and hard at building a new life for herself. She had defeated Alan and broken his control over her. She had had the courage to leave her family and friends and start all over again in a new place. She was careful, of course—she tried to keep her whereabouts unknown to Alan; she had a security system; she checked her doors and windows; she kept pepper spray in her purse—but those things were part of what helped her not be frightened. She did not leave herself vulnerable to attack, and she was prepared for it if it should happen, so she did not have to be afraid.

She would not let a little thing like a phone call or her mother’s talking about Alan make her start cowering under her sheets. She refused to live her life in fear, to worry about Alan and where he was, what he was doing, whether he might show up at any time. To do so would be to give Alan control of her again. That, she promised herself, was the last thing she would ever do. Even if Alan were to find out where she lived and show up here, he would find her very different. He would discover that she could take care of herself, that she was no longer intimidated by him.

She was her own woman now. Antonia turned and walked away from the window.

Daniel Sutton drove by the café a second time, slowing down for a good look. Yes, sure enough, that was the vet’s mobile truck in the parking lot of the Moonstone Café.

On impulse, he turned into the next entrance to the parking lot, then stopped, thinking. He had been driving home from the seed store when he had spotted the mobile van, and he had driven two blocks farther before he circled around a few blocks and came back by. Thinking about it, it seemed a little silly and high-schoolish, just as whipping his truck into this lot had been.

First of all, he reminded himself, he didn’t even know if Antonia Campbell was in the café. It could have been Doc Carmichael who had been out in the van and had decided to stop in at the café for lunch on his way back. Second of all, he wasn’t sure what he would do if Antonia was in there. Most likely she had someone with her, one of the technicians or Doc Carmichael or maybe even a client. And if she was alone, what did he plan to do? Just walk up and plop down on the other side of the booth? She would, he felt sure, find him rude and forward. If he went in, he would probably wind up sitting down and eating at some other table and watching her—unless, of course, she finished eating and left as he came in. That would be just his luck.

Daniel knew that he had never been much good at dating. He and Lurleen had gone steady from the beginning of their junior year. Before that he had had a few dates with Suzette Carpenter, who had been visiting her grandmother in Angel Eye the summer after his sophomore year. Looking back on it, though, he realized that Suzette, a year older and way more sophisticated than he, had more or less maneuvered him into asking her out. And he had known Lurleen since they were kids. It wasn’t like dating a stranger.

He had gone out some since his divorce, had even had one or two fairly long relationships, but he knew that he was a novice in the field of dating, and he always found the process awkward, especially in the initial stages. This time, however, it was even worse. He felt like he was back in high school, he was so full of nerves and doubts.

He could hardly remember the last time he had had this sort of reaction to a woman. When he walked out of the barn the other morning and saw her, he had felt as if someone had slammed him in the gut. It had been a surprise, of course, expecting Doc Carmichael and instead seeing a gorgeous blonde. But it hadn’t been only surprise. It had been the immediate, unmistakable kick of sheer lust.

She had looked pristine and untouchable, a Society girl with ice in her veins but a face so lovely it made his heart clench, and mile-long legs that drove everything from his mind but the thought of having them wrapped around him.

It had been unnerving. He was still unnerved. That was, he thought, one reason why he had gotten so angry at her presence. He was a man who prided himself on his calm and control. He liked his life on an even keel, without all the emotional turmoil that had marked it with Lurleen—the bursts of passion, the long, dark nights of pain, the worry and doubt. All that was far in the past, and he had found that it was much easier to live this way. He dated women he liked, but he never fell head over heels in love with them. He didn’t lose control, didn’t get carried away.

So to feel such an electric shot of longing was not only unexpected but also faintly frightening, and he had reacted with a swift surge of anger.

It still bothered him. He didn’t like the fact that he had been unable to get Antonia Campbell out of his mind. He didn’t like the way his thoughts kept lingering over that kiss as she left. Most of all, he didn’t like the fact that when he saw her mobile truck parked in the café parking lot, his heart had skipped a beat and he had been compelled to return.

On the other hand, he couldn’t remember the last time he had felt this excited, eager and alive, either. It probably was foolish. He had decided long ago that most things connected with love were foolish. It was also, apparently, something he could not control with his usual ease. In fact, he found himself not wanting to control it.

It was kind of nice, in a way, to feel like a kid with raging hormones again.

Daniel opened the door of his truck and stepped out, reminding himself that it was even more foolish to sit out here in the parking lot, doing nothing. He walked across the asphalt and went in the front door.

Daniel paused inside the door and looked around the room. It was a typical lunchtime crowd; practically every table and most of the stools at the counter were full, and the air was vibrating with the noise of people talking. The Moonstone Café was a bit out of place in Angel Eye. It had been started three years ago by Jocelyn Kramer, a willowy woman with dark, wildly curling black hair, who had moved here from Dallas, seeking, according to the gossips, to get away from the big city. There were all sorts of rumors about why, ranging across everything from marital troubles to a nervous breakdown to some sort of New Age strangeness. But whatever had impelled her to come, she was a hell of a good cook, and her small restaurant had flourished.

For a moment it all seemed a blur of faces. Then Daniel spotted Antonia, sitting by herself in a booth in the back, a glass of iced tea and an open book in front of her. His stomach knotted. This was the moment of decision. He had to do it now. In another minute one of the waitresses would turn and see him and come lead him to a seat, and he knew that he would not have the nerve to tell her that he would rather sit with Antonia.

Swallowing hard, he started threading his way through the tables, nodding to people he knew. He stopped to talk to two of his father’s friends whom he knew would be offended if he didn’t. By the time he drew near Antonia’s table, she had looked up from her book and was watching him approach.

He had been rehearsing what he would say all the way across the room, but once he saw her eyes on him, all thoughts went straight out of his head. Daniel reached her table and stopped. His mouth went dry, and he couldn’t think of a thing to say.

“Hi,” Antonia said after a moment. “How are you?”

Daniel was too busy with his own problems to notice that her voice had a slight tremor to it. Antonia, however, heard it and felt like slapping herself. Why did she always seem to turn to quivering jelly around this man?

She had spent a great deal more time than was wise the past two days thinking about Daniel Sutton and had even considered calling to ask about his mare and foal just to have a chance to talk to him. In other circumstances, she probably would have called to make sure that everything was going all right, but because it was him, she knew that the call would be as much excuse as concern. What if he saw through it? What if he assumed that she was calling because of that kiss?

So she had not called, but still she had found her mind wandering all too often to the subject of whether and how she would see him again. When she had looked up just now and seen him walking through the dining room, pausing to chat to various friends, her heart had slammed into overdrive. He seemed to be coming straight toward her, and that fact made it even more difficult to breathe. She was surprised that she was able to squeeze out a hello.

“Hi,” Daniel returned, jamming his hands in the front pockets of his jeans. “Nice to see you.”

“Yeah. I mean, it’s nice to see you, too. How is your mare?”

“Great. She’s doing real well. The foal, too.”

“That’s good.”

They both nodded, and Daniel glanced around the restaurant. “Kinda crowded today. ’Course, I guess it always is.”

“It has been every time I’ve been here.” Antonia groaned inside at the lameness of her conversation, but she could think of nothing to say. She wondered if any other thirty-year-old woman was this tongue-tied around a man. You’d think she had never dated. Not, of course, she added silently, that she was dating Daniel. Far from it.

As he cast another glance around them, it occurred to Antonia that he was perhaps hinting for an invitation to join her. “Would you—I mean, why don’t you sit here? Since it’s so crowded.”

“Okay,” he answered with alacrity and slid into the seat across the booth from her. He let out a long sigh. “Well…I don’t feel too stupid.”

“Why? What are you talking about?”

“Ah, hell, I wanted to come sit down here as soon as I walked in the door. Then, when I got here, I stood around like a teenager. No, worse, a ten-year-old. I’m sure James is much suaver than I am.”

Antonia grinned. “Well, if it helps you any, I’m equally inept. Maybe we’re too used to working with animals instead of people.”

He smiled back at her. “That may be the case with you, but I’m afraid I’ve always been that way. Many was the time that Cater about despaired of me. He always had more dates than me, and he was a year younger.”

“Your brother?”

Daniel nodded. “Yeah. The whole crew’s pretty good at talking, except for me. I took after my Dad. The rest were like Mama.”

“I met your father. You’re right. He isn’t much of a talker. But I liked him right off.”

“Yeah. He’s a good guy. Old-fashioned and all.”

“Hey, Daniel.” A middle-aged woman with improbably bright red hair stopped by their table, order pad in hand. “You sittin’ here?”

“Hi, Marlene. Yeah. I thought I would. Pretty crowded today.”

“Un-huh.” Marlene smiled—a little too broadly, in Daniel’s opinion. Her gaze flickered to Antonia and back to him. “Know what you want?”

“Sure. The, uh, chicken-fried steak, I guess.” Daniel hadn’t in fact glanced at the menu, so he named a dish they were sure to have. No café in Angel Eye could have been successful without serving it. “Iced tea.”

“Sure thing.” Marlene slipped the order pad into the pocket of her apron, glanced again at Antonia and walked away.

Daniel sighed, watching her go toward the kitchen, and turned back to Antonia. “I guess this will be all over town by nightfall. Sorry.”

“What? What will be all over town?”

“That we had lunch together. Except that by five this afternoon they’ll probably have us engaged.”

Antonia’s eyebrows rose. “Just because we ate at the same table?”

“Little town, ma’am. Not much to do besides gossip, and everybody knows everybody—their family, their history, oh, hell, just everything.” His mouth quirked up in a smile, and he shot her a quizzical look. “Don’t tell me someone hasn’t already told you that I’m divorced with an eighteen-year-old son, and that I have three brothers and—”

“One sister,” Antonia finished, chuckling. “Yes. Rita Delgado filled me in.”

“That’s what I’m saying. Everyone knows everything. It’s hard to keep a secret. But what’s worse is that they speculate and embellish until the rumors hardly resemble what really happened.” He paused, then added, “Just wait. You’ll see what I’m talking about. Bachelors tend to stir up a great deal of curiosity, I’ve found. ’Course, newcomers are topics of great interest, as well. Put the two together…”

“But it must not bother you that much. You still live here.”

“Sure. Wouldn’t live anywhere else. The thought of living in someplace like Dallas or Houston is enough to give me the heebie-jeebies. Cater is always going on about all the things there are to do in Austin and all that. But I figure, if it’s so great there, how come he bought a house here and comes back all the time?”

Antonia smiled. “It’s a nice town. I like it.”

“So you reckon you’ll stay?”

Antonia nodded. “Yeah. As long as the horsemen and ranchers don’t rebel against having a woman vet.”

“Now what kind of fool would object to a woman vet?” he asked, his eyes alight with humor. “I doubt there’s anybody like that around here.”

“A few,” Antonia retorted.

“I guess everybody can’t be as forward thinking and tolerant as I am.”

“Yeah. Too bad, isn’t it?”

The waitress came up to their table with Daniel’s glass of iced tea. After she set it down, she lingered to straighten a chair at the table closest to them and rearrange the sugar packets. Daniel glanced back at her, then cast a meaningful look at Antonia. She grinned. It was obvious that the waitress was hoping to hear some of their conversation.

The two of them said nothing as Daniel put sugar and lemon in his tea and stirred it. After a few moments Marlene gave up and went off to wait on another customer.

After she left, they continued to sit in silence until it began to stretch out awkwardly. Antonia cast about for something to say and came up blank. Why was it that this man made her feel tongue-tied and foolish, like a schoolgirl again? Daniel shifted in his seat.

“So tell me,” he said finally. “I understand why you came to Angel Eye and all, but how did a debutante wind up becoming a vet?”

“Horses,” Antonia answered succinctly. “Riding is still a First Family of Virginia sort of thing to do. The school that I went to even had a stable, and riding lessons were part of the curriculum. English saddle, of course. Well, it was the one thing about that sort of life that I loved. I was crazy about horses from the minute they put me on one’s back. I was one of those stereotypically horse-mad adolescent girls. I must have read the Walter Farley books a million times. I collected horse figurines. I watched National Velvet every time it came on TV. At school I spent all my spare time down at the stables. I would follow the vet around whenever he came and absolutely plague him with questions. Finally he let me come down to his clinic to watch him work for a career day thing we did in middle school. From then on I was hooked. ’Course, my mother nearly fainted when I announced at sixteen that I wanted to go to veterinary school.” She quirked an eyebrow. “Not exactly a career for a proper young lady.”

“What did she want you to do?”

“Hmm. I’m not sure. Follow in her footsteps, I guess—go to a ‘good’ school socially and marry well, then keep all the charities in the greater Richmond area in business.”

“That’s what she does? Charity work?”

Antonia nodded. “I suppose it really is a career. Worthwhile, too. But it can’t compare to saving an animal’s life. She never could understand that. All she could see was the mess and blood and plebeian-ness of it. My mother and I are poles apart.”

“Happens sometimes.” Daniel looked suddenly sober. “I guess that’s the way it is with James and me. He has about as much interest in raising horses as I do in nuclear physics. All he’s interested in is films. He wants to go to the film school at UT and then go to Los Angeles.” His face turned both pained and puzzled. “L.A.,” he repeated, shaking his head.