Heaven, Texas (Chicago Stars #2)(59)

“Doing what?”

“Blackmailing me! That’s what this is about, isn’t it? If I sleep with you, you’ll keep Rosatech in Telarosa? If I don’t, you’ll move the company.” He said nothing, and she couldn’t quite suppress the bubble of hysteria rising inside her. “I’m fifty-two years old! If you’re looking for a mistress, why don’t you do what other men your age do and find someone young.”

“Young women don’t interest me.”

She turned her back to him, her nails digging into her palms. “Do you hate me so much?”

“I don’t hate you at all.”

“I know what you’re doing. You’re living out some kind of vendetta from thirty years ago.”

“My vendetta is with the town, not with you.”

“But I’m the one who’s being punished.”

“If that’s the way you see it, I won’t try to change your mind.”

“I’m not going to do this.”

“I understand.”

She spun back. “You can’t force me.”

“I would never force you. It’s entirely your decision.”

The lack of emotion in his words frightened her more than an expression of anger would. He was insane, she thought. But his dark eyes regarded her with intelligence and a terrifying lucidity.

A note of pleading crept into her voice that she couldn’t repress. “Tell me you won’t move Rosatech.”

For the first time he hesitated, almost as if he were waging some sort of private war with himself. “I’m not making any promises until you’ve had time to think over our conversation.”

She drew a ragged breath. “I want to go home now.”

“All right.”

“I left my purse inside.”

“I’ll get it for you.”

She stood alone in the garden, trying to take in what was happening to her, but the situation was so far outside her realm of experience that she couldn’t absorb it. She thought of her son, and her blood went cold with fear. If Bobby Tom ever found out about this, he’d kill Way Sawyer.

“Are you ready?”

She jumped as he touched her shoulder.

He immediately withdrew his hand and offered her the purse. “My car’s in the front.” He gestured toward a brick path that wound around the side of the house, and she moved toward it before he could touch her again.

When they reached the front, she saw his BMW instead of the Lincoln his chauffeur had driven and realized he planned to drive her home himself. He opened the door and she slipped inside without a word.

To her relief, he didn’t attempt conversation. She closed her eyes and tried to imagine that Hoyt was beside her, but tonight he seemed impossibly far away? Why did you leave me? How am I supposed to face this alone?

Fifteen minutes later, he stopped his car in her driveway and, looking over at her, spoke quietly. “I’m going to be out of the country for about three weeks. When I get back—”

“Please,” she whispered. “Don’t force me to do this.”

His voice was cool and distant. “When I get back, I’ll call to hear your decision.”

Suzy jumped out of the car and raced up the sidewalk to her house, running as if all the hounds of hell were nipping at her heels.

Sitting behind the wheel of his car, the most hated man in Telarosa, Texas, watched her disappear inside. As the door slammed, his face contorted with anger, pain, and the barest hint of longing.





12




For the first time all evening, nobody was shoving a cocktail napkin under Bobby Tom’s nose for an autograph, or asking him to dance, or poking around for details about the golf tournament. He finally had a few minutes to himself, and he leaned back into the corner of the booth. The Wagon Wheel was Telarosa’s favorite honky-tonk, and the Saturday night crowd was enjoying itself, especially since Bobby Tom had been buying all the drinks.

He set his beer bottle down on the scarred table and stubbed out one of the thin cigars he occasionally permitted himself. At the same time, he watched Gracie make a fool of herself trying to line dance to a new song from Brooks and Dunn. It had been two weeks since her make-over, so he thought people should be used to her by now, but everybody in town was still fussing over her.

Despite all the improvements in her appearance, she wasn’t even close to being prime-cut gorgeous. She was cute, no denying that. Pretty, even. In the land of big hair, that little flyaway cut of hers might very well be Shirley’s masterpiece, and he got a big kick out of the way it fluffed around her face and glimmered all warm and coppery in the light. But he preferred his women blond and flashy, with legs up to their armpits and porn star breasts. Real live sex trophies, that’s what he liked, and he wasn’t going to apologize for it either. He’d earned those sex trophy females on the bloody battlefields of the NFL. He’d earned them in bruising drills and brutal two-a-day practices; he’d earned them by taking hits so violent he couldn’t remember his name afterward. They were the spoils of gridiron warfare, and giving them up would be the same as giving up his identity.

He took a deep swig of Shiner, but the beer didn’t fill up the empty place inside him. He should be starting the season now, but instead, he was prancing around in front of a movie camera like a damn * and pretending to be engaged to a bossy lady who wouldn’t ever be mistaken for a sex trophy.