Lady Be Good (Wynette, Texas #2)(30)

Emma glanced down at the horrific tattoo and shuddered. She would have to wear long sleeves for the rest of her life.

Her muzzy head, the trauma of the tattoo, and the sheer force of Torie’s invasion into Kenny’s bedroom had kept her from processing the real content of their conversation, but now she began to absorb it. “Are you saying your father is trying to force you into marrying someone you dislike?”

“Or give up the charge card that’s been paying off my feed bill, not to mention a few other minor necessities like decent clothes and gas money. My daddy and Dexter’s father have me trapped. They can’t come up with any other way to arrange a merger than for Dexter and me to . . . merge.”

“Merger?”

Kenny came out of his closet, still bare-chested, zipping up a pair of chinos. “Our father owns TCS, Traveler Computer Systems. It’s located in Wynette. Dexter’s father owns Com National, his fiercest competitor. Their main plant’s in Austin, but he built a smaller research and development facility in Wynette just to get under my father’s skin. The two companies have been duking it out since the seventies, pretty much using whatever slimeball trick either man could come up with to stay on top of the other. Unfortunately, they got so preoccupied hating each other’s guts that they stopped paying attention to all the young companies nipping at their heels. Now both TCS and Com National are in trouble, and the only way they can survive is to merge. If that happens, they’ll be pretty much invincible.”

Emma shook her head. “I still don’t understand what this has to do with Torie. Companies merge all the time without people getting married to accomplish it, especially when their fathers hate each other.”

“Not these two companies,” he said, bringing a light blue denim shirt from the closet. “The men have pulled too many shady deals on each other—not just business stuff, personal as well. Now neither of them trusts the other, but they both want the merger.”

“So they’re making me the sacrificial lamb to hold the whole thing together.” Torie extracted a pack of cigarettes from her purse, only to have Kenny snatch them away and pitch them in the wastebasket.

Emma felt disoriented. Was there an epidemic of marriage-by-blackmail going on in the Western world? How had it happened that she’d managed to meet another woman in a similar situation? It seemed too bizarre to be coincidental, and the image of Francesca Serritella Day Beaudine came into her mind. But that made no sense. Francesca might know about Torie’s dilemma, but she didn’t know about Emma’s own.

She needed to be alone so she could think, and she rose from the side of the bed. “If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to shower, and then I need to get back to the hotel.”

Half an hour later she emerged from the bedroom and headed downstairs dressed in the short dress she’d worn last night, with Kenny’s T-shirt pulled on top to hide the awful tattoo. The thought of living the rest of her life with a Lone Star flag on her arm was bad enough, but having the word Kenny permanently etched into her skin was unbearable.

Kenny and Torie sat at the kitchen counter sipping coffee and eating donuts. Torie pointed a blue-green fingernail toward the open carton. “You want a donut, Emma? There’s a cream-filled here that your lover boy hasn’t gotten his mitts on yet.”

“He’s not my lover boy, and I think coffee is all I can handle at the moment.”

“If he’s not your lover boy, why were you naked in his bedroom?”

“That was an accident. We’re not sleeping together. He’s my driver.”

“Your driver? Kenny, what’s goin’ on?”

He explained, although, in Emma’s opinion, he placed unnecessarily negative emphasis on her leadership skills.

When he was done, Torie said, “So you’re really a lady?”

“Yes, but I don’t use my title.”

“I sure as hell’d use my title if I had one.”

“That’s what I said.” Kenny shot Emma an I-told-you-so look.

Emma gave up.

“Wynette’s not that far from Austin, Lady Emma.” Torie uncoiled from the stool as gracefully as a lynx and headed to the sink to rinse off her sticky fingers. “And it’s a real nice town. As long as you’re in Texas, why not see how the natives live instead of just hitting the tourist spots? Kenny can take you back and forth to the UT library whenever you want, and San Antonio’s not that far either. What do you say? As a gesture of feminist solidarity, will you help me get him back to his home-town?”

“She doesn’t have any say in this,” Kenny responded, clearly irritated.

Emma thought about it. Despite what she was telling everyone, her primary purpose in coming to Texas wasn’t to do research. As long as she had access to the libraries she needed, she could finish that up in a few days. Far more important was the task of casting a shadow over her character, and she could do that just as easily in Wynette as anywhere else. Besides, being in the presence of a woman as outrageous as Torie Traveler was bound to upset Hugh. And it might be easier for Beddington’s detective force to keep track of her in a small town. She had to admit the idea of having her base in Wynette was more appealing than moving from one impersonal big city hotel to another. “All right. Yes, I suppose that would work.”

“No,” Kenny said. “Absolutely not.”