Sugar Daddy (Travis Family #1)(59)

I felt almost lighthearted about breaking up with Tom, except for that shot he'd taken at the end. I didn't blame him for saying it, since he'd just been dumped. What troubled me was the inner suspicion that he was right. Maybe I did have fear of intimacy. I had never loved any man but Hardy, who was secured in my heart with backward barbs. I still dreamed of him and woke with my blood clamoring, every inch of my skin damp and alive.

I was afraid I should have settled for Tom. Carrington would be ten soon. She had been deprived of so many years of fatherly influence. We needed a man in our life.

As I walked into the salon, which had just opened, Alan approached with the news that Zenko wanted to talk to me right away.

"I'm only a few minutes late—" I began.

"No, no, it's not about that. It's about Mr. Travis."

"Is he coming in today?"

Alan's expression was impossible to interpret. "I don't think so."

I went to the back of the salon, where Zenko stood with a china cup filled with hot tea.

He looked up from a leather-bound appointment book. "Liberty. I've checked your afternoon schedule." He pronounced it the British way, shedule. It was one of his favorite words. "It seems to be clear after three-thirty."

"Yes, sir," I said cautiously.

"Mr. Travis wants a trim at his home. Do you know the address?"

I shook my head in bewilderment. "You want me to do it? How come you're not going? You always do his trims."

Zenko explained that a well-known actress was flying in from New York, and he couldn't cancel on her. "Besides," he continued in a careful monotone, "Mr. Travis specifically asked for you. He's had a difficult time since the accident, and he indicated it might do him some good if—"

"What accident?" I felt a nasty sting of adrenaline all over, not unlike the feeling of saving yourself from a fall down the stairs. Even though you avoid the tumble, your body still gets ready for catastrophe.

"I thought you would already know," Zenko said. "Mr. Travis was thrown from a horse two weeks ago."

For a man Churchill's age, horse accidents were never minor. Bones were broken, dislocated, crushed, necks and spines were snapped. I felt my mouth gather in a soundless "oh." My hands shifted in a mosaic of movement, first going to my lips, then crossing over to the upper arms.

"How bad was it?" I managed.

"I'm not aware of the particulars, but I believe a leg was broken, and there was some surgery..." Zenko paused as he stared at me. "You look pale. Do you want to sit down?"

"No. I'm fine. I just..." I couldn't believe how afraid I was, how much I cared. I wanted

to go to Churchill right then. My heartbeat was a painful throb in my chest. My hands came together, fingers laced like those of a praying child. I blinked against the pictures that flashed through my mind, images that had nothing to do with Churchill Travis.

My mother wearing a white dress splashed with daisies. My father, accessible only in a two-dimensional layer of black-and-white silver halide. Tawdry fairground light shivering across Hardy's resolute face. Shadows within shadows. I found it hard to breathe. But then I thought of Carrington. I held on to that image, my sister, my baby, and the panic eddied and washed back.

I heard Zenko asking if I was willing to go to River Oaks to do the trim.

"Sure," I said, trying to sound normal. Matter-of-fact. "Sure I'll go."

After my last appointment Zenko gave me the address and two different security codes. "Sometimes there's a guard at the gate," he said.

"He has a gate?" I asked. "He has a guard?"

"It's called security," Zenko said, his impersonal tone far more withering than sarcasm. "Rich people need it."

I took the slip of paper from him.

My Honda needed a run through the car wash, but I didn't spare the time. I needed to see Churchill as soon as possible. It took only fifteen minutes to get there from Zenko's. In Houston you measure distance by minutes instead of miles, since traffic can turn a short commute into a stop-and-start journey through hell, where road rage is just a driving technique.

I've heard people compare River Oaks to Highland Park in Dallas, but it's bigger and even more expensive. You could call it the Beverly Hills of Texas. River Oaks consists of about a thousand acres located halfway between Downtown and Uptown, with two schools, a country club, upscale restaurants and shops, and esplanades of brilliant flowers. When River Oaks was established in the 1920s, there was what they called a gentleman's agreement to keep out blacks and browns, except for those living in the maids' quarters. Now those so-called gentlemen are gone, and there's more diversity in River Oaks. It's no longer all-white, but it is definitely all-rich, with the cheapest homes starting at a million dollars and going up from there.

I guided my battered Honda along streets of two-story mansions, past Mercedes and BMWs. Some of the homes were designed in the Spanish Revival style, with flagstone terraces, turrets, and ornamental wrought-iron balcony railings. Others had been modeled after New Orleans plantation homes, or New England colonials with white columns, gables, and banded chimneys. They were all large, beautifully landscaped, and shaded by oaks that lined the walks like giant sentinels.

Although I knew Churchill's house was going to be impressive, there was no way I could have been adequately prepared for it. It was an estate, a stone house designed like a European chateau and set back on a three-acre bayou lot. I stopped at the heavy iron gates and entered the code. To my relief, the gates opened with majestic slowness. A broad paved drive led to the house and split into two roads, one encircling the house, the other leading to