A Wild Red Rose (4 page)

After working in the bullring all morning with the students, Clint skipped lunch and sought out the nearest K-Mart about ten miles away from Rainbow for an array of cleaning supplies. He looked over a display of Martha Stewart sheets and picked a couple of sets in red. If Martha said that was good taste, then it was. The tiger print throw and pillows he got didn’t bear her name. He found some narrow floor runners that looked like fake Persian rugs to cover the snuff-stained beige carpet in The Tin Can. He couldn’t stand the thought of walking on it barefooted. Once he got back, he realized he should have gotten some new curtains to replace the sorry, striped, grease-streaked ones hanging over the small windows. They’d probably been there since before Snuffy’s wife, Ruth Ann, refused to travel anymore and left him years ago. Too late for another trip now. Clinton O. Beck had a toilet to scrub.

The stains in the bathroom proved to be permanent, but Clint had the satisfaction of knowing he’d disinfected all surfaces his flesh or Renee’s was likely to touch. He put out an air freshener hoping it would compensate for the aroma of used snuff that seemed to hang in the air, the cloudy mirror over the sink, and all the other imperfections of The Tin Can. The mattress on the foldout bed proved to be better than expected and probably newer. Fresh sheets made it look good, if he did say so himself.

Snuffy poked his head in the door, searching for some forgotten item. “Wouldn’t hardly recognize the place, Clint, all duded up for a woman. I like that tiger skin blanket. Do I get to keep this stuff when you’re through with it?”

“You bet.” Clint could see Snuffy puckering and looking for a place to spit and grabbed a paper cup in a hurry.

“How about the mountain bike you got on that rear rack. I get to use it? I figure I can store my custom barrel back there, too.”

“Sure, use the bike. I’ll be getting my exercise another way.”

“You’re spoiling me, Beck. I plan on leaving tomorrer evening and get on up to Casper to visit with my kid. See you there.”

“That’s a promise.”

****

After the bullfighting class ended for the day, Clint took a box of files over to Bodey for safekeeping.

“Papers that might reveal my net worth. Keep ’em safe for me, Bodey.”

“You bet. What about your laptop?”

“The Belly Nelle has a bunch of secret compartments, not to mention trapdoors.”

“Good, then you can escape Renee if you have to run.”

“Cut it out. I promise to bring her home a changed woman.”

Eve Landrum, who had been rocking her baby and obviously listening in, said, “Clint, be careful with her. I don’t think Renee is as strong as she seems. Tricking her is wrong.”

“Yeah, right. Like she didn’t try to trick me or half a dozen other men,” Bodey snorted.

Clint left it at that and went to convince Renee Hayes to ride the circuit with him.

****

Renee allowed herself to be persuaded to go along fairly easily. After two rounds of very hot sex, she regarded a fingernail she’d broken on his back and said, “What else have I got to do? Give me a day or two to get ready.”

She admitted the sad truth about not having anything else to do, though pronounced the fact so casually Clint mistook it for boredom. After Eve snatched Bodey away from her, two other well-researched marriage prospects slipped through her fingers in the last year, each one now engaged to women in their early twenties. Sure, those men had been willing to try to the goods, but neither closed the sale with her.

Renee didn’t even have her art classes to distract her anymore, she thought resentfully. Eve Landrum had been her instructor and stopped giving lessons a month before the baby came. Mrs. Bodey Landrum showed no signs of returning to her small studio on the other side of Rainbow. She’d quit her waitress job after marrying the great bull rider, but honored her teaching contract at Mt. Carmel Academy until the Christmas break to allow the school time to find a new riding instructor and art teacher. Early on, most of the older women who had taken painting classes from Eve nodded wisely and said Eve had signed up for the mommy track and would be showing a baby belly any day now. How right they were. That howling kid must have gotten its start on the wedding night. Bodey built an art studio next to the house for Eve’s own pleasure, but she wouldn’t be instructing others anymore. Some people had all the luck.

What was Renee Hayes supposed to do with no place to paint, and no one to listen to her schemes? How selfish of Eve to abandon her best pupil, especially when she’d taken that lecherous fraud of an artist, Evan Adams, off of Eve’s hands for a while, and let the way wide open for Bodey to step in and claim her.

Getting away would be good. Who knew, maybe she would bump into a Texas millionaire at one of those rodeos or a bull rider as rich as Bodey Landrum. In the meantime, she’d have a man with a gorgeous bod and lots of stamina for entertainment despite his country yokel personality. If nothing else worked out, she’d fly home from wherever she wound up once she grew tired of Clint.

Her preparations for the trip were simple. She packed a small suitcase since Clint said he didn’t have much room to spare in his trailer and stuffed her most essential items—make-up, condoms, her diaphragm and spermicidal jelly, spare contacts, a touchup kit for her hair color, and a pile of credit cards, most of them near their limit—into an oversized leather satchel. She expected Clint to pick up the tab for anything else in return for her company.

The shock arrived when the Belly Nelle returned to her driveway hauling a trailer that looked like something cartoon characters, mouse, a duck and a parrot, would take on vacation. She knew her mouth hung open but couldn’t seem to close it.

Clint spread his arms wide. “My home away from home, princess. Climb aboard.”

She did, not sure why, but she did. The interior, a decorator’s nightmare, possessed a strange odor that a cheap floral air freshener couldn’t hide. She felt the urge to bolt.

“Thanks for packing light, Renee. You can see I don’t have much room, but that there bench folds down into a pretty good bed.”

“Oh, none of my clothes take up a lot of space, and I have everything I really need in my satchel. You can buy me anything I’ve forgotten later.”

Renee pretended an interest, opening cupboards and the refrigerator. “You certainly like Beck’s products. I believe you have every variety of beans they put out, plus the complete line of pickles and their spicy brown mustard.”

“Yeah, well, there’s a story behind that. See, I do like their foods. One time, just once, I mentioned in front of Snuffy that maybe I might be related to those rich folks somehow, and maybe they’d sponsor some bullfighting competitions. He about busted a gut over that. Calls me the Bean King, now. So do a lot of the guys. I have to put up with a bunch of flatulence jokes, too. It’s embarrassin’.”

Half a truth was better than none, Clint figured. His mother kept him well-stocked with the family products, which were certainly high quality and very nourishing for a reasonable price. He had asked his father to sponsor a bullfighting competition, but his dad lowered his head and bellowed like one of the bulls Clint fought, “Are you out of your mind!” He hadn’t asked again.

“Now, the announcers call me Clinton O. Beck, the Bull Bomber. I like that better.”

“So do I.” Renee felt a tiny twinge of pity for this nice, unassuming, well-built, sexy guy. “Come on Bomber, let’s try out the hide-a-bed.”

They rocked The Tin Can on her old springs for an hour, then Clint helped her into a pair of short shorts so tight he’d had trouble getting them off. They got back to the business of moving on.

Renee wanted to say good-bye to her mother, and Clint had to gas up and get some fresh food for the trip, so they towed The Tin Can up the rest of the hill and parked in the circular drive before Tara-on-the-Bayou.

“Want me to come in and meet your mom so she’ll feel better about you going off with a stranger?” Clint offered.

“No, thanks. I just want to leave a note with your name and that we are heading off to Casper, then Glendale, Arizona. Where after that?”

“Wherever the road takes us, baby, but we’ll be in Cheyenne at the end of July.”

If they lasted that long, if she didn’t find someone better, Renee thought. She let herself into the phony mansion and looked around for her mother. The maid dusting in the den said Miss Prudence sunned out by the pool—of course.

Renee found good old Mom basking, basted with coconut oil, and out cold. The pitcher of luridly pink cosmopolitans sitting on the table next to her lounger told Renee her mother had fallen off the wagon again. A life of tennis and sunbathing had stained Pru Niles’ skin the color of leather and wrinkled her hide to the toughness of an alligator’s back. She wore a bikini but possessed the sex appeal of a skeleton. Years of alcohol abuse and bulimia kept her extremely thin. Her short cut of dyed red hair only pointed up her sunken cheeks and bad teeth, slightly exposed like those of a dried out mummy, except Mrs. Niles snored, miraculously not dead yet.

Renee didn’t bother to wake her parent, but she slammed the door to the house harder than she intended. She got a notepad and paper in the kitchen and wrote out her itinerary, gave them Clint’s name, reminded them she could be reached on her cell if they wanted to get in touch—as if. She stuck the note to the refrigerator door where her father would find it just as Pru Niles staggered in.

“Wadda you want, Renee? I heard that door slam exactly the way you used to do back in your teens. You think by now, you’d let a woman get her beauty rest.”

“I want nothing from you, Mom. I’m leaving on a trip. I asked Dad to make sure my gardener is keeping up the yard. My cleaning lady will come once a week to dust and water the plants. I’m off with a new friend of mine. His name is on the note. Don’t know when I’ll be back.” Renee didn’t bother to hide her scorn for the woman who gave birth to her. She stared at the emaciated form before her with hard, green eyes.

“Don’t know how I raised such a piece of trash. You’d go off with any guy with a big dick and a little money. Must of got running around from your father. He’s down the hill doing that Parker bitch right now.”

“Sally, my friend, Sally?” Not Sally who had always been the most decent member of her old Academy clique, the Sexy Seven, if you didn’t count her cousin Rusty’s wife who had never really belonged.

“No, the old bag, my former friend, Sally’s mother. Since her husband left with his secretary, she thinks my husband is fair game. But, you know what? Jed promised he’d never, ever leave me, so she’s in for a shock. The Niles men keep their word even if they do screw around on the side.”

“Dad didn’t make me what I am, Prudence. Think about it when you sober up. Meanwhile, I’m outta here—with a guy who’s good-looking, brave, and—simple and sweet and almost poor.”

“Like the nigger yardman you screwed for a while, the one caused your divorce from Elias? Or was it the personal trainer. I forget since you had another husband since then. You really can’t hold on to them, can you, Renee?”

“Gerry died on me!”

“Yeah, right on top of you in bed, naturally. Poor old geezer, you screwed him to death.”

Knowing from years of sparring verbally with her mother that she would not win the battle of words because all Prudence said rang with truth, Renee retreated through the house. She slammed the front door harder than she had the back. Climbing into the cab of the Belly Nelle, she slammed the truck door, too. The vibrations sent a cascade of small, stuffed animal toys sliding into her lap from the dashboard. Clint stared as Renee buried her face in her hands.

“Ah, maybe if your mama is real against this, you shouldn’t go.”

“She doesn’t care where I go or with whom. What is with all these stuffed toys? You must have fifty of them shoved in here.” Renee began pushing the plush unicorns and blue teddy bears back into the heap on the dash.

“Snuffy—and me—like to give ’em out to little kids at the rodeos. Besides, I’m a devil with the claw machine. Passes the time, you know.” Clint sorted through the stack. “Here, looks like you could use a furry friend to cheer you up, too.”

He handed her a tiny tiger with green glass eyes. Renee blinked. In high school, boys hopeful of getting in her pants spent all their cash trying to win the huge pink poodle or the enormous stuffed panda at the booths of passing carnivals. In college, they wooed her with bouquets of expensive roses or jewelry full of diamond chips. After graduation, men who sought her favors gave her cars and rings with colored gems, usually emeralds. She had no idea why such a small, cheap toy made her feel as warm and happy as when her father had given her similar items in her childhood. She blinked her eyes a few times to hold back some sentimental tears.

“Now, don’t cry. There’s plenty more where that came from. Take your pick if you don’t like the tiger but it reminds me of you.”

“No, I love the tiger. My contacts are bothering me.” Renee tucked the little beast deep into her satchel.

Clint swung the truck and trailer out of the driveway and went down the hill, passing through the brick pillars with the rust-red iron horse heads on top that marked the entry to Red Horse Acres.

“Swanky place,” Clint remarked. His family owned an estate so big and venerable you couldn’t see any neighboring houses. “Maybe you should see an eye doctor when we get back.”

“I don’t really need them. They are for effect.”

“Effect. You mean you don’t really have green eyes? So what color are they?”

“None of your business, Clinton O. Beck. Do you want to tell me what the O in your name stands for?”

“No, ma’am. The only way you will find that out is when the preacher says it on my weddin’ day.”

“I’ll bet Snuffy knows. I could ask him.”

“Yep, he knows, all right, but he won’t tell because I know his real name. It’s a standoff, you see.”

Clint parked his battered rig in front of Plato’s Liquor and Groceries where he’d attempted to buy a fine wine a few nights ago. At least, the gas wasn’t overpriced considering the small size of the town. He got out and swiped a credit card, careful not to use his American Express platinum, at a relatively new pump. The front of the store looked to be a hundred years old with its gray and sagging cypress boards, but its protruding back was a long metal building stuffed with all the needs for a small community. He thought he’d seen some homemade bread in there on his last trip, and he did need to stock up on fresh items.