California Gold (41 page)

Mack unlocked a drawer with a small key. From a cashbox he took a packet of bills and counted off ten of them. “Can you get that to him?” he asked, handing them to her. “As a donation?”

“I’ll certainly find a way.” She counted the money. “Five hundred dollars. Mack, can you afford this with so much overhead?”

“Let me worry about that.”

She put the money in her reticule. “You’re a generous man. It’s a side I’ve never seen before.”

“Never had the wherewithal to be generous before. My pa used to say that if you were lucky enough to get rich, you ought to give some back by way of appreciation.”

“Not all your ideas are mossbacked, Mr. Chance.”

“Thanks, ma’am,” he said with mock politeness. Suddenly he thought of Yosemite, and the memories overwhelmed him, as did the warm brown eyes that found his, and held.

Mack flung himself out of the chair and reached for her. He pulled her up to his chest and she raised her strong chin and waited with a frightened-doe expression.

He tilted his head, put his mouth lightly on hers, and felt the rush of her warm breath, the uncontrolled trembling of her slim body—

Then he heard a buggy drive up.

Nellie drew back with mingled dismay and relief, patting her hair with nervous little motions. “Visitors, Mack?”

Mack went to the door and was stunned at what he saw: the phaeton with yellow wheels. A man Mack had never seen before helped Carla Hellman alight.

“Darling, darling.” Carla threw herself on him with hugs and squeezes and breathless exclamations. Mack dutifully embraced her in return, all the while watching Nellie. Her reaction to Carla’s show of emotion was not good.

“How marvelous you look. After I came back from the Continent I spent six weeks in San Francisco. They were talking of nothing but your success down here.”

“I doubt that.” He wondered about her high spirits, given the circumstances under which she’d left the country. Beavis had recovered from his stab wounds, and at the behest of family members, pressed no charges against his wife. Her lawsuit had mysteriously dropped from view, and she and her husband were reported on a second honeymoon in the Greek islands.

“Oh yes, even Walter mentioned how well you’re doing,” she said.

“Fairbanks? Do you see him a lot?”

“Of course. At social functions. He won’t leave me alone. It’s a beastly bore.”

The mention of Fairbanks pricked him with irrational jealousy. He knew Carla’s gushing must be for Nellie’s benefit.

“I want to see all these oil wells that are making you so much money. I want a personal tour. I have a proprietary interest, don’t forget.”

Mack’s mouth drew tight. “I’d have settled the debt before this, but I didn’t know where to find you.”

“What a dear man. Promise you’ll show me everything.”

“Yes, certainly,” he said, resigned.

“And my friend too. This is Clive Henley. Clive, Macklin Chance.”

At last Mack had a proper look at Carla’s companion. He was Mack’s height, and about the same age, but a little heavier. His skin was the color of fresh milk, though relieved by a facial ruddiness that suggested an active life outdoors. His hair was yellow and combed straight back, flat to his head, his eyes a mild gray. He carried himself in a relaxed way and the immediate impression was of affability and good manners.

He was stylish too. His flannel coat and trousers fit perfectly. He wore a straw boater with a band striped in burgundy and white. His bow tie matched, as did the ribbon on his lapel, at the end of which dangled a monocle.

“Very fine to meet you, sir,” Henley said, with a marked accent. His handshake was firm; it surprised Mack because of the man’s paleness.

“Mr. Henley. You’re an Englishman—”

“I am, sir, though a permanent resident of California now.”

“Clive grows citrus,” Carla said. “Down in Riverside—The area they call the Great Orange Belt and Sanitarium.”

“Actually, I—Oh, excuse me,” Henley said, almost in a stammer. His eye rested on Nellie, whose cheeks were nearly as red as his. Mack rushed to her.

“Nellie, I apologize for the confusion. Miss Hellman, Mr. Henley—Miss Ross, from San Francisco.”

Henley tipped his boater, bowed, and murmured the right pleasantries. “I know Miss Hellman by reputation,” Nellie said with perfect politeness and unmistakable double meaning. She extended her hand. She’d put her gloves on again. Carla clasped the hand and held it briefly while they took each other’s measure. Their eyes exchanged secret messages; each had instantly sensed the other as a rival.

Mack offered chairs, but no one moved. In the strained silence, the pounding of the derricks seemed louder, and the emotional temperature of the room shot up several more degrees.

Mack said to the visitors, “Miss Ross is a journalist. She writes for the
Examiner
under the name Ramona Sweet.”

“Of course—the sob sister,” Carla said. “I’ve read a few of those sensational stories. What an unusual way to spend one’s time. Mingling with the dregs, so to speak.”

“All in the job,” Nellie said. She was simmering.

Henley tried to turn the conversation onto an innocuous tack. “What I started to say was that I don’t actually raise oranges, I merely own the groves. Mexicans do all the hard labor. When my father sent me over here five years ago, I discovered that a man could be an orchardist and a gentleman at the same time.”

Henley beamed. Mack suspected the man didn’t mean to sound like a pompous idiot, but he did.

Carla swept off her little tweed hat. In her matching full skirt and jacket, high-collared silk shirtwaist, and smart buttoned forest-green gaiters adorning brown oxfords, she was very much in the French mode, and very much more stylish than Nellie.

“Clive’s father is a baronet,” Carla said to Mack. “Fourteenth of his line. Where is it again, dear?”

Henley was tolerant of her flippancy. “Fontana Hall. Oxfordshire.”

“Oh yes.” She gave Nellie a sweet smile. “But it’s you who fascinate me, Miss Ross. Frankly, I’ve never met a woman who is—how should I put it—in trade.”

“Put it…however you choose, Miss Hellman. I’m sure you will anyway.”

Carla flashed her a hot look. “Do you like this—crude sort of life?”

“I wouldn’t do anything else. Except perhaps write novels.”

“Even more bohemian! I’m just overcome. I’ve simply never known a member of our sex who worked for a living, though I’ve heard of some, who get arrested regularly…”

Equally hot now, Nellie said, “Prostitutes and journalists, it’s all the same to you, is that it? Well, for your information, Miss Hellman, you’ll see more and more women, respectable women, working in the future. You will, that is, if you ever care to spend a few minutes in the world of real people.”

This was going all wrong. Mack couldn’t stand by and let them spit at one another like cats with their fur up. He stepped in and grasped Nellie’s arm. “If you’d just excuse us a moment.” A slight pressure got her moving toward me door, though her eyes flashed angrily. She was not merely unhappy with Carla. “I want to discuss…dinner…” Mack added.

By then they were outside. He said the word “dinner” quietly, but Carla had chased them to the door, and overheard. “Yes, we must have dinner, and get even better acquainted,” she said with venomous sweetness. “There’s a charming little inn that opened recently on the road to the coast. The chef is Belgian. We could all drive over and—”

“Thank you so much,” Nellie said with a poison smile of her own. “I’m afraid I can’t. I have to cover a hearing in town. Just a common working girl of the streets…”

Carla reddened and vanished from the doorway. “You said the hearing wasn’t important,” Mack growled under his breath.

“It wasn’t, until I saw that I was keeping you from your company.”

“You were pretty nasty to Carla—”

“I was nasty? Good God, what’s got into you? Unfortunately, I’m afraid I know.”

“Nellie—”

She pulled her arm from his hand, her brown eyes brimming with hurt and anger. “Good-bye, Mack.” She hurried to her buggy. Snatching the long whip from its socket, she switched the withers of the horse three times, and then she was gone.

Damn you,
he thought.
If that’s how much you care—yes, good-bye.

The buggy’s dust plume rose slowly and elegantly in front of the new signboard for Chance-Johnson. Mack squinted at it a moment, then spun and stomped into the office. Clive Henley had gone out the other door and could be seen walking up and down and fanning himself with his boater while he surveyed Mack’s property. Carla was removing her gloves and straightening her high white-silk collar. She didn’t look at him. There was no need; they both understood how the contest had come out.

“Oh, Mack, it’s lovely to see you again. Did you get my note?”

“I did. It took me by surprise. What exactly happened with the Beavis lawsuit?”

Before she could answer, pink-cheeked Henley returned and immediately began to chatter. “I say, old fellow, this does look like a going enterprise. Carla wasn’t exaggerating; half of California is talking about you. The young Midas of the oil fields. They speak of you in the same breath with that Irishman Doheny.”

“And you’re much better-looking,” Carla teased. She slipped her arm through his, on the side away from Henley, and pressed him with her bosom, her dark-blue eyes conveying invitation. “Papa says Mr. Doheny has a reputation. There are whispers that he killed a man in the Southwest.”

“I don’t know anything about that.”

“You sound cross. Is it Miss Ross? Did I interrupt something important?”

“I haven’t seen her for a while, that’s all.”

“You’ve not seen me either, my dear,” she said tartly.

“I tell you,” Henley put in, “if you’re looking for a place to invest your oil profits, you couldn’t do better than citrus. Come down to Riverside and I’ll show you.”

“Thanks—I might. I have some problems to solve first. We’re freighting our crude to the Santa Paula refinery on a temporary basis, but I’d like to ship it all the way to Ventura on my own. If I sold it there, I’d make a bigger profit.”

Carla swept between them, seizing the arm of each. “Tell us about it, my dear.” A heated look flushed her face. Nellie was gone; she’d won the day. She was reveling in it.

Johnson returned at half past four, and they drove to the inn Carla had mentioned. Everyone drank too much wine, but Carla drank the most.

The Englishman and the Texan spent almost the entire meal talking to one another. The faster the merlot flowed, the more boisterous and incoherent their conversation became. At the end of the meal, while the two new friends continued to shout genially at one another, Mack and Carla had a chance to talk with a degree of privacy. Again Mack raised the question of the Beavis lawsuit. Carla was matter-of-fact.

“After Swampy got through cursing me up and down, he hired Stephen White’s law firm in Los Angeles. One of White’s young attorneys, a genuinely tough little fellow named Earl Rogers, persuaded Gladys Beavis to drop the suit. Gladys had her own string of lovers in years past; and Rogers promised that would come out. She withdrew the suit, Mr. White cabled the news, and I came home. Of course I felt terrible about Buddy being hurt that way. I suppose he said something about me to start the quarrel. But me truth is, we’d broken off months before.”

Her shrug struck him as callous. “Carla, the man nearly died because he fell in love with you—”

“Who said that? Swampy?”

“Calm down, everybody who’s read about the lawsuit knows it. I just don’t understand how you can get rid of a sense of responsibility so easily.”

She glared. “I can’t. Why do you think I go through the days with a glass in my hand?”

“Well, you shouldn’t. It isn’t good for you.”

“Oh shut up. Just shut up and put something in this glass.”

Reluctantly he poured more wine. She took a sip, then leaned against his arm, her brief anger passed. “I want to sleep with you so badly,” she mouthed silently.

Mack stared into the dark-blue eyes. Her beauty was overpowering as ever…

Clive Henley whooped and rocked back in his chair. “That’s rich, Hellburner. Oh my dear fellow, that’s choice.”

Mack poured a little wine in his own glass as Carla carelessly drank the rest of hers. Some of the wine ran down her chin, like the flow from a wound. Under the table, she began to caress his hand. His head was buzzing.
Hell with you
,
Nellie
, he thought, and reached for the bottle.

With a headache, a churning gut, and a bitter remorse born of sobriety, Mack took the train to Los Angeles next day. He’d been a fool. He meant to undo it, but he got no farther than the desk of the Pico House.

“No, sir, Miss Ross is no longer here. She left for San Francisco early this morning.”

The following day Mack rode over to the Hellman ranch on the Santa Clara River and gave Carla a bank draft for $1,173. She pleaded with him to spend the night, but though he wanted to, he invented a problem with one of the wells. Their visit consisted of a sumptuous luncheon, full of her lively chatter, any number of double entendres that made him chuckle, frequent praise for his accomplishments, and several references to Walter Fairbanks. These were intended to remind him that he had competition, that if he wanted her, he must be aggressive. He was in awe of her feminine skills; in pursuing him, she goaded him into the role of pursuer. But he stuck by his determination to leave. As he cantered from under the portico, a stronger inner voice said,
You’d be better off staying away from that woman.

On the road to San Solaro he tried to analyze the reason for his feeling. He decided a part of him wanted Carla badly because she was so womanly and warm, and many other men would have sacrificed almost anything to have her; Beavis had almost died because he couldn’t. But another, perhaps deeper and saner side of his nature clung to Nellie. She had walked out, though. He might win her back as a friend but he wasn’t so certain about winning her as a wife. Their ideas were too different, their natures too conflicting, their ambitions too strong. At any rate, she was gone again, and without her he felt vulnerable. And now he harbored a deep fear that at some weak or impulsive moment he might give in to Carla completely.