Dust Devil (24 page)

Adding
to Sarah’s attraction had been the air of mystery, the touch of
scandal that had clung to her. She had borne a child out of wedlock,
and so far as Bubba knew, she had never named the father. That she
just didn’t seem the type had further fascinated him—to
say nothing of the fact that, inexplicably, his notoriously demanding
and tightfisted father had not only hired her, fresh out of college,
to head up the entire advertising-and-promotions department at
Field-Yield, Inc., but at an extremely generous salary, besides.

At
first, Bubba had been struck by the horrible, jealousy-arousing
suspicion that Sarah was his father’s mistress, that her
illegitimate son was none other than J.D.’s little bastard. But
several weeks of spying on his father had finally convinced Bubba
that while J.D. did, in fact, discreetly maintain a mistress, it
wasn’t Sarah Kincaid— which had made his father’s
actions all the more bewildering and Sarah herself all the more
intriguing.

In
the beginning, she had deftly turned aside Bubba’s flattery,
eluded his passes and refused every single one of his invitations,
putting him off with one excuse after another: her child, her widowed
mother, the fact that he was her boss. It had taken him two and a
half years of carefully concealing his frustration and impatience, of
cooling himself down with endless cold showers, just to persuade her
to go out to dinner with him. And then she hadn’t even let him
kiss her good-night at the door! No woman had ever treated Bubba
Holbrooke like that. All his life, women had fallen all over
themselves to go out with him, to go to bed with him. But neither his
blond good looks, the fact that he had been a star quarterback in
high school, his position as manager of Field-Yield, Inc., nor his
being J. D. Holbrooke’s son and heir had carried one bit of
weight with Sarah Kincaid. She had been maddeningly unimpressed. For
the first time in his life, Bubba had found a woman who hadn’t
literally dropped to her knees to please him—and it had driven
him crazy with wanting her.

Despite
that they had dated more or less steadily after that, she had kept
him dangling for another two and a half years now—obstinately
refusing to share his bed. He had alternately cajoled, pleaded and
threatened, all to no avail.

“
Look,
I was young and foolish once, Bubba,” she had told him, “and
I made a bad mistake. And although I don’t regret it, since it
gave me my son, I’m not so stupid as to repeat it, either. It’s
taken me a long time and a lot of hard work to live down the shame,
the scandal and the stigma of my having borne an illegitimate child
in this town, and I don’t intend to throw away everything I’ve
gained just because you want to go to bed with me.”

“
Well,
you don’t need to worry about any of that, Sarah honey. Really.
I’m not an irresponsible boy. When the time comes, I’ll
protect you, I swear!” Bubba had insisted.

“
Yeah,
right,” Sarah had replied with uncharacteristic curtness and
sarcasm, her lip curling. “You know something, Bubba? That’s
exactly what Alex’s father said. And that’s why I’ll
never believe or trust another man again where there’s a
bedroom involved.”

Nothing
Bubba had said or done had moved her from this rigid stance. He had
broken up with her more than half a dozen times over it. Sarah had
merely shrugged, unconcerned, unaffected, and told him coolly that he
must suit himself in the matter, that she certainly understood if he
no longer wished to go on dating her.

Finally,
it had belatedly occurred to Bubba that she was holding out for a
wedding ring. After much long, hard contemplation, he had decided it
was worth giving up his freedom to have her—besides which, no
woman in her right mind expected a man to be faithful, anyway—and
he had asked her to marry him. But to his total shock, Sarah had
politely but firmly rejected his proposal.

“
I
have to think about Alex and what’s best for him— and to
tell you the truth, Bubba, I’m afraid he doesn’t really
much like you,” she had said.

“
Shit,
Sarah! He doesn’t even hardly know me! If you’d just give
me a chance with the boy, I know I could win him over. But, no, you
won’t let me take him anywhere. I have practically to twist
your arm off just to get you to invite me over to supper with him. I
never saw a woman protect a kid so damned much. And that’s
exactly what’s wrong with him—the boy’s been
mollycoddled by you and your mother all his life. He needs a man
around to teach him a few things. But you won’t move in with
me—or let me move in with you. Hell, after two and a half
frigging years, you still won’t even go to bed with me, no
matter that I’ve done everything I can think of to show you how
serious I am about you, Sarah. Jesus Christ! I don’t know any
man worth being called one who would hang around as long as I have
without getting a single damned night of sex for it in return! It’s
enough to drive a man clean off his rocker!”

“
Are
those the kind of things you want to teach Alex, Bubba? All about
swearing and sleeping around?”

“
Well,
no, darlin’, of course not.” Bubba had realized his
mistake immediately. “But for heaven’s sake, Sarah! You
just can’t go on sheltering the boy from reality like this. It
ain’t healthy, and that’s a fact. Besides, what did it
ever do for you, get for you out of life? You just sneaked around
behind your parents’ backs, anyway, no matter how strict they
were. In fact, you probably did it precisely
because
they
were so damned strict! And as a result, you wound up spreading your
legs for some no-good young bum who left you high and dry and
pregnant! And if you ask me, that’s the whole damned reason
you’ve got this unnatural hang-up about sex! I’m
beginning to think the bastard must have raped you or something and
that’s why you’re so frigging frigid! Hell, I can even
understand what drove the poor guy to do it. I’m so nuts from
your behavior that I’m half tempted to force you myself, damn
it!” Bubba’s voice had been harsh with anger and desire,
his breathing labored, and his narrowed blue eyes had gleamed in a
way that had made Sarah take a hasty step back from him, her own eyes
wary.

For
a long moment, silence had stretched tautly between them. Then, her
throat working with emotion, she had stated quietly, “Bubba,
it’s not your fault. It’s mine. I’m just not cut
out for the kind of relationship you want to have with me. I knew
that, and I should never have agreed to go out with you in the first
place. I really think it’s best if we don’t see each
other anymore.”

That
idea had scared him so badly that he had apologized profusely,
declaring that there was no excuse for anything he had said, that he
was the world’s biggest idiot and heel and that he ought to be
horsewhipped. He had barely managed to placate her, and he had left
feeling as though he were a dumb cluck more henpecked than any other
man in town. That thought had been absolutely humiliating!

Now,
not for the first time, Bubba asked himself why he tolerated Sarah’s
mental abuse and cock teasing. Who in the hell did she think she was,
anyway? She was Coal Lump Kincaid, mining trash, at the best no
virgin, at the worst an outright slut. He could do a hell of a lot
better. His entire family had told him so on more than one occasion.

Yet,
as he went on gazing at her in the glowing lamplight that illuminated
the study, Bubba could not prevent the tightening of his groin. She
was beautiful—not in the icy, classically lovely, blond fashion
of his sister, Evie, but in a dark, haunting way that made him think
of sunlit green meadows, shaded summer ponds and hushed woods long
with cool shadows. In his mind’s eye, he could see Sarah in
those surroundings, laid out on the grass, sunbeams streaming through
the leaves of the trees to dapple her naked body, flushed and dewy
from his lovemaking. Bubba wondered if that was how she had looked,
spread for her lover, and the thought filled him anew with jealousy
and rage toward the unknown father of her son.

Who
had the man been? Bubba asked himself for the umpteenth time. For
more than a decade, Sarah had maintained her silence on that subject,
had never revealed the man’s name. Not knowing drove Bubba
insane. He looked at every man in town and wondered:
Is
he the one who had her?

“
Was
this the one you liked, Bubba?” Sarah’s voice startled
him from his half-drunken reverie. He shook his head, trying to clear
it, to rouse himself from his lethargy as she held up for his
inspection a recently taken publicity photo of his father.

“
Why
waste your time asking Bubba’s opinion?” Evie sneered,
glancing at him with disgust. “He couldn’t care less
about Daddy’s campaign. The only reason my dear
brother
bothers to do anything at all to help is because he’s all hot
and bothered about
you,
Sarah—although
I confess the reason for that continues to escape me.”

“
Evie!”
J.D. spoke sharply, frowning and shaking his white-haired head like
an old, woolly albino buffalo. “I will not tolerate that kind
of talk from you.”

“
Now,
Daddy—” taking her arm in his, Evie smiled up at him as
flirtatiously as a child “—it’s no less than what
everybody else in town is saying, and what’s more, you know it.
Everybody else is just too polite to say it to your face, that’s
all.”

“
Look,
it’s late, and we’re all tired,” Sarah declared
before J.D. could reply. She coolly ignored Evie. “And I
promised Tiffany I’d be home by eleven at the latest.”
Tiffany Haskell was the young college girl who baby-sat Alex at
night. Although Sarah thought that at age eleven, he was now old
enough to stay by himself during the day, she still wouldn’t
leave him alone after dark. And despite Alex’s insistence that
he wasn’t a child, that girls only a year older than he were
baby-sitters themselves, Sarah had refused to budge on the issue. The
farmhouse was relatively isolated, and if anything ever happened to
Alex, she knew she wouldn’t be able to bear it. “So I
really need to be going. Why don’t we finish the rest of this
sometime tomorrow in your office, J.D.?” she suggested,
beginning to gather up the campaign materials strewn across the desk.

“
I’ll
drive you home, Sarah,” Bubba announced, hauling himself with
obvious effort from the burgundy leather wing chair in which he’d
been sprawled, his tie loosened, collar opened, legs stretched out on
the matching ottoman before him.

“
There’s
no need for that. I’ve got my own car.”

“
Then
I’ll follow you home. You know I don’t like you out by
yourself on the country roads after dark. Anything might happen to
you—a flat tire, an overheated engine. God knows, it’s
hot enough outside to fry eggs on the sidewalk.”

“
Bubba,
you know Sarah carries her cellular phone in her purse everywhere she
goes.” Evie grimaced at her brother. “So it isn’t
as though she couldn’t call somebody for help if she needed
it.”

“
Nevertheless,
even in this day and age, it’s still a mark of a gentleman to
see a lady home, Evie,” J.D. observed, pouring himself two
fingers of whiskey from the Baccarat decanter on the bar, then
settling his bulk into the chair Bubba had vacated. Reaching out to
lift the lid of the wooden box on the end table, J.D. extracted a
hand-rolled cigar. “So you go on, Bubba, make sure Sarah gets
home safely. We’ll reconvene tomorrow afternoon in my office.”

“
Thank
you, J.D.” Sarah finished packing her black leather portfolio,
then picked up her handbag. She knew that as much as J.D. liked and
respected her, he still didn’t approve of her as his son’s
possible future wife. Yet J.D. never failed to ensure that Bubba saw
her home when the hour was late. In fact, on those occasions when she
and Bubba had been quarreling and he balked at accompanying her, J.D.
actually insisted on it. It was almost as though he were terrified by
the thought that some mishap would befall her, and that puzzled Sarah
no end. Although she was extremely good at her job, it wasn’t
exactly as though either Field-Yield, Inc. or J.D.’s senatorial
campaign would collapse without her. So she couldn’t think of
any logical reason why her well-being should be of such seeming
importance to him.