Shades of Twilight (39 page)

“They do. The so-called burglar spooked them. We have new deadbolt locks now, more secure windows, and we're wired to an alarm that, if it goes off, will set every dog inside a thirty-mile radius to howling. It's not any secret in Tuscumbia that we've done this, either.”

“So you think he knows, and isn't likely to try getting into the house again?”

“He's gotten in twice before without any trouble. Instead of trying it again, this time he tried to shoot me off the road. Sounds as if he heard the news.”

Carl crossed his arms and stared at him. “Miss Lucinda's big party is tonight.”

“You think he could be among the guests,” Webb said. He'd already thought of that himself.

“I'd say there's a good chance. You might want to take a look at the guest list and see if you recognize the name of someone you didn't get along with, somebody who came out on the short end of some business deal. Hell, he wouldn't even have to be invited; from what I hear, so many people will be there that he could waltz right in and no one would notice.”

“You were invited, Carl. Are you coming?”

“Couldn't keep me away. Booley will be there, too. Is it okay if I run all of this by him? That old dog is still pretty sly, and if he knows to be watching, he might see something.”

“Sure, tell Booley. But no one else, you hear?”

“All right, all right,” Carl grumbled. He looked at Webb's car again. “You want me to give you a ride up to the house?”

“No, everyone would ask questions. Take me back to town. I have to get something else to drive anyway, and I'll arrange to have this one taken care of. As far as anyone is concerned, I had car trouble.” He looked at his watch. “I'll be pushing it to get home in time for the party.”

The guests were due to arrive in only half an hour, and Webb was nowhere around. All of the family was already there, including his mother and Aunt Sandra. Yvonne was beginning to pace, because it wasn't like Webb to be late to anything, and Lucinda was growing increasingly fretful.

Roanna sat very still, holding her own worry inside. She didn't let herself think about car accidents, because she couldn't bear it. Her own parents had died that way, and since then she shrank from the very idea of an automobile accident. If she passed one on the highway, she never
rubbernecked but carefully kept her gaze averted and got past the accident site as soon as she could. Webb couldn't have been in an accident, he simply couldn't

Then they heard the front door open, and Yvonne rushed to the door. “Where have you
been?”
Roanna heard her demand with a mother's asperity.

“I had car trouble,” Webb replied as he took the stairs two at a time. He was back downstairs in fifteen minutes, freshly shaved and wearing the black-tie apparel on which Lucinda had insisted.

“Sorry I'm late,” he said to everyone as he crossed to the liquor cabinet and opened the doors. He poured himself a shot of tequila and tossed it back, then set the glass down and gave them a reckless grin. “Let the games begin.”

Roanna couldn't take her eyes off him. He looked like a buccaneer despite the fineness of his clothes. His thick dark hair was still black with dampness and brushed into a severe style. He moved with the lithe grace of a man accustomed to formal clothes, without a trace of self-consciousness. The jacket sat perfectly on his broad shoulders, and the trousers were just snug enough to look trim without being binding. Webb had always worn his clothes well, no matter what they were. She had thought no one could look better than he did in jeans and boots and chambray work shirt, and now she thought no one looked better in black tie. Jet studs marched down the front of his snow white shirt, which had rows of tiny tucks, and matching jet cuff links gleamed darkly at his thick wrists.

She hadn't talked privately with him since the night he'd come to her room, and she had told him why she hadn't seen the burglar. Webb had forbidden her to work at all until the family doctor had checked her and given her the all clear, which he'd done just the day before. Truth to tell, for the first several days after she'd gotten home from the hospital, she hadn't felt like working or doing anything except sitting very still. The headache had been persistent, and if she had moved around much, she suffered a recurrence of that nausea that went with concussion. It was only
in the past two days that the headache had gone away, and the nausea with it. She didn't think she would risk dancing tonight, though.

Webb had been busy, and not just with work. He had overseen the installation of steel-reinforced doors on the main entrances, dead-bolt locks on even the French doors, and an alarm system that had made her pull a pillow over her head to buffer the sound when it was tested. If she couldn't sleep and wanted the veranda doors open so she could enjoy the fresh air, first she had to punch in a code on a small box installed by the window of every room. If she opened the doors without entering the code, the resulting blast would jolt everyone out of their beds.

Between her headache and his work, there simply hadn't been time for a private talk. In the drama of her injury, most of her embarrassment had faded away. After his midnight visit to her room, the subject hadn't come up again, as if they both wanted to avoid it.

“My, you look handsome,” Lucinda said now, eyeing Webb up and down. “Better than you did before, if you don't mind my saying so. Wrestling cows, or whatever it was you did in Arizona, certainly kept you in shape.”

“Steers,” he corrected, his eyes gleaming with amusement. “And, yes, I wrestled a few of them.”

“You said you had car trouble,” Yvonne said. “What's wrong with it?”

“The transmission went out,” he said smoothly. “I had to have it towed.”

“What are you driving then?”

“A pickup truck.“ His eyes gleamed greenly as he said it, and Roanna saw the fine tension in him, a sort of heightened state of alertness, as if he were poised for some sort of crisis that only he anticipated. At the same time there was an obvious amusement in the line of his mouth, and she saw him glance expectantly at Gloria.

“A truck,” Gloria said with disdain. “I hope it doesn't take long to get your car repaired.”

The amusement became even more pronounced, though Roanna wondered if she was the only one who saw it.

“Doesn't matter,” he said, and grinned in wicked relish. “I bought the truck.”

If he'd expected a tirade, Gloria didn't disappoint him. She launched into a lecture on “how it looks for one of
our
family to drive such a
common
vehicle.”

When she segued into the part about the image they had to uphold, Webb's eyes gleamed even brighter. He said, “It's four-wheel drive, too. Big tires, like the kind bootleggers use so they can get into the woods.” Gloria stared at him, aghast and momentarily silenced, as her face turned red.

Lucinda was hiding her smile behind her hand. Greg coughed and turned away to look out the window.

Corliss was also looking out the window. She said, “My God, it looks like that scene in
Field of Dreams.”

Lucinda, understanding exactly what she meant, stood up and said with evident satisfaction, “Of course it does. If I give a party, they will come.”

That remark elicited laughter from everyone except Roanna, but Webb noticed that a smile briefly touched her lips. That was the third one, he thought.

Soon the house was brimming over with laughing, chattering people. Some of the men wore black tie, but most of them were in dark suits. The women were arrayed in a variety of styles ranging from above-the-knee cocktail dresses to tea length to more formal long gowns. Everyone in the Davenport and Tallant families wore long gowns, again at Lucinda's direction. She knew exactly how to make an impression and set the tone.

Lucinda looked good, better than she had in a long time. Her white hair was in a queenly twist on the back of her head, and her pale peach gown, aided by a skillful application of cosmetics, lent its delicate color to her face. She had known what she was doing by insisting on peach-colored lights.

While Lucinda held court with her friends, Roanna
quietly saw to it that everything ran smoothly. The caterer was very efficient, but disaster had been known to strike even the most rigidly organized of parties. Waiters hired for the evening moved through the crowd with trays laden with glasses of pale gold champagne or with a dazzling array of hors d'oeuvres. For those who had heartier appetites, a huge buffet had been set up. Out on the patio, the band had already begun playing old standards, luring people outside to dance under the peach fairy lights.

Roanna noticed Webb moving through the crowd, talking easily with people, stopping to tell a joke or make a few remarks about politics, then going on to another group. He seemed perfectly relaxed, as if it hadn't occurred to him that anyone might look askance at him, but still she could see his increased tension in the hard, bright glitter of his eyes. No one would say anything derogatory about him in his presence, she realized. There was a power about him that made him stand out even in this crowd of social elites, a personal assurance that not many people had. He really didn't give a damn what any of them thought. Not for his own sake, at least. He came across as both relaxed and self-assured but ready to act if necessary.

Around ten o'clock, when the party had been going strong for over two hours, he came up behind her as she was surveying the buffet table to make certain nothing needed replenishing. He stood so close that she felt the heat of his big body, and he rested his right hand on her waist. “Are you feeling all right?” he asked in a low voice.

“Yes, I'm fine,” she said automatically as she turned to face him, repeating the same words she had used at least a hundred times that night in answer to the same question. Everyone had heard about the burglar, and her concussion, and wanted to know about it.

“You look fine,” everyone else had said, but Webb didn't. Instead he was looking at her hair.

The stitches in her scalp had been removed just the day before when she had gone to the family doctor. Today, in preparation for the party, she had gone to her hairdresser,
who had gently arranged her hair in a sophisticated twist that concealed the small shaved patch.

“Can you tell?” she asked anxiously.

He knew what she meant. “No, not at all. Is your head still sore?”

“Just a little. It's tender rather than actually sore.”

He lifted his hand from her waist and flicked one of her dangling earrings, setting the gold stars to dancing. “You look good enough to eat,” he said quietly.

She blushed, because she had hoped she looked attractive tonight. The creamy gold of her gown complemented her warm complexion and the dark chestnut of her hair.

She looked up at him, and her breath caught in her chest. He was looking down at her with a hard, intense,
hungry
cast on his face. Time suddenly seemed to stand still around them, people fading from her consciousness, the noise and music muted. Her blood throbbed through her veins, slowly, powerfully.

This was the way he had looked the day they'd gone riding together. She had mistaken it for lust … or
had
she been mistaken?

They were utterly alone there in the middle of the crowd. Her body quickened, her breath coming fast and shallow, her breasts rising as if to his touch. The ache of wanting him was so intense that she thought she would die. “Don't,” she whispered. “If you don't mean it … don't.”

He didn't reply. Instead his gaze moved slowly down to her breasts, lingered, and she knew her nipples were visibly erect. A muscle twitched in his jaw.

“I want to make a toast.”

Lucinda knew how to make herself heard in a crowd without appearing to raise her voice. Slowly the chatter of hundreds of voices stilled, and everyone turned toward her as she stood slightly alone, frail but still queen.

The spell that had held Roanna and Webb in its grip was shattered, and Roanna shuddered in reaction as they both turned to face Lucinda.

“To my grand-nephew, Webb Tallant,” Lucinda said
clearly, and lifted her glass of champagne to Webb. “I missed you desperately while you were away, and I'm the happiest old lady in Colbert County now that you're back.”

It was another of her masterful strokes, forcing people to toast him, acknowledge him, accept him. All over the room glasses were lifted to Webb, champagne was drunk to his return, and a chorus of “Welcome home” filled the room. Roanna, whose hands were empty, gave him a fleeting, rueful smile.

Number four, he thought. That was two in one night.

Her nerves felt raw from the silently charged interval that had passed between them. She slipped away into the crowd and worked her way outside to make certain everything was okay on the patio. Couples strolled over the grounds, their way lit by the thousands of lights woven into the trees and bushes, the maze of electrical cords carefully covered with foam stripping and taped over so no one would trip over them. The band had moved out of old standards, having sufficiently warmed up the dancing crowd, and was now playing more lively tunes, specifically “Rock Around the Clock.” At least fifty people were bopping their hearts out on the dance floor.

The tune ended to applause and laughter, and then there was one of those errant little pockets of silence in which the words “killed his wife” were clearly heard.

Roanna stopped, her expression freezing. The silence spread as people looked uncomfortably at her. Even the band members stood still, not knowing what was going on but aware that something had happened. The woman who had been talking turned around, her face dark red with embarrassment.

Roanna stared steadily at the woman, who was a Cofelt, a member of one of the oldest families in the county. Then she looked around at all the other faces, frozen in the lovely peach light as they watched her. These people had come to Webb's home, enjoyed his hospitality, and still talked about him behind his back. It wasn't just Cora Cofelt, who had been unlucky enough to be heard. All of these faces were
guilty because they too had been saying the same thing she had. If they had possessed any good judgment to begin with, she thought with growing fury, they would have realized ten years ago that Webb couldn't possibly have killed his wife.