Texas rich (17 page)

Aside from a telegram informing them that he'd arrived safely in San Diego, there had been no word from Moss. Billie wrote him care of an APO number, San Francisco. V-mail was notoriously slow, she'd been told when she'd fretted about Moss's not answering her letters. She wrote every night, using the onionskin paper commonly known as V-mail stationery that Jessica had brought her from the post office.

After the very first vitamin B injection BilUe began to feel more like herself. But the days were still long and lonely for her. It was Jessica who kept BiUie company on those afternoons when she was feeling better. Billie welcomed Jessica's attentions and company. She liked to hear stories about Moss when he was a child, and looking through the family photo album was one of her favorite pastimes. One day, Jessica asked Billie if she would like to see Moss's room.

Jessica opened the door to a room on the second floor, west wing. "This was Moss's room when he was a boy," Jessica explained. "When he was seventeen he moved to the room next to yours. And then, of course, he went off to college." Billie stepped inside and immediately felt herself immersed in Moss's life. School banners almost covered the walls by the narrow low bed. Books, hockey sticks, baseball bats, and other assorted sports equipment littered the comers. Dresser tops and bookshelves were studded with sports trophies, and from the ceiling, on fine, almost invisible wires, hung model planes, put together by Moss himself with painstaking attention to detail.

"Why don't I just leave you here, Billie? That's the first smile I've seen on your face in almost a week," Jessica said. "If you need me, I'll be in the kitchen with Tita, going over next week's shopping list. When you're through here, I've something else to show you."

Jessica closed the door quietly, a sympathetic smile touching her lips. Poor Billie, she missed Moss so. Such a quick courtship, so little time to get to know each other. And now there was a baby on the way. As she walked to the kitchen, she thought of Seth's disapproval of Billie—"not the stuff Cole-mans are made of." But there was one thing Seth and that lovely girl had in common; their love for Moss. The thought occurred to Jessica that perhaps Seth was so disagreeable to

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Billie for just that reason—he saw the girl as a rival for Moss's affections. Well, Jessica sighed, hadn't that always been the case? Since the day of Moss's birth nothing and no one else had existed for Seth, and that included herself and poor AmeUa, who had tried her whole life to gain her father's love. And when she'd failed, Amelia had opted for her father's attention instead. That was the reason for most of her scrapes and rebellion. It seemed that all of them, Moss included, thought nothing was as important as being worthy of Seth's love. A love so grudgingly given.

Billie hardly heard the door close, so enthralled was she at being surrounded by Moss's things. It wasn't difficult to imagine his young dark head bent over the scarred and battered desk as he studied his schoolwork or meticulously painted one of his model planes—and so many of them! It was easy to see that his love of flying had begun at an early age. Her eyes wandered over a cabinet filled with athletic trophies, the floor-to-ceiling shelves littered also with books, some of them read over and over again, judging by the tattered comers and dogeared pages. Photographs hung on the walls—Moss playing basebfidl, football, one with his arm around a pretty girl at what must have been his senior prom. She was a slender girl with dark hair and angular features. Several photographs were of Moss with this girl. One, bent and dog-eared, as though it had been carried for a long time inside a wallet, was of the girl, stylishly dressed in ski togs, smiling up at Moss, who had his arm around her possessively. Across the bottom, Moss had scrawled, "Alice 'n' me."

Billie knew a pang of jealousy. Who was Alice?

Several photographs were of himself with his sister, Amelia, whom Billie recognized from pictures Jessica had shown her. Two sleek dark heads close together, AmeUa's arm around a pony's neck. Moss grinning into the camera while he authoritatively held the animal's bridle.

Sinking down onto the foot of the narrow bed, Billie smoothed her hand over the green wool sweater that lay beside her. There was so much about Moss she didn't know, couldn't even imagine. He was still a stranger, she realized sadly, a man who had come into her life and taken her heart. There had never seemed to be time for questions, for delving into the past. All that had mattered was the present, the all-too-short present. And now here she sat among his things, in this room that seemed to be maintained as a shrine to his youth. She felt as though she'd

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been sent here to Texas to be stored among his possessions and to wait for his return, something more that belonged to Moss. Unthinkingly, her hand went protectively to her middle, where the life their love had created nestled warm and safe within her. This was Moss's also. And the baby would wait, just as she would, to be reclaimed.

The feelings of an echoing past stayed with Billie when Jessica took her later to the little workroom behind the stable. Here an older Moss had littered the small space with radio innards, electric motors, screwdrivers. Here, too, was the sense that Moss had only just left for a little while, that any instant he would appear at the door to finish a project or begin another.

"This should have been cleared out long ago," Jessica complained good-naturedly, "but Seth wouldn't hear of it. That man's as stubborn as a sore-toed mule. It's not as though Moss will ever use this place to tinker again, not when he's got factories and laboratories with all the latest equipment."

Billie's brows hfted in question. "That's right, dear. Didn't Moss tell you? Or was he too busy sweeping you off your feet?" Jessica laughed indulgently. "Seth's business isn't just cattle and oil. Heavens, no. The Coleraans are involved in aeronautics and electronics. Moss always was bright when it came to new ideas or new uses for old ones. That's a direct quote from Seth, but I was always proud of Moss, too. Considering the way his father dotes on him—and certainly he never wanted for anything money could buy—^Moss was never spoiled or lazy, never what you'd call a playboy. He gets more pleasure from his little inventions than he would from a new sports car." Jessica's pride in her son was evident in her glowing smile. "Moss always had good judgment, I'm glad to say, and he's shown extraordinary taste when it comes to choosing a wife."

Jessica threw her arms around Billie and hugged her. "You've become very dear to me, child. I won't pretend it doesn't have something to do with the baby, but I'm so glad you've come to Sunbridge."

"Moss's good judgment extends to his choice of mothers," Billie teased, returning the hug. "And thank you for showing me his room and his workshop. There's so much about my husband I don't know."

'The Coleman men are a hard lot to understand, Billie. There's a lot of Seth in Moss, and even being married for

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almost thirty years I still can't say I know my husband. But this is Moss's world, Billie, and it must become yours if you're ever to be happy. Your child will belong to Sunbridge. And while you're discovering Moss's world and his work, I hope it will bring him closer to you, ease some of the loneliness." Together, Billie and Jessica stepped out of the workshop and into the bright Texas sun. When BiUie looked over the expanse of lawn and the pastures beyond, she tried to see through Moss's eyes. Sunbridge. Moss's home. Would it ever be home to her?

Seth was taking unusually long to select his dinner clothes. Normally he reached into the closet and whatever his hand touched was what he wore. Tonight there were guests. Guests, he snorted. Moss's sickly-looking wife and her mother, who could double as a barracuda. He withdrew a five-hundred-doUar, custom-made suede jacket that was the color of tumble weed. He had a shirt to match and he'd even wear a tie. Dress up, spruce up, show off a little. Agnes Ames would catalog his entire outfit complete with prices. He hadn't managed to get this far in life without knowing something about people, and Seth had seen Agnes before, in himself. There was a burning fever in her eyes that had once been in his own.

The pier glass threw back his reflection. He looked fme. Fitter than a tick on a brown dog, and the image of success. Not long ago Texan magazine had done a spread on him, noting his humble beginnings. Humble my ass, Seth snorted. Bom to an abjectly poor tenant farmer, he had worked by day beside his five brothers and his father to eke out a living from the barren land. By night, he'd huddled on a bare mattress with only unwashed brothers for warmth. He would never forget the stink. He would never forget any of it.... His ma was always carrying a big belly or spewing another life into the already too crowded shack. The naked defeat in her eyes and the stench of moonshine on his father's breath convinced him at an early age that life on someone else's land would never bring a man a good meal or a clean bed.

He was twelve years old, scared of the big world but scareder still of what staying in that tenant shack would make of him, when he cut and ran with the rags on his back and sixty cents stolen from the cracked milk jug. He poked around some for a year or two, begging and finding odd jobs. But most men

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took him for older than he was because of his size and the curiously solemn expression in his eyes, and he talked himself into a job in the oil fields. He woriced like a slave and was treated like one, but at the end of the first month he had fourteen dollars and eighty-five cents and that was all that mattered. He saved, spending only what was necessary to survive: a warm coat, sturdy boots, and a stupid old mule to carry him about. And at the end of each year the sock in his bedroll bulged fatter and fatter.

He was twenty when he met Skid Donovan, an old catter with a lease on a pumped-out well but no money. There was still oil in that old hole; Seth could smell it. All around them the black stuff was making men rich. It was a chance, a gamble, and he took it. They became partners.

Seth worked like a mule and sharpened his business savvy. That other companies wanted to take over Skid's lease confirmed Seth's opinion that there was more oil down there. He had to fight and develop eyes in the back of his head. Luck decided to ride with him and the well proved. But while he did all the work. Skid drank away his half of the profits. After two years Seth had enough and sold the partnership out from under Skid without guilt. Hell, Skid would guzzle himself to death in another six months anyway, so what difference did it make that he'd gotten his signature while the old man was blind with rotgut whiskey? TTie world was made of survivors

The mirror was showing Seth something he didn't want to see. He was aging just like his father. The grooves and trenches in his face were the same ones he'd despised in the old man. Without a second thought, he raised his booted foot and smashed the pier glass into thousands of sparkling shards.

He supposed that somewhere down the line he should have sent some money to the old man and those shiftless, sorry creatures who were his brothers. But hell, if they wanted to wallow in poverty, who was he to stop them? Sending them money would have been like pissing in the ocean. They were all too stupid. He didn't owe tiiem anything. He couldn't even remember if the old man had ever called him anything besides "boy." And when he'd left, he was sure, it had been a relief to his family that there was one less mouth to feed. They hadn't exactly sent out a search party for him.

Setfi had never wanted Jessica to know the whole truth. Once he'd set his sights on her, he'd wanted nothing to stand

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in the way of making her his wife. She knew he came from modest beginnings, but he'd never told her how sorry it had all been—it never did for a woman to have something to hold over a man's head.

Yes, he'd wanted Jess. Good family, good bloodlines, a little short on money—but that was all right; he was going to have more than enough. Poor Jessica. Pretty as a picture and crazy in love with him. But weak, no grit, no starch, too emotional. He'd been expecting a passel of robust sons and what he'd gotten was a worthless daughter who had made it impossible for Jess to bear more children. Sometimes there was no justice. And of course, she'd given him Moss. For his one magnificent son, Seth did have to thank Jessica. He'd given her an easy life and she had no complaints.

Agnes Ames, now that was some woman. He admired her rigid posture and her capable hands. A strong woman, damned attractive, too. He wished he could say the same for the pitiful little gal Moss had married. Billie would have to toughen up if she was going to fit into the Coleman family. He hoped he was wrong, but he thought he saw many of Jessica's weakiiesses in the girl. Too thin and narrow-hipped.

Yes sir, he'd come a long way by the shortest possible route. He made the rules. The legacy he would leave behind to his son and future grandsons had been worth it. His family, his legacy. No guilt, no remorse. When you won, you won all the way.

Seth Coleman presided over the chenywood dining table in proper patriarchal form. His thick, freshly combed gray hair brought his healthy tanned features into relief beneath the glow of the Victorian globe chandelier. A russet-brown, westem-cut jacket fit snugly about his broad shoulders and he wore a silk waistcoat that belonged to another age. Billie tried to see something of Moss in Seth's face but could recognize only the summer-blue eyes; they were older and wiser, of course, but they lacked the warmth and humor that were in her husband's. Those qualities, she decided, he'd inherited from Jessica.

"What's for supper?" Seth growled in his peculiarly graveled voice. "I don't mean to offend you ladies," he said with a smile toward Agnes, "but I hope to hell we've having something a man can sink his teeth into."

"Now, Seth, you know what the doctor said about your

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diet." Jessica kept her words light but there was a loving chastisement in her tone. "As it happens, tonight we're having roast beef and potatoes. That should suit any man, Seth, even you."