Water Witch (22 page)

She managed a feeble, self-conscious sound and a twist of her lips that she hoped passed for a chuckle. “How dumb of me not to notice.”

His smile widened as he looked down at her. “Not at all.”

When he pushed open the door, she scooted around him and sucked in a blessed breath of air to be free of that place and put some distance between them.

Outside, the parking attendant snapped to at the sight of Nick. “I stayed to keep an eye on your car, Mr. Russo. She’s a beauty.”

“Thanks, Eddie,” he said, peeling a bill off a wad thick enough to buy the Astrodome and handing it to the grinning young man. “She’s a real find. Perfect shape. I lucked into her at an estate sale and picked her up for a bargain. I’m not sure why she quit on me tonight, but I’ll have her running like new in a few days.”

Following the rapt gaze of the two, she saw an ancient limousine sitting alone in the almost empty parking lot. Gleaming black and chrome with a tire well behind the front fender, it looked like something from an old movie.

“That’s your car?” Chris asked.

He nodded and they walked toward the heavy automobile. “A 1939 Rolls Royce Wraith. Mint condition. I bought it and drove it here from Galveston, but it started acting a little jumpy a few blocks away. I decided to have it towed until I have a chance to look at the engine. Cars are like women.” A slow grin spread over his face. “They respond best to easy handling.” His fingers caressed the distinctive feminine hood ornament as his gaze slid over Chris. “The Spirit of Ecstasy,” he said, voice husky, index finger tracing the graceful curve of a chrome leg. “Think you can handle it?”

Her eyes grew wide and she swallowed. “Handle what?” she asked slowly, her voice barely above a whisper.

Nick gave a deep chuckle. “Towing the car . . . for a start.”

Suddenly, Chris became animated. “Oh, sure. No problem. Let me get the truck, and I’ll have you hooked up and hauled before you can say ‘Jack Robinson.’“

She fled to the wrecker and jumped into the cab. Gripping the wheel, she forced herself to take deep breaths. Was he making a pass or was it her overactive imagination? In all the years she’d been driving Hub Lovell’s tow truck, she’d never gotten herself into a situation like this. Some folks, Jon included, thought it was dangerous for her to drive a wrecker, but she’d never run into serious problems. Well, she reconsidered, maybe a few hair-raising situations here and there. But nothing she couldn’t deal with.

Nick Russo was a different matter altogether. She’d never encountered a smooth-talking hunk with bedroom eyes and a seductive smile that made her want to dissolve into a grease spot on the pavement. If she got out of this intact, she was going to ground Jon Paul Ponder until he was thirty.

Somehow she managed to maneuver the truck over to the ancient limo, get out, and work the hydraulics until the eagle claw had grasped the wheels and she had raised the boom, lifting the Rolls. Nick Russo watched her with an odd bemusement that made her nervous. Very nervous.

When she had secured the car with wheel straps, she tossed her gloves into the truck and climbed in. “Where to?” she asked when he had settled into the passenger seat.

“River Oaks,” he replied, and named an address in the most exclusive area of Houston.

“It figures,” she muttered under her breath as she pulled away. His type always lived in mansions in River Oaks with gardens and swimming pools; she lived in a decrepit monstrosity in the Heights without so much as a petunia. And the closest thing she had to a pool was the puddle on the kitchen floor when the plumbing leaked from the bathtub upstairs.

“Did you say something?”

“Uh, no. I was just thinking about my plumbing. How long have you lived in Houston, Mr. Russo?”

“I moved here from Chicago about eight years ago.”

“You still have family in Chicago?” she asked, trying to find a safe topic of conversation to keep her mind off the sheer presence of him filling the cab.

“Yes, I still have family in Chicago, but most of them have moved to Houston now. The business opportunities were better here. What about you?”

“What about me?”

“Tell me about Chris Ponder, lady wrecker driver. Are you from Houston?”

“No, I’m originally from Texarkana. I came here to go to the university and never left. My parents still live in Texarkana though. My dad worked at the pickle plant, but he’s retired now. I have a younger brother who’s an engineer in Sacramento.” Chris knew she was babbling, but she didn’t care. She’d tell him her life story if it would fill the time until she could get rid of him. “My brother’s name is Andrew, and he and his wife, Carol, have three little girls.”

“How long have you been driving a tow truck?”

“About four and a half years. I usually work on weekends or when it rains.”

“When it rains?”

“Sure,” she said. “Everybody needs a wrecker when the streets flood. You’d think people would learn not to drive into high water, but they never do. I make my best money when we get a couple of inches or more.”

“Isn’t it a dangerous occupation for a woman?”

Irritation flashed over her. She was sick to death of hearing how dangerous it was for her to drive a tow truck. She didn’t need anyone telling her how to run her life, least of all someone who hung out in sleazy nightclubs. “I like it,” she snapped. “And it pays the bills. It’s honest work, Mr. Russo.”

Nick smiled as he watched her chin jut out as she gripped the wheel and concentrated on her driving. For the first time in a long time, he felt the strong stirring of genuine attraction to a woman. Not since Paula had left had he felt much of anything. Oh, he’d been out with women; he’d played the games, but he hadn’t felt anything. And if he were honest with himself, he hadn’t felt much for Paula their last couple of years together.

He looked at the little spitfire beside him and tried to compare her with his ex-wife. Besides the fact that they were both beautiful, although in very different ways, there was no comparison. Paula had been all cool surface with no interest in family or anything other than her own image. She’d never gotten excited about anything. He almost laughed out loud when he tried to imagine Paula, In greasy jeans, driving a wrecker or trying to drag a dancer offstage or yelling at Sal.

By the time she pulled into his driveway, Nick had decided that he definitely planned on seeing more of Chris Ponder. It was going to be an interesting relationship. She was an independent little thing, but she brought out a protective streak that he didn’t even know he had.

The first thing he was going to do was find her a job in his organization that would keep her off the streets.

After she unhooked the Rolls in front of the garages, Nick took a couple of hundred from his money clip and handed it to her.

“What’s this?” she asked, frowning at the bills in her hand.

“Consider it payment for the extra irritation at the club.”

Did he think he could wave a little cash under her nose and everything would be all right? Anger boiled up in her like an overheated radiator as she extracted her usual fee and thrust the rest back at him. Why had she ever thought this macho jerk was attractive?

“It’s been irritating all right, Mr. Russo, but I won’t take hush money!” Scrambling into the truck, she slammed the door and revved the engine. Leaning out the window, she yelled, “And you can tell Mr. Milella that the Viking has bumped his last grind!”

*    *    *

THE RIGHT MOVES is on sale now!

Texas Tales: Galveston

“Ain’t nobody here but me, and I’m just fixing the furnace. Think Hook drove the ladies over somewhere in Louisiana to see that flower garden. Everybody says it’s right pretty this time of year with the tulips and such. I believe they’re all gone for the weekend, except Tess.”

Damn! The muscles in Daniel Friday’s jaw twitched as he clenched his teeth, and the deep lines between his eyebrows became furrows. Why in the hell couldn’t Gram stay put for one day? Now of all times, when he was swamped with work, he couldn’t believe he’d flown to Galveston for nothing. His sister Kathy had convinced him that their grandmother had moved in with a bunch of strange people who might very well be con artists of some kind, and she had insisted that he come check out the situation.

“Who’s Tess?”

“Tess Cameron, Miss Olivia’s niece. No,” the stoop-shouldered man in blue coveralls said as he rubbed his chin, “I guess she’d be Miss Olivia’s great-niece. Her mama was the niece. Miss Octavia’s daughter. Miss Octavia and Miss Olivia was—”

“Yes, yes. May I speak to—”

“—twin sisters, you know,” the repairman drawled on, ignoring the brusque interruption. “Spittin’ image of one another, but Miss Octavia’s been gone about eight or ten years and her daughter closer to thirty. Anna, I recollect her name was.” He rubbed his chin again. “Or was it Amelia? No, I believe it was Anna.”

Daniel Friday was a man who valued his time. Tall and impeccably dressed, he was also one whose presence commanded respect, and he demanded the same competence and efficiency from others that he did from himself. He was accustomed to controlling every situation, and his irritation grew as he was forced to listen to the old geezer’s meandering drone. Not even Daniel’s sternest “let’s cut the crap and get on with business” look, a look guaranteed to sober every one of his employees immediately, could faze the fellow.

Daniel stood on the porch of the old mansion on Galveston’s main thoroughfare, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. Even the magnificent three-storied redbrick house, which at first glance he judged to be well over a hundred years old, captured only his subliminal awareness. All he wanted was to find his grandmother, get her settled back where she belonged, and return to Pittsburgh first thing tomorrow. Maybe the niece could help him find Gram.

“May I speak to Tess?” Daniel asked when the man paused for a breath.

“She ain’t here. Ain’t nobody here but me.”

Daniel waited for a long-winded explanation, but this time, when one was needed, none was forthcoming. Dragging his fingers impatiently through his thick, tawny hair, he asked very deliberately, “Where can I find her?”

“I’m not right sure, but you could try the pier down at Twenty-Seventh and Seawall. She goes down there most mornings about this time. Says the fiddler crabs don’t complain about her music as much as the neighbors do. Yep, I’d try there first if I was you.”

Fighting to control his growing frustration, Daniel secured directions from the repairman, stalked to his rental car, and headed toward the Gulf. The morning fog was so dense that he had to creep along and squint at the street signs. Mumbling about his rotten luck, he finally found the spot he was looking for, parked, and slammed the door as he got out.

A pain gnawed at his stomach. Heartburn again, he thought. Too much coffee and too little sleep. It seemed that there was never enough time these days, never enough of him to spread around. His twelve-and fourteen-hour days had been stretching into sixteen and eighteen. There were always labor problems, equipment malfunctions, material delays, and the never-ending mounds of paperwork. Right now he needed to be in his office in Pittsburgh, not chasing after Gram and a gang of loonies on a foggy sandbar along the Texas coast.

A fine mist spotted his navy wool blazer as he crossed the boulevard, deserted as far as he could tell except for a lone jogger slapping the wet asphalt and a small black dog running beside him. Scents of fish and ocean and rotting wood hung heavy in the humid air. Though he couldn’t see through the fog that hovered over both the island and the water, he could hear the cries of sea gulls overhead, mixed with the gentle lap of waves on the shore. The occasional blare of fog horns, some distant, some closer, echoed over the water as he descended the seawall steps.

He walked carefully onto the rock groin pier, following the sound of a strange whining he couldn’t identify. It sounded almost like the skirl of a bagpipe coming from the misty fog. He had no idea how long the pier was, and he was hesitant to go much farther.

He called out. “Tess Cameron!” He listened for an answer, but all he heard was the haunting whine from the fog, the sea gulls, and water washing against the rocks.

Cautious of the slippery surface of the jetty under his leather-soled shoes, he advanced slowly and hoped to hell he didn’t step off into the Gulf of Mexico. If he hadn’t loved his grandmother so much, right about then he would have seriously considered throttling her. He muttered a few choice oaths and trekked on.

He had gone about thirty feet out when he saw her.

The tall, slender figure playing the bagpipe was no dour Scot from the highlands. Instead of kilts and tartan, she wore orange overalls and a fuchsia shirt, and a floppy yellow rain hat pulled low over her ears. She was playing the bagpipe, playing with total abandon. And obviously relishing every minute of it.

The scene and the sounds and the piper were so totally incongruous that, in spite of his agitation he couldn’t help but smile. Her whole body was animated as she played. Her head bobbed as her cheeks puffed and blew, her bottom did an exaggerated twitch, and her knees pumped up and down as her fingers moved along the chanter.