Читать книгу Talk To Me - Jan Freed - Страница 7

CHAPTER ONE

AS TOPICS WENT, “My Significant Other Never Listens To Me” was about as interesting as a tractor pull. But apparently the rest of Houston had a love life.

Settling into her sixth-row seat, Kara Taylor glanced from the guest chairs and TV cameras on stage to the rapidly filling George R. Brown Convention Center auditorium. Amazing. Hundreds of busy people had wrangled with bosses, baby-sitters and “five o’clock traffic” that actually started at three to get here by four. All for a chance to see the touring Los Angeles-based Vanessa Allen Show.

Scanning the arriving crowd more closely, Kara arched a brow. Who would’ve thought so many silk ties and mid-heel pumps would attend the taping?

Oh, she’d known the tabloid talk show was popular. But she’d assumed most fans would be traditional homemakers or senior citizens, like the seventy-three-year-old woman sitting to her right. Gram looked positively giddy at the prospect of seeing her favorite talk-show host in person.

But then, so did the working professionals in the audience—some of whom looked younger than Kara, who’d hit the big three-oh two months ago.

Twisting back around to face the stage, Kara smoothed her navy wool skirt, adjusted her matching jacket, centered the gold heart pendant on her delicate neck chain. Hmph. If she hadn’t feared disappointing Gram, who’d raised Kara with unflagging love and selflessness since she was four, no way would she sit here and watch couples air their tawdry dirty laundry. She certainly had better things to do.

Like produce a sleazy lingerie catalog.

Oh God.

Kara battled her flush of chagrin with righteous rationalization. Desperate circumstances called for desperate measures. And Mystery Woman merchandise wasn’t sleazy. Sexy, yes—to both sexes. At least, it was according to the catalog’s photographer, Lisa Williams. Kara would have to continue to trust her best friend’s judgment about the fantasies of men.

She would never in a million years comprehend the male psyche.

Women, however, she understood perfectly.

And the delicately feminine, exquisitely detailed lingerie in her catalog would make any woman who wore it feel sexy and beautiful. Results from her first secret experimental mailing had exceeded her wildest hopes. Especially since almost half of the orders had come from men.

If a second city-wide drop pulled the same ten percent response, she wouldn’t have to worry about paying double the current rent when Taylor Fine Foundations’ lease expired in three months. She wouldn’t have to liquidate stock and close the last remaining store in the family’s once-thriving chain. She wouldn’t have to admit she’d failed to make up for her mother’s unforgivable sins.

By the year 2000, she would beat back the wolves from her family’s estate and ensure her grandmother’s happiness. At least she would if a miracle occurred and those catalogs got mailed out soon.

Yet here she sat in early October, wasting precious hours she couldn’t spare, because Gram refused to drive on the freeway, and Major McKinney had bailed from escort duty at the last minute. Wimp. So the retired army officer was running a little fever? He should try running a store with walking pneumonia, the way she had last year, and then complain.

A squeeze on Kara’s forearm captured her attention. She glanced down at the hand, as fragile and spotted as a quail’s egg, resting on her navy wool sleeve.

“I’m so nervous,” Esther Taylor confessed, her pale blue eyes anxious. “Last week a woman in the audience had a big piece of spinach or something in her teeth. It was so embarrassing.” She wrinkled her brow. “Do I need more lipstick? Did my hair get mussed in the parking garage?”

Kara’s irritation dissolved in an overwhelming rush of affection. Her grandmother was supremely vain.

She checked the vivid pink of Gram’s lips, the crisp edges of youth fissured by time and yearround gardening. Her helmet of silver-blue curls hadn’t budged, of course. No puny gust of wind could penetrate two coats of Final Net.

“You look wonderful, Gram. Quit worrying.”

“You’re right. It’s not as if Vanessa will pick me out of all these people to ask a question on camera. But don’t you think this is exciting?”

About as exciting as a bass-fishing tournament. “Hmm-mmm,” Kara hummed vaguely, the best she could manage without choking on a lie. Together with a pat on bony knuckles, the sound appeared to satisfy her grandmother.

Just then a frazzled-looking man wearing headphones broke apart from the camera and lighting crew to walk center-stage. He picked up a microphone lying on one chair and tested the sound level, stirring up a buzz of speculation.

“Ladies and gentlemen, could I have your attention, please?” he asked, then repeated the question until the large room quieted. “Ms. Allen will be out shortly. But I’d like to go over a few rules before we start taping.”

Kara then learned she was to stay in her seat at all times, applaud and even laugh on cue, listen carefully to each couple’s dialogue on stage without shouting comments—as if she would do such a thing—and raise her hand, rise calmly and state her viewpoint succinctly into the microphone if Ms. Allen singled her out of the audience for an opinion.

For the first time since entering the auditorium, Kara experienced a flutter of anxiety. She reached up casually, patted her sleek chignon and tucked a few errant strands into place.

Unnecessary. Vain and silly. She had no intention of raising her hand. Gram was the star-struck fan who’d be thrilled to share the spotlight with her idol.

“All right folks, let’s get started,” the prompter concluded. “Everybody please give a warm welcome to... Va-nes-sa Al-len!”

The familiar theme music swelled. Kara clapped on cue. A tall striking redhead in signature blueframed glasses entered stage-right carrying a cordless microphone. Her olive-green silk jacket and pants were stylish, but Kara could think of two Mystery Woman camisoles that were prettier choices than the one Vanessa wore.

Smiling warmly, the forty-something celebrity waved and shouted, “Howdy, Houston!”

Cheers erupted. Gram warbled a loud, “Howdy!”

“Gosh, I love this city! People here are so friendly. This is my first visit, can you believe that? I thought you’d all have oil wells and, you know, horses and stuff in your backyards, but you don’t. You guys have something better.” She paused impishly. “Great shopping.”

As laughter broke out she grabbed her knees and hitched up both pant cuffs. “Look what I bought today. Ernie, can you get a close-up of these babies?”

Two large screens mounted high on each side of the stage showed the studio audience what the television viewers at home would see. The camera zoomed in on taupe ostrich-skin cowboy boots.

“Aren’t they beautiful? Rodeo Drive eat your heart out!” She grinned delightedly.

The crowd roared its approval. Vanessa had acknowledged the city’s cosmopolitan status and Texas pride in one fell swoop. No wonder the country loved her. The woman had natural charm and showbiz poise to spare.

Too bad the show’s guests often seemed dredged from the bottom of America’s barrel of apples. Watching rotten characters unpeeled and exposed on TV was not Kara’s idea of entertainment.

Viewing the same process—live and unedited in her naive past—had been bad enough.

“We have some interesting guests for you today,” Vanessa was saying. “Each of the couples you’ll meet is at the brink of breaking up because of a communication problem in their relationship. Let’s see if we can help these people out. What do you say, folks?”

Kara squirmed through the audience’s enthusiastic response and Vanessa’s introduction of Bill and Dorothy, an overweight, middle-aged couple from Rosenberg, Texas.

The two settled in their chairs, his finger prying more space between red neck and shirt collar, her fists tugging less space between knees and skirt hem. They fidgeted self-consciously while Vanessa headed down the stage steps and into the center aisle. Two men bracing cameras on their shoulders followed, as well as the stage manager who’d opened the show, carrying a second microphone.

Esther squeezed Kara’s arm and drew in a sharp breath, then released a disappointed sigh when Vanessa passed by their row.

About halfway up the aisle the TV host stopped and turned.

“Now then, Dorothy, let’s start with you. You told our producer that your husband hasn’t talked to you in twenty-seven years of marriage, and that you can’t take it anymore. Do you honestly mean to say he hasn’t spoken to you in all that time?”

“Oh, he’s spoken, all right. He just hasn’t talked to me,” Dorothy clarified in an unpleasantly shrill voice.

“Can you be more specific?”

“Well, like about a week ago? He comes home from work and I ask him how his day was. ‘Okay,’ he says, like it was business as usual. So later I’m watching the news, and there’s a story about a chemical leak at the plant where he works.”

She flicked a resentful glance at her husband, who gazed stonily ahead. “He could’ve been hurt bad, and I have to find out about it on Channel 2! Does that sound like an ‘okay’ day to you?”

“Nobody got hurt,” Bill spoke up, frowning at the audience. “They cleaned up the spill and I was back on the job in a couple of hours. Like I said, it was an okay day.”

Huffing, Dorothy turned in her chair to face him directly. “What about last night during Walker, Texas Ranger? I asked if you were nervous about being on the show today, and you never even looked away from the TV.”

“I answered you, didn’t I?”

“You said ‘yeah.’ Period. What kind of answer is that? For all I know you didn’t even hear me!”

Bill winced and stuck his little finger in one ear. “The whole trailer park heard you, Dorothy. How can you think I didn’t?”

Predominantly male laughter swelled in the audience.

Kara bristled.

She knew how Dorothy had thought her husband hadn’t heard. He hadn’t looked at her, that’s how. Without the connection of eye contact, a wife simply couldn’t be sure her husband was paying attention.

Poor Dorothy’s cheeks were tomato red. “If you’d told me how you were feeling, if you’d talked to me I would have known you heard me. But all you said was ‘yeah.’ And then when I told you I was nervous, too, and that my stomach felt queasy every time I thought about being on TV, you got mad.”

The couple fumed silently.

Vanessa jumped in fast. “Is that true, Bill?”

His scowl deepened. “I guess.”

Kara’s indignation on his wife’s behalf rose. From the outbreak of feminine murmurs in the crowd, she wasn’t alone.

“Why would her sympathy make you mad?” Vanessa sounded sincerely puzzled.

Slouched in his chair, Bill retreated into himself and stared at an exit sign. Rudely silent. Aloofly distant.

Annoyingly familiar.

Kara wanted to rush up on stage and shake an answer out of the man.

“See what I mean?” Dorothy turned away from the husband who hadn’t looked at her since they’d entered the stage. “It’s hopeless. When he’s at the pool hall with his buddies, he yaks his head off. But he won’t say squat to me, who’s given him three children and cooked and cleaned for him twenty-seven years. I give up.”

“No, no,” Vanessa protested. “Give the audience a chance to help. Okay folks, who’d like to comment on Bill and Dorothy’s problem?”

Hands, including Esther’s, shot up everywhere. But Vanessa was plunging into the opposite section of the auditorium.

“Let’s get a man’s take on this, first. The gentleman with the dark hair, sitting in the middle. Yes, you, I’m heading your way.”

Kara twisted and craned along with everyone else to watch Vanessa’s progress. Too many heads blocked the view.

“Stand up, sir—whoa! Hello up there. Everything is bigger in Texas, isn’t it? Love the T-shirt, by the way.”

Kara jockeyed for a glimpse of the man. Dam it, she couldn’t see!

“Turn toward the camera so we can zoom in for the folks at home. That’s it. Women want me. Bass fear me,” Vanessa read, her tone amused.

Kara’s heart stopped cold...then lurched into heavy slamming beats.

Remembering the big-screen monitor, she whirled to the front. The camera had focused on thin gray cotton stretched tightly over a muscular chest. Dead center, a hooked bass thrashed out of the water, the once-vivid greens and blues faded, the words above imprinted forever in Kara’s memory.

“Tell us what your name is, sir, and where you’re from.”

Even before the camera moved, even before the man answered, Kara knew.

Oh God, oh God.

“My name is Travis Malloy, and I’m from Lake Kimberly, Texas,” drawled the deep baritone that had so enthralled a young woman accustomed primarily to feminine voices.

Gram gasped.

The camera pulled back.

Kara stared at the shaggy sable hair, the slightly crooked nose, the square masculine jaw sporting stubble—not for fashion’s sake but because his beard grew at the speed of light. She took in the bronzed skin and deep squint lines of an outdoorsman, the dark intelligent eyes of a voracious reader.

Then she assembled it all into the heartbreaker of a face she hadn’t seen in nine years. The face of her ex-husband. The man who had, in fact, broken her heart—and had the supreme gall now to wear the T-shirt she’d given him for their first-year anniversary celebration.

The same occasion he’d ended their marriage for good.

STANDING IN THE beam of a remote-camera spotlight, Travis silently cursed the irritation that had sent up his hand, along with seventy or so others.

To his right, obnoxious cackling heated his neck. He probed with his heavy boot until he bumped rubber, then carefully planted his full weight on top of a sneaker.

“Okay, Travis,” Vanessa said above Jake’s strangled groan. “What did you want to say to Dorothy and Bill?”

Since “never mind” would make an even bigger fool out of him, Travis eased off his little brother’s foot and onto the subject at hand. “Just that I think I know why Bill got mad when Dorothy told him she was nervous and queasy.”

“Really? Why?”

He’d had nine years to refine his answer.

“Because instead of focusing on him, she brought the conversation right back to her. Why should he ‘talk’ to her about his feelings when she doesn’t respect them enough to devote her full attention to them?”

Vanessa appeared surprised, then intrigued. “Interesting. I see a lot of men in the audience nodding their heads. What about you, Bill?” she said, tuming to the stage. “Can you confirm Travis’s theory?”

Bill had snapped to military attention, amazed gratitude replacing his earlier scowl. “Yeah. I could never quite put my finger on it before, but that’s exactly right. Hey, thanks, buddy.”

Travis shrugged modestly. Unlike most women, he could be right without making a federal case out of it.

“I’m impressed, Travis. Thank you,” Vanessa told him in a dismissive tone.

He gladly sank out of the spotlight into his seat, ignoring the low singsong, “teacher’s pet” from his right. Give Jake an inch of encouragement and he’d dole out a mile of abuse.

Travis couldn’t think why he’d accepted tickets to the Vanessa Allen Show in lieu of his normal fishing-guide fee. Or why he’d compounded the mistake by inviting the Malloy family clown to accompany him to the show.

“Dorothy, you look a little shocked,” Vanessa continued. “What do you think about all this?”

Dorothy closed her sagging jaw. “I can’t believe what I’m hearing. Do you really think I don’t respect your feelings, Bill?”

“I said so, didn’t I?”

“For heaven’s sake, look at me, please.”

Travis cringed, the words fingernails on the blackboard of his memory, a slate he’d yet to wipe clean. He should never have made the rare trip into Houston today.

When Bill finally gazed at his wife, his expression was long-suffering. “All I know is, whenever I tell you something personal, you always say how you’re feeling or what happened to you that was almost the same. Like what I feel isn’t important”

“But—Bill, honey, that’s not at all what I think. When I say those things, I only want you to know you’re not alone, that I’ve felt the same way. I thought that knowing I understand how you feel might comfort you.”

“Well, it doesn’t. It never has.”

“I didn’t know.” Dorothy’s strident voice was subdued, her two screen-monitor faces sincere and misty-eyed. “I swear I didn’t know. I...I’m sorry.”

Travis shifted uneasily. The conversation slowly faded into the background of his mind. A soft melodious voice crept forward from the past.

Look at me, please.

Talk to me, please.

I know exactly how you feel about not making the boat payment on time. The late fees I paid on rent for my apartment in college would add up to a nice little nest egg. Don’t worry about it, Travis.

Had his ex-wife possibly meant to comfort him instead of belittle his real worries about the future?

Uh-uh. No way, José. Did not compute. Nice try, but no bananas.

She’d had no interest at all in helping him establish a fishing camp on the shores of Lake Kimberly. It was as simple as that. They’d been as mismatched as caviar and catfish bait, their marriage doomed from the start.

Of all the females he’d never understood—which at age thirty-four was a hell of a long list—Travis had never understood Kara Taylor the most.

Men, on the other hand, were an open book. As proof, he’d developed Bass Busters Fishing Camp into a thriving operation.

An elbow in his ribs jabbed Travis into the present.

“Man, can you believe this?” Jake muttered, gesturing to the stage. “The Simpsons meet The Munsters.”

Travis checked out the teenage couple sitting next to Bill and Dorothy, and felt his lips twitch.

The big brawny dude wore black jeans, a black T-shirt and black biker boots. He had massive shoulders, a low ridged forehead and a flat-top haircut. Put bolts in his neck and he could pass for Herman Munster’s little brother. The girl’s long black hair, flowing black dress and cadaver-pale face with heavily lined eyes made a fitting match.

Vanessa spoke from the center aisle. “Since we heard from Dorothy first, last time, let’s start now with you, Terrence. Tell us why Tiffany doesn’t understand you.”

Travis and Jake shared an incredulous look.

“Terrence?” Jake mouthed silently.

“Tiffany?” Travis mouthed back.

They both snorted at the incongruous names.

“She’s always puttin’ me down, man. and then acts all hurt when I say so. Like, the other night at Sonic? They’ve got this deal where if you don’t get your order delivered in fifteen minutes, you get it free?

“So I’m keepin’ an eye on my watch, ya know? The waitress skates up with our burgers, and I tell her she’s five minutes late. But Tiffany, she says—real load—that I’m wrong and the food’s not late. And everybody’s car windows are down for the trays.”

Travis winced in sympathy.

“Why doesn’t she just scream ‘Loser’ to my face?” Terrence asked the audience.

“Oh, puh-leez!” Tiffany rolled her eyes, a startlingly melodramatic sight given her heavy make-up. “Your watch was fast. Kim wasn’t late. She gets in trouble if she gives out too many coupons in a night.”

“Whose side are you on? Hers or mine?”

“That’s stupid. You’re my boyfriend. I’m always on your side.”

“Then why did you put me down?”

“I didn’t put you down. I helped out a friend!”

“See? You’re on her side.”

Tiffany let out a frustrated shriek, lifted her hands and strangled an invisible neck.

As the women in the audience laughed, Vanessa moved to the section opposite Travis and Jake.

“Who has a comment?” she asked, weaving into the crowd. “Yes, sir, tell us your name and what’s on your mind.”

A short, balding man stood and thrust out his chin. “Harold Stokes. And I think if she was really on his side, she wouldn’t have contradicted him in public.”

“Thank you, Harold.” Vanessa moved closer to the stage. “The men are all nodding again. Let’s get a female point of view. Ah, there’s a woman of experience. Hang on, I’m coming. Okay, what’s your name?”

The sound of amplified breathing filled the auditorium.

“Don’t be shy, dear. We’re all friends.”

Travis’s gaze sought the closest monitor—and widened.

Good grief! He’d recognize that sweet face surrounded by immovable gray curls anywhere.

Esther Taylor stood frozen in the spotlight, prime for gigging or a truck bumper in her gut. She eyed the extended microphone as if it were a hand grenade with the pin pulled.

The audience started to mumble and snicker.

Move on to someone else. Don’t prolong the old girl’s misery.

Esther sat abruptly, yanked down by an unseen force, and a mint-julep voice spoke. “I’ll comment, if you’d like.”

Travis’s heart sputtered like a flooded outboard motor. Even before the camera moved, he knew.

“Wonderful! Stand up and tell us your name.”

Of all the crazy rotten luck

“Kara Taylor. And the lady who just sat and will kill herself when we get home is your biggest fan—Esther Taylor, my grandmother.”

Travis stared at the tall elegant woman who’d disarmed the restless audience as quickly and easily as she’d once entranced him.

Her generous curves were disguised by a severe navy jacket and skirt, her only accessory a dainty necklace. Her glorious platinum-blond hair was tortured into some sort of do only women liked. Her bewitching green eyes were underscored by shadowed half moons of fatigue.

Together they formed the heartbreaking beauty he hadn’t seen in nine years. His ex-wife. The woman who had, in fact, broken his heart—and had the incredible gall now to wear the heart pendant he’d given her to celebrate their first-year anniversary.

The same occasion she’d ended their marriage for good.