Читать книгу Lone Star Rancher - Laurie Paige - Страница 8

Jessica Miller sighed in relief as she entered the dim coolness of the restaurant. Outside the temperature was in the nineties, not unusual for early August in New York City.

She was aware of the glances and outright stares when she followed the restaurant hostess to the table where her best friend waited for her. At five-ten and wearing sandals with two-inch heels, Jessica was tall enough to be a high-fashion model and, in fact, that was how she made her living.

With wide, bright blue eyes and light brown hair that needed little enhancement to make her look like a summer blonde, she had a face well known to the public.

“Jessica, I’m so glad you’re here,” her friend Violet Fortune said. “I was afraid the photo shoot wouldn’t be finished.”

“I told the director it had to be because I was leaving at noon.” She wrinkled her nose, then smiled at her old chum from long-ago summer vacations and college days.

Violet and her family were from New York but they had visited their Fortune cousins in Texas each summer at the Double Crown Ranch outside Red Rock, which was near San Antonio. Jessica’s father had managed the local hardware store in Red Rock, and Jessica had been born and raised in the small town. The girls had met as youngsters and formed a solid friendship.

They’d shared a room at college the first year, then Jessica had been discovered by the owner of a top New York modeling agency. The woman had attended a college function with her niece, spotted Jessica and demanded to represent her in a modeling career. Since the hardware store was going out of business and Jessica knew her parents and younger sister would need income, she’d taken the offer, given up her scholarship and moved to the city.

But only after the agency owner had promised Jessica’s father she would guard his daughter from the predatory worms in the Big Apple who would devour fresh-faced country girls for a snack.

For the first two years of her new life in the city Jessica had actually lived in Sondra’s home—with Sondra’s son, five-year-old Bertram, whose father was a diplomat stationed in France; Mutley, the dog who’d followed Bertie home from the park; and four assorted cats.

At twenty-one, she’d decided she was old enough to be on her own and had bought her first New York apartment, which was where she’d lived for the past twelve years.

The other condos she owned were rented, as were the parking spaces she’d bought on the second floor of the parking garage next to her place. All in all, the country gal had done well. She was one of the three top-paid models in the world, according to Forbes magazine.

“What are you snickering about?” Violet demanded as Jessica took a seat opposite her friend.

“Life,” Jessica said.

Violet gave an exaggerated shrug. “Oh, that.”

The two friends laughed merrily. However, there were undertones of sadness in Violet’s eyes.

Jessica refrained from questioning her friend, but she knew the sadness had to do with work. After Violet had finished medical school and residency requirements, she’d taken advanced training in neurology and settled in the city, too. She’d stayed with Jessica for a few months before finding her own place. Brilliant at diagnosing brain disorders, she was well known for her pioneering studies.

Recently Violet had been the chief physician or consulting expert on several very difficult cases. While Jessica hadn’t understood the intricacy of the diseases when they had discussed the problems, she’d recognized her friend’s sense of failure whenever a patient didn’t make it.

Jessica thought this was taking a serious toll on the skillful, sensitive doctor, but it did no good to tell Violet the tragedies weren’t her fault. She knew that, and that she had to find her own emotional balance—

“Uh, excuse me, Ms. Miller, but, uh, could I have your autograph?” a young, feminine voice interrupted.

Jessica held her smile in place. Although she wished people would leave her in peace when she was about her private business, her career precluded that possibility.

Sondra had explained all that before letting her sign a contract with the agency. Her agent was a stickler for being polite to the public, who, after all, contributed to the success of her career.

“Of course,” Jessica said. “What’s your name? Are you visiting the city or do you live here?”

The teenager was obviously delighted that the famous model was talking to her. Jessica wrote the girl’s name and a brief message and signed the spiral-bound notebook. Ten other people lined up at once.

The restaurant owner was adept at handling this sort of thing. He stopped others from joining the line and, after Jessica had autographed various pieces of paper, shooed the guests to their seats and reminded them that Ms. Miller also had to eat.

“Now I recall why I was reluctant to have my picture in the medical journal with that article on long-term diseases of the brain,” Violet said with a wry grimace when they were alone.

“Yes.” Jessica sighed as she looked over the menu.

After they’d ordered, Violet narrowed her eyes and studied her friend. “So,” she said, leaning in to the table, “are you going to tell me what’s happening?”

Jessica grimaced. “I have a slight problem.” She hesitated to mention it in view of the life-and-death struggles her friend dealt with every day.

“Yes?” Violet drew the word out.

“There’s a local politician, a semi-biggie, who’s, uh, sort of stalking me. I think.”

Violet’s manner became dead serious. “Who is it? Do you know? What’s he doing?”

“Roy Balter. I met him at a weekend party. I couldn’t take a step without falling over him. He asked for a date. I declined by saying my time was already spoken for. That usually discourages unwanted attention. But not with him. He repeatedly asked to see me.”

“What happened next?”

“When I returned to the city, it started out with flowers. Tons of them every day. After the first few, I refused to accept any others. Now it’s phone calls.”

“Demanding to see you?”

“No. Heavy breathing. When he first started calling my private line and wanting to meet for dinner or the theater, I changed the number. He got the new one, but now he doesn’t say anything when he calls.”

“Oh.” Her friend thought it over. “How do you know it’s him?”

“Feminine intuition and the fact that the telephone number is blocked from identification.”

Violet looked somewhat dubious. “I see.”

“I talked to the district judge, but without solid evidence, he can’t issue a restraining order. The police have informed me that without one they can’t do a thing, even if the man is in my building. He has to be in my condo.”

Jessica shuddered at the thought of him invading her private space. For the first time she admitted to herself that she was a tiny bit frightened by his persistence. It seemed obsessive…vindictive, even.

“You’re sure it’s him?”

“Positive. Sometimes he gives this little laugh just before he hangs up. I recognized it from the three days at the house party. It became quite annoying.”

“When he stayed glued to your side,” Violet concluded.

“Right.”

“Stalkers are dangerous. We need to do something.”

The nice thing about having a best friend like Violet was her willingness to take on another’s problems and plant herself in the middle of them. It had been Violet who had helped her fill out scholarship forms for college and prodded her when she’d felt discouraged.

“You’re too smart to settle down to a mediocre marriage and life in a small town. It’ll stifle you,” her mentor had told her with the confidence of being eighteen and an honor graduate of a prestigious prep school.

Jessica had held the second-highest grade point average in her graduating class, but that had been in Red Rock, and hadn’t counted for much, or so she had thought. Violet had disagreed and persuaded her to go for the gold, which in her case was a scholarship to study economics.

She really would have preferred classical guitar, but she didn’t think many people made a living at that. Her duty had been to her family.

However, because of the money she made from modeling, she had become interested in the investment world and had taken classes to qualify as a financial advisor for the day when her modeling career would be over. At thirty-three, she was lucky to still be on top.

Violet snapped her fingers, startling Jessica out of her introspection. “I know,” she said.

“Know what?”

“What you should do.”

“Oh, yeah?” Jessica asked. “Is this anything like your brainstorm when we were sixteen that we should go down to Galveston, collect sand fleas and sell them to fishermen in order to make a fortune, only we ended up with a bucket of rotten little critters that no one wanted?”

Violet gave her a mock stern frown. “Of course not. This is serious.” Her tone was light, but her eyes looked worried, making Jessica sorry she’d mentioned the problem. “I think you should go to Texas—”

“No way. That might put my parents in danger. And my sister and her family.”

“Let me finish. You should go to Texas and stay with my brothers at their ranch. No one will find you there. When your stalker realizes you’re gone, he’ll give up.”

Jessica wanted to believe that. “Why would he?”

“He gets his satisfaction from taunting you. If that stops, he’ll move on.”

“Right, to some other unlucky woman.”

Her friend nodded, her manner sympathetic. “That’s the way the world works, unfortunately.”

Their food came. Jessica murmured her thanks to the waitress, then gazed at Violet. “I can’t leave the city now. I have a full schedule until the end of the month. I had planned to take September and October off, though, before heading to Italy for a special swimsuit layout.”

“It’ll be cold in November,” Violet reminded her.

“Tell me about it. We’ll be filming in the Alps, if you can believe that.” She started on her chicken salad. “So how’s it going on the medical front? Any miracle cures I should know about?”

“I wish. I’m thinking of taking a cruise in the South Seas or something equally wild and extravagant.”

“Ha,” Jessica said, knowing her friend rarely took a day off, much less a whole week or more.

The conversation turned to general matters for the rest of the meal. When they were ready to leave, Violet laid a hand on her friend’s arm. “Think about the ranch. It would be a safe place. If nothing else, it would give you some peace of mind for a couple of months.”

“I’m sure your brothers would love for a stranger to crash on them for two months.”

“You’re not a stranger. Plus I’ve kept them up to date on your success. After all, how many people have a top model for a best friend? Promise me you’ll think about it.”

“I will. Maybe two weeks would be okay.”

“A month,” Violet promptly countered.

Jessica grinned and rolled her eyes. “A month, then. I’ll think about it.”

Outside they hugged and said farewell. Violet hurried off to the exciting world of brain cures and research studies. Jessica put on sunglasses and a denim tennis hat that pulled down snugly around her face, then strolled through Central Park for an hour before heading down Fifth Avenue to her home.

After nodding to a famous writer in the lobby, she walked up the steps to her floor. Although she was cordial to the man, she kept her distance. She’d learned that he’d voted against her purchasing the apartment when her approval had come before the condo association board. He didn’t like celebrities in the building. He thought it contributed to strangers hanging around, hoping to catch a glimpse of the well-known person, and making a nuisance of themselves.

She wondered what the heck he thought of his own celebrity, or maybe she should say, notoriety. He had three ex-wives and a bunch of illegitimate children.

Upon letting herself in her apartment, she made sure the door locked securely behind her, then noted the blinking light on the telephone-fax-answering machine.

With a feeling of dread, she hit the play button. One message was from her boss, telling her to report in an hour early for the photo session tomorrow and to be prepared for a long day. They wanted to continue into the evening if it rained so they could get shots of lights on the wet streets and her in the latest raincoat fashions.

“Oh, thrill,” she murmured.

The next four messages were silent, except for the faint hiss of breathing. On the last one, she heard the voice she recognized. “Heh…heh-heh,” he chuckled, a slight pause between the start and the end of the laughter.

A shiver stormed down her spine as if she stood in the cold rain. “I hate him,” she murmured as anger, resentment and fear formed a tight ball in her chest. “Hate him.”

“Yeah?” Clyde Fortune said into the phone, which had been ringing when he walked into the house.

“Is that any way to answer the phone?” his obnoxious kid sister demanded.

“Sure. It’s short and to the point.”

She snorted in disapproval, then spoiled it by laughing. “How are you, my dear favorite brother?”

He grinned. “As in one of your many dear favorite brothers, according to which one you’re going to ask a favor of, my sweet little sister?”

There were four boys in the family. Jack was four years older than his own thirty-six years. Since Clyde was the oldest of triplets, he had two brothers, Steven and Miles, who were the same age as he was. Violet was three years younger and the only girl among the siblings.

While the triplets had headed west when they grew up, Jack and Violet had remained in New York, where their parents lived. Their father, Patrick, was an affluent financier. Their mom, Lacey, was a feminist and an equal rights advocate. All her children had gone on marches for one cause or another during their growing years.

Clyde and his triplet brothers had loved Texas and had spent their summers on the ranch belonging to their Fortune cousins for nearly as long as they could remember. Once out of college, they’d pooled their resources and bought their own spread, the Flying Aces, two miles outside of Red Rock and not far from Ryan Fortune’s Double Crown Ranch.

The brothers ran a very successful beef and egg supply business. They contracted with a major distributor in San Antonio, which was only twenty miles from Red Rock, for everything they could produce.

“I do have a favor to ask,” Violet admitted.

“Uh-huh. I thought that was what you had on your little mind. Otherwise, why bother to call?”

“Don’t be so cynical. Besides, the phone line runs both ways. When was the last time you called me?” she demanded.

She had a point. “Okay, I give. You’re right. I haven’t called in weeks—”

“Months,” she corrected.

He sighed loudly. “How are our parents? Have you seen them lately?”

“I try to get out there for Sunday lunch,” she told him, becoming serious. “Mom is as active as ever, but Dad is having trouble with his knees. He’s slowing down.”

“Well, he is seventy,” Clyde said. “Tell the old man to get knee surgery. Can’t you docs replace everything in the body these days, even brains?”

“Very funny,” she snapped, but with humor in her tone. “I didn’t call to talk about our family.”

“Ah, so whose family do you want to talk about?”

“Not a whole family, just Jessica.”

An image came to his mind—a tall girl with skinny arms and legs and a narrow frame, a girl who’d been shy and awkward when Violet had first brought her out to the Double Crown. The two girls had become fast friends, which he’d found surprising. Jessica had looked and sounded exactly like what she was, a down-home Texan with a twang and few social graces. Violet and the girl had remained friends all these years, had even roomed together a couple of times.

Even more surprising was the fact that Jessica was now a top model in New York, according to his sister. Since the world of fashion didn’t come close to being on his list of priorities, he didn’t know about that.

“Do you remember her?” Violet asked.

“Sure. Tall, awkward girl who morphed into a fashion model or something. Is that her?”

“Yes. Uh, she has a problem.”

“Yeah?” He wondered what that had to do with him and the price of eggs in China or, closer to home, San Antonio.

“There’s this guy, a politician who’s sort of big in the city, respected family and all that.” She paused.

Clyde felt tension in the back of his neck. He rubbed it away. “So?” he prodded, growing impatient.

“He’s stalking Jessica.”

“Call the police.”

“She has. They won’t do anything. There’s no proof, just her word against his. Anyway, she’s been working hard and this creep keeps calling and breathing into the phone, then he gives this little smirky laugh and hangs up.”

Clyde muttered a curse. He didn’t like people, whether men or women, who preyed on others.

“She’d planned on taking September and October off, so I thought it would be good if she got out of town.”

He could sense what was coming.

“The ranch would be a perfect place for her to rest and to stay low while this jerk gets over his fixation.”

“Two months? I don’t—”

“She would probably only stay a month. You won’t have to do a thing. She can entertain herself. She just needs a quiet place where he can’t contact her.”

Put that way, it was hard to refuse. “I don’t know,” he hedged. “Let me talk to Steven and Miles first.”

“Steven doesn’t even live there anymore,” she protested. “He’s all wrapped up in his new ranch and remodeling the house for the love of his life. And Miles won’t care. He loves having a woman around to flirt with and practice his charm on. You know that.”

“Huh,” he said, trying to think of a good excuse not to have her friend there and knowing it was a losing battle. His protective instincts were already prodding him.

“The problem is you,” Violet stated.

“Maybe,” he conceded, wondering if the man was at fault. Maybe the model had led him on.

Once he’d been twenty-two and a gullible dreamer. He’d gone to Dallas for the annual ranchers’ association meeting and fallen headlong into love with a sweet-talking waitress who’d told him she was nineteen, pregnant and abandoned by both her lover and her family. He’d given her money and set up an account for the unborn child.

Claudia had used him and his trust in her to bilk him out of a couple of thousand dollars.

He’d even proposed, thinking to bring her to the ranch and share an idyllic life. The weekend they were to marry, he’d arrived at their meeting place in Dallas and waited…and waited…and waited.

As the hours passed, he’d been in agony, worrying that she’d been in an accident or something. Yeah, right. She’d taken his money and run out on him for parts unknown. He’d also found out there had never been a child, according to her friend at the restaurant where she’d worked. The older woman had looked at him with pity.

Man, he must have had “sucker” written in big, bold letters on his forehead. Since then he’d kept his distance from women.

Ignoring the urge to dash to the rescue, he tried once more to dissuade his sibling. “Look, little sis, Jessica would be bored out of her mind staying out here.”

“She wouldn’t. She was born in Red Rock. She grew up there and she loves the area.”

Clyde glanced heavenward. His sister was nothing if not determined once she’d set her mind on a course. “Why doesn’t she stay with her family? Doesn’t she have relatives somewhere around here?”

“She doesn’t want to put them in danger in case the stalker follows her and gets violent. Just last month one weirdo here in New York stabbed the actress he was obsessed with. Didn’t you see it in the paper?”

“I might have read something about it,” he conceded. “Don’t you think it’s a tad strange that she won’t put her family in danger but she thinks it’s okay to stay with near-strangers and put their lives at risk?”

There was a tense silence on the line. “Hello?” he finally said to remind his sibling he was still there.

She cleared her throat. “I haven’t exactly convinced her to head for your place. She’s as stubborn as you are.”

He had to laugh. “Talk about the pot calling the kettle black,” he murmured.

Violet waited a second, then continued, “She doesn’t want to bother anyone. She thinks it’s her problem, and she has to solve it. But I’m getting worried. The guy—his name is Roy Balter—is calling more and more often. Jessica has already changed her phone number, but he got the new one.”

“Info is a snap to get nowadays,” Clyde said. “I’ve heard of this Balter guy. He was one of the talking heads on a television news program the other day. He’s on the city council and is heading up a commission on terrorism. He looked okay to me.”

“That’s the problem. Everyone thinks he’s perfectly sane, while they think Jessica is off her rocker. I was at her place last night and listened to his messages, the breathing, then this sinister little laugh. It gave me chills. Jessica is keeping the tapes from the answering machine. She says maybe the police will believe her when they find her dead body and a box of recordings from the creep.”

“Damn,” Clyde muttered. He closed his eyes and rubbed his neck, then gave up. “Okay, tell her she’s welcome to come here next month if she wants to. I’ll arrange transportation from the airport in San Antonio.”

“Oh, Clyde, thank you. I don’t care what other people say. I think you’re absolutely wonderful.” She laughed at this oft-repeated joke between them, then sobering, she said, “Would you mind picking her up? I’ll feel so much better knowing she’s with you. Miles is wonderful, too, of course, but he doesn’t take things as seriously as you do. This may be a matter of life and death. Really.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll pick her up. Let me know the flight, date and time, okay?”

“Yes. I’ll call as soon as I talk her into going. I’m sure she will. She’s tired and discouraged and frustrated trying to deal with this and her work and all.”

“Make sure she understands that we’ll be doing the roundup while she’s here. No one will have time to babysit or entertain her. You understand?”

“Perfectly. She just needs a break and some peace and quiet. You will keep an eye on her, won’t you? I mean, in case the stalker shows up?”

He exhaled heavily. “Yes.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

With that, she said her farewells and hung up. He realized he’d forgotten to congratulate her on the article in the medical journal, which their mom had sent a couple of months ago. Not that there wouldn’t be other chances in the near future. If he knew his little sis, she would hound her friend into coming out, then she would hound him about looking after the visitor.

He grabbed a beer from the fridge, which held very little else, and went out on the patio to enjoy the twilight and the cool evening air. The cattle in the two thousand acres of pasture that comprised the ranch were grazing peacefully or bedded down while they chewed their cuds.

The quiet appealed to him. No cars were on the paved county road. The interstate highway, I-35, that ran up the middle of the state through San Antonio, Austin and points north was too far away to be heard.

He liked the distance to the horizon, as if one could ride into the sunset forever. He appreciated the vastness of these wide open spaces that were so different from New York where he’d grown up.

Years ago, his mother had declared the triplets to be cowboys at heart. She said she’d known it from the moment they’d been born. Instead of crying, they’d come into the world yelling, “Whoopie-ti-yi-yo.”

Or so she’d said many times with an almost perfectly straight face.

He smiled, then took a long draught of cold beer. Sometimes he missed his mom, he admitted. When she came to the ranch, she fretted about the house and its lack of a feminine touch and worried about the boys’ love lives as well as their eating habits. She was into tofu and soybeans and healthy stuff. Married men, she pointed out, lived longer, healthier lives than bachelors.

She especially worried about him. When he’d returned from Dallas, alone and still single, he’d told his family his fiancée had died in a car accident and had never mentioned it again. His mother probably thought his heart was still broken.

Little did she know, as the saying went. He’d locked that unreliable organ away for good. The Flying Aces was the love of his life. It was enough.

Clyde smiled again, then frowned as he remembered his promise to his sister. Steven wouldn’t care a whit if Jessica visited. Miles would flirt like mad with her when he was at the house, but most of the time he would be out on the back forty of the ranch, handling that part of the roundup.

That would leave him to watch after their guest.

He said a very bad word and was glad his mother wasn’t there to hear it. He would have to guard his tongue if and when the visitor arrived, too.

Taking a long, long drink of the crisp, cold microbrew, he realized something else and nearly choked.

“Damn,” he muttered, then gave a snort of laughter. “It figures,” he said to Smoky, a dog that had drifted by last year and decided to stay, and now, attracted by the laughter, ambled over for a pat on the head.

He wondered if his sister had noted the day of the month when she’d called. That would be so like her.

It was Friday the thirteenth.