Czytaj książkę: «P.s. Love You Madly»

CHAPTER ONE

IT WAS A SATURDAY MORNING in May, and the Texas Hill Country was in bloom. Wild roses clambered up the fences, violets blossomed along the creeks, and the bluebonnets blanketed the fields so thickly, it was as if they were turning the earth into a second sky.

The Hill Country was celebrating spring, and at its heart, the city of Austin celebrated, too. It was the time of the yearly Old Pecan Street festival.

But on his long drive here, Sloan English had paid no mind to the beauty of the countryside. Now in the festival’s midst, he cared nothing for the city’s revels. He wanted simpler things: to get back to Tulsa, find some sorely needed peace, and start putting his life back together.

Instead, he had come to Austin against his will to track down a woman he didn’t want to meet. And she was not where she was supposed to be—right at the festival’s center. She had vanished.

Not only had she disappeared, so had her shop. At the address where it should have been was a candy kitchen. It advertised, among other things, The Best Little Horehounds in Texas.

Sloan went in, glad to escape the insanely churning crowd outside. There was no one else within except an attendant behind the counter, a chubby woman with an eager-to-please air. She wore a white apron spotted with colored sugar sprinkles, and a name tag that said Velda.

She told him she hadn’t lived long in Austin and had but an imperfect memory of the shop called The Prickly Poppy. “They lost their lease or something,” she said. “They been gone a couple months. You want to try the gumdrop of the day? It’s jalapeño flavored.”

He didn’t want the gumdrop she offered, which was neon green and shaped like a chili pepper.

He shook his head. “You said ‘they.’ There was more than one person involved?”

She nodded, which made her multiple chins bob. “They were a cooperative or something. All women.” She offered him a sample tray of nuts. “You want a spiced pecan? They just came out of the oven.”

He didn’t want a pecan. “These women—they were all artists?”

She took one herself and chewed it thoughtfully. “I guess. One made jewelry, and one did paintings, and one blew glass, and the other one—I don’t know what they call what she did.”

He narrowed his eyes, which were as green as a cat’s. “What would you call it?”

Velda gave an expressive shrug. “She made weird things. Scarecrows. Kites. These sort of doll things.”

“You mean like toys? For kids?”

She shrugged again. “Some of ’em was, some of ’em wasn’t. She sort of did her own thing, you might say.”

I’ll bet she did, he thought. He said, “You know where she went?”

Velda helped herself to another pecan. “I don’t know where any of ’em went. They’ve scattered. Like to the four winds.”

He was tired, he felt feverish, and the too-rich scent of chocolate made his stomach squirm queasily. He set his jaw and said, “Who might know where she is?”

Velda licked her upper lip thoughtfully. “They might know at one of the galleries. These artist types, they come and go. She might even be out on the street—it’s festival. Lots of booths and vendors. Just ask around. Somebody’ll know. You want to try a honky-tonk surprise? They got tequila filling.”

The last thing he wanted was a honky-tonk surprise. The pain was tripping in his temple like a tiny hammer. He thanked Velda and went back outside into the glare and the noise.

Sixth Street, with its bars and galleries and shops and restaurants, was considered the heartbeat of Austin, and today the heartbeat had gone mad with spring.

The arts festival was in full swing. The streets were roped off and bursting with tents that were cornucopia-full of Texas food and Texas merchandise. The scent of tacos and chili floated on the sun-warmed air. Young couples drinking champagne mimosas strolled the sidewalks, looking at the paintings, the pottery, the jewelry, the T-shirts.

The onslaught of the sun magnified the pain drilling at Sloan’s skull, and he slitted his eyes against the brightness. His eardrums danced with the street’s din. There were Native American dancers and lively Tex-Mex cajuno bands, country fiddlers, and even a harpist in medieval robes. A clown on tall stilts walked down the street with the swaying grace of a giraffe.

Fortune-tellers told fortunes. A face painter, crowned with flowers, painted the faces of children. Jugglers juggled. A large man with a bald head walked a pair of albino ferrets on a leash.

From a truck, a yellow dog wearing sunglasses watched the street with kingly indifference. Slowly, it turned its face toward Sloan, as if recognizing a fellow spirit. Its aloof expression seemed to say, Lord, what fools these mortals be.

Sloan thought, You’ve sure as hell got that right, dog.

But he set off on his own foolish errand, which was to find the woman.

The dog, looking more superior than before, stared after him a moment, then turned his attention back to the human carnival around him.

IN HER MAKESHIFT STUDIO beside the river, Darcy Parker worked alone. She had a deadline, and that meant she was spending her afternoon with a worm.

He was a bookworm, a comical soft sculpture that she had been commissioned to make for the children’s section of the main library. He was four feet long, his flexible body composed of cuddly green-and-yellow globes.

He had a yellow head with a benevolently mad smile. He wore red spectacles and sported twelve pliable lavender legs. He was not exactly a handsome worm, but he was a winsome one, and Darcy was pleased with him.

This morning she had finally got his antennae right. Now she experimented, trying him in different poses. Worm—reading studiously in an armchair. Worm—standing on a library stool, reaching for a book on an upper shelf. Worm—stretched out on his belly on the floor, his head cocked over the Sunday comic papers.

You look good, Worm, she thought. You just might be a star.

She took snapshots for her files. Around her, the room was crammed with her other projects: stuffed toys, quilts, puppets, experimental clothing, fabrics she had dyed and silk-screened by hand. It was a happy hodgepodge that probably made sense to no one but her. But there was method in her madness—a great deal of method, in fact.

In Darcy Parker’s nature was an equal mix of whimsy and practicality. She was successful at what she did, although she could not explain exactly what her profession was. Sometimes she was an artist, sometimes a craftswoman, sometimes a seamstress. She had a questing curiosity, and she followed where it led.

She was a whip-slender woman with a quick mind, lively eyes and clever hands. She was thirty years old. From her father she had inherited the midnight darkness of her hair; from her mother, her quick-silver smile and fair skin. Unlike her mother, she didn’t hide from the sun, so she had a dapple of freckles sprinkling her nose and high cheekbones.

Her studio was makeshift, temporarily set up in the guest cottage of her mother’s weekend house on Lake Travis. She hadn’t wished to impose on her mother. But when the lease in downtown Austin was lost, she’d had no choice.

The lake property was for sale, so Darcy didn’t want to grow overly fond of the little house. It was airy and full of brightness, and she loved the sweeping view of the lake and the looming limestone cliffs.

There were no neighbors. She lived in splendid isolation. On Saturdays, Rose Alice, the housekeeper in town, drove out to vacuum and dust the lake house. She was a tough-looking woman with tattoos on both biceps, but she was hell on every sort of dirt. Her spanking white pickup was parked in the service driveway today.

Rose Alice didn’t touch the guest house; it was Darcy’s responsibility as long as she stayed. Besides, she didn’t like anyone disturbing the disorderly seeming order of her studio, and Rose Alice attacked clutter with the energy and ferocity of a pit bull.

Rose Alice had taken one look at the studio room after Darcy moved in, winced, and shook her head. “No offense, kid,” she said. “I love ya. But I don’t think I ought to look in here again until you’re gone. I got delicate sensibilities.”

Before Rose Alice left the main house today, she would telephone Darcy and invite her over for coffee. She had known the family for almost twenty years, and, in her rough-spoken way, was fond of them.

“In the meantime, it’s you and me,” Darcy told the worm. “Want to curl up with a good book?” She wound him into a coil and put an oversize picture book in his grasp.

Darcy was kneeling to snap his picture, when her phone rang. It was Rose Alice.

“Hey, Darcy,” she said in her sandpapery voice, “storm warning. The kid just drove up. She don’t look happy. Something’s wrong.”

Darcy stiffened in apprehension. She loved her sister, but Rose Alice’s tone was full of foreboding. “Oh,” said Darcy. “Thanks.”

“Batten down the hatches,” said Rose Alice, and hung up.

With a sigh, Darcy set down the receiver and put aside her camera. There’d be no work done if Emerald was having a crisis. It had seemed lately to Darcy that perhaps both her sister and mother were calming down, getting their lives in order at last. Nothing could please her more. But Rose Alice’s message was clear: it wouldn’t happen today.

She heard Emerald stamping across the concrete service drive toward the guest house. Curtain going up, thought Darcy. Let the drama begin.

Emerald didn’t knock. She burst through the door, clanking. She wore a good deal of chain mail and a buckler and sword. Her short hair was tousled by the spring wind, and her cheeks were red as flame.

She had been at the Pecan Street Festival with her fellow members of the Medieval Society. The Medieval Society usually turned out for the event in full costume, as knights or damsels or wizards or monks or warlocks. Emerald was presently in her warrior maiden phase, which she had described as “sort of Joan of Arc without the religion or politics.”

Darcy crossed her arms and allowed herself the smallest of smiles. “This is unexpected. Why aren’t you at the fair, jousting or minnesinging or whatever you do?”

“Somebody stepped on my lute, the clod,” Emerald said with passion. “I had to go home for my other one.”

“Hmm, sounds serious. When a man breaks your lute, doesn’t that mean you’re engaged—or should be?”

Emerald flashed her a resentful look. “You always want to make a joke out of everything. This is serious.”

Darcy shrugged. “I’m sorry. Can it be restored to its former virginal state? Do you need a lute-repair loan?”

Emerald put her gloved hands on her hips. “This isn’t about the lute, Darcy. This is about Mama. I’m very worried about her.”

Darcy gave her sister a skeptical look. “Mama’s fine,” she said. “She just had her physical. The doctor said she’s in wonderful shape.”

“Mom’s in fabulous shape,” Emerald said, tossing her head. “That’s never been the problem—has it?”

“No,” Darcy admitted, but she thought, It hasn’t been much of a solution, either.

Their mother, Olivia, had been a great beauty in her day. She was still stunning, tall and shapely, with platinum-blond hair she wore in a sleek chignon.

Emerald was small and wiry and brown-haired, like her father, and she had inherited their mother’s blue eyes. Darcy had her mother’s height, but she was dark-eyed and slim like her father.

Olivia had married three times. Now she was a widow, and if she was not exactly merry, she seemed content with her lot. She’d lived in Austin for the past twenty years, but had grown up Portland, Maine. When her third husband had died last autumn, she’d waited a decent interval, then bought a vacation condo back in Maine.

She wanted to spend her summers on the seacoast she’d loved as a girl. For the past month she’d been in Portland, working on the condo with a decorator.

“Oh, God,” Emerald said in exasperation. She threw herself down in the studio’s one armchair. This caused more clanking, and her sword stuck out at an awkward angle. “I don’t even know how to tell you this.”

“Would you take off that sword? You’re going to run it through either my cushion or yourself.”

Emerald ignored her. She threw back her head and stared at the ceiling dramatically. She sighed.

“I mean,” Darcy said, brushing back a dark strand of hair, “if you went home, why didn’t you take off the sword? Why didn’t you change clothes? You didn’t have to come stomping in here sounding like a bag of hubcaps.”

“I was too upset,” Emerald said, and scowled harder at the ceiling.

“Upset why?” Darcy demanded. “You said it’s about Mother. What is it?”

“I’m trying to tell you,” Emerald said righteously. She put her gloved hand over her mailed heart. “Oh, Gad.”

Darcy cleared the scraps of Velcro from the corner of her worktable and sat on its edge. “Yes?” she prodded.

“I don’t know where to start,” Emerald said. Her voice quivered.

Darcy wanted to snap just start, dammit! But she knew this tactic never worked. Instead, she mustered her best semblance of kindly patience. “Well—why don’t you just begin?”

Emerald slumped more deeply into the chair and gazed more fiercely at the ceiling. “Do you know that laptop computer you bought Mama?” she asked. She gave the word computer a sinister fillip.

“I should,” said Darcy. “I’m the one making the payments.”

She had bought the computer so their mother could e-mail them from Maine. It was cheaper than ordinary mail and than phoning, and Darcy, who was new to the computer world and excited about it, had thought it an inspired idea.

“Well,” said Emerald, “you know how she said she had a phobia about it?”

Darcy waved away the thought dismissively. “Once she gets used to it, she’ll wonder how she lived without it. That phobia’ll fly out the window.”

“It has flown out the window,” Emerald said ominously. “And guess what’s flown in?”

Darcy lifted one brow. “I can’t guess. Just tell me.”

“A man,” wailed Emerald, sitting up straight again. “She’s got herself a gigolo! This—this e-mail Don Juan. She’s head over heels. She’s gaga—she sounds like a teenager—our mother!”

Darcy looked at her sister and shook her head. “No,” she said with certainty. “Not Mother. Not Olivia.”

“She has,” Emerald said, her cheeks flaming even more hotly.

“She’s only had the computer six weeks,” Darcy argued. “I don’t think she’s ever turned it on.”

“She took it to Maine,” Emerald said accusingly.

“Only because I nagged her. She hasn’t sent a single message yet.”

“Maybe not to you, she hasn’t,” Emerald said, her eyes suddenly glittering with tears. “But to him she’s sent plenty. I’ve got proof—she sent me one by mistake. It’s this—this steamy love note.”

“What?”

Darcy did not want to believe this improbable news. Yet Emerald’s tears were disturbingly real, and despite her sense of drama, she truly hated for anyone to see her cry.

Emerald got to her feet and began to forage in her scabbard. “Damn!” she said. She stripped off her black leather gloves and threw them to the floor. She groped in the scabbard again. “I’ve got the letter,” she said. “I’ll show you.”

“You could,” Darcy said dryly, “carry a purse, like other women.”

“Joke all you want,” Emerald retorted. “You won’t think it’s so funny when you read this.”

She thrust a folded paper at Darcy, then angrily dashed the tears from her eyes. “Mama’s too old for this kind of thing,” she said bitterly.

The paper crackled as Darcy unfolded it—it clearly was an e-mail printout—but she told herself that Emerald had to be exaggerating; she always did.

But as Darcy read the message, she felt the blood drain from her face and her brain dance dizzily.

SUBJECT: I Saw You in My Dreams

From: Olivia@USAserve.com

To: BanditKing@USAserve.com

Copy To: MaidOfOrleans@USAserve.com

Hello, you big sexy thing—just a little mid-morning hello (and a hug and a kiss and a squeeze and another hug and another kiss…I could go on and on!!)

Last weekend was too fabulous; you’re too fabulous. I dreamed of you again last night, of your green eyes, your slow hands, your deep chest, and your divine Etcetera.

I had a thought for your free week—what do you say to coming here? I got the brochures you sent on lower Florida. You’re right; it looks like an excellent buy.

Oh, darling, I’ve got to figure out when to tell my girls about this, but I think it’s way too soon. They don’t even know I’m online yet. You’re so-o-o brave to tell your family.

But I will try to drop Em a short note today. I worry about her. I know she’s twenty-one, and it’s time for me to let her fly on her own, but it’s hard for a mama to let go. You know, darling—you’re a parent yourself.

Love to you (and your Etcetera)

Olivia, whose mouth waters for another taste of her BanditKing.

P.S. Thanks again for the anniversary roses. Who could believe we met only three weeks ago? Blessed be the name of the Chat Room. Oh, darling, we do live in an age of miracles!!

Darcy stared at the message in bewilderment. “Ye gods.”

“Well,” demanded Emerald. “Still think it’s funny?”

“Maybe we’re reading too much into this,” said Darcy. “Maybe we’re—misconstruing it.” But the explanation struck her as pathetically weak, even as she said it.

Emerald snatched back the paper. “How do you misconstrue something like this—? Her ‘mouth waters for another taste of her BanditKing’?”

“Maybe he’s a chef,” Darcy said lamely. “Maybe he cooked for her.”

“Something’s cooking, all right,” Emerald retorted. “Mama’s libido. She’s spent the weekend with this man. She’s going to do it again. And she barely knows him—it’s here in black and white.” She rattled the paper under Darcy’s nose for emphasis. “Three weeks—and she’s having an affair. She met him in a chat room. God—a seventh-grader would be more careful.”

“Let me think,” said Darcy. She raked her hand through her hair and tried to control her wildly spinning thoughts.

None of Olivia’s marriages had been happy—certainly not the ones to Darcy’s father or to Emerald’s father. But the third and last, to Gus Ferrar, had at least been tolerable—some of the time.

Gus had been good-hearted, but oversexed and quarrelsome and brash. He had clearly adored Olivia, but just as much, he loved bickering with her. He had honed complaint into an art form, and the older he got, the more he demanded to be the center of Olivia’s universe.

After Gus’s death last year, a well-meaning friend had told Olivia that she was still young and attractive, that someday “someone else will come along.”

“I’m through with marriage,” Olivia had said with cynical conviction. “I’m through with men. I’m going to get a Pekingese. A Pekingese doesn’t argue, it doesn’t nag you about how much you spend, and you can make it sleep in a separate room.”

Olivia had been true to her word. Because she was beautiful and well-off, eligible men tried to court her. She’d rebuffed them all.

“In my golden years, I’m going to be as chaste as a nun,” she’d told Darcy. “Besides,” she’d added thoughtfully, “sex has never been as much fun as shopping. Not really.”

Olivia bought the Pekingese, got it neutered, and named it Mr. Right. Mr. Right was spoiled rotten and had an engraved collar of silver links and ate from a silver dog dish. But he made her sneeze, so she gave him to Rose Alice, saying that apparently she was allergic to all things male.

“Mama said she was through with men,” Emerald fumed. She began to pace. “I don’t want another stepfather. One was enough.”

More than enough, thought Darcy, who had lived through two. But someone had to be calm, she thought with wry resignation. It wouldn’t be Emerald—she’d spent too many years competing with Gus for attention; his tempestuous ways had rubbed off on her.

“She’s not going to marry anybody,” Darcy said, almost certain it was true. “She’s having a little fling, that’s all. This thing will run its course, and she’ll snap out of it. She’s not a stupid woman. Or a naive one.”

Emerald stopped pacing and drew herself up to her full height of five feet one inch. “She is naive. She knows nothing about the Internet or these chat room Casanovas. She’s like a little child—a total innocent.”

Darcy crossed her arms again. “Emerald, that letter was hardly written by a ‘total innocent.”’

Emerald threw out her arms in despair. “But don’t you see? She’s at a terrible disadvantage here. She’s only had experience with real men.”

Darcy frowned, trying to digest this logic.

“This man is a fantasy,” Emerald persisted. “He can pretend to be anything she wants. That’s what she doesn’t understand. I grew up with the Internet. But she has no idea what it’s about—do you?”

Darcy felt an uncomfortable sense of disadvantage. She could use the computer for basic things, but she knew only a fraction of what Emerald did. Emerald had spent most of her teenage years cloistered in her room, communing with cyberspace.

“Well, do you?” challenged Emerald.

Darcy looked down at the library’s bookworm, curled up at her feet. She thought about books and research and computers and networks of knowledge.

Defensively she said, “It’s about communicating. And information. It’s about accessing vast reserves of—”

“No, no,” Emerald said with emotion. “The Internet is about lying.”

Darcy gave her a skeptical look. “That can’t be true. Al Gore wouldn’t like it so much.”

“It is—it’s about lying,” Emerald repeated emphatically. “You get in these chat rooms. You write messages to people you don’t know. You can’t see them and they can’t see you—so what does everybody do? They lie.”

Darcy shook her head stubbornly. “That’s an exaggeration.”

“It’s not,” Emerald tossed back. “Suppose I’m wandering around the Internet, and I meet a guy who seems interesting. Do I tell him I’m short, that I have a thirty-one-inch bust? That I’m blind as a bat without my contacts? That I’ve been on Prozac for four years? Of course not!”

“Well—” Darcy said. “Withholding a few facts at the start isn’t lying…exactly.”

“Right,” Emerald replied sarcastically. “So this guy doesn’t tell me that he weighs four hundred pounds and has the social skills of a clam. Or that he’s a fourteen-year-old horny geek. Or worse, a horny old married man. Either way, he’s horny. Because, first the Internet’s about lying. And second, it’s about sex.”

Darcy blinked in displeasure. “Maybe that’s true for some people. But Mama’s an adult—”

Emerald narrowed her eyes. “Mama’s a babe in the cyber-woods. And she’s a rich widow. You think there aren’t men out there waiting to pounce on women like her? Oh, they’ll sweet-talk you, these guys. They’ll make themselves sound like God’s gift to women. Darcy, I’ve been there.”

Darcy’s confidence took an unsteady stagger. She realized that she had entered a realm where, for once, Emerald was far worldlier than she was. Emerald might be dressed as a creature of fantasy, but her words had the ring of cold reality.

“He’s talking to her about investing,” Emerald said ominously. “In Florida—swampland, probably. He’s already sweet-talked his way into her bed. Next it’ll be her bank account.”

Darcy’s muscles tightened. Olivia wasn’t exactly conservative with money. To protect her, Gus had left her a generous monthly allowance dispensed from a trust fund, as well as a large sum to tide her over. But Olivia had already spent almost a third of the ready money on the property in Maine.

The rest of her inheritance was tied up in bonds and real estate. But not so tightly that a clever and determined man might not untie it—the lake house was already for sale.

The nickname of Olivia’s new paramour echoed in her mind like an evil prophecy: BanditKing. Darcy thought, My God! He could be a con man. He could ruin her. Take everything she’s got.

Emerald said, “Mama’s never had much luck with men. This could be, like, the final insult. He could take all her money and destroy her pride.”

The two women looked at each other, and Darcy knew they were thinking of the same thing: Gus’s will.

To each of my stepdaughters, Gus had decreed, I leave the sum of $10,000 in cash and the solemn charge to watch over the welfare of their mother. She’s a wonderful woman, but stubborn, and frankly, sometimes she doesn’t know her ass from a muffin.

Only Gus would have slipped such a phrase in as staid and somber a document as a will—but there it was. Olivia, of course, had been furious, and the girls had only shrugged and smiled sadly.

Neither of them had expected to exert any control over Olivia, or to even have to. The purchase of the house in Maine was inevitable. She had talked about it for years. Gus, of course, had hated Maine. “It’s cold, it’s spooky, it’s full of bears. Stephen King lives there. What does that tell you?”

Emerald squared her shoulders and put her hand on the hilt of her sword. “We were given a solemn charge to watch over mother. It’s a matter of honor. You’ll have to do something—right now.”

“Me?” Darcy said, startled. “Do what?”

“You figure it out,” said Emerald, raising her chin. “You’re the oldest. Call her. Talk some sense into her. Call her now. Do you know her number?”

“I can’t jump into it just like that,” Darcy said. “I’m going to have to think of a way to do this tactfully. If that’s possible. Good grief, the situation couldn’t be worse—”

The phone rang again.

“What now?” Darcy sighed and plucked up the receiver. “Yes?”

Rose Alice’s voice was rich with suspicion. “There was this man just drove up, come to the front door. He wanted you. He wouldn’t identify himself. He’s on his way around there now. I said to him, ‘Hold it, buster,’ but he wouldn’t stop. Gus’s rifles are still in the gun cabinet. You want me to load up, come over there, show this guy the way out?”

Darcy struggled not to flinch. Rose Alice had once been imprisoned for shooting off a man’s ear. “No, no,” she said. “I’ll handle it. Don’t worry.”

“I’ll keep my eye on him,” Rose Alice promised. “Don’t you worry, honey. Rose Alice is right here.”

The line went dead. Darcy heard footsteps stalking up the front walk to the cottage. She and Emerald both turned toward the living room door.

There was a furious knock, so forceful that the very air of the studio seemed to shake.

“Who is it?” Darcy demanded.

There was no answer except another hail of knocking, even more earsplitting.

“All right, all right,” Darcy called, anger rising. “Don’t bang the door down.”

“What is this?” Emerald asked apprehensively.

“I don’t know,” Darcy said, stalking to the door. “Rose Alice says it’s some man.”

She flung open the door.

A tall man stood there. He was expensively dressed, but his black tie was askew and his suit coat was off. His white shirt looked crumpled, and its sleeves were rolled up unevenly on his forearms.

With a jolt, she realized he was an extraordinarily handsome man—or would be, if he were not so lean that he was almost gaunt. His thick brown hair was unruly, and the fore-lock fallen over his brow gave him a dangerous air. His lips were unsmiling. His brows were dark and stern. His eyes were a feline green.