Matt Caldwell: Texas Tycoon

“That makes two of us.”

One of the secretaries motioned to Matt that he had a phone call. He left and Ed departed right behind him for a meeting. Leslie wondered how she was going to endure an evening of dancing without ending up close to Matt Caldwell, who already resented her standoffish attitude. It would be an ordeal, she supposed, and wondered if she could develop a convenient headache on Saturday afternoon.

Leslie only had one really nice dress that was appropriate to wear to the function at the country club. The gown was a long sheath of shimmery silver fabric, suspended from her creamy shoulders by two little spaghetti straps. With it, she wore a silver-andrhinestone clip in her short blond hair and neat little silver slippers with only a hint of a heel.

Ed sighed at the picture she made when the limousine pulled up in front of the boardinghouse where she was staying. She met him on the porch, a small purse clenched in damp hands, all aflutter at the thought of her first evening out since she was seventeen. She was terribly nervous.

“Is the dress okay?” she asked at once.

Ed smiled, taking in her soft oval face with its faint blush of lipstick and rouge, which was the only makeup she ever wore. Her gray eyes had naturally thick black lashes, which never needed mascara.

“You look fine,” he assured her.

“You’re not bad in a tux yourself,” she murmured with a grin.

“Don’t let Matt see how nervous you are,” he said as they approached the car. “Somebody phoned and set him off just as we left my house. Carolyn was almost in tears.”

“Carolyn?” she asked.

“His latest trophy girlfriend,” he murmured. “She’s from one of the best families in Houston, staying with her aunt so she’d be on hand for tonight’s festivities. She’s been relentlessly pursuing Matt for months. Some of us think she’s gaining ground.”

“She’s beautiful, I guess?” she asked.

“Absolutely. In a way, she reminds me of Franny.”

Franny had been Ed’s fiancеe, shot to death in a foiled bank robbery about the time Leslie had been catapulted into sordid fame. It had given them something in common that drew them together as friends.

“That must be rough,” Leslie said sympathetically.

He glanced at her curiously as they approached the car. “Haven’t you ever been in love?”

She shrugged, tugging the small faux fur cape closer around her shoulders. “I was a late bloomer.” She swallowed hard. “What happened to me turned me right off men.”

“I’m not surprised.”

He waited while the chauffeur, also wearing a tuxedo, opened the door of the black super-stretch limousine for them. Leslie climbed in, followed by Ed, and the door closed them in with Matt and the most beautiful blond woman Leslie had ever seen. The other woman was wearing a simple black sheath dress with a short skirt and enough diamonds to open a jewelry store. No point in asking if they were real, Leslie thought, considering the look of that dress and the very real sable coat wrapped around it.

“You remember my cousin, Ed,” Matt drawled, lounging back in the leather seat across from Ed and Leslie. Small yellow lights made it possible for them to see each other in the incredibly spacious interior. “This is his secretary, Miss Murry. Carolyn Engles,” he added, nodding toward the woman at his side.

Murmured acknowledgments followed his introduction. Leslie’s fascinated eyes went from the bar to the phones to the individual controls on the air-conditioning and heating systems. It was like a luxury apartment on wheels, she thought, and tried not to let her amusement show.

“Haven’t you ever been in a limousine before?” Matt asked with a mocking smile.

“Actually, no,” she replied with deliberate courtesy. “It’s quite a treat. Thank you.”

He seemed disconcerted by her reply. He averted his head and studied Ed. His next words showed he’d forgotten her. “Tomorrow morning, first thing, I want you to pull back every penny of support we’re giving Marcus Boles. Nobody, and I mean nobody, involves me in a shady land deal like that!”

“It amazes me that we didn’t see through him from the start,” Ed agreed. “The whole campaign was just a diversion, to give the real candidate someone to shoot down. He’ll look like a hero, and Boles will take the fall manfully. I understand he’s being handsomely paid for his disgrace. Presumably the cash is worth his reputation and social standing.”

“He’s got land in South America. I hear he’s going over there to live. Just as well,” Matt added coldly. “If he’s lucky, he might make it to the airport tomorrow before I catch up with him.”

The threat of violence lay over him like an invisible mantle. Leslie shivered. Of the four people in that car, she knew firsthand how vicious and brutal physical violence could be. Her memories were hazy, confused, but in the nightmares she had constantly, they were all too vivid.

“Do calm down, darling,” Carolyn told Matt gently. “You’re upsetting Ms. Marley.”

“Murry,” Ed corrected before Leslie could. “Strange, Carolyn, I don’t remember your memory being so poor.”

Carolyn cleared her throat. “It’s a lovely night, at least,” she said, changing the subject. “No rain and a beautiful moon.”

“So it is,” Ed drawled.

Matt gave him a cool look, which Ed met with a vacant smile. Leslie was amused by the way Ed could look so innocent. She knew him far too well to be fooled.

Matt, meanwhile, was drinking in the sight of Leslie in that formfitting dress that just matched her eyes. She had skin like marble, and he wondered if it was as soft to the touch as it seemed. She wasn’t conventionally pretty, but there was a quality about her that made him weak in the knees. He was driven to protect her, without knowing why he felt that way about a stranger. It irritated him as much as the phone call he’d fielded earlier.

“Where are you from, Ms. Murbery?” Carolyn asked.

“Miss Murry,” Leslie corrected, beating Ed to the punch. “I’m from a little town north of Houston.”

“A true Texan,” Ed agreed with a grin in her direction.

“What town?” Matt asked.

“I’m sure you won’t have heard of it,” Leslie said confidently. “Our only claim to fame was a radio station in a building shaped like a ten-gallon hat. Very much off the beaten path.”

“Did your parents own a ranch?” he persisted.

She shook her head. “My father was a crop duster.”

“A what?” Carolyn asked with a blank face.

“A pilot who sprays pesticides from the air in a small airplane,” Leslie replied. “He was killed…on the job.”

“Pesticides,” Matt muttered darkly. “Just what the groundwater table needs to—”

“Matt, can we forget politics for just one night?” Ed asked. “I’d like to enjoy my evening.”

Matt gave him a measured glare with one eye narrowed menacingly. But he relaxed all at once and leaned back in his seat, to put a lazy arm around Carolyn and let her snuggle close to him. His dark eyes seemed to mock Leslie as if comparing her revulsion to Carolyn’s frank delight in his physical presence.

She let him win this round with an amused smile. Once, she might have enjoyed his presence just as much as his date was reveling in now. But she had more reason than most to fear men.

The country club, in its sprawling clubhouse on a man-made lake, was a beautiful building with graceful arches and fountains. It did Jacobsville proud. But, as Ed had intimated, there wasn’t a single parking spot available. Matt had the pager number of the driver and could summon the limousine whenever it was needed. He herded his charges out of the car and into the building, where the reception committee made them welcome.

There was a live band, a very good one, playing assorted tunes, most of which resembled bossa nova rhythms. The only time that Leslie really felt alive was when she could close her eyes and listen to music; any sort of music—classical, opera, country-western or gospel. Music had been her escape as a child from a world too bitter sometimes to stomach. She couldn’t play an instrument, but she could dance. That was the one thing she and her mother had shared, a love of dancing. In fact, Marie had taught her every dance step she knew, and she knew a lot. Marie had taught dancing for a year or so and had shared her expertise with her daughter. How ironic it was that Leslie’s love of dance had been stifled forever by the events of her seventeenth year.

“Fill a plate,” Ed coaxed, motioning her to the small china dishes on the buffet table. “You could use a little more meat on those bird bones.”

She grinned at him. “I’m not skinny.”