from Pansy. She wanted him to call her the minute he got back to town. The next two were from headquarters, about some drilling rights that were coming up for renewal. Another one was from a candidate in the upcoming election, wanting money. He happened to know the man was the biggest crook in six counties, not that that meant he wouldn’t be an effective politician, but all the same, he’d pass on this one.
The last message was from Manie. “Hank, I’ll be bringing Callie by in the morning to show her around and introduce her to the staff. She’s tired, so we might not be in before ten, but I want you to promise me you’ll be nice to her.” As if he’d be anything else to one of Manie’s relatives. “She’s a hard worker and real good with people. Give her a day or two and she’ll do just fine. I’ll be bringing you a slice of my sweet potato pie, too, so save room for it.”
Sighing, Hank dropped into his chair, raked his fingers through his hair and wondered, not for the first time, if he was too old and beat-up to get back into the service.
How could anyone perspire with a ceiling fan going full blast? Callie wiped the sweat from her eyes and plopped her aunt’s iron back on the stove to cool. She hung her white camp shirt over a chair, folded away the ironing board, and called down the hall to where Manie was watching the morning news on TV.
“I’ll be ready in ten minutes, all right?”
“Take your time, I told Hank we’d be late.”
Callie didn’t want to take her time, she wanted to get it over with. Manie’s Hank might be a paragon of all virtues, but no man liked having his routine disrupted. Bringing someone new on the job with little or no notice was the sort of thing Doc Teeter had always hated. Even Grandpop, the sweetest man in the world, used to grumble when she happened to call during a Lawrence Welk rerun or his nightly bowl of ice cream and the Channel 8 news. Women were adaptable because they had to be, but men were creatures of habit.
She did the best she could with what she had to work with. Blond hair. At least, in the summer it was blond. At least the top layer was blond. Underneath, and in the wintertime, it was more the color of tree bark. She’d had it cut really short just before she’d come west, because it was too thick and too curly to manage otherwise. Her eyes were too big, too pale, but fortunately, her glasses hid the faint shadows that always seemed to show up just when she wanted to look her best.
As for her clothes, they were neat, clean and serviceable. She’d been told more than a few times that she had absolutely no sense of style, but as it was her mother who’d told her, she’d taken it with a grain of salt. Any fifty-twoyear-old woman who wore fringed miniskirts, cowboy boots, satin blouses and half a pound of silver dangling from each ear the way her mother did these days didn’t have a whole lot of room to criticize.
Her father was just as bad. The day he’d turned in his resignation he’d given his suits to Goodwill and held a ceremonial necktie-burning. Since then all he wore were torn blue jeans, waffle-stomping boots and risqué T-shirts. On really dressy occasions, he added beads and an earring.
Callie would be the first to admit she was dull as ditchwater. It was a good thing somebody in her family was, or else who would take care of them all when they were too old to run wild any longer?
By the time they entered the Texas Cattleman’s Club, Callie had gnawed off a thumbnail. Why couldn’t Manie have worked for a nice, respectable family doctor in a small suburban clinic instead of a high-powered millionaire in a fancy gentleman’s club in a plush little oasis in the middle of a desert that bristled with windmills and oil derricks? Callie felt as if she’d wandered onto a movie set. She wasn’t at all sure she could cope.
Well, of course she could cope. She always had, hadn’t she?
All the same, she stopped dead in her tracks, her sensible beige pumps sinking into a richly colored rug, and stared at the vast, high-ceilinged, dark-paneled room filled with heavy leather furniture, a massive fireplace and decorated with rows and rows of huge oil paintings, animal heads and antique gun displays.
She forgot to breathe, and then breathed too deeply, inhaling lemon oil, floor wax and the essence of roughly a hundred years’ of cigar smoke and brandy.
“Come along, honey, the stairs are right over here. I reckon we could’ve taken the elevator, but nobody ever does.”
Callie swallowed hard. Her blouse was stuck to her back. The place was chilled down to goose bump territory, but her palms were wet and her mouth was dry, and she knew, she just knew, that Mr. Langley was going to take one look at her and realize that she was scared silly and way, way out of her element.
You can do this, Caledonia Riley. You survived your parents’ midlife crisis, Doc’s retirement and Grandpop’s passing. You can do anything you set your mind to, and besides, Aunt Manie’s old and sick, and she’s counting on you.
Callie knew her role in life. She was a caretaker. A looker-after. She might not have a college degree, but she was real good with people. She lived by the Golden Rule. The one about doing unto others, etc. If she could do it without hurting feelings, she always spoke her mind to avoid misunderstandings.
Only this time she hadn’t…not completely. At least, she’d told her aunt she wanted to take her back home for a nice, long visit. Which was more of an understatement than an outright lie.
Manie’s office was a cul-de-sac near the head of the stairs, consisting of a rosewood desk, an oak filing cabinet and a French provincial library table holding a stack of books, a copier, a fax machine, a telephone and an old manual typewriter. Across the way was a tall window bracketed by heavy linen drapes and walnut louvered blinds folded back to display a row of African violets.
There were two wing chairs upholstered in a dainty chintz print, but instead of stopping there, Manie crossed to the massive walnut door a few feet beyond and rapped sharply. Without waiting for a response, she opened the door and waved Callie into the lion’s den.
“Here she is, here’s my Callie. Honey, meet Hank Langley. He’s just as sweet as he can be, so don’t let that scowl of his fool you.”
It was a good thing she was wearing panty hose. That was the only thing that kept her knees from buckling as the big, dark, unsmiling man rose from another of the massive leather-covered chairs. How many cows had been sacrificed for this man’s comfort?
More to the point, how many secretaries had been sacrificed on the altar of his personal convenience?
“Say hello to your new employer,” her aunt urged. Callie must have made a sound of some sort, because the scowl disappeared.
“Miss Riley.” Her new employer nodded gravely.
“M-Mr. Langley,” she said, trying to sound as if she weren’t sweating like a horse under her neat cotton blouse and tan poplin skirt. This was Hank Langley? Her aunt’s sweet, sensitive boy? The man who wouldn’t swat a fly if he could open a window and let it out?
No way. This man was a…
Well, she didn’t know what he was, but he was no sweet, harmless little boy. She’d heard all about Texas men. According to those songs her mother played on the kitchen radio and sang along with, they rode harder, drank
