Beloved (5 page)

180

Beloved

Diana Palmer

181

nobody in their circle had any use for. The marriage was a com
plete mystery.

"1
don't have a
dress."

"Buy one," he instructed.

She hesitated.

“I’ll protect you from him," he said after a minute,
having
realized that Simon would most likely be in
attendance. "I swear on my glorious red Mark VIII that I won't leave your
side for an
instant all evening."

She gave him a wary glance. His mania about that car was
well-
known. He wouldn't even entrust it to a car wash.
He washed and
waxed it lovingly, inch by inch, and
called it "Big Red."

"Well, if you're willing to swear
on your car," she agreed.

He grinned. "You can ride in
it."

"I'm honored!"

"I brought you some flowers," he added.
"One of the nurses
volunteered to put
them in a vase for you."

She
gave him a cursory appraisal and smiled. "The way you
look, I'm not surprised. Women fall over each
other to get to
you."

"Not the one I wanted," he said sadly. "And
now it's too
late."

She slid her hand into his and pressed
it gently. "I'm sorry."

"So am I." He shrugged. "Isn't it a damned
shame? I mean,
look what they're missing!"

She knew he was talking about Simon and the woman
Charles
wanted, and she grinned in spite of
herself. "It's their loss. I'd
love to go to
the ball with you. He'll let me out of here today.
Like to take me home?"

"Sure!"

But when the doctor came into the room, he was reluctant
to
let her leave.

She was sitting on the side of the bed. She gave him a
long,
wise look. "I wasn't lying," she
said. "Suicide was the very last
thing from my
mind."

"With a loaded pistol, which had
been fired."

She pursed her lips. "Didn't anyone notice where the
shot
landed? At a round hole in the baseboard?''

He frowned.

"The
mouse!" she said. "I've been after him for weeks! Don't
you watch old John Wayne movies? It was in
True Grit!"

All at once, realization dawned in his
eyes. "The rat writ."

"Exactly!"

He burst out laughing. "You were going to shoot the
mouse?"

"I'm a good shot," she protested. "Well,
when I'm sober. I won't miss him next time!"

"Get a trap."

"He's too wily," she
protested. "I've tried traps and baits."

"Buy a cat."

"I'm allergic to fur," she
confessed miserably.

"How about those electronic things
you plug into the wall?"

She shook her head. "Tried it. He bit the electrical
cord in half."

"Didn't it kill him?"

Her eyebrows arched. "No. Actually he seemed even
healthier
afterward. I'll bet he'd enjoy
arsenic. Nope, I have to shoot him."

The doctor and Charles looked at each other. Then they
both
chuckled.

The doctor did see her alone later, for a few minutes
while
Charles was bringing the car around to the
hospital entrance. “Just
one more
thing," he said gently. "Regardless of what Simon said,
you didn't kill John. Nobody, no woman, could have
stopped what
happened. He should never have married you in the first
place."

"Simon kept throwing us together," she said.
"He thought we
made the perfect couple," she
added bitterly.

"Simon never knew," he said. "I'm sure
John didn't tell him,
and you kept your own
silence."

She
averted her eyes. "John was the best friend Simon had in
the world. If he'd wanted Simon to know, he'd have
told him.
That being the case, I never felt that I had the right."
She looked

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Beloved

Diana Palmer

183

at him.
"I
still don't.
And you're not to tell him, either. He de
serves to have a
few
unshattered
illusions. His life hasn't been a
bed of roses so far. He's missing an arm, and
he's still mourning
Melia
."

"God knows why," Dr. Gaines added, because he'd
known all
about the elegant Mrs. Hart, things
that even
Tira
didn't know.

"He loved her," she said simply. "There's
no accounting for
taste, is there?"

He smiled gently. "I guess
not."

"You know, you really are a nice
man, Dr. Gaines," she added.

He chuckled. "That's what my wife
says all the time."

"She's right," she agreed.

"Don't you have family?"

She shook her head. “My father died of a heart attack,
and my
mother died even before he did. She had
cancer. It was hard to
watch, especially
for Dad. He loved her too much."

"You can't love people too
much."

She looked up at him with such sadness that her face
seemed to radiate it. "Yes, you can," she said solemnly. "But
I'm going
to learn how to stop."

Charles pulled up at the curb and Dr. Gaines waved them
off.

"Look at him," Charles said with a grin.
"He's drooling! He
wants my car."
He stepped down on the accelerator. "Everybody
wants my car. But it's mine. Mine!"

"Charles, you're getting obsessed with this
automobile," she
cautioned.

"I am not!" He glanced at her. "Careful,
you'll get fingerprints on the window. And I do hope you wiped your shoes
before you
got in."

She didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

"I'm kidding!" he exclaimed.

She let out a sigh of relief. “

And Dr. Gaines wanted
me
to have
therapy," she
murmured.

He threw her a glare. "I do not need therapy. Men
love their

cars. One guy even wrote a song about how much he loved his
truck."

She glanced around the luxurious interior of the pretty
car,
leather coated with a wood-grained dash, and nodded. "Well, I
could love Big Red," she had to
confess. She leaned back against
the padded headrest and closed her
eyes.

He patted the dash. "Hear that,
guy? You're getting to her!"

She opened one eye. "I'm calling the therapist the
minute we
get to my house."

He lifted both blond eyebrows.
"Does he like cars?"

"I give up!"

When she arrived home, she was met at the door by a
hovering,
worried Mrs. Lester.

"It was an old, empty prescription bottle!"
Tira
told the kindly
older woman. "And the pistol wasn't for me, it was for that mouse
we can't catch in the kitchen!"

"The mouse?"

"Well,
we can't trap him or drive him out, can we?" she que
ried.

The housekeeper blushed all the way to her white
hairline and
wrung her hands in the apron. "It
was the way it looked..."

Tira
went forward and hugged her. "You're a doll and I love
you. But I was only drunk."

"You never drink," Mrs.
Lester stated.

"I was driven to it," she
replied.

Mrs. Lester looked at Charles. "By him?" she
asked with a
twinkle in her dark eyes. "You
shouldn't let him hang around here so much, if he's driving you to drink."

"See?" he murmured, leaning down. "She
wants my car, that's
why she wants me to
leave. She can't stand having to look at it
day after day. She's obsessed with jealousy, eaten up with
envy..."

"What's he talking about?" Mrs. Lester asked
curiously.

"He thinks you want his car."

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Beloved

Diana Palmer

185

Mrs. Lester scoffed. "That long red fast flashy
thing?" She
sniffed. "Imagine me, riding
around in something like that!"

Charles grinned. "Want to?" he asked, raising
and lowering
his eyebrows.

She chuckled. "You bet I do! But I'm much too old
for sports
cars, dear.
Tira's
just right."

"Yes, she is. And she needs
coddling."

"I'll fatten her up and see that she gets her rest.
I knew I should
never have let her talk me into that
vacation. The first time I leave
her in a month, and
look what happens! And the newspapers...!"
She stopped so
suddenly that she almost bit her tongue through.

Tira
froze in place. "What newspapers?"

Mrs. Lester made a face and exchanged a helpless glance
with
Charles.

"You, uh, made the headlines," he said reluctantly.

She groaned. "Oh, for heaven's sake, there goes my
one-
woman show!"

"No, it doesn't," Charles replied. "I
spoke to Bob this morning
before I came after
you. He said that the phone's rung off the
hook all morning with queries about the show. He figures you'll
make a fortune from the publicity."

"I don't need..."

"Yes, but the outreach program does," he
reminded her. He
grinned. "They'll be able to buy a
new van!"

She smiled, but her heart wasn't in it. She didn't want
to be
notorious, whether or not she deserved to.

"Cheer up," he said. "It'll be old news
tomorrow. Just don't
answer the phone for a day or two. It
will blow over as soon as
some new tragedy
catches the editorial eye."

"I guess you're right."

"Next Saturday," he reminded
her. "I'll pick you up at six."

"Where
will you be until then?" she asked, surprised, because
he often came by for coffee in the afternoon.

"Memphis," he said with a sigh. "A business
deal that I have

to conduct personally. I'll be out of town for a week. Bad timing,
too."

"I'll be fine," she assured
him. "Mrs. Lester's right here."

"I
guess so. I do worry about you." He smiled sheepishly. "I
don't have any family, either. You're sort of the
only relative I
have, even though you
aren't."

"Same here."

He searched her eyes. "Two of a kind, aren't we? We
loved
not wisely, and too well."

"As you said, it's their loss," she said
stubbornly. "Have a
safe trip. Are you
taking Big Red?"

He shook his head. "They won't let me take him on
the plane,"
he said. "Walters is going to
stand guard over him in the garage
with a
shotgun while I'm gone, though. Maybe he won't pine."

She burst out laughing. "I'm glad I have you for a
friend," she
said sincerely.

He
took her hand and held it gently. "That works both ways.
Take care. I'll phone you sometime during the
week, just to make
sure you're okay.
If you need me..."

"I have your mobile number," she assured him.
"But I'll be
fine."

"See you next week, then."

"Thanks for the ride home,"
she said.

He shrugged and flashed her a white
smile. "My pleasure."

She watched him drive away with sad eyes. She was going
to
have to live down the bad publicity without
telling her side of the
story. Well, what did it matter, she
reasoned. It could, after all,
have been
worse.

Diana Palmer

187

Chapter 3

 
The week passed
slowly until the charity ball on Saturday eve
ning. It was to be a lavish one, hosted by the
Carlisles
,
a founding family in the area and large supporters of the local hospital's charity
work. Their huge brick mansion was just south of the perimeter
of San Antonio, set in a grove of mesquite and pecan
trees with its own duck pond and a huge formal garden.
Tira
had always
loved coming to the house in the past
for these gatherings, but
she knew that Simon
would be on the guest list. It was going to be hard facing him again after what
had happened. It was going
to be difficult
appearing in public at all.

She did plan to go down with all flags flying, however,
having
poured her exquisite figure into a sleeveless,
long black velvet
evening gown with lace
appliques
in entrancing places and a lace-
up bodice that left little gaps from her diaphragm to her
breasts.
Her hair was in an elegant French
twist with a diamond clip that
matched her dangling
earrings and delicate waterfall diamond
necklace. She looked wealthy and sophisticated and Charles gave
her a wicked grin when she came through to the living
room with a black velvet and jewel wrap over one bare shoulder. It was
November and the weather was unseasonably warm, so the
wrap
was just right.

Charles dressed up nicely, she thought, studying him. His
tux
edo played up his extreme good looks and his
fairness.

''Don't we make a pair?" he mused, glancing in the
hall mirror
at them. "Pity it isn't the right
one."

"We'll both survive the
evening," she assured him.

"Only if we drink hard enough," he said with
graveyard hu
mor. Then he noticed her expression and
grimaced. "Sorry," he
said genuinely.

"No need to apologize," she replied with a wry
smile. "I did something stupid and had the misfortune to be found doing
it. I'll survive all the gossip. But whatever you do, don't leave me alone
with Simon, okay?"

"Count on it. What are friends
for?"

She smiled at him. "To get us through rough
times," she said,
and was suddenly
very grateful that she had a friend as good as
Charles.

Charles chided her gently for her growing and obvious ner
vousness as he drove rapidly down the road that led to
the Carlisle
estate. "Don't worry so. You're
old news," he reminded her. "There's the local political scandal to
latch onto now."

"What political scandal?" she asked. "And
how do you know
about it when you've been out of
town?"

"Because our lieutenant governor has been participating
in a
conference on the problems of inner cities in
Memphis. I sat next to him on the flight home," he said smugly. Keeping
his eyes on
the road, he leaned toward her.
"It seems that the attorney general
intervened in a criminal case for a friend. The criminal he got
paroled was serving time for armed robbery, but when he
got out,
he went right home and killed his
ex-wife for testifying against
him and is now back
in prison. But the wheels of political change
are going to roll over the governor's fair-haired boy."

"Oh, my goodness," she burst out. "But he
was only doing a
kindness. How could he know...?"

"He couldn't, and he isn't really
to blame, but the opposition