Paradise County (29 page)

“How’s your head, anyway?”

“Okay. If I take aspirin. The stitches pull a little bit, but there’s no real pain.”

“When do they come out?”

“Friday. I was going to see my doctor at home, but …” Alex’s voice trailed off.

“So you’ll see a doctor here instead. Carl Allen’s good.”

“Is he a friend of yours?”

“Yeah.”

“Everybody around here is a friend of yours, it seems.”

“Hey, I was born here, raised here, went to high school here. I was gone for nine years, then I came back. That was about ten years ago. I’ve been here ever since. Of course I know everybody.”

Alex looked at him curiously. “What did you do in California?”

“Worked as an assistant trainer for a guy named Ted Gray. Ever heard of him?” Alex shook her head. “Well, he’s a big-time trainer. You
should
have heard of him. He was a great guy to learn from.”

“So why’d you leave him?”

He smiled just enough to make his crow’s-feet apparent. “Remember me telling you that I’d been fired before? Well, he was the guy who fired me.”

“Why?” Alex couldn’t imagine that Joe would be anything other than an exemplary worker. Even on their admittedly brief acquaintance, she had been impressed by his utter competence. He was hardworking, disciplined, responsible, intelligent, the kind of man upon whom one could completely rely.

Joe grimaced. “We—Gray’s team—were at Santa Anita, and an emergency came up for me at home. It was on the eve of the Santa Anita Derby, and we were pretty heavy into prepping about eight horses, sleeping there at the track and everything. When I told Gray I had to go, he said if I left before the race was over he’d fire me. I left, and he sure enough did.”

“What was the emergency back home?” Alex was fascinated.

Joe looked at her and hesitated. Alex had the feeling he was debating answering. “Laura—my wife—had taken off and left the kids. Just left ’em alone in the house for more than a day. Eli was four, Josh was two. A friend of Laura’s who’d come by looking for her found them, and called me. Laura was nowhere around. I had to go.”

“Oh, my God!” Alex was shocked. “Had something happened to her?”

He shook his head. His voice hardened, and his eyes as they met hers levelly were cold with remembered bitterness. “Nope. She wanted to party, is all. Laura always wanted to party. Nothing was ever allowed to stand in the way of that.”

“So is that when you divorced her?” Alex remember Inez telling her that Joe’s wife had just up and left him with all three children. But he’d only mentioned there being two at that time.

His expression warmed into a slightly rueful half-smile. “That’s when she left me the first time. She was gone for three weeks. After that, she pretty much took off whenever she felt like it, but we didn’t actually divorce until after we’d moved back here and Jenny was born.”

“Have you only been married once?”

“Once was plenty, believe me.”

He sipped at his coffee. “Okay, so let’s hear about you: tell me how you became a photographer. Do they teach that in those fancy boarding schools you went to?”

It was obvious that the change of subject was a very deliberate effort on his part to get the focus off his personal life. Alex didn’t blame him. That wasn’t exactly a heartwarming story to have to tell.

“I told you I took a lot of lessons. When I showed an interest in photography one summer when I was a teenager, Daddy heard about it through the servant grapevine and hired the best professionals he could find to teach me. I’ve been doing it ever since, and getting paid for it—all right, not much, but something—since I graduated from college.” She took a sip of coffee. No matter what Joe said, she couldn’t bring herself to eat more toast. She knew it would sit like a brick in her stomach. “What about you? Did you go to college?”

Joe’s mouth crooked into a half-smile. “Yep. UK. University of Kentucky.”

“Why am I not surprised? What did you major in?”

“Equine management. What about you?”

“Classical studies.”

“Oh, now that’s practical.”

Alex frowned at him. “It’s as practical as equine management.”

“Hey, I got a job.”

“Hey, I didn’t have to.”

Neely appeared just then, dressed in a denim jacket over a teeny denim mini, and walked toward their table, slipping into a chair.

“You started without me,” she said.

“Can I get you something?” Mabel appeared, casting a disapproving glance at the diamond stud in Neely’s nose. Joe performed the introductions, and Neely ordered. Alex waited until the waitress was gone before she told Neely the highlights—or rather the lowlights—of her conversation with Andrea.

“Does that mean we really get to stay here a couple more weeks?” Neely asked with enthusiasm when Alex had finished. Alex knew her sister was thinking of Eli, and hoped Joe hadn’t realized the same thing. She wasn’t sure what Joe would think about Neely “doing”—if indeed she was telling the truth—his son, and she didn’t want to find out.

“It means that
I
am going to stay here a few more weeks. We have to get
you
back in school.”

Neely looked at her. “I’m not leaving you here all by yourself. If you’re staying, I’m staying too.”

“Neely, you can’t. You
have
to go to school. You can’t possibly sit out three weeks or so. You’d have to repeat this entire school year.”

Mabel returned with Neely’s order. Neely took a bite of the cheese omelet, and glanced at Joe.

“Where does Eli go to school?”

“Right up the road. Shelby County High School.”

Neely looked at Alex in triumph. “I could go there.”

“For three weeks? Get real.”

Neely looked stubborn, and Alex thought, Uh-oh.

“You can’t make me go to any school I don’t want to go to. If you send me to another boarding school before I’m ready, I’ll just run away.”

“Neely …” Alex felt helpless, and, acutely conscious of Joe as an audience to the exchange, embarrassed as well. The hideous thing about
it was, she knew Neely well enough to know that it was no idle threat. Neely was perfectly capable of doing just as she said.

“You’re not my mother, Alex. You’re just my sister. So don’t try to run my life, okay?”

Joe, taking another sip of coffee, looked sardonic.

“Neely!” Alex glared at her sister, more out of mortification that Joe should witness her behavior than true anger because of it. This was vintage Neely all the way, and she had grown pretty much inured to it over the years.

“You’re just trying to get rid of me! All my life, that’s all anyone’s ever wanted to do: get rid of me! Off to boarding school, off to camp, off here, off there, all the time! I’m surprised my mother didn’t just have an abortion and be done with it!”

Glaring at Alex, throwing her fork down on her plate with a clatter, Neely sprang up from the table and practically ran from the restaurant.

Mabel and half the patrons in the place turned to watch her go.

Twenty-five

W
hen Alex would have gotten up and followed Neely, Joe stopped her with a hand on her wrist.

“Stay put and finish your coffee. If you go running after her when she pulls a stunt like that, you’re just teaching her that that’s the way to get your attention.” Joe’s voice was quiet.

“What do you know about it?” Alex felt both sorry for Neely and angry at her too. Sorry because she knew that there was some truth in her sister’s accusations about everybody, all her life, trying to be rid of her, and angry for exposing such private family dysfunction to Joe and everyone else in the place.

“I have three kids, remember, two of them teenagers. You pick up a few pointers along the way.”

“Oh, yeah? So how would you handle Neely’s little outburst, pray tell?”

Joe looked at her thoughtfully. “I’d tell her that if she ever did it again I’d blister her ass until she couldn’t sit.”

Alex was horrified, and he grinned at her expression. “All right, so I wouldn’t really do it. But in her case, I sure as hell would make the threat.”

“That might work for you. Unfortunately, I’m not quite as physically
intimidating as you are, and I don’t think it’s going to work for me. Do you have any other suggestions that don’t involve violence?”

“Just sit here drinking your coffee. Ignoring undesirable behavior takes longer, but it works in the end.” He took another sip of his coffee as if to demonstrate. “By the way, you might want to rethink letting her stay here with you. How comfortable are you going to be living up at Whistledown all alone?”

Alex hadn’t thought of that. So far, every time she’d walked inside the house she’d gotten a major case of the creeps.

“I wouldn’t keep Neely with me for that reason. That’s not fair to her. I’ll be fine by myself.” She had to suppress a shiver at the thought.

He smiled crookedly at her. “You can always come running down the hill if you get scared.”

Their gazes met, and Alex felt the strength of the sexual pull between them. The last time she’d run down the hill to him for help, she’d ended up in his shower, and, later, his bed. If she ever got a chance to do them over again, those experiences would, she thought, end very differently. Next time she wouldn’t keep her hands to herself. And neither, she thought, would he.

“Can I get you any more coffee, Joe?” Mabel approached them again, this time carefully not looking at Alex. The deliberate avoidance of eye contact signaled embarrassment, Alex knew, and she once again felt the mortification of Neely’s behavior.

“Just the check, Mabel,” Joe said. He paid the bill and followed Alex out the door.

Neely was standing beside a public telephone box on the opposite side of the parking lot, her hair glinting gold in the bright sunlight, talking to the burly handyman who’d spoken to Joe earlier. Alex headed toward her. Joe was behind her. This was one time, Alex thought, when she could have done without his presence.

Neely, seeing their approach, scowled. The man turned at her expression and, spotting Joe, waved.

“Hey, Benny.”

“Hey, Joe. Is this little lady with you? I thought she might be needing some help.”

“I am
not
with him,” Neely said icily.

Alex gave an inner groan. The handyman looked alarmed at the signs of imminent discord.

“Uh, sorry, just trying to help. See ya, Joe,” he said, and took himself off.

“Who are you calling?” Alex asked with some trepidation. When Neely got in one of her snits, there was no telling what she might do.

“I called Shelby County High School and asked what you had to do to go to school there.”

Alex groaned out loud.

“They said all you had to do was live in the district. If Eli does, then I must too.”

“Neely …” Alex began, feeling helpless.

“If you send me to a school I don’t want to go to, I’ll just get myself kicked out. And there’s nothing you can do to stop me!”

At the expression on Joe’s face as he looked at her sister, Alex knew that it was all he could do not to put into practice the recommendation he had made in the restaurant. On the verge of tears now, Neely was glaring at her, Joe was looking from one to the other of them with a disapproving gaze, and finally Alex had had enough.

“Fine!” she snapped, returning her sister’s glare. “Just fine! If you want to stay here and go to school, you’ve got it! And if you end up having to repeat a grade, you can damned well blame yourself! Now get your stuff out of the room, your butt in the car, and let’s go get you enrolled in school, okay?”

It was late afternoon by the time Alex got back to Whistledown. She was alone. Joe’s blue pickup truck, with Eli at the wheel and a gang of kids inside, had rolled past the driveway heading toward the farmhouse just as Alex and Neely had gotten out of the car. From the window of the truck, Eli had yelled at Neely to come on over. Without so much as a glance at Alex for permission, Neely had sped down the hill. It seemed not to have occurred to Neely that, in the aftermath of her outburst in
front of Joe, he might not be exactly eager to welcome her into his home.

They had parted ways at the Dixie Inn. At Alex’s request, Joe had shown them where the high school was, driving ahead of them in his car. Then he had gone on about his business, leaving Alex to get Neely enrolled. The process was relatively simple, involving a few phone calls and some faxed papers, and Neely started school tomorrow. To Alex’s relief, once at the school her sister had been on her best behavior—she tended to be on good behavior when she got her own way—but Alex still felt drained by the whole unsettling day as she walked inside the house. To have to stay at Whistledown for three weeks—the thought sent a shiver down her spine. The only thing that made the prospect bearable was Joe.