Caesar had no doubt he was talking to the traitor.
A warrior’s scream rose inside him, like the screams of cattle in a burning barn. He must have made some sound because vultures exploded out of nearby oak tree and circled slowly, as if he were a stricken creature.
“You won’t be around forever, old man. When you’re gone, whatever will happen to Lizzy?”
Caesar cursed. Then pain, the likes of which he’d never felt before, burst inside his head. His right hand lost its grip on the leather reins, and he cried out.
The pain subsided as quickly as it had come, as it always did. Other than feeling curiously empty as if a part of himself was gone, he felt all right. It was nothing, he told himself. Nothing. He’d had headaches all his life. He was too young for it to be anything serious. Just in case, he pulled an aspirin out of his pocket and chewed it, swallowing the bitter taste.
“Who are you? Who the hell gave you this number?”
Laughter. Peals of it. Then the line went dead.
He had no idea how long he sat in the saddle thinking about Electra, wondering what had happened to her, before the phone rang again. Quickly he answered it.
“Hi there. I got worried when you didn’t call right back.” Cherry’s voice was soft and friendly, but he couldn’t talk, couldn’t say anything.
“Hey, big boy, are you there? Are you okay?”
Caesar cleared his throat and tried to focus. “I can’t talk right now.”
“I’m sorry.” She sounded genuinely sympathetic. “So, do you want to get together?”
He didn’t answer. That he was even considering cheating on Joanne with a woman like Cherry had to be a sign that the tremendous strain he’d been under was taking its toll.
“I don’t think that’s a very good idea,” he said. “Look, I shouldn’t have called you—”
“You won’t be sorry,” her low, sultry voice promised. “I swear. I think this is fate. Your name starts with C—my name starts with C. I looked up your birthday. You’re a Taurus and I’m an Aquarius.”
What the hell did that have to do with anything?
“I’m free…late, every single night,” she whispered, “after I finish dancing. We could unwind…after a long day. I’m off all day Sunday, and I never go to church. Get your cowboy son-in-law or his pilot to fly you up here again.”
“You’re awful sure of yourself.”
“You called me,” she said.
He remembered Electra and his wild passion for her that had lasted even until now. Sorrow, not lust, gripped his heart.
“You called me back—twice. Don’t chase, girl. If I want you, I’ll do the chasin’. Frankly, I’m not in the mood.”
“Ohhhh!” She sucked in a breath. “Go to hell. Go straight to hell.”
When she slammed the phone down so hard she made his ear pop.
She was a pistol.
A woman like her could take a man’s mind off his worries. His sorrows…
All things considered, he had half a mind to call her back.
Two
Six months later
Manhattan,
Upper West Side
The cell phone rang just as Lizzy made it up the concrete stairs outside her brownstone with baby Vanilla. Golden leaves fluttered on the trees that lined her street. Not that she paid much attention to the afternoon’s beauty.
She was too preoccupied at her front door as she buzzed Bryce, her present live-in, who didn’t answer. When he didn’t, it was panic time.
Bouncing her fidgety niece up and down instead of searching for the phone, Lizzy hit the buzzer again as waves of uneasiness washed over her. Her brother, Walker, was visiting them. Why wasn’t he home?
Lizzy hated the way she overreacted to everything, but when Bryce didn’t answer, butterflies whirled in her stomach. Not good butterflies, either.
Lizzy had been trying to make her mark in Manhattan for over five years. She’d started out as a cat-and dog-sitter and then a nanny. Next she’d read manuscripts for her landlord, who was a publisher. But when she’d passed on a couple of shallow novels that had turned out to be bestsellers, her landlord had suggested that she stick with cats and dogs and children. Lizzy was in television production at the moment, but like every other job she’d had here, she wasn’t as good at it as she was at dog-sitting. Her boss, Nell, had said, “You didn’t really acquire…an…er…broadening…education on the university level, now did you? Besides that, you don’t get New York or our audience.”
Lizzy’s love life hadn’t been a roaring success, either, at least not until Bryce. Yes, she had high hopes for Bryce—he was part of her fantasy. A successful woman, at least a woman with a drop of Texas blood in her, always had a man to share her success with. Okay, so for her, the right man had come before the right career.
Lizzy’s fantasy was also to be a beautifully groomed, kick-ass career girl, somebody with short, smooth, glossy black hair instead of long, platinum corkscrew curls. She wanted to be a real live heroine with a fantastic wardrobe; a fighter, who might get knocked down, but who could always joke about life’s little upsets with snappy, sexy one-liners.
Lizzy most certainly did not want to be somebody who didn’t even get jokes half the time, even dumb blond jokes, or somebody who was tongue-tied, shy, repressed and riddled with self-doubt. Most of all she did not want to be a crybaby.
Heck, maybe she should see a shrink again, but that would be admitting she was still a mess.
The phone in her purse stopped ringing.
Love means letting go of fear.
Why had that particular pearl from some dumb pop-psychology book she’d read on the sly sprung into her mind at this exact second? Was it true? If it was, had she ever really been in love?
She’d been crazy-lovesick over Cole, but there had been a darkness in him she couldn’t reach. And that had scared her. Maybe that’s why she’d finally let Daddy convince her to break up with him. No, the real reason was he was pure country, and since she was no good at any of that, she was determined to be a big-city career girl—not to mention the fact that all Cole’d ever really wanted was a piece of the Golden Spurs.
The phone in her purse rang again and each ring got louder. This time she managed to get the thing out and up to her ear—no easy accomplishment since she was juggling the baby on her hip, her briefcase on one shoulder, a diaper bag as well as her purse on the other, while holding her door keys and buzzing Bryce, too.
“Did I call at a bad time?” her mom asked in a faint, lifeless voice as Lizzy got the big doors unlocked.
“G-great time, Mom,” she lied, looking up at the staircase that vanished into the darkness long before it even reached the third floor where she lived.
“How’s Vanilla?” her mother asked softly.
Lizzy could hear her mother’s white fantailed pigeons cooing in the background, which meant her mother must be in their coop, tending to them. She knew her mom had more on her mind than the baby, but the baby was a safe topic. Hopefully Mom wasn’t going to rehash her dad’s betrayal and the impending divorce and settlement.
What had gotten into Daddy six months ago?
Sex. Pure raw sex. Bryce had said this in that definitive, annoying know-it-all,