They went back a forth a few more times, but youth and determination were no match for age, experience and a conniving turn of mind. Callie knew when to give in. Her own plans would just have to wait. “All right, I’ll do my best, but don’t blame me if your Mr. Langley sends me packing. I know a lot about men, and—”
Manie snorted again.
“—and one thing for sure, they don’t like any changes in their routine. Doc Teeter is the sweetest man alive, but just let me slip up and send in the first patient before he finishes his second cup of coffee, and he’ll growl all day.”
“You won’t have to worry about that with Hank. He’ll bend over backward not to cause you a speck of trouble. Like I said, he’s the sweetest boy in the world.”
Callie, shoulders slumping, eyelids at half-mast, had her doubts about that, but there wasn’t much she could do about it. The arrangements had already been made. Her aunt needed her, if only to water her precious plants and set her mind at ease so she could heal properly.
And after this, she thought smugly, Manie was going to owe her. “All right then, if your sweet boy agrees, I’ll do my best.”
Manie beamed. Face flushed with pleasure and two glasses of blackberry wine, she looked far younger than the sixty-nine years she admitted to. “I’m just as sorry as I can be the way things worked out, but when I scheduled my operation, I wasn’t sure you’d actually come to visit.”
“Yes, well…I guess it worked out for the best. Just remember, once the operation’s done, we’re going to have a serious talk about the future. I’ve had a wonderful idea, and I can’t wait to tell you all about it.”
The elderly woman nodded, and then nodded again. Leaning over, Callie peered up into her face and saw that she was dozing.
Well. She was pretty tired, herself, after driving practically nonstop all the way across the country. A few hours of sleep in a series of cheap motels hardly counted as rest.
Hank stared morosely at the blinking red light on his answering machine, tempted to ignore it. Discipline took over. Besides, it might be Manie. He still wasn’t convinced she hadn’t made light of her illness just to keep him from worrying.
The first message was 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