Rose smiled, obviously touched by the offer. “Thanks, but like I said, I’m going to New York.”
“They’ve these newfangled things they call telephones. People talk into them and people on the other end can hear every word. Imagine that.”
Rose laughed.
Haley smiled, her eyes crinkling. At least she’d done one good deed today. “That’s better.”
Matt finally understood the old, trite saying. He understood what it meant to be at wit’s end, because he was at the end of his.
He had no idea what to do.
After deciding that Flynt was right, that he should take the bull by the horns before he allowed it to ram right through him, he’d gone to see Rose.
But she was gone.
She wasn’t at the library, wasn’t anywhere in town. And when he’d finally broken down and called her house, the woman who had answered the telephone informed him that Rose wasn’t available. No details, nothing. Impatient, he’d asked when she would be back. The only answer he got was that information was unavailable at this time. Then the phone had gone dead.
He’d slammed down the receiver. What kind of garbage was that?
Unavailable.
That was the whole problem. Rose was supposed to be unavailable to him because he was a Carson. But she hadn’t been. She’d been like fireflies and light. Magic. Pure magic in his arms, in his bed. The memory of making love with her into the wee hours of the morning clung to him tenaciously, coloring every moment of his day and night.
He couldn’t go on this way.
Damn it, a man should be able to shake off anything, but he couldn’t seem to shake off the effect she’d had on him. He needed to tell her that. To find her and talk to her face-to-face.
It couldn’t just end like this, as if it hadn’t meant anything.
It wasn’t his ego that was at stake, it was his heart. Why couldn’t she see that? She’d been so bright, so insightful about everything else, how could she not know what her leaving would do to him?
He’d tried to talk himself into believing that this had been just a fling, an affair. But it was a lie and he knew it from the start.
He needed a drink. A tall, stiff one.
Matt stormed into the Lone Star Country Club Men’s Grill and planted himself on a stool at the bar. Because of the bomb that had gone off months earlier, the Men’s Grill was under construction, forcing the patrons into temporary quarters.
He scowled into the mirror.
Amid a barful of customers, Haley saw him. Flynt Carson’s younger brother. Flynt had been one of her brother Ricky’s best friends before life had conspired against them and sent them in separate directions.
She made her way over to Matt, she on her side of the bar, he on his.
“Hi, handsome. A smile will really dress up that pretty face of yours.”
Without asking, the bartender set a whiskey neat down in front of him.
Matt accepted the drink with a slight nod of his head. “Thanks, Daisy. But I don’t have anything to smile about.” Throwing back the contents of the shot glass, he set it down empty on the counter a moment later. “Hit me again.”
Daisy reached for the bottle and poured. “Hey, go slow on that. Don’t want to make extra work for the sheriff now, do we? What’s the problem?”
He raised his eyes to hers. Suddenly he missed Rose’s eyes. He cursed her soul to hell for what she’d done to him. “Nothing,” he muttered moodily. “Everything.”
“That about covers it.” Haley watched him down the second drink and held off offering the third. At this pace, Matt Carson was working himself up for one powerful hangover.
“Yeah.” He laughed without any humor. “I thought I had all the bases covered, too.” He stared down at the empty glass—empty, like the way he felt. “But she fooled me.”
“She?”
Matt nodded, hating this impotent way he felt. Where the hell was she? He leaned in over the counter, his voice low. The bartender was forced to lean forward to hear him.
“She’s gone. I can’t find her anywhere.”
Haley thought back to the woman who had been in the Grill two days prior. With the same troubled look in her eyes. It didn’t take a genius to make the connection.
“She?” Daisy asked. “That wouldn’t be Rose Wainwright, now, would it?”
Matt looked at her sharply, then glanced around to see if anyone had overheard. Not likely, not in this din. “How did you—?”
Daisy’s mouth curved in a comforting smile. “Don’t worry, I won’t say anything to anyone. I know all about that family feud of yours. Big waste of time if you ask me. But no one’s asking me.”
The hell with the feud, the hell with everything else except the woman who’d twisted his gut up so bad, it felt like a pretzel. “I’m asking you about Rose. Was she here? When? What did she say?”
The bartender nodded. “Day before yesterday. And she said she was leaving.”
“Leaving?” Then he was right, she had gone. “Where did she say she was going?”
“New York.”
“‘New York’?” he echoed.
His first inclination was to say she had to be mistaken. New York wasn’t the kind of place someone like Rose would go. But then he remembered. She had an aunt who lived in Manhattan. Beth Wainwright, that was her name.
Relief swept over him like a giant wave. Rose hadn’t just disappeared into thin air. He knew where she was. And he was going to get her back. Grateful for the help, Matt leaned over the counter, took hold of Daisy’s shoulders and kissed her soundly on the mouth.
“Thanks.”
She pretended to fan herself. “Don’t mention it.” And then she winked. “Pleasant though that was, that doesn’t take the place of a tip, you know.”
Standing up, Matt pulled a twenty out of his wallet and tossed it onto the counter. “Keep the change,” he told her. “And thanks.”
For the first time in two days he knew where he was going.
The doorbell pealed incessantly, intruding into the mood that was enshrouding Rose.
Try as she might, she couldn’t seem to shake loose of it. It hung about her like a coat of heavy iron malle. Her aunt had been nothing short of wonderful, insisting on taking her “fun” places, as she called them, and determined to make her smile. Rose tried her best not to show the older woman how deeply unhappy she was, but she had a feeling she wasn’t fooling her.
She supposed that eventually the raging battle would die down to an occasional minor skirmish and Matt Carson would entirely cease to matter. In about a million years or so.
“Would you get that, darling? I have my hands full of caviar,” Beth called from the kitchen.
Rose didn’t even stop to ask. Her aunt’s eccentricities were becoming normal.
Though she didn’t feel like talking to anyone, she couldn’t very well return Beth’s kindness with surliness.
“Of course.”
She supposed, she thought as she turned the lock and pulled on the doorknob, that she should welcome any distraction.
Except this one.
Rose’s mouth fell open.
Matt