A Man to Rely On

“I shouldn’t leave,” she said. “If there’s somewhere I could hide for a few minutes…” She looked back toward the café as the photographer and the reporter exited.

“If you go back, so will they,” Jay said. “We’ll drive you home.”

As they rounded the corner to the small parking lot behind the café, the camera flashed again. Scott lunged at the photographer, who laughed, then dove into a waiting car, which sped away.

“Sorry about that,” Scott said as he helped Marisol into the back seat of a blue sedan, then climbed in after her. Jay took the driver’s seat and drove slowly toward Marisol’s house, circling the block a few times, looking for suspicious vehicles or persons, before pulling into her driveway.

“Maybe I should go back,” Marisol said. She hated running away, like a coward. “I should have stood up to them.”

“What would that have done but give them more pictures, and words they could misquote?” Scott asked. His face was flushed, his eyes dark with anger. Part of her wanted to throw her arms around him, to let him hold her and be the rescuer to her damsel in distress.

Except that she was through with men rescuing her. No man who was supposed to protect had ever done her any favors. And no good would come of letting Scott think she needed taking care of. “I’ll be fine now,” she said. She started to open the door and climb out of the car, but Scott’s hand on her arm stopped her.

“Are you going to be okay?” he asked. “Do you want us to stay with you a while?”

“I’ll be okay.” She scanned the front yard and the street, but they were empty. “It doesn’t look like they’ve found this place. At least not yet.”

“Who were they?” Scott asked. “Do you know them?”

She shook her head. “They’re probably from some gossip rag.” She smoothed the front of her skirt. “I was hoping they wouldn’t find me here in Cedar Switch.”

“Was this what it was like for you in Houston?” Scott’s face reflected his horror at the idea. “With people like that hounding you?”

“Pretty much. From the time I was released on bail until the trial ended and Toni and I left to come here there was always at least one group, sometimes more, parked in front of my house. They trailed me everywhere. We managed to avoid being followed here by leaving in the middle of the night and driving through back streets to lose the one car that tried to come after us.”

“I’ll call the police chief and ask him to keep an eye on your place,” Jay said. “Chase away anybody who’s loitering.”

“Thank you, but you can’t keep them out of public places,” she said. “They know their legal rights.” The horror of the scene in the café was beginning to set in—that first blinding flash, the flying tray of food. “Mary will never let me come back to work now,” she said.

“I’ll talk to her,” Scott said. “It’s not your fault—”

“No.” She gripped his arm, silencing him. “I don’t need you to fight my battles for me. I’m not helpless.”

He started to protest, then apparently thought better of it. “What will you do?”

“I don’t know. I’ll think of something.” She opened the door and climbed out of the car. He didn’t try to stop her this time, though she could feel his eyes on her as she unlocked the front door.

Inside, she locked the door and leaned back against it. What little peace she’d enjoyed since leaving Houston had been shattered. She could only imagine the headlines that would accompany the pictures those two lowlifes had taken: Accused murderess reduced to slinging hash in small town café. Or maybe Billionaire’s widow forced into menial labor. The pictures and stories would make the rounds of all the Junior Leaguers who had once welcomed her as one of their own. They’d shake their heads and click their tongues and tell each other how they had always suspected Marisol was not really “their kind of people” and this only confirmed it. Worse, how long would it be before those two men, or others like them, zeroed in on this house? How long would she and Toni have to barricade themselves inside before a more interesting scandal distracted her pursuers?

Toni. The thought of her daughter spurred her to action. She needed to telephone the school and ask them to have Toni wait in the office for her mother to collect her after school. Under no circumstances was she to go outside, and the school should be on the lookout for any suspicious characters hanging around the campus, especially anyone with a camera.

Toni would hate being singled out this way, especially on her first day. And she would, as usual, blame her suffering on her mother.

For her part, Marisol laid the blame firmly on Lamar, though fat lot of good that did, considering he was dead. What remaining love she’d had for the man upon his death had been leeched out of her by the ugly revelations of the trial and the suffering his mistakes and bad habits had brought on her and on Toni. The part of her heart that had once belonged to her handsome husband was now empty and cold. She wasn’t sure she had the strength to risk ever trusting a man again.

Which made her reaction to Scott that much more suspect. Maybe her sudden desire for him fell into the same category as nervous laughter at funerals and the sensation of wanting to jump when standing on the balcony of a tall building—involuntary, misplaced emotions or misfiring synapses. In a way it was comforting to realize her body was still capable of feeling attracted to a man. And Scott was, after all, good-looking and charming.

But it would be a long time before her mind was ready to let a man into her life. And when it happened, it would be somewhere a long way from Cedar Switch, Texas. Her time here was merely an interlude while she regrouped, refreshed her finances and prepared herself for a new life, one far removed from either her glamorous days in Houston, or a childhood here in the sticks she’d spent twenty years working to forget.

CHAPTER FOUR

T HE RINGING PHONE woke Scott the next morning at 6:30. “Have you seen the front page of today’s Houston Chronicle? ” a raspy voice demanded.

Scott sat up on the side of the bed and rubbed his eyes. “Marcus, is that you?” He checked the bedside clock. Apparently the real estate mogul was an early riser.

“Your picture is on the front page of the Houston paper, all cozied up to Lamar Dixon’s infamous widow.”

The words had the same effect as dunking his head in a bucket of ice water. “What?”

“I didn’t know you knew Marisol Dixon,” Marcus continued. He was a man who preferred asking questions to answering them.

“She’s using the name Marisol Luna now,” Scott said. “She’s listed her house with me.”

“I thought that River Oaks mansion was sold to pay her legal fees.”

“She has a house here in Cedar Switch. She inherited it from her mother.”

A crackling sound, like paper being rattled, reached his ears. “Since when do real estate agents cuddle up to clients in the backseat of cars?”

Marcus should have been a tabloid reporter. He made one innocent gesture sound so lurid. “She was ambushed by a reporter and a photographer in the Bluebonnet Café yesterday when my dad and I were there eating lunch,” he said. “We helped her get away from them and gave her a ride home.”

Help Marisol hadn’t been particularly grateful for, he reminded himself.

“And now half the state thinks the two of you are involved.” Even this early, Marcus sounded as if he’d been drinking straight bourbon and smoking cigars for hours.

“I don’t care what they think,” Scott said. Phone to his ear, he leaned over and grabbed a pair of jeans off the back of the chair he’d flung them across before crawling into bed last night and began to pull them on.

“Well, I care!” Marcus’s shout startled Scott so much he almost dropped the phone.

“I’m not involved with Marisol,” he said. Yes, there had been that moment when their eyes had locked in the café yesterday. In that briefest instant he’d felt the heat of desire and possibility arc between them once more.

A possibility that would go unfulfilled. Marisol was leaving town. And he was staying here, out of trouble.

“You’d better not be involved with her,” Marcus growled.

Scott stiffened. “Even if I was, what difference would it make?” he said. “She was acquitted of the murder charges.”

“Acquitted! All that means is she had good lawyers. It doesn’t mean she was innocent.”

Scott froze in the act of zipping the jeans, his hand tightening on the receiver. “Marisol did not murder her husband,” he said, struggling to keep his voice even.

“And you know this how? Were you there?” Marcus’s voice was a gravelly sneer.

“Of course I wasn’t there.” He finished zipping the jeans and began to pace. “I watched the trial and the prosecution clearly didn’t have enough evidence to convict her. Besides, she had nothing to gain by her husband’s death, and everything to lose. She did lose everything, which is why she moved back here and got a job waitressing in a café.”

“Maybe she’s just waiting for all the hubbub to die down, then she’ll go away and spend the millions she’s hiding from the government.”

Scott took the receiver from his ear and stared at it. He was tempted to ask Marcus if he also believed in UFOs, alien abduction and other bizarre theories.