Denim And Lace

Bess wanted to watch him ride away, but she’d already given away too much. She loved him so. Why couldn’t she stop? Heaven knew he didn’t want her, but she kept flinging herself against the stone wall of his heart.

She climbed back into the car, feeling weary and numb. She wished she could fight him. Maybe if she were spirited, he’d notice her, but she loved him far too much to go against him in any way. She wondered sometimes if that wasn’t the problem. He was worse when she knuckled under. She had spirit, it was just that she’d been trained from her childhood not to express it. It was neither dignified nor ladylike to brawl, as Gussie often put it.

Bess pulled the car out into the road, feeling depressed. She was decorative and well mannered, and her life was as dead as a rattlesnake lying flattened in the middle of the highway. Her life had no adventure, no spark. She was nothing except an extension of Gussie. And not a very attractive extension at that, she realized bitterly.

Her father was home when she got there, and he looked twice his age.

“I thought you were going to be in Dallas until tomorrow,” she said as she hugged him warmly. He was only a little taller than she was, dark-eyed with salt-and-pepper hair and a live-wire personality.

“I was,” he returned, “but something came up. No, I won’t tell you, so stop snooping,” he added when she opened her mouth to speak. “It will work out. It’s got to.”

“Business, I suppose,” she murmured.

“Isn’t it always?” He loosened his tie and looked around at the black-and-white marble floor leading to a carpeted staircase. There was a Waterford crystal chandelier in the foyer and elegantly furnished rooms off both sides of the hall. “My God, it gets worse every day. No matter how hard I work, I just go backward. Sometimes, Bess, I’d like to chuck it all and go to Africa. I could live in a hut somewhere in the jungle and ride an elephant.”

“Africa is in turmoil, most of the jungle has been eaten by the elephants, and some of the little ones are even being transplanted to other countries in an experiment to see if they can repopulate in areas with sufficient vegetation,” Bess informed him.

“You and your damned National Geographic Specials,” he muttered. “Never mind. I’ll sign aboard Moulin à Vent and help Jacques Cousteau and his son explore what’s left of the seas.”

“They have a new windship now. Its name is—”

“I’ll tell your mother you didn’t go to the coffee,” he threatened.

She laughed. “Okay, I’ll stop. Where is Mama?”

“Upstairs primping. I told her I’d take her to San Antonio for lunch.” He checked his watch. “If she gets finished in time.”

“She’s still beautiful,” she reminded her father. “You can’t rush beauty.”

“I’ve been trying for twenty-four years,” he said. “Next year we celebrate our silver anniversary. They’ve been good years, despite your mother’s harebrained spending. I hope I can keep enough in the coffers to support her diamond habit,” he chuckled, but his eyes didn’t laugh. “It’s getting to be an ordeal. I’ve just taken one of the biggest gambles of my financial career, and if it doesn’t pay off, I really don’t know what we’ll do.”

Bess frowned because he sounded worried. “Daddy, can I help?”

“Bless you, darling, no. But thank you for caring.”

“Mama cares, too,” she said hesitantly.

“In her own way,” he agreed. “I hoped in the beginning that it was really love on her part and not just an attraction to the good life. Then I settled for friendship. We haven’t had the best of marriages, but I promise you I’ve loved her enough for both of us. I still do,” he said, smiling.

Her big brown eyes searched his face. “Nita wants me to go down to the Caribbean with her.”

“Your mother will have a fit.”

“Yes, I know. I don’t really want to go anyway.”

Frank Samson grimaced. “Yes, you do. You’re entitled to a life of your own. It’s just that your mother doesn’t realize how possessive she is. She leads you around like a puppy, and you let her,” he said, pointing a lean finger her way. “You’re a big girl now. Stop letting her run over you.”

“She means well,” Bess began hesitantly.

“Don’t wait too long,” he added. “Parents can do a lot of damage without realizing it.”

“I’m not damaged,” she protested, although in a sense she was. She wanted Cade, and her mother would fight her tooth and nail if she knew how badly.

“Where in the world have you been?” Gussie Samson muttered angrily as she came down the staircase in a delicately woven white-and-cream wool suit with pink accessories. Her tinted blond hair was elegantly coiffed and her makeup was perfect. In her younger days Gussie Granger Samson had had a brief career on the stage. Her roles had been supporting ones, not leading ones, but she still acted as if she’d been a full-fledged star, right down to the elegance of her carriage.

“I stopped by Lariat to tell Elise some of their calves got out of the fence,” Bess said.

Gussie glared at her with angry green eyes. “I suppose Cade was at the house?”

“No, Cade wasn’t at the house,” Bess replied quietly.

Gussie sighed angrily. “I don’t want you near that man. He’s a common cowboy...”

“He’s an able and intelligent man with great potential,” Frank argued, putting an arm around his wife. “Stop riding him. All that is in the past, remember? And better forgotten.”

Gussie flushed, darting a glance at Bess. “Never mind the past,” she told Frank quickly. “Shall we go?”

Bess was more in the dark than ever after that statement. She wondered if she knew her parents at all, especially Gussie. But she wasn’t one to pry into people’s secrets, so she smiled and waved goodbye to her parents and went upstairs to change.

That night she overheard an argument between her parents over money, and although they made up quickly, she couldn’t forget it. The next evening a man came to see her father.

“Who is he?” Bess asked Gussie curiously.

“I don’t know, darling,” Gussie said nervously. “Your father’s been in a terrible mood for two days. He snaps and snarls and his color is bad. I don’t know what’s wrong, but something is.”

“Can’t you ask him?”

“I did. He only stared at me. There’s a party tomorrow night at the River Grill. Want to come with your father and me?” she coaxed. “The Merrills will be there, and their son, Grayson, is going to be with them.”

“Gray’s very nice, but I don’t want to be thrown at him, if you don’t mind,” she said softly. “I’m not in the market for a rich husband.”

“You’ll enjoy yourself,” Gussie assured her, smiling. “Now, no more arguments. You know you love seafood, and Gray is just back from a month in Europe; he’ll be full of stories. You can wear your new gray crepe dress and that pretty fox cape I bought you for Christmas.”

“But, Mother...”

“Let’s have some coffee. Ask Maude to fix a tray, dear, and perhaps your father and his guest will join us. There’s a good girl,” Gussie added, patting Bess’s hand absently.

Bess gave up. It was easier than trying to fight Gussie, but she knew that someday she was going to have to stand up to her. Giving in was a dead end. Her father was right. Odd, she thought, that her father should have made such a statement, when it was usually Cade who disliked Gussie’s overbearing maternity. She knew that Cade and her father talked a good deal when they had business meetings about the new real-estate investment. But surely Cade wouldn’t have talked to her father about so personal a subject. Would he?

She came back from the kitchen still pondering, when Gussie came running toward her, wild-eyed and breathless.

“Your father’s guest left, and now Frank’s locked the study door and I can’t make him answer me!” she cried. “Bess, something is terribly wrong!”

“But...what could—”

They heard the chilling, loud report of a pistol and they both froze in place. Then Bess turned and ran down the hall to the study, trying the door with both hands, banging on it, kicking.

“Daddy!” she screamed. She turned to Gussie. “Call the police!”