Texas! Lucky (6 page)

She touched his hair. Feeling the caress, he smiled. Then he drifted off to sleep again, wondering why, since it had been so damned good, he'd never made love to her before.

* * *

No matter how much Lucky drank the night before or how late he caroused, he always woke up at daybreak. His father had had chores for Chase and him to do before school. The habit of waking up early had been ingrained in him.

When he first became conscious, his head felt like a bowling ball stuffed with cotton, which might roll off his shoulders at any moment. It was an effort just to open his one functioning eye. Nevertheless, when he saw through the slit that he was alone in the bed, it came fully open. Stretching out his hand, he touched the imprint her body had left. Grunting and groaning from the whipping he'd taken from Little Alvin, he sat up, switched on the nightstand lamp, and groggily surveyed the room. No suit jacket. No keys. No purse. No sign that she'd ever been there.

Maybe she'd just gone out for coffee. He swung his feet to the floor, swearing liberally as pain rocketed up through the soles of his feet straight to the crown of his head. Dizzily he stood up and hobbled toward the window. With as dramatic a flourish as his battered body would allow, he flung back the drapes, startling a middle-aged couple walking down the breezeway.

The woman uttered an astonished gasp and hastily averted her eyes from Lucky's semi-nudity. Her husband gave him a reproving look before taking his offended wife's elbow and ushering her toward their camper parked at the curb.

Lucky automatically began rebuttoning his jeans while staring hard at the empty space where Dovey's red car had been parked the evening before.

"Damn!"

She had made a clean getaway. Sneaked out like a thief. That thought sent his hand plunging into his jeans pockets for his money clip. He found it intact.

She
had
been here, hadn't she? She wasn't just a figment of his imagination? No, of course not. He couldn't have imagined eyes that unusual shade of green. If he had dreamed her, it had been one hell of a dream. One he wished he could have every night and never wake up from.

He limped into the bathroom and switched on the unkind, unflattering fluorescent light. The image the mirror over the basin threw back at him belonged in a monster movie. Not only was his hair a mess and his lower jaw dark with stubble, but, as predicted, his eye was black-and-blue and swollen almost shut. There was a bruise as big as a baseball on his shoulder, probably where he had gouged Little Alvin's middle. The cut across his belly had closed, but was still a bright red line.

Then something incongruent caught his eye, something reflecting the blue-white glare of the fluorescent tube. He pulled a long, dark red strand of hair off his chest. It had become ensnared in his chest hair. Spurred on by that discovery, he returned to the bedroom and checked the wastepaper basket. He found what he was looking for.

Sinking down onto the bed, he held his aching head between both hands. She'd been real, all right. He hadn't imagined her. Nor had their lovemaking been a dream, except in the metaphorical sense.

Unsure whether that made him feel better or worse, he returned to the bathroom and showered. As soon as he was dressed, he left the room and got into his Mustang. He'd been negligent to leave it uncovered and unlocked all night, but thankfully it hadn't been vandalized. He drove it around the building to the office and went in to speak to the motel clerk—not the same one who had been there the evening before.

"Mornin'." His smile was almost as big as his ears. "Have some coffee."

"Good morning. Thanks." Lucky poured himself a cup from the pot brewing on a hot plate. "My name's Lucky Tyler. I spent last night in room one ten. The room was registered to a young woman."

"Yeah?" The clerk propped his elbows on the counter and leaned forward eagerly.

"Yeah. Would you please check your register for her name?"

"You don't know it?"

"Dovey something."

"Must've been some night. She do that to you?" He nodded toward Lucky's black eye and torn shirt.

"What's her name?" Lucky's tone of voice prohibited further speculation or comment. The clerk wisely checked his files. "Smith, Mary."

"Mary?"

"Mary."

"Mary Smith?"

"That's right."

"Address?"

"Two hundred three Main Street."

"City?"

"Dallas."

"Dallas?"

"Dallas."

"Two hundred three Main Street, Dallas, Texas?"

"That's what it says."

Lucky was familiar enough with the city to know that the two-hundred block of Main Street was downtown in the heart of the commercial district. He suspected Ms. Smith of duplicity. And Smith! Mary Smith, for crying out loud. Not even very original. Where had "Dovey" come from?

"Did she give a phone number?"

"Nope."

"Car tag?"

"Nope."

"Which credit card did she use?"

"Says here she paid with cash."

Lucky swore. "Driver's license number?"

"Nope."

"Great."

"Sounds to me like the lady was covering her tracks."

"Sounds that way to me too," Lucky mumbled, his mind on where and how he might pick up her trail. "When a guest pays with cash, isn't it procedure to get some form of identification?"

"It's procedure, but, you know," the clerk said, shrugging, "we don't always do it. I mean, people traveling together get the hots, check in for a quickie, things like that. Most times they don't even stay overnight."

Knowing the clerk was
right,
Lucky combed back his hair with his fingers. He'd washed it with bar soap, and it was drying in a helter-skelter fashion. "What times does the other guy come on duty? The one who works this desk on the evening shift."

"Four."

Lucky tossed his empty disposable coffee cup into the wastepaper basket and ambled toward the door. "Thanks."

"You bet. Come again," the clerk called cheerfully.

Lucky shot him a withering look before he went out into the bright, new East Texas sunlight that was just breaking over the tips of the tall pine trees and spearing through his eyeballs straight into the back of his skull.

He slipped on the sunglasses he'd left on his dashboard the day before and pointed the Mustang toward home. He would start tracing her at the place later this afternoon. Not only did she owe him an apology, but now he was due an explanation as well. In the meantime he couldn't devote the whole day to tracking her. Even though there wasn't much work to do, he and Chase felt better about business if they looked and acted busy. The drive home would normally have taken an hour, but Lucky was anxious for more coffee and some breakfast, since he hadn't eaten the evening before. He floorboarded the Mustang, and in a little over thirty-five minutes was turning off the farm-to-market road into the lane leading to his family's home.

The narrow blacktop road was lined with pecan trees. In summer, when they were in full leaf, their branches formed a thick green canopy over the road that sunlight could barely penetrate. The only time he didn't appreciate the trees was in the fall, when his mother sent him out to pick up the crop of nuts that covered the ground. Still, the effort became worth it when the pecans showed up in homemade fudge and pies.

They raised only enough cattle to keep them in fresh beef, and stabled a few riding horses. Sage had spoiled them and turned them into pets, and they offered little challenge to
hell-bent
riders like Chase and Lucky. As he sped past, Lucky honked at the small herd grazing on the thick grass that grew on the acreage surrounding the house. The two-story structure was built of painted white brick, and had black shutters on the windows opening onto the deep front porch. His father had built the house when he and Chase were youngsters, but Lucky never remembered living anywhere else. When Sage came along, quite unexpectedly, another three rooms had been added on to the back side to accommodate the Tylers' growing family.

It was a handsome house, and homey. Lucky knew the day would come when he would marry and move out as his brother had two years earlier, but he dreaded thinking about it. This was home. His fondest memories were directly connected to this house.

He knew every nook and cranny of it. He knew which stairs creaked when someone stepped on them. His initials were carved on every peach tree in the orchard. He'd smoked so much of the grapevine that grew along the fence, it was a wonder there was any of it left. He could almost recall each individual Christmas, and one particular Easter stood out in his memory because he and Chase had replaced the hard-boiled eggs his mother had dyed for Sage's Easter basket with raw ones, and had got a spanking for ruining her day.

"Oh hell."

This morning he was none to happy to see Chase's car parked in the curved drive in front of the house. It was early for him to be out. Lucky had hoped to give the swelling around his eye a few hours to go down before confronting his older brother.

Resigned to the inevitable interrogation, followed by a lecture about maturity, image, and responsibility, he parked his Mustang and loped up the front steps.

Entering the wide, airy foyer, he followed the smell of fresh coffee toward the kitchen situated in the southeast corner of the house.

At this time of day the sun bathed the pale walls with butter-colored light.

"Lucky, is that you?" his mother called through the rooms.

"None other. What's for breakfast?"

He entered the kitchen and was surprised to see Tanya, Chase's wife, sitting with him at the kitchen table. Small and blond, she perfectly complemented his tall, dark brother. Lucky liked Tanya immensely, and often teased her by saying that if she ever got smart and left his brother, he had first dibs on her. That would never happen. She was devoted to Chase, which was one of the main reasons Lucky liked her so much.

When he walked in, she gave him one of her sweet smiles, which turned into openmouthed gaping when he removed his sunglasses. His smile disfigured his face even more.

Laurie Tyler, attractive even in middle age, flattened her hand against her breasts and fell back a step when she saw Little Alvin Cagney's handiwork on her son's face.

"Good Lord, Lucky, we heard you'd been in another fight, but I didn't expect anything this bad. Did that Cagney brute do that to you?"

"Yeah, but you ought to see him," he quipped as he headed for the coffee maker and poured himself a cup.

"Where the hell have you been?"

Lucky blew on his coffee and looked at his brother through the rising steam. "Are you in another lousy mood today? It's not even time for me to be at work yet, and already you're on my case."

"Lucky, something's happened," Laurie said, laying a hand on his arm. Her eyes were a similar shade of blue, and almost as bright and youthful as her son's. Now, however, they were clouded with concern.

"Happened?"

Just then Sage came barreling through the back door. Here lately, Lucky was startled every time he saw his kid sister. She wasn't a kid any longer. Only a few weeks earlier they'd attended her graduation from the local junior college. Next fall she would be studying at the University of Texas in Austin.

She no longer looked like an adolescent. She was a woman. And it seemed she'd become one overnight.

"I was in the stable and saw his car pull in," she said breathlessly as though she'd been running. "Have you told him yet?"

"Told me what? What the hell is going on?"

"We had a fire last night," Chase said grimly.

"A fire?"

"In the main garage." Chase left his chair and went to the coffee maker to pour himself a refill.

"Jeez." Lucky suddenly felt nauseous. "I'm sorry I wasn't available. How bad was it? Nobody was hurt, I hope."

"No, nobody was hurt, but the building burned to the ground. Everything in it was destroyed."

Lucky dropped into a chair and dragged his fingers through his hair again. What Chase had told him was inconceivable, but the grim faces surrounding him confirmed that it was the truth. "How'd it start? What time did all this happen? Did they get it put out?"

"The first alarm came in about two-thirty. They fought the blaze till around four. It's out now. Hell of a mess though."

Chase returned to his chair across from his brother. Once he was seated, Tanya rested her hand on his thigh in a silent, wifely gesture of sympathy and support.

"Thank God we've kept up our insurance premiums," Lucky remarked. "As hard as it's been to rake together the cash for—" He broke off when he intercepted the exchanged looks that went around the kitchen. "There's more?"

Chase sighed and regretfully nodded his head. Laurie approached Lucky's chair as though she might, at a moment's notice, have to render maternal consolation. Tanya stared down at her hands.

Sage was the one who finally spoke up. "There's a whole lot more. Who's going to tell him?"

"Be quiet, Sage."