After the Night (14 page)

And he wondered why she had come back to Prescott. There was nothing for her here, no family, no friends. The Devlins hadn’t had friends, only victims. She had to have known she wouldn’t be welcomed back with open arms. Probably she had thought she could slip in without anyone being the wiser, but folks around here had long memories, and her resemblance to her mother was too marked. Reuben had recognized her as soon as she’d taken off her sunglasses.

Well, it didn’t make any difference. He had rid the parish of the Devlin vermin for the second time, and with a hell of a lot less trouble than it had been twelve years ago. He just wished she hadn’t come back at all, hadn’t revived the potent memory of his unwilling response to her, hadn’t replaced his image of her as a young girl with the image of her as she was now, a woman. He wished he had never heard her soft, cool voice saying, "Thank you."

Faith drove steadily along the dark road, not letting herself stop even though her insides were shaking like jelly. She refused to let her reaction get the best of her. She had learned the hard way what Gray Rouillard thought of her, dealt with the shock and pain years ago. She would
not
let him hurt her again, or get the best of her. She hadn’t had any choice but to leave the motel, because she had seen the ruthless determination in his eyes and known he hadn’t been bluffing about having her thrown out. Why should he
balk at that, when he hadn’t balked at having her entire family removed? Her calm acquiescence didn’t mean, however, that he had won.

The threat of the sheriff hadn’t frightened her. What had her both scared and angry was the intensity of her reaction to Gray. Even after all those years, after what he had done to her family, she was as helpless as a Pavlovian dog to stop her response to him. It was infuriating. She hadn’t rebuilt her life just to let him reduce her to the status of trash, to be gotten rid of as soon as possible.

The day had long passed when she could be intimidated. The quiet, vulnerable child she had been had died one hot summer night twelve years ago. Faith was still a fairly quiet person, but she had learned how to survive, how to use her own steely will and determination to get what she wanted out of life. She had even become confident enough to indulge in her redheaded temper from time to time. If he had wanted to get rid of her, Gray had made a mistake in forcing the issue. He would soon learn that what looked like a retreat just meant she was adjusting her position for attack from another angle.

She couldn’t let him run her off again. Not only was it a matter of honor, she still hadn’t found out what had happened to Guy. She couldn’t forget about it, couldn’t let it
go.

A plan began to form in her agile mind, and a smile touched her lips as she drove. Gray would find himself outflanked before he knew it. She was going to move to Prescott, and there wasn’t a thing he could do to stop it, because she would be ensconced before he knew it. It was past time she faced all of her old ghosts, cemented her own self-respect. She would prove herself to the town that had looked down on her, and then she could forget about the past.

And she wanted to prove to Gray that he had been wrong about her from the beginning. She wanted that so fiercely that she could taste it, the victory sweet in her mouth. Because she had loved him so intensely as a child, because he had been the stern, ruthless judge and executioner, so to speak, on the night when he had run them out of the parish,
he had assumed far too much importance in her mind. It shouldn’t be that way, she should have been able to forget him, but the fact was there: She wouldn’t/*?*?/ like anything other than trash until Gray was forced to admit that she was a decent, moral, successful person.

She didn’t just want to find out what had happened to Guy. Maybe it had begun as that, or maybe she had hidden the truth from herself, but now she knew.

She wanted to go home.

Seven

"Yes, that’s right. I want everything handled in the agency’s name. Thank you, Mr. Bible. I knew I could count on you." Faith’s smile was warm in her voice, something Mr. Bible must have heard, because his reply made her laugh aloud. "You’d better be careful," she teased. "Remember, I know your wife."

She hung up the phone and her assistant, Margot Stanley, gave her a rueful look. "Was that old goat flirting with you?" Margot asked.

"Of course," Faith said good-naturedly. "He always does. It gives him a thrill if he thinks he’s being wicked, but he’s actually a sweet old guy."

Margot snorted. "Sweet? Harley Bible’s as sweet as a rattlesnake. Let’s face it, you have a way with men."

Faith restrained herself from an unladylike snort. If Margot had seen Gray run her out of town – again – she wouldn’t think Faith had such a "way" with men. "I’m just nice to him, is all. It’s nothing special. And he can’t be as bad as you say he is, or he wouldn’t still be in business."

"He’s still in business because the old fart is a smart businessman," Margot said. "He has an evil genius for sniffing out prime property right before it becomes prime,
and buying it up for a song. Damn him, people only go to him because he has the land they want."

Faith grinned. "Like you said, a smart businessman. He’s always been as nice as he can be to me."

She might have restrained herself from snorting, but Margot had no such inhibition. "I’ve never seen a man who
wasn ‘t
nice to you. How many times have you been stopped for speeding?"

"All total?"

"Just this past year will do."

"Ummm… four times, I think. But that’s unusual; it’s just that I’ve been traveling so much this past year."

"Uh-huh. And how many times have you gotten a ticket?"

"None," Faith admitted, rolling her eyes. "That’s just coincidence. Not once have I tried to talk my way out of it."

"You don’t have to, and that’s my point. The cop walks up to your car, you hand him your license and say, ‘I’m sorry, I know I was flying,’ and he ends up handing your license back and telling you to slow down, because he’d hate to see your pretty face all cut up in an accident."

Faith burst out laughing, because Margot had been in the car with her when she had been stopped that time. The Texas state trooper in question had been a burly gentleman of the old school, with a thick gray mustache and a drawl as slow as molasses. "That’s the only time a cop has said anything about my ‘pretty face,’ quote and unquote."

"But they were all thinking it. Admit it. Have you
ever
gotten a speeding ticket?"

"Well, no." She controlled her amusement. Margot had gotten two speeding tickets within the past six months, and now was having to stick strictly to the speed limit, to her great resentment, because a third ticket would result in the temporary loss of her driver’s license.

"You can bet neither one of the cops who stopped me said anything about slowing down before I got my pretty face all cut up," Margot muttered. "No sirree, they were pure business. ‘Let me see your license, ma’am. You were doing sixty-five in a fifty-five zone, ma’am. Your court date will be such and such, or you can mail in your fine by such and such
date and waive your right to a court appearance.’" She sounded so disgusted that Faith had to turn away to keep from laughing in her face. Margot didn’t see anything funny about her two speeding tickets.

"I’d never had a ticket before in my life," Margot continued, scowling. Faith had heard it many times before, so that she could almost say the words in unison with her friend. "I’ve been driving for half my life without so much as a parking ticket, and then all of a sudden the damn things seem to be coming out of the woodwork."

"You make it sound as if you could paper your walls with them."

"Don’t laugh. Two tickets are pretty damn serious, and a third one is a catastrophe. I’ll be poking along at fifty-five for two years. Do you know how much this throws off a schedule? I have to get up earlier and leave earlier, everywhere I go, because it takes me so long to get there!" She sounded so aggrieved that Faith gave up the struggle and began giggling helplessly.

Margot was a joy. She was thirty-six, divorced, and had absolutely no intention of staying that way. Faith didn’t know what she would have done without her. When she had finally scraped up enough money to buy the agency, she had known how to handle the customer part of the business, but despite her college degree in administration, there was a great deal of difference between textbooks and real life. Margot had been assistant to J. B. Holladay, the previous owner of Holladay Travel, and had been glad to handle the same duties for Faith. Her experience had been invaluable. She had kept Faith from making some serious mistakes in financial matters.

More than that, Margot had become a friend. She was a tall, lean woman with bleached blond hair and a dramatic flair for clothes. She made no bones about being in search of a new husband – "Men are a lot of trouble, honey, but they do have their good points, one big one in particular" – and was so good-natured about it that she had no trouble getting dates. Her social life would have exhausted the strongest debutante. For her to claim that Faith had a way with men,
when Faith seldom went out with anyone and she herself was seldom at home, was pushing it a bit, in Faith’s opinion.

"Don’t laugh," Margot warned. "You’re going to be stopped by a female cop one of these days, and that’s when your luck will run out."

"That’s all it is, luck."

"Sure it is." Margot abandoned that subject and gave her a curious look. "Now, what’s this about a house in Godforsaken Louisiana?"

"Prescott," Faith corrected, smiling. "It’s a little town north of Baton Rouge, almost at the Mississippi state line."

Margot snorted again. "That’s what I said. Godforsaken."

"It’s my hometown. I was born there."

"You don’t say. And you actually admit that out loud?" Margot asked with all the incredulity of a true Dallas native.

"I’m going home," Faith said softly. "I want to live there." It wasn’t a step she took lightly; she was going back with the full knowledge that the Rouillards would do everything they could to cause trouble for her. She was deliberately placing herself once more in proximity with Gray, and the danger of it made her lie awake at nights. Besides trying to find out what had happened to his father, all those years ago, she had a lot of ghosts to face, and Gray was the biggest one. He had tormented her, in one way or another, for most of her life, and she was still caught in the helpless childhood whirl of emotions where he was concerned. In her mind he was omnipotent, bigger than life, with the power to either destroy her or exalt her, and her last meeting with him had done nothing to dilute that impres-siqn. She needed to see him as a normal man, meet him on equal footing as an adult, rather than a vulnerable, terrified young girl. She didn’t want him to have this power over her; she wanted to get over him, once and for all.

"It was that trip to Baton Rouge that did it, wasn’t it? You got that close and just couldn’t stand it." Margot didn’t know about what had happened twelve years ago, didn’t know anything about Faith’s childhood other than she’d been in foster care and was very fond of her foster parents. Faith had never talked about her past or her family.

"I guess it’s true about roots."

Margot leaned back in her chair. "Are you going to sell the agency, or what?"

Startled, Faith stared at her. "Of course not!"

There was a subtle relaxation of Margot’s expression, and abruptly Faith realized how alarming her decision could be for her employees. "Everything will go on just like before, with two minor exceptions," she said.

"How minor?" Margot asked suspiciously.

"Well, for starters, I’m going to be living in Prescott. When Mr. Bible finds a house for me, I’m going to put in a fax machine, a computer, and a photocopier, so I’ll be as in touch, electronically speaking, as I am now."

"Okay, that’s one. What’s the other?"

"You’re going to be in charge of all the offices. A district manager, you might say, except there’s only one district and you’re the only manager. You don’t mind traveling, do you?" Faith asked, suddenly anxious. She had forgotten to consider that when making her plans.

Margot’s eyebrows arched in disbelief. "Me, mind traveling? Honey, are you out of your ever-lovin’ mind? I
love
to travel. You might say it expands my hunting area, and God knows I’ve already given most of the prime bucks around here their chance for a life of excitement. It’s their hard luck if some lucky guy somewhere else takes me out of circulation. Besides, it’s never a hardship to go to New Orleans."

"And Houston and Baton Rouge."

"Cowboys in Houston, Cajuns in Baton Rouge. Yum, yum," said Margot, licking her lips. "I’ll have to come back to Dallas to
rest."

Her plan fell smoothly into place, but then Faith went to a lot of trouble to make certain it did. She took a great deal of satisfaction in her efforts; she had been helpless at fourteen, but now she had resources of her own, and four years in the business community had given her a lot of contacts.

With Mr. Bible’s help, she quickly located and settled on a small house for sale. It wasn’t in Prescott, but was situated a couple of miles outside the town limits, on the edge of Rouillard land. Buying it put a sizable dent in her savings,
but she paid for it in full, so Gray wouldn’t be able to pull any strings with a mortgage holder and cause her any trouble. She knew enough now to foresee what steps he might take to make things rough for her, and counteract them. It gave her great pleasure to know she was outflanking him, and he wouldn’t know anything about it until it was too late to stop her.