Aly's House (14 page)

Aly transferred her attention to Joe. Until she could get a handle on this, she had to do something about Joe. His curiosity, if not extinguished now, could spread like a brush fire. He would question and probe and dig until he unearthed answers satisfactory to his resourceful intelligence. Also, she had to prevent him from selling those shares—either to Marshall or her father.

Though she already knew, Aly asked, “How many shares did your aunt own?” When Joe cited the number, she said, “That represents only ten percent, Joe, not enough to give Marshall much clout even if he did own them. They would have to be combined with others to give him the needed majority to oust my father.”

Joe, all perked ears now, asked narrowly, “Exactly how does that work?”

“Well, to remove my father as chairman, a new board of directors opposed to him would have to be elected. That would come about only if those owning the majority of stock, fifty-one percent, voted to oust the old board and elect a new one. Only the board of directors can hire or fire a chairman.”

“So that means that if Marshall owned fifty-one percent of the stock, he could sweep the board clean all by himself.”

“That's right, but he doesn't. He doesn't possess a single share, according to the annual stockholders' report.”

“Then why the hell would he want to buy Aunt Hattie's measly ten percent?”

Aly shrugged. “You got me. Maybe just to be a thorn in Dad's side at the stockholders' meetings the way Aunt Hattie has been for years. Marshall came to Claiborne to buy Cedar Hill from Matt, you know.”

At Joe's look of surprise, she grinned. “He didn't know that I had bought it.”

Joe returned the grin with satisfaction. “Looks like that boy is being cut off at the pass from every direction. So you think he thought that since he'd have a claim in Claiborne again, he'd just buy himself a seat in the meetings with Aunt Hattie's shares?”

“That's what I think, Joe. I'd just hold on to that stock if I were you. The bank's turning around. Those shares may become a very valuable asset one of these days.”

Joe settled his cap down over the pale green eyes decisively. “I'm satisfied,” he said, “but I got one more question to ask you, Aly. Why is he hanging around—you being a Kingston and all?”

“I think he thinks I may be persuaded to sell Cedar Hill.”

“And what form might that persuasion take?”

“You're getting a little personal now, Joe.”

“Well then, answer me this. Could you be persuaded to sell Cedar Hill?”

“You know the answer to that, friend.” Aly allowed a conspiratorial glint to appear in her eye, relieved to see Joe's slow, acknowledging grin.

“That's my girl,” he said. “Now, you think you could do without me for about a week? I got so many things that need doing right now—”

“I insist that you take next week off, Joe,” Aly said commiseratively, seeing the wash of sorrow back in his eyes. Moved by compassion for him, she pressed her hand to his cheek. “Take as long as you need. Willy and I can manage.”

He squeezed her hand in response, then kissed its palm. “Don't manage too well,” he said.

When he was gone, Aly went back inside, pausing briefly in the breezeway to collect her thoughts. She hadn't lied to Joe. She had simply not told him the whole truth. She had not explained that to oust a chairman of the board, a stockholder did not have to
own
fifty-one percent of the shares. He merely had to
control
them. The only reason Marshall would have sought Hattie's shares, had come at this time to buy them, was because he already controlled forty-one percent. What, she wondered, growing cold, would be his next move?

“Your dinner is probably cold,” Marshall commented in annoyance when she took her place at the table. “Who was that?”

“Joe Handlin,” she said, in case he had come to check on her and saw him on the porch. “One of the boys” would have been a suspicious evasion. Her body felt numb.

“What did he want?”

“A week off. I gave it to him. He needs it.”

Marshall had waited for her to begin the meal. Now he cut into a chicken breast with what she knew to be feigned enthusiasm, took a bite, and chewed blissfully. “Excellent,” he pronounced.

“I hope this meal won't provoke painful memories,” Aly said, keeping her eyes on her plate and taking her time in slicing her own portion.

“Not at all. I'm glad Mother's culinary talents live on in you, Aly. I'm glad so much of what I cared for lives on in you, as a matter of fact.” He underscored the sentiment with a devastating smile, emptying her heart. When she did not respond, he paused from his eating, watching her. “Anything the matter?”

She looked up, eyes innocent. “Joe's on my mind, I guess. It will be hard on him for a while with his aunt gone.”

Marshall went back to his fricasseed chicken. “You'll be shorthanded with Joe gone,” he said. “How about letting me fill in for him until he comes back?”

Aly's head popped up. “You mean
work
here at Green Meadows?”

“Why not? I'd very much like to help you out.”

“But—but this is your vacation.”

“I can't think of a better way to spend it. You know, Aly, it crossed my mind when I was growing up to turn Cedar Hill into a horse breeding farm someday. Don't look so surprised. I thought Mother would have told you. Sampson was my first purchase toward that possible goal. I'd enjoy working around here for the next week. What with Sampson here and Willy and the house—and you—I'd feel almost home again.”

How warm and winning the words sounded. They were what she wanted to hear, and he probably knew it, but were they the truth? Was his offer genuinely extended to help her out, or was it a pretext made to give him the opportunity to seduce her shares from her? She would have to wait and see. She was no longer sure of him, of Sy and Elizabeth's son.

Then, as she considered him, a notion so stunning, so unbelievable, so absolutely right, smacked her with such force that she was obliged to cough delicately into her napkin.
So what if Marshall's motives might be less than honorable
, she asked herself.
Why not give him reason to change his mind—his heart! Why not give him reason to abandon this whole ridiculous idea of taking over the Kingston State Bank! Take the offensive!
That had always been her father's favorite dictum in business and in that respect at least, she had proved to be his daughter.

So why not take it now? Why not go after Marshall, seduce
him?
Why not woo him, win him, keep him here forever! He belonged in Claiborne. He belonged on Cedar Hill with her. He just
thought
he wanted to become president and chairman of the Kingston State Bank. What he really wanted was to marry her and help her run Green Meadows.

Taking a sip of water to clear her throat, Aly set down the glass and smiled, completely restored. “It's a deal,” she said. “Can you start in the morning?”

They decided to clear away the dishes before having pie and coffee on the porch. In the kitchen Aly hummed while Marshall carried in the dishes from the living room. He studied her covertly, in an anguish to know if Joe Handlin had spilled the beans about the shares. From Aly's cheerful manner, he decided that Joe, not understanding their actual importance to him, had not. Maybe he had been too broken up over his aunt's death to mention them.

Did Aly ever read the bank's annual report? Did she know or care that her family no longer held a majority of the stock? She could not possibly know whose hand controlled forty-one percent of the outstanding shares. But did she suspect? And if Joe told her later about his offer to buy Hattie's ten percent, which she knew wouldn't be honored now, then what would she deduce?

A feeling of loss swept through him, a melancholia that sent him to stand behind Aly and wrap his arms around her. He kissed the top of her head. “Just think, a whole week together. A whole anything-could-happen week.”

“You said it,” Aly said. “This is the tornado season, you know, so I'm doubly appreciative of your offer, Marshall. I usually try to hire extra men this time of year simply to help us round up the mares and foals in the pastures when we get the warnings, but temporary help is hard to come by. I have no trouble when school is out because I can hire teenagers, but right now—”

“Is that all you're thinking about—how much help I can be? I had other things in mind, too.”

Still in his arms, she turned around to face him, the movement alluring and feminine, igniting his desire. Her eyes were wide and quizzical. “But, Marshall, I thought—last night you said—”

He slipped his hand up through her hair and drew her to him. “That was last night,” he said roughly. “I haven't been able to get you out of my mind, Aly.”
It was true
, he thought, as he covered her mouth. Her lips parted. He could feel the sensuous touch of her hands finding their way around his neck. She moved against him, whether consciously, he could not tell. All he knew was that she was drawing him away on some sea of passion, or feeling, heretofore uncharted in his experience. His last awareness before he found himself opening the door of his old room to lead her inside was to ponder the two questions of how could he live with what he was about to do and how could he live without it.

A
ly's built-in alarm woke her at the usual time Monday morning. For a few blissful minutes she lay on her back, letting herself slowly come awake to the memory of the night before. Then, without opening her eyes, she reached over to the other side of the bed to feel for substantial evidence that it had not all been a dream. Her hand fell upon empty bedsheets.

“Marshall?” she exclaimed, sitting up in surprise. She listened for sounds of him in the adjoining bathroom, and when none came, she hurriedly threw back the covers and pushed into a pair of slippers by the bedside. Drawing on a robe, she went down the breezeway to the kitchen.

He had gone. A note by the coffeepot explained, in an endearingly prudish fashion, that he thought it wise his car not be discovered in front of her house should one of her men show up there Monday morning. “Claiborne isn't New York, you know,” he wrote, saying that he had gone to the motel and would be back out to Green Meadows after breakfast.

Aly put the coffeepot on and went out onto the porch to wait for it to perk. She sat down on the couch and drew her robe around her, snuggling into it as she thought with sublime satisfaction that some realities were better than dreams ever could be. He was right about the car, of course, but if she'd known Marshall would be gone when she awoke, she doubted if she would have slept.

All night long she had marveled at the miracle of his presence beside her. And because it was a miracle, then that meant it was supposed to be. It was just that simple. Marshall would fall in love with her, go back to New York to resign his position (if he hadn't already), and then return to Claiborne to marry her. They would reside on Cedar Hill and live happily ever after. She wasn't one to put much stock in fantasies, but she did believe in miracles.

Oh, Marshall would have a struggle on his hands right now, she could appreciate that. How confused he must be this morning, how frustrated to know she was his only hope to accomplish what he'd set out to do thirteen years ago. And to be so close… Now he'd have to decide whether his hate for her father outweighed his growing love for her. And she knew it was love. There had been something so tender, so genuine in his awe of her, his feeling for her, something so beyond what he had expected from both of them for the night to have been called anything but an expression of love.

She would have to give him time to come around. In the meantime, she wouldn't give him the minutest reason to believe she was on to him, that she knew why he had come to Claiborne, why he'd offered to fill in for Joe, why he'd made love to her—and might again before he called off this whole thing with her father. And he would call it off. She knew Sy and Elizabeth's son. Come time for the board meeting in eight days, Marshall Wayne would not be attending.

Marshall walked out of Willard's Cafe where he had just had breakfast into the sunshine of a fresh spring morning. Skies were blue, the breeze was gentle, the air invigorating, but he took no notice of any of these end-of-winter beneficences that as a boy on his morning chores had made his family's farm the finest place in the world to be. His chest felt so tight that the mitigation of a deep breath wasn't worth the pain of it. He yearned to take a swing at something, anything good and solid, but preferably the jaw of Lorne Kingston. Damn, if it wasn't for him, how different everything would be! How simple and uncomplicated—how beautiful.

How, he demanded in frustration as he lit a cigarette, had everything skittered so far off track? Five days ago when he stepped off that plane in Oklahoma City, everything he needed to destroy Lorne Kingston was in the bag. Nobody but that double-dealing conniver stood to get hurt, not even Lorne Junior, who, for the first time in his life, could get his backside out of that bank and go to work like other men's sons.

But now Aly was involved, and the last thing he wanted was to hurt her. Unbidden, before he could stop it, the memory of her in his arms last night flooded over him. He saw her face gazing up at him, her head pillowed on the golden cushion of her hair. Unable to stanch them, he felt again the desires that had put all others out of his mind, that had made him loath to leave her in the early hours of the morning before she could wake and make him stay.

Marshall cursed under his breath. What an ironic turn of events. It would be only a matter of time before Aly found out that he'd made Hattie an offer for her stock. Joe would have every reason to tell her. He might even go to her father with the information, who wouldn't waste a panicky second informing Aly.

And what then?

Marshall took a deep draw on the cigarette, feeling the acrid smoke burn a trail to his lungs. In disgust he looked at it, then flicked it into the street. Aly was right. He hadn't liked them before. He didn't now. A motorist, his face friendly and familiar, waved at him. Marshall waved back, feeling his chest loosen somewhat. It was good to stand here in the peace and quiet of morning and be hailed by old friends. Quite a contrast from New York. He would be going back now, all that he'd come home for—and more besides—lost to him once again.

He began to walk. Up the block was the Kingston State Bank. He had been avoiding it as he had been avoiding the sight of Lorne Kingston. He had not wanted to lay eyes on him until the day of the board meeting. He hoped the old boy still stood tall and straight, still had that superior way of looking over his glasses at you as if you'd asked to go to the bathroom in his house. He wanted no reason to feel sorry for him, no reason later to regret what he'd done. But now he wanted to see him. He wanted a look at the bank.

Marshall crossed the street and sauntered down the sidewalk until he drew abreast of the bank on the other side. Then, slipping his fingers into the top of his jeans pockets, he stood there looking at it, imagining the name Kingston removed from the sign and himself as president and chairman. Wayne State Bank. It could still be his. That was the biggest irony of all. If he chose, it could still be his.

His glance sharpened as two men, one old, one young, pushed open the double glass doors from inside the bank. Lorne Kingston and his son. Lorne Junior was heavier than when Marshall had last seen him, but his father, though completely gray now, was still trim and suave. He still walked with that arrogant air of self-esteem that Marshall had looked forward to extinguishing. As he watched their progress down the street, observed the deference they were accorded, hate surged anew within him. How quickly people forgot. The ruined acres of Cedar Hill, which had lain exposed to public scrutiny for at least three years, were evidence of what Lorne Kingston could do to people like the Waynes. Yet he and his son could still be treated with respect, slapped on the back, and welcomed into the coffee klatch of local businessmen and farmers that gathered about now at Willard's.

Marshall, his thirst for vengeance fully returned, watched as Mrs. Devers—grayer, a bit stooped, but amazingly fast on her feet—rushed out of the bank in pursuit of the two Kingstons. At once Marshall became interested in the window display behind him. In the glass he saw the pair turn at the cry of their names and wait for the excited woman. They conferred, then in alarm all three hurried back and reentered the bank.

Marshall smiled, welcoming the surge of pleasure through his bitterness like a draught of fresh air in a stale room. He started back down the street toward his car. Temporarily at least, he had thrown a rock into the spokes of the biggest wheel in town.

In the breezeway, Aly was just hanging up the phone when she saw Marshall coming up the steps. Today he wore a western straw hat, an addition to the jeans and boots, which she thought made his true image complete. She stayed in her chair, watching him reflect a moment on a pot of geraniums, then go back down the steps. Afraid that he might be leaving, she hastened to the door, but was cautioned by some instinct to peep through the glass first. Marshall was making for the pecan trees, his long-legged stride recalling another time when she followed him down the steps in beseeching pursuit. She watched him stop in the shade of the newly budded limbs, their shadows gamboling over him in merry play. What was he thinking, standing there like that in the stance of men whose lives are spent in constant surveillance of crops and animals and weather? What was Marshall surveying? The yesterdays of Cedar Hill? The succession of seasons and cornfields and the secondhand vehicles once parked between the trees?

Aly thought she knew. She had just spoken with her father. He had sounded out of breath, for he had just run from Willard's to the bank after Mrs. Devers had gone to tell him the results of the first proxy forms. All had voted against retaining the board.

“My God, I can't believe the finesse, the years involved in this! He's out to get us, Alyson. I'm convinced that all those proxies will come in negative now that I've learned Marshall came here to buy Hattie Handlin's shares—”

“Did he?” she asked calmly.

“You know he did! Joe told me so himself when I called him at the funeral home minutes ago. I offered to buy Hattie's shares. But he won't sell to me—says he's not selling to anybody, which means Marshall can't get his hands on them either. Now, Aly, you're his only prayer for getting the ten percent he needs. I know he'll try to fleece your shares out of you. He's started already if I'm to believe Joe. But I'm telling you that if you're fool enough to let him, the family will disown you. You'll never set foot in this house again. I'll keep Peter from you—”

“You can forget the threats, Dad,” she had cut in. “I'm not about to sell my shares to Marshall Wayne. I wouldn't do such a thing to him.” She had hung up, leaving her father still on the line trying to figure out her last remark.

But what would she do if Marshall asked her for the shares? Watching him come back to the house, his face drawn from the struggle within him, she had a moment of panic. She knew what her answer would be, but Lord, what would she
do
! How could she order him out of her life? How could she live the rest of it with the memory that for a while, a precious, beautiful while, he had been such an intimate part of it?

But he wouldn't ask her for those shares, she decided resolutely, opening the door, her smile ready and welcoming. Miracles never went awry.

“Good morning!” she greeted him happily. “Why so glum, chum? Having second thoughts about working during your vacation?”

“Not about that.”

“About last night then?” she asked, sweeping off his hat as he gathered her to him.

“No,” he said, holding her as if she'd been about to fall. “Never about last night. Never, never about last night.”

The day went fast with barely enough time to eat the sandwiches Aly had packed for Marshall and Willy and herself for lunch. Almost hourly a horse trailer or van arrived either to deliver or pick up their valuable cargoes. Marshall, with the instinctive understanding of a born horseman, took charge of loading and unloading the stock. Calm and patient, he was able to soothe the crankiest of the travelers in the tricky process of leading them from vehicle to paddock where stiff legs and tempers could be run off.

Gratefully, Aly left Marshall to the chores she would have had to see after in Joe's absence and devoted her time to the necessary paperwork and entertainment of her visitors. She was even able to take time to slip into town to pay her last respects to Hattie at the funeral home, where she unfortunately had an ugly encounter with Joe.

“I hear Marshall Wayne is my temporary relief.”

“News travels fast.”

“That surprise you in this town? He going to fill in the full week?”

“Yes.”

“So I guess it's lucky for you that I had to be off this week.”

“He offered to help out, and I'm grateful for it, Joe. That's all there is to it.”

“You know, your dad made me a pretty tempting offer this morning. I've been thinking about it, and the more I think about it, the more tempting it seems. Especially if it means cutting Marshall's legs right out from under him. Know the offer I'm talking about?”

“I know, Joe. Here's mine. If you sell those shares to my father before the board meeting next Tuesday, you will never get another job with a major horsebreeding operation in this state.”

“It's that way, is it?”

“It's that way. Leave it be, Joe. You made the right decision when you told my father no this morning. Let it ride now.”

That evening, accompanying her on the nightly tour of the stables, Marshall asked, “Tired?”

“Not as much as you are, I'd bet. You've had a long day.”

“I've enjoyed every minute of it. I can't remember when I've enjoyed a day more, but I could sure use a beer when we get up to the house.”

“You got it. Want to stay for supper?”

“I ought to take you out.”

She laughed at his unenthusiasm. “I put on a roast awhile ago, hoping you'd stay. No need to go back to the motel to change. You can wash up at the house.”

In the bathroom, Marshall finished drying his face and hands and looked at himself in the mirror. The first of the proxies had arrived today. He had ordered that they come in a trickle, all negative, with the last of them delivered the day before the meeting. He wanted to draw out Kingston's pain, make him sweat and worry. It had been an excellent plan. By now he was to have had Hattie's proxy letter. He could go out on the porch in a moment, accept a beer from Aly, sit down at her supper, and never feel a pang. After all, he'd made it clear long ago how he felt about her father, what he hoped to do, how his white Continental would someday be parked in the president's spot at the bank.

But now—now everything had changed. His lips twisted wryly. So much for the dramatic point of the white Continental. His stomach had never felt tied in so many knots. He kept waiting for the phone to ring. It could be Joe or it could be her father, both with news that would make Aly fix him with a look in a moment that said she knew his motives for last night, for today, for the rest of the week.