Beauty and the Brain (19 page)

“I don’t know.” His furrows were deep.
Brenda had a mad urge to smooth them out for him. Lord, she must be
tired! “I, ah, don’t drink much.”

She patted the cards into a neat stack, then
took his arm. “I don’t, either,” she said confidentially. “But I’m
tired tonight and I think it will help me sleep.”

“I don’t need help sleeping.”

He’d gone stiff at her touch, and Brenda
wasn’t able to stifle her sigh this time. “Lucky you.” To Martin,
she said, “Order him a Manhattan, too. If he doesn’t like it, he
doesn’t have to drink it.”

“Right-o.” Martin sauntered off to the
bar.

Watching his receding back, Brenda murmured,
“I swear, he never gets tired. He expends as much energy as any of
us, but he doesn’t seem to feel it as the rest of us do.”

“It’s probably his metabolism,” Colin
said.

She peered up at him and noticed that he
didn’t look so stiff. She figured it was because she’d given him a
reason to assume his professorial pose. What the heck, she might as
well play along. “What’s a metabolism?”

He didn’t appear too shocked by her lack of
knowledge. She gave him a figurative tip of her hat for it,
although it most likely only signified that he was too accustomed
to her state of ignorance to show how much he deplored it.

He said simply, “It’s the rate an
individual’s body uses the fuel with which it’s been supplied.”

“Oh.” She blinked and wondered what to ask
next. She had no idea.

Fortunately, Colin didn’t let her
befuddlement stop him; she should have expected as much.
“Everybody’s body is different.” He glanced down at her and looked
away again quickly. “As you know already.” He sounded very formal,
and Brenda had a notion he’d realized he’d begun talking about
bodies to a female and was embarrassed.

“I see,” she said, although she didn’t see
anything. “So Martin’s energy level is higher than mine?”

“Not necessarily.” He cleared his throat.
“You see, it may only be that he consumes fuel at a higher level
than you do. Or perhaps his body is more efficient in its fuel
consumption.”

“Oh.” She hoped he’d drop this subject,
because he was making Martin sound like an automobile, and she had
an urge to giggle. Obviously, she was in no condition to try to
understand the lesson he was attempting to impart. They’d reached
the bar, thank God, and she saw Martin at a table in a corner.

She appreciated this bar. She appreciated
the whole Cedar Crest Lodge, if it came to that. It was a tasteful
and refined place. Brenda, who hadn’t grown up with any refinement
at all, enjoyed it when she sat in it. The lodge, and this bar,
were both masterpieces of polished wooden beams and understated
elegance. The whole shebang reminded her of old money. Like the
Vanderbilts or the Morgans or the Astors. Or, better still, like
one of those old British families who’d been spitting out dukes and
earls for centuries. She sat with a sigh and leaned back against
the soft cushions of her chair. “If I fall asleep, just nudge
me.”

Martin chuckled. “Sure thing.”

Colin looked faintly shocked. How unusual.
With a little grin that probably looked as dry as it felt, she
murmured, “I didn’t mean it, Colin. It was a joke.” She took a sip
of her cocktail. It was delicious, and the warmth of the alcohol
spreading through her gave her hope for the night. She usually
slept well, but when she was working, sometimes she suffered from
insomnia.

With an effort, she sat up straighter in her
soft, comfy chair and asked Colin, “How do you like your
Manhattan?” After his first sip his nose had wrinkled and he looked
disapproving, so she anticipated his answer.

He surprised her. Before he answered, he
took a second sip, stared across the table and over her left
shoulder, appeared to think for a few seconds, and finally said,
“It’s pretty good.” He took another sip and nodded. “Yes, it’s
quite tasty.”

Good grief. Not for the first—or even the
hundredth—time, Brenda wondered what it was like to test everything
with such care before rendering an opinion. Heck, she’d only had to
set foot in the Cedar Crest Lodge to realize she liked it. She’d
bet Colin hadn’t allowed himself to form a verdict yet, and they’d
been here for several days. He undoubtedly had to put the question
to some sort of scholarly test. Curious, she asked, “What do you
think of the lodge, Colin?”

His brow wrinkled again, he pushed his
glasses up his nose, and he looked as if he intended to nut that
one over for a year or three before rendering a judgment on the
subject. Brenda guessed her tiredness had made her short-tempered,
because his attitude grated on her nerves like a file.

Turning to Martin, she said, “I think it’s a
wonderful place. I’d like to spend a couple of weeks every summer
up here to rest and relax.”

Turning a weather eye upon Colin, she noted
his expression and decided he didn’t respect her opinion of the
lodge any more than he respected anything else about her. She
wanted to snap at him. Maybe slap him around some. Instead, she
lifted her Manhattan and took another sip.

She didn’t drink very often and never
gulped. One was her limit, and she intended to savor this one.

“It’s a great place,” Martin concurred. “I
discovered it last year when I was looking for a suitable location
to shoot a mining film.”

“A mining film?” Brenda’s interest was
piqued. “I don’t believe there are any mines up here.”

Brenda and Martin both turned to look at
Colin. He gazed back, noted their expressions, and lifted an
eyebrow. “That is, I believe there are many mines down the mountain
and around San Bernardino and in the Mojave Desert, but there
aren’t any up here to my knowledge. The ore fields are down
there.”

“And you ought to know,” Brenda murmured.
She added to herself,
since you know everything
. She didn’t
say that part aloud.

“Right.” Martin seemed relatively unfazed by
Colin’s input. “I found that out last year. I was hoping to find a
place that was out of the heat of the desert, which is why I went
up into the mountains in the first place. It’s much prettier up
here.” He smiled his regular happy smile. “Unfortunately, it didn’t
work out. I fear we’ll be shooting the picture in the desert. I get
mighty tired of deserts, but it’s where we film most of the cowboy
pictures and so forth.

Colin nodded and looked as if he were only
barely restraining himself from saying, “You should have asked me
first.” Asking Colin first, Brenda knew, even though she was sure
Colin wouldn’t understand, would have taken the fun out of Martin’s
enterprise. Seeking advice was all well and good, but sometimes
life was more interesting when you allowed yourself to discover
some things on your own.

“Are you going to make that picture next,
Martin?” she asked in order to take her mind off Colin and how
irritating he was. And how much she wished he wasn’t.

“I’m not sure. I still haven’t found a
suitable site. I’m working on it, though.”

She shook her head slightly. “You do too
much. You never take any time for yourself.”

“Oh, I love what I do. It doesn’t seem like
work to me.”

Colin nodded his agreement, and Brenda was
amused. How funny. These two men, who were as different as night
was from day, had something very important in common. She didn’t
share this aspect of life with them. While she enjoyed her work to
a degree, she’d just as soon be able to retire somewhere and read
for the rest of her life.

Suddenly she saw Colin stiffen, as if a mob
of people had taken to speaking ungrammatically in his hearing. Or
had maybe done something worse, like mistaken a Navajo for an
Apache. Actually, he looked as if someone had struck him hard and
knocked him cockeyed.

Good heavens, perhaps he’d had a reaction to
the alcohol in his drink. Brenda had heard of some people who
couldn’t tolerate even a drop of alcohol.

She heard Colin mumble “Good God.”

He seemed to be staring at the door of the
bar, which was at her back. She swiveled in her chair and looked to
see if they’d been invaded by wild Indians. Frowning, she decided
that wasn’t a funny thing to say any longer, if it ever was.

A young man had entered the bar and was now
glancing around with an uncertain air. He was a nice-looking lad:
tall and straight, with dark wavy hair and a strong chin. He held
his hat in his right hand and licked his lips nervously. He looked
vaguely familiar to her.

It hit her after only a very few seconds.
She sat up ramrod straight in her chair and turned her startled
glance upon Colin. He still sat rigid, staring at the boy. All at
once he stood, bumping the table and sending his chair skittering
across the polished cedar-wood floor.

“George,” he said, in a voice Brenda had not
until now heard issue from his lips.

The young man at the door turned and
squinted through the dim bar lighting at Colin, his uncertainty
falling away. He still appeared uncomfortable when he smiled,
lifted his hat in a gesture of greeting, and said, “Colin.”

“George!” Colin said, more loudly.

“Who is it?” asked Martin with interest,
obviously unperturbed by the newcomer’s entrance.

“It’s George,” Colin said. He sounded as if
he’d been struck over the head with a large rock and stunned.

Brenda decided she might as well ask. “Who’s
George?”

Colin swallowed hard. “My brother.”

No wonder they looked vaguely alike. How
fascinating. She watched as the brothers met a few paces away from
her table. They shook hands

They shook hands?

Brenda knew she was way too exhausted when
she experienced a sudden furious impulse to holler at the formal,
stodgy brothers to forget about shaking hands and hug each
other.

Something was very wrong. Colin resisted the
impulse to grab his younger brother by the nape of his neck, shout
obscenities, and shake the news out of him. He was none too gentle,
though, when he barked, “What in thunder are you doing here?”

George’s lips tightened for a second.
“Visiting you, Colin. Didn’t think you’d mind.” There was the
faintest taint of insolence in his tone.

He was also hedging, and Colin knew it.
“Aren’t you supposed to be in school?” Colin knew he was. What’s
more, George’s school was in Pennsylvania. George shouldn’t be
within two thousand miles of California.

“Not any longer.”

Colin felt his anger rise and his gaze thin.
“What do you mean, ‘not any longer’? I know good and well you
haven’t graduated yet.”

A flash of temper crossed George’s face.
“And I’m not going to graduate.” He sounded defiant, as only a
thwarted adolescent can sound. “I dropped out of school.”

“You
what?
” Colin hadn’t meant to
bellow, but he could scarcely believe his ears and bellowed anyway.
Impossible! Yet if anyone in the family were to fail in life, he
supposed George was the one.

George took a step sideways, as if to walk
around Colin. “You heard me.” Now he sounded sullen. “Why don’t you
introduce me to your friends?”

Colin knew to the instant when George saw
Brenda. He’d evidently been too nervous to notice anyone but Colin
before. But when his eyes bugged and his mouth fell open and he
started gaping, Colin knew he’d spotted Brenda. He turned, too, and
had to acknowledge that Brenda Fitzpatrick, when viewed for the
first time, could dazzle a man. He was in no mood to be honest with
himself or he’d have owned that she still dazzled him, and he’d
known her for days now

Both Martin and Brenda rose from their
chairs. Martin looked curious. Brenda smiled, which was enough to
overwhelm a young lad like George. Colin took him roughly by the
shoulder. “Come with me. As long as you’re here, I might as well
introduce you.”

“As suave and chivalrous as ever, I see,”
George muttered sourly.

“Don’t push it, George. Do Mother and Father
know you’re here?”

“No”

Now he was sulky. Colin wanted to shake him
until he rattled and then batter him around for a while, but that
would have to wait. Brenda was on her way over to them, along with
Martin, although Colin was positive George hadn’t yet so much as
registered Martin’s presence, so brilliant was Brenda’s.

She was also very gracious. Colin admitted
it to himself, although he’d never do so to anyone else. She gave
George a warm, welcoming smile. “Hello there. Welcome to the Cedar
Crest Lodge. I understand you and Colin are related.”

“Th-thank you, ma’am.” George swallowed.
“Yes. I mean, yes, we’re related. Colin and me, I mean.” His face
burned a fiery red.

Irked with his younger brother for being a
harebrained twit as well as a college failure, Colin said harshly,
“Miss Brenda Fitzpatrick, please allow me to introduce my younger
brother, George. George is—visiting from back east.” Damn him.

“How do you do, George? It’s so nice to meet
you.”

She held out one of her lovely, tiny hands
to George, who dropped his hat in his eagerness to shake it. Colin
cut the handshake short by introducing Martin. “Martin Tafft, my
brother George.”

“How-do, George. Good of you to visit us.
Colin’s been trying to keep us straight, but he hasn’t had much
luck so far.” He chuckled, and Colin’s insides clenched. Martin
thought he was being funny, Colin supposed, but Colin didn’t see
any humor in the comment.

“I’m sure,” George said with a hint of
malice in his young voice even as he smiled and shook Martin’s
hand. “Colin’s aim in life is to keep everyone straight.”

Colin caught the sharp glint in Brenda’s
eyes and could have kicked his brother from here to Sunday. Anyone
would think Colin was some sort of monster, the way George talked.
Yet Colin had never given George any reason to think ill of him.
He’d only ever tried to help him with his lessons, and there was
nothing wrong with that even though George had always been a
recalcitrant recipient of Colin’s assistance. A couple of instances
tiptoed through Colin’s mind, and his lips tightened.