Deep in the Heart of Trouble (23 page)

“Exactly. If he had any chance of getting a job in the oil patch, he had to be someone other than Tony Morgan.”

She rubbed her forehead. Tony, her Tony, was the cast-out son of Blake Morgan? She tried to imagine her parents disinheriting her. The hurt and betrayal alone would be devastating.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked.

“I didn’t mind his being a Morgan. I wasn’t about to hold a grudge against him simply because his father hadn’t cared for me. At the same time, I didn’t want to show my hand too soon, just in case his motives were questionable. So I decided to sit tight and see what happened.”

“And when he asked to court me? It didn’t occur to you that I might like to know the identity of the man I was stepping out with?”

“I thought about telling you. But after praying about it, the Lord told me to be still. So that’s what I did. You’d have found out here pretty quick, though.”

She frowned. “Why do you say that?”

“I just learned that Darius Morgan outbid us on the mineral rights for that chunk of land south of town.”

“No! You can’t mean it. I didn’t even know he was interested in it.”

“Me either.”

“And we lost?” She tightened her lips. “I can’t believe it. And not only that, but now we’re going to have to deal with Morgan Oil doing business right here in our own backyard.”

Papa shrugged. “He has just as much right to it as we do.”

“But … but we were here first!”

A sparkle entered his eyes. “Would it soothe your sense of injustice if I bought up some mineral rights in Beaumont?”

She thought about it, then smiled. “Actually, I think it would. You want to?”

He chuckled. “We’ll see. In the meanwhile, Morgan’s men will be pouring into town pretty soon and they’ll be all too happy to tell everyone within hearing distance just exactly who Tony is.”

She bit her lip. “Is Tony aware that you know he’s a Morgan?”

“He has no idea.”

“And you think it’s really as simple as he wanted a job?”

“I do. From everything I’ve seen and heard, he’s a fine man. I’ve been most impressed.”

She hoped he was right. Oh, how she hoped he was right. “Do you think he knows about Morgan Oil’s plans to move in?”

“I doubt it. It’s my understanding he’s been completely cut off from them. Besides, I just found out myself a couple of hours ago.”

“Did you tell Uncle Melvin about Tony?”

“The very first day the boy arrived.”

Slapping her hands against the arms of the chair, she pushed herself up. “Well. I guess I’ll go on to the clubhouse. I’m sure Tony’s wondering what’s keeping me.”

“What are you going to do?”

“First I’m going to train him for the bicycle race. Then I’m going to ask him straight out who he is.”

chapter TWENTY-ONE

TONY JUGGLED the football with his thighs and feet, trying to see how long he could keep it in the air. The door to the clubhouse squeaked open and he caught the ball.

“Where have you been?” he asked.

Essie removed her shawl and hat and hung them by the door. “Something came up and I couldn’t get away.”

He pushed the hair out of his eyes. “Is it because you’re still mad at me?”

“Mad at you about what?”

He hesitated. If she wasn’t dwelling on their argument about her going to the fields, he wasn’t fool enough to bring it up. “You aren’t wearing your bloomers.”

She glanced down at her brown skirt and white shirtwaist. “I didn’t have time to change.”

“What is it? What’s happened?”

“We lost our bid for the mineral rights south of town.”

“You’re kidding.” He frowned, yet took time to appreciate the sway of her hips as she approached. “Who outbid you?”

“Morgan Oil.”

He froze. “Morgan Oil? Why would they bid on rights clear up in Navarro County?”

She stopped in front of him and took the ball from his hands. “You tell me.”

Dragging his hand across his mouth, he looked around the clubhouse, trying to make sense of what she’d told him. “I have no idea. I didn’t even know they were interested in it.”

“No? Well, I’m glad to hear that, anyway.”

He glanced at her sharply. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing,” she said, moving to the bin against the wall and dropping the ball inside. “Did you put yourself through all the paces?”

“I did.”

“You’re completely through with your workout?”

“Except for our football match.”

“Well, we won’t be having that tonight.” She turned around, facing him, then clasped her hands in front of her. “Just when were you planning on telling me your real name is Tony Morgan?”

Take the deuce. One of M.C.’s crew must have inadvertently said something. He’d been afraid of that. He’d hustled her off that field just as quick as he could. But it obviously hadn’t been quick enough.

“I don’t know, exactly,” he said. “How did you find out?”

“That hardly matters, Tony.”

“No, I don’t suppose it does.” He cleared his throat. “I’ve been wanting to tell you for quite some time.”

“Then why didn’t you?”

“I was afraid you’d question my motives.”

“Motives for what?”

“For working for Sullivan Oil. For,” he swallowed, “for stepping out with you.”

“And what are your motives, Mr. Morgan?”

He started toward her, but she held up her hand. “Stay right where you are, sir, and answer my question.”

“It’s a really long answer. Can we go to your office over there and sit down?”

“I don’t think so. Why don’t you just give me the short version.”

He massaged the back of his neck. “My interest in you is genuine, Essie. Very genuine. And asking for permission to court you was not something I did lightly.”

He gave her a chance to respond, but she remained silent. The sconces cast a glow over her features. Her expression gave nothing away.

“I think about you all the time,” he continued. “I think of all the places I want to take you and all the things I’d like to do with you, then I remember I have no money. No secure future. Not even a real name anymore.” He blew out a huff of air. “Then I start worrying about how I’m going to support you. I’ve been scared out of my mind that if you ever found out who I was, you’d think I was using you to gain a foothold in your father’s business. And I’m not.

I swear I’m not.”

She remained stoic. “What are you doing, then, Tony?”

“I’m trying to learn everything I can about the oil industry. I know a lot about the business side of it, but not as much about the everyday field work. So that’s why I came here. To get a job with the largest producer of Texas oil so I could learn the ropes.”

“Well, you’ve certainly managed to move up the chain of command rather quickly, haven’t you?”

He crossed the floor, ignoring her attempts to keep him at bay. “I earned those positions fair and square,” he said. “My success in the fields has had nothing to do with you and me.”

“I’m part owner and sole heir to the Sullivan Oil enterprise. Of course it has to do with you and me. Do you take me for a fool?”

He grasped her arms. “Don’t, Essie. Don’t believe the worst, please.”

“How can you expect me not to when you’ve done nothing but lie from the moment I laid eyes on you?”

“That’s not fair. I’ve not lied about everything. Only about my name. It’s just a name.”

She pulled free of him. “Don’t patronize me. It’s much more than a name and you know it.”

“All right. I was wrong to have lied. And I’ve known that for quite some time now. You have no idea how many times I’ve wanted to push the clock back and knock on your door for the first time as me. The real me.”

She swallowed, her poker face disintegrating, the distress in her eyes apparent.

“Why didn’t you just tell me?” she asked. “At least when we began to court. Couldn’t you have told me then?”

He reached for her again, but she flinched, so he contented himself with lightly rubbing her arms.

“I wanted to,” he said, “but don’t you see? If I’d told you at that point, you would have sent me packing. You know you would have.”

She turned her face away, and he could not resist pulling her to him. She felt so good. So soft. Whiffs of clove and sugar teased his senses.

He nuzzled her hair. “If you don’t believe me, ask Mrs. Lockhart.”

She jerked out of his arms and stumbled back. “Mrs. Lockhart?
Mrs. Lockhart!
What has she to do with this?”

“Well, she, she knows who I am,” he answered, confused at her reaction.

“You told Mrs. Lockhart who you were and you didn’t tell me?” she screeched.

“Not on purpose. She recognized me. What was I supposed to do?”

Essie spun around, no longer willing to face him. “Oooooh, I cannot even believe this is happening.”

“What’s wrong with Mrs. Lockhart knowing who I am?”

Essie covered her face with her hands. “Don’t you see how humiliating this is? ‘Poor little Essie Spreckelmeyer, the wallflower of Corsicana, finally gets herself a man because she comes part and parcel with the biggest oil company in Texas.’ ”

“Now, just a minute,” he said, grabbing her arm and jerking her back around. “That’s about the stupidest thing I ever heard and not a single soul would ever believe it. You’re smart, you’re pretty, you have a zest for living that others only dream about. You’ve accomplished more in your short life than most could accomplish in two lifetimes, you think nothing of risking your own skin to save somebody else’s, and you make the best green corn patties I’ve ever tasted in my life. That oil company is nothing compared to you.”

Her jaw slackened. “When have you had my green corn patties?”

“On the Fourth of July.”

She stared at him, completely befuddled. “You think I’m pretty?”

“What fool kind of question is that? You’re bound to own a mirror, so you know good and well you’re pretty.”

By slow degrees, her expression softened. “Thank you.” Her gaze swept over him. “I think you’re pretty, too.”

He frowned. “Men are not pretty.”

A smile crept onto her face. “Tony Bryant’s pretty,” she crooned in a soft, whispery voice.

It took him a moment to register she wasn’t baiting him but was instead teasing him. And smiling. She wasn’t angry anymore.

He let out a sigh of relief, then smoothed a tendril of hair behind her ear. “My name is Tony Morgan. Tony Bryant Morgan.”

“Ahhh. That’s right. I forgot. Tony Bryant
Morgan
is pretty.”

“He is not.”

“He is, too.”

The light picked up the laughter in her eyes, the peaches in her skin.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I promise you this: I’ll never, ever be anything but completely honest with you henceforth and forevermore.”

Her amusement was slowly replaced with a touch of vulnerability. “Is there going to be a forevermore, Tony?”

Slipping his arms around her waist, he gently drew her close. “There will be if I have anything to say about it.”

He lowered his lips to hers and kissed her. Not the way he’d have liked to, but the way he ought to. He tucked her more tightly against him, inhaling her scent, testing the way she felt in his embrace. Her arms snaked up around his neck, her fingers stroking the hair at his collar as she returned his kiss with the same enthusiasm she brought to most everything else she did.

Desire rushed through him and he forced himself to pull back. The yearning he saw in her eyes nearly undid him. Groaning, he pressed his face against her neck and helped himself to the tiniest of tastes before setting her at arm’s length.

“I think we’d better head on home, Essie,” he said, breathing heavily as he waited for the fog in her expression to clear. When it did, she gave him a tender smile, not at all embarrassed by her passion or his.

For the next two weeks, Tony hardly saw Essie outside their training sessions. Even then, with the date of the bicycle race drawing near, all her energies were focused on the track, not the courtship— though he did manage to steal a kiss or two.

Still, she broke their fishing date when an argument flared up amongst her organizers over who was to be the grand marshal for the bicycle parade. Some thought it should be the mayor, others thought it should be a wheeler.

He tried to take her to the soda shop, but she insisted she didn’t have time; race headquarters needed to be set up downtown instead.

On Saturday, the hospitality committee had proposed to greet guests at the front door of the Commercial Hotel with a white porcelain bathtub filled with punch and large cakes of ice. The preacher was none too happy about it.

He’d nodded coolly to Tony. And though Tony was careful to acknowledge the preacher’s greeting, he accepted the fact that some folks were not as friendly as they used to be now that they’d discovered he was a Morgan.

“My congregation is scandalized at the very idea of using a bathtub in public,” Wortham said to Essie.

“But a bathtub is perfect,” she argued. “Think of all the filling and refilling of punch bowls we’d have to deal with otherwise, not to mention the chipping of ice.”

“How ’bout using a horse trough?”

“A horse trough! I can’t have our guests drinking out of the same thing their horses do.”

“A coffin?”

“Ewing, would you please be serious?”

“I am. All my elders are breathing down my neck and a coffin is where I’m gonna end up if you insist on using that bathtub!”

“Listen, if you’re so concerned with propriety, why don’t you and your elders park yourselves in front of Rosenburg’s Saloon and save a few souls instead of pestering me?”

In the end, she got her way, but it caused a strain between her and Ewing, and various members of her church took her to task on Sunday morning, though she didn’t seem too terribly concerned.

Tony’s relief at no longer having to hide his identity had filled him with an unprecedented sense of freedom—regardless of the censure bestowed by a few Corsicanans. Judge Spreckelmeyer had told Moss that he’d known all along Tony was a Morgan—which turned out to be the case—and that he’d thought it best if the boys judged him on his own merits before finding out who he was.

There was a bit of awkwardness among the Sullivan Oil hands for a few days, but M.C.’s crew had no such reservations. Since the other men on the patch held them in awe, their obvious respect went a long way in restoring Tony’s standing in the fields.

Mrs. Lockhart returned from her second trip to Beaumont in just as many weeks, catching up to him on her bike in front of Castle’s Drug Store.

“I need to talk to you,” she said.

He assisted her off her wheel, took hold of the handlebars, then glanced up and down the street. “Shall we walk?”

As soon as they were out of earshot, she stopped. “Anna is being most uncooperative. She refuses to enter a convent. She doesn’t find the idea of being swept out to sea by a pirate the least bit intriguing. And she claims you are the only relative she has that would be willing to stand up to Darius.”

“You found a pirate?” he asked, shocked.

“Well, no. But I’m sure I could have.”

He blinked. “I see. Well, Anna’s got the right of it. Convents and pirates are not at all how I would have her proceed. And Grandfather Bryant would have taken her in, but he passed several years ago.”

He turned the bike in the direction of Mrs. Lockhart’s home and started walking again. “How’s Mother holding up? Did Anna say?”

“Your mother has taken to her bed. She’ll be of no help whatsoever.” “No. That doesn’t surprise me.”

“And I’ve a bit more bad news, I’m afraid.”

He glanced at her. “What?”

“Morgan Oil is entering the bicycle race.”

He stopped. “Our bicycle race?”

“The very same.”

“But, Morgan Oil has never once accepted the invitation. It was only extended to us out of courtesy. Everyone knows we wouldn’t accept.”

She said nothing.