One Track Mind (6 page)

Once outside the door, he thought of taking Lori’s arm to guide her to his car, but her body language told him not to touch her. He understood why.

Once in the sports car, she said, “I’m not going on the
castle grounds. For one thing, they’re posted. The place is under renovation. There’s probably security up there. Somebody could call the police on us.”

“Fine,” he said, starting the car. He shouldn’t try to take her there anyway. They’d had too many necking sections by or in the carriage house. He remembered them so clearly that his lips tingled, his throat tightened, and his body ached.

“But I just want to drive up that way and see it again,” he said. “Just a little closer. It’s been a long time.”

He’d worked on the castle grounds that fateful summer he was seventeen. That was the weekday job for Old Man Merkle. Helping tend that gigantic yard. He felt he’d ridden that lawn tractor for hundreds of miles under the hot sun. But he checked gardening books out of the library and studied, and soon Merkle promoted him to tend the shade gardens, all ten of them.

Sometimes the owner of the place, Junior McCorkle himself, would often come outside, carrying a pair of gallon thermos jugs of iced tea for the workers and handing out salt tablets. Occasionally he even hung around and helped Kane pick slugs out of the hostas and knock Japanese beetles into jars of soapy water. Junior enjoyed waging war on the beetles and just passing the time of day.

Kane had liked the old guy a lot. He’d been surprised to learn that the man hadn’t been Lori’s uncle at all, only a family friend. “I read about Junior passing on,” he said with atypical solemnity. “I was tempted to come back for the funeral. He was one of a kind. He had a fortune and a castle, but he never stopped being a good ol’ boy.”

“I know,” Lori said. “He was Daddy’s silent partner. When he died, he left his share of the speedway to Daddy.”

“That sounds like Junior,” Kane said, remembering. In the dusk, at the Bin Birnam’s top, he could see the spires of the castle, bluish in the dimming light. He felt odd, disjointed in time, unsettled in his emotions. He hadn’t expected it to be like this.

“This is the first time we’ve ever been in a car together,” Lori said pensively. “I never imagined that it would be like this.”

She didn’t seem impressed by his fancy car. After all these years, he was perplexed that he still couldn’t quite figure her out. “What
did
you imagine it’d be like?”

“I didn’t try to imagine,” she murmured. “The future seemed a long way off. I didn’t think very far ahead.”

He hadn’t, either. He had a vague idea of being a success, of showing all of Halesboro what he really was and what he could accomplish. And he, in turn, would scorn the town that had once scorned him.

He didn’t know how he’d do this. Being an agent? That had never occurred to him. What he’d thought about most that last year was Lori Simmons. He’d succeed, and he’d take her with him. He’d steal Halesboro’s princess and take her where the lights were bright and the buildings were tall and the opportunities were limitless.

So naive. So stupid. So
young.
He’d come back rich, after all these years, and he found it gave him no satisfaction. He had the power to meddle with the destiny of this town, a fantasy he’d once cherished, but now that he was here, it seemed a petty goal.

And he’d expected to put Lori Simmons Garland in her place. Not to hurt her. He actually meant to help her—in his way. And he’d meant his way to do two things. First, she’d regret how she’d treated him, and she’d spend the rest of her life kicking herself for being such a shallow little twit back then.

Second, he would exorcise her. Because she was his first love, and lost at that, and lost with maximum melodrama, he hadn’t been able to get her out of his mind. Ever. She held part of him captive, and he was determined to be free.

He expected to find everything he remembered about her wrong or changed. Twenty-one years had passed, she’d married that asinine jock Scott Garland, and she’d never left Halesboro. Her fortunes had fallen and her wrongheaded marriage had failed.

He’d expected to find her bent down by fate, possibly—though he didn’t wish it on her—broken. She would be middle-
aged, and probably her red hair turning gray or cheaply dyed. She’d have gained weight, and that little hourglass figure would have turned as round as the clock in the town clock tower.

Wrinkles would line her too-fair skin, and she’d be nothing except a frumpy, provincial divorcee with a thickening waist. The spirit he once thought so high and frisky would be flat as day-old champagne. Her rebellious nature would now be duty-bound and conventional. He would see her, and he would be over her.

It wasn’t working out that way. She didn’t look twenty years older. She hardly looked
ten
years older. Her figure was even better. Her hair was still as bright, her eyes still sparking with life, and she was even prettier than when she’d been sixteen.

She was just as spirited and just as independent, full of nerve and verve, and she didn’t seem bowled over by his new, improved, moneyed status. In fact, she seemed a bit disappointed in him.

And as if to prove his worst suspicions, she turned to him and said, “Why are you dressed like that? Trying to recapture your youth? What happened to the silk shirt? The fancy shoes—what are they, Gucci?”

He tried to keep a disgusted slant from his mouth. The shoes were actually Ferragamos, but he wasn’t going to brag about that. “This,” he said, gesturing at his T-shirt and jeans, “is how I usually dress on my own time.”

“You were on your own time today,” she pointed out. “Do you always dress up to tromp around a speedway?”

“I was making a
business
call,” he retorted. “Business hours are over.”

“But we were supposed to be going for a business supper,” she reminded him. “So when do we talk business?”

They were passing the speedway, and on impulse, he pulled in and parked in the westernmost corner of its parking lot. He could look out and slightly up and see McCorkle Castle now, glowing silver under a rising three-quarter moon.

“I said we had some catching up to do,” he said, switching off the car. He pointed at the castle. “I picked up a lot of slugs on that land. I drowned a lot of beetles. What happened when Junior died? I thought he was going to leave it to the town.”

He undid his seat belt, but she kept hers fastened, as if it were some kind of device that protected her from him. “He was older than Daddy. Like Daddy, he started getting forgetful, a bit erratic. His stepdaughter got power of attorney.”

He grimaced. “Cynthia, the Southern belle? I kind of remember her. She always looked like her mouth was full of vinegar.”

“Cynthia got everything,” Lori said. “But she didn’t want the castle. Too much upkeep. So she put it up for sale. And it didn’t sell for years. And the years weren’t kind to it.”

He nodded. He knew that the South was quick to reclaim whatever land humankind had wrested from it. The weeds grew quickly, the woods closed in, the warm damp entered timbers. Mortar and concrete cracked. And a structure, even a castle, could go to ruin.

“I’m glad somebody’s saving it,” she said, sounding truly grateful. She stared at the towers that rose against the darkening sky. “I hope somebody doesn’t do something horrible with it.”

He examined her profile, still, almost exactly as he remembered it. She’d kept that way of holding her head high, her chin up.

“Something horrible like what?” he asked.

“Oh, I don’t know. I can think of all kinds of things. Making it into a fancy resort and building all sorts of touristy little units all around it. Cutting down trees and putting in golf courses and miniature golf courses.”

She wrinkled her nose in distaste. “One swimming pool won’t do. There’ll have to be five—and kiddy pools. And they’ll make the lake bigger and have speedboats and water skis and a Zoom Flume waterslide, and a phony beach, and a sports complex and—ugh!”

“What a pessimistic imagination you have,” he marveled. “I never knew. What if somebody just wants it for a home?”

“Probably some rock star with a bunch of wild friends and hangers-on, getting hammered and climbing up on the battlements to shoot squirrels and deer and throwing wild parties…”

“Puritan,” he teased. “Don’t make up such scenarios. Wait and see what happens.”

“Well,” she fretted, “what if it’s somebody who hates the speedway? You can hear it very clearly from up there. Uncle June didn’t mind, because he loved racing, and, of course, he was pretty deaf, so the noise wouldn’t have bothered him anyway…” Her voice trailed off.

He wanted to reach over, unfasten her seat belt and draw her to him, kiss that enchanting little nose and then her lips. His mind tumbled backward to the nights they’d met on the castle grounds, remembering how completely he’d lost himself in her kisses…how he felt his body couldn’t get close enough to hers.

He hadn’t broken her spell at all. He’d come back only to fall under it, almost as completely as before. She was still a princess. She was born to it.

And he was still only the gypsy rover. He was born to that.

But this time he wasn’t going to try to win the lady. It could never be the same. Somehow he knew this. He had a keenly developed sense of survival, and it was sending him strong warning signals.

He settled back against his seat, his blood thudding in his ears, his body tingling with suppressed desire.

“Okay,” he said. “I guess we’re caught up. Let’s talk business.”

“Wait,” she said, turning to him. “I’ve got a question for you.”

The warning signals amped up, shrill yet silent. “What?”

The moonlight had turned her face into a poem of silver and shadows. “Didn’t you ever marry?”

He went very still. “No,” he said.

He could feel her eyes searching his face and he kept it blank, implacable.

“Ever get close?” she asked.

He felt her presence like a mesmerizing energy surrounding him, invading him.

“No.” He said it very shortly.

“Why not?” she asked.

Because I never got over you,
he thought.
But I should have. Long ago.

He said, “Because there are too many beautiful women in the world for me to stick to just one.”

She seemed to think about this. She didn’t seem put off by it. She certainly didn’t seem disappointed.

“Okay,” she said. “Just curious. Now, let’s talk business.”

O
F COURSE
, she thought.
His world is full of beautiful women. Young women. Eager to please and well-versed in the art of doing so.

If he wanted to make her feel unglamorous and past her prime, he’d succeeded. Did he think she deserved it? She’d been high-handed enough with him once upon a time. But they’d been very young, and the statute of limitations should have run out.

She cast him her coolest glance.

“Well?” she said pointedly. “Talk.”

He took a deep breath, one hand clamped on the steering wheel. “For one thing,” he muttered, his voice tinged with disgust, “something needs to be done about this parking lot. It’s full of grass. It’s full of potholes. It’s full of weeds.”

“I’m all too aware of that. Next item.”

“The track needs to be reconfigured,” he said, not looking at her. “That exit off Turn Four is a problem. Your dad tried a quick fix, and it didn’t work.”

“I’m aware of that, too. He did what he could.”

“It wasn’t good enough.”

She fought against bristling. She knew her father had increasingly made bad decisions, but she didn’t want to hear Kane criticize him.

He irritated her again by seeming to know what she thought before she thought it. “It wasn’t his fault,” he said. “I know. But still a problem that’s got to be fixed. That’s first.
I’m going to have plans drawn up. And the whole track needs resurfacing.”

“I know.”

“I’d like it fast, really fast, but with multiple grooves. With a chance for really close finishes. But to keep rough asphalt on it. That’s part of what made Hellsboro famous.”

“Check,” she said with a curt nod.

“I want the grandstand inspected, the whole shebang, a structural analysis, structural reliability assessments, condition survey.” He gripped the steering wheel more tightly. “Electrical, plumbing, safety features from top to bottom. Landscape inspection, too. Retaining walls, drainage, all of it.”

He reeled off the list almost mechanically, as if he’d thought about it a long time. “It needs a new night-lighting system—”

She knew all this, but his recital made her queasy with nervousness. She looked at him apprehensively. “Do you know how much all this is going to
cost?
”

“A lot,” he said and shrugged. “That scoreboard’s got to be replaced. Pit road still looks solid, but it needs to be modernized. The infield’s a mess. The seating’s going to have to be replaced. The VIP suites refurbished. And a new security system needs to be installed. The one you’ve got is obsolete.”

Butterflies of financial panic swarmed in her stomach. A knot threatened to choke her throat. “Kane,” she said, “are you sure you’re not overreaching on this? I mean it’s good to be confident, but…but…”

He turned and gave her his one-cornered, sardonic smile. “But pride goeth before a fall. Is that what you’re thinking?”

“Daddy wanted to keep it a speedway. He didn’t have delusions of making it a showplace. A few renovations and the place can be self-sustaining. You can keep the drivers’ school. You can rent the track out for movies and TV. There’s still a roster of races.”

“Not enough,” he said. “Because it’ll be the races that bring the fans back.” He leaned nearer, looking at her more closely. “Good grief, you’re all fidgety. What’s wrong?”

“Don’t you think I’d get more races if I could?” she challenged. “You act like this is
Field of Dreams
or something. If you rebuild it, they will come. It’s not going to be easy.”

He leaned a bit nearer still. She could feel the warmth of his body, smell the scent of his aftershave. “I was never much interested in what was easy. Most things worth having are hard to get.”

A velvety suggestiveness had crept into his tone. He was too near, and too many of her old feelings came flooding back—the excitement, the attraction, the fascination and the sense of the forbidden.

She edged away from him in the seat, closer to the rolled-down window. “You always did fizz with energy,” he said softly. “Especially when you got wound up. Let’s go someplace and walk around.”

“Suits me,” she said. She yearned for open air, not this sense of being confined so closely with him. She was too conscious of him, all her senses too heightened and prickly.

“How about the park, go to the old footbridge?” he asked.

“Fine.” Though they both knew the park and the bridge, they’d never been there together. It was too far from Lori’s home and too public in those days. It held no memories of him. It was neutral ground.

He drove to the little park at the east edge of town and parked. “Wow,” he said, as he pulled up in its gravel lot. “It looks a lot smaller than I remember.”

In the headlights, it didn’t seem like much—only a few square blocks of trees with an ancient footpath winding its way into the shadows.

He turned off the engine, killed the lights. His was the only car in the lot.

“Nobody much comes here any longer,” she said. “After you left, Uncle June donated a bigger park to the town, on the opposite side. It has two ball diamonds and a playground and picnic tables. All that’s left here is scenery. And a couple of benches. This is where Aunt Aileen comes when she takes her walks.”

He got out and started toward her door, but she didn’t wait for him. Swiftly she unfastened her seat belt and opened her door. He was already there at her side.

The moon was bright enough that they should be able to make their way to the bridge without trouble. She headed for the path, and he kept stride with her, his thumbs hooked into the back pockets of his jeans.

“Sometime I’d like to take a long walk with Aileen,” he said. “Yeah. I’d like that.”

She always believed in you,
thought Lori.
She did before anyone else did. She always saw the potential in you. Even when you were the poor kid with the tattoos and long hair and that attitude that the rest of us didn’t even exist.

He looked up, squinting at the overhanging branches of the black gum and mountain ash trees. “They’ve grown,” he said. “I remember the colors in the fall. Old Man Merkle told me his father planted these trees. Over a hundred years ago, I bet.”

She nodded and looked at the shadows play on the path. “I still want to know how you think you’re going to get more races here, Kane. The town’s not what it was. Uncle June’s gone, and there aren’t any more tours of the castle grounds. People told Daddy a long time ago that Halesboro needed more attractions to draw the crowds in. That was one of its problems from the beginning.”

“There are lots of ways to draw crowds,” he said. “And when the crowds start showing up again, the races’ll be easier to get. Especially when the facility’s improved.”

A mockingbird caroled its almost unbearably sweet song to the night air, such a beautiful sound it made something in Lori’s chest hurt. She remembered lying in Kane’s young, strong arms, listening to the mockingbirds sing at Uncle June’s.

Often Kane and she went to the little brook that ran downhill from McCorkle Castle’s carriage house. The water came tumbling from higher up the mountain in a narrow, splashing waterfall. It was like a magic spot, with small ferns,
and they would lie there, talking and kissing…and sometimes going further than they should—but never as far as he wanted.

She’d been shy and frightened by anything beyond a few intimate caresses. She realized now how difficult it must have been for him, how he wished for far more than she’d dared to give. She’d sometimes felt sinful and sometimes felt prudish. But she still remembered those kisses. Oh, my, yes.

But if he recalled those nights, he didn’t speak of them. He said, “You want to know how I’ll get people to start coming back? I’ve got things planned. Appearances. Events. Promotions. Exhibits. Displays. Much, much more spectacle before the races.”

She stopped and looked at him aghast. “
Stunts?
You’re talking
stunts?
My father had no patience with things like that. To him it was about the racing, not some…some sideshow.”

He, too, had stopped. “It’s about the racing, all right. But we have to get people to come see it. And if it takes a little hoopla, babe, then we give ’em hoopla.”

“We?” she flung back. “What’s this ‘we’ stuff? If you want to hang by your heels from a hot air balloon—”

He cocked his head sarcastically. “I thought you read the contract carefully. You know what the offer is. You work for me to bring this track back to life. You work for me one year. Remember?”

He’d addled her so badly that she hadn’t remembered. Hardly two straight thoughts in a row had made it through her head since he’d walked into her office that morning. She almost sputtered in frustration.

He bent nearer. “Or maybe now you don’t want to sign the contract. You’d rather Devlin buys Hellsboro, knocks it down and plows it under. Would you rather do that?”

Confusion and anger so roiled her that she couldn’t speak. But he, of course, could.

“Look yonder in the moonlight, princess. It’s the bridge. Look at it hard.”

What sort of deviltry was he up to now? As if in defiance,
she glared at the old bridge arching over the gurgling brook. It was the same brook that fell down the mountain’s slope, so near the carriage house. The bridge was built of the same silvery gray limestone as the carriage house, as McCorkle Castle itself.

He moved nearer to her still. “What’s a bridge for, Lori? What’s its purpose? Why do you use one?”

I’d like to use this one to throw you off of,
she thought, in exasperation, but she couldn’t let him see how he’d rattled her.

She drew back a bit and said, coolly as she could. “A bridge connects things.”

“Very good,” he replied. “You cross it to get from one spot to another. And the bridge that has to be crossed is change, Lori. And lots of it. On one side of that bridge is Halesboro dying,” he said, holding out his right hand, palm up. “On the other side, with luck and hard work—and here’s the hard part for you—adaptability, is Halesboro living. Now. Are we going to cross it? Or aren’t we?”

She listened to the splashing of the brook. She remembered the two of them, long ago, beside this brook. They were young lovers then, very naive ones, really. What had become of those two innocents?

She squared her shoulders. She turned and walked to the center of the bridge. “I’m here,” she said, turning to face him. “Is that what you want?”

“It’s exactly what I want,” he said. “I’ll walk you to the other side.”

If he wanted to dish it out, she thought, she’d show him she could take it. He came to her and nodded her to go with him to other side. Then she stopped again, listening to the flow and rush of the water.

He gazed down at her. “You’re not happy with my plans,” he said.

“It doesn’t matter if I’m happy. I’m about to be your employee. The hired help.”

“Yes,” he said, raising his hand and bringing his finger
tips near her cheek. “Just like I used to be at your place. The hired help.”

For a heart-stopping moment, she thought he was going to touch her. But he didn’t. His hand lowered. He glanced up at the sky again. “I’ll take you back to your car,” he said.

She realized that she’d been holding her breath. She let it out, slowly, silently in relief. And with the slightest tinge of disappointment.

H
E DROVE HER BACK
to Main Street. They hardly spoke.

This time he was out of the sports car and opening her door for her almost as soon as she had her seat belt undone. He nearly offered his hand to help her out, but he realized she’d take it in hers as if she were forcing herself to clasp a toad.

He walked her to her car, an aging Mustang of an improbably bright blue. “Thank you for the tea,” she said as she got in.

“You’re welcome,” he answered. He wished she’d eaten something; she hadn’t even finished the tea. She was probably starving. Maybe that’s why she seemed a bit shaky.

Or maybe it was because he’d acted like a lunkhead. He’d been phony and condescending when he’d greeted her. He’d made sure he’d called all the shots all evening long. He’d gotten her exactly where he’d wanted her, and he’d kept her there, cornered. It was exactly the way he planned it. And it made him feel like a bully.

But he said, “I’ll come by your office tomorrow, same time.” He didn’t ask permission. He simply told her, as if she had no say in it. She nodded with a sort of aristocratic stoicism. He watched as she drove off, the old car making weird noises. Its transmission was going out, he could tell.

He was tempted to follow her home to see if she’d make it okay. But no, that would be like stalking. He got into his car, which suddenly struck him as exactly the sort of a car an arrogant jerk would drive if he were coming back to show off in the old home town that had held him in such contempt.

He’d wanted to talk to her on the way back. He wanted
especially to know about the marriage, how she felt about it ending. He’d had a detective in Charlotte check her out. He knew about the deaths in her family, the problems her father’s illness had caused. He knew she’d filed for divorce from Scott Garland four years ago on the grounds of irreconcilable differences, but he didn’t know precisely what differences.

Had he come here to save her, or to punish her, or both? He’d wanted to find her not at all as he remembered her—only a small-town woman with no hold over him. But it wasn’t playing out that way, and he had no one to blame except himself.

He drove back to the Halesboro Luxury Motel, which was not luxurious and never had been. But it was the best that the town had to offer these days. He opened his suitcase, took out a pint of gin and poured himself a double shot in a plastic glass. He didn’t bother with ice. He wanted something to deaden his feelings and do it fast.

But he couldn’t stop thinking about her. Even her freckles—she hadn’t bothered to cover them tonight—filled him with odd nostalgia. He hadn’t come back to Halesboro without a lot of homework—including hiring a private investigator, Fenneman, to check out Lori.