Sweet Water (18 page)

Marisa shrugged, looking down at her neatly trimmed nails. Short, well-kept nails were important in the world of cooking. “That’s what friends are for. I’ve known them all my life. They might be the crazy uncle you lock in the closet when company comes, but they’re my support group. My
only
support group, I should add.”

“They’re grown people. They shouldn’t be looking to you to solve their problems.”

She aimed a long, serious look into his eyes and saw something she hadn’t noticed earlier. The eyes that looked back at her were gentle and caring. The tough businessman image was a façade. Instantly she knew he worked hard at protecting a kind heart. “Don’t you see they can’t do it? They’ve never been able to take on the world and everyday life like most people do. That’s why they live in this isolated place. Having Mama to rely on freed them of the pressure of living. She used to be their wits and their security, but—” She shook her head. “Obviously that’s no longer the case.”

He picked up her hand and enclosed it in his. She again felt the warmth and reassurance she had experienced that day they danced to the jukebox in the cafe.

“You take too much responsibility on yourself,” he said.

She took back her hand and, with her fingertips, wiped away the tear that had almost fallen. “Everyone has responsibility.”

“But not everyone meets it quite as head-on as you seem to. And not everyone worries about everyone else before he worries about himself.”

“Head-on Marisa. That’s me. One of my better-known weaknesses.”

He took her hand again and his thumb moved back and forth on the top of it. This time, she didn’t move it even though a little shiver rippled through her. That was probably exactly what he intended. Men were so dumb. Give them a shock or a crisis and they think of sex.

She released a deep sigh. “Look, we could whip this dead horse all day, but I need to get the café open. No telling how much business I’ve missed by being closed all morning.”

He nodded. “Tell you what. I want you to quit worrying. I’ve got to move ahead, but I’ll work around you as long as I can. I’ll try to come up with a solution you can live with. I know a lot of people.”

“Don’t you dare feel sorry for me. Or send anyone else around to feel sorry for me, either. I’m--we, Mama and me, we aren’t sops for your or anyone’s else’s conscience. It’s always been just her and me. We’ll manage.”

He straightened, frowning and blinking as if she had insulted him. “I wouldn’t think of feeling sorry for you. It has nothing to do with my conscience. Business. We’re talking a business arrangement. I just have to figure out what it is.”

For the first time in days she felt safe, which was insane considering the circumstances. What was it about him that threw her off her good sense and gave her that feeling of security?

“You’re an admirable woman, Marisa.”

She gave him a phony smile and a humorless chuckle. “Yep, that’s me. Head-on, admirable Marisa.”

****

Terry reached his mobile home after noon, shaken by meeting Raylene Rutherford. He had never known anyone with Alzheimer’s disease. Not since his days in the army and his experiences in Iraq had he seen another human being who had affected him more deeply. than the older woman who had once been smart and alert, but who had now lost her mind. He meant it when he told Marisa he admired her. Who wouldn’t admire the patience and the care she showed for not just her mother but for every loony person in Agua Dulce? He doubted he could contend half as well with all that confronted her every day. How could any man with ethics even consider uprooting her and her mother?

Unfortunately, the building that housed Pecos Belle’s sat dead-center where he planned to locate Larson’s. He thought of presenting the company with another Agua Dulce site. After all, there were two hundred acres from which to choose.

But his twelve years of experience in the commercial real estate profession argued that even the thought was a waste of time and he knew he wouldn’t make the suggestion in a face-to-face meeting with Larson’s team. Pecos Belle’s had the prime highway frontage, the number one selling point in his arsenal. To suggest a different site was a certain deal breaker.

He could get along with moving the mobile home where Marisa and her mother lived to another site in the RV park—the expense would be small—but all that did was assure them a roof over their heads. Relocating their home wouldn’t provide them with an income after the flea market and café were gone.

As ideas raced through his head, none of which stuck, he perused the disarray of documents and maps scattered over his dining room table and breakfast bar. He had pissed away more than half a day, was nowhere near being prepared for a big customer and he had to leave before eight tomorrow morning to be at the Midland airport by ten o’clock. He had only hours to accomplish what needed to be done. With a million dollars invested, he couldn’t afford to back off now. He called on the discipline he had learned in the army. Just focus on the mission.

****

Marisa and Mama had been given a reprieve. Of sorts.

As Marisa cooked hamburgers for seventeen—some class returning from a field trip to Carlsbad Caverns—and listened to laughter and thumps and bumps as kids crawled over and through the covered wagon, she fantasized about walking out and asking the teachers if they wanted to buy the damn thing. It would make a great addition to a playground, she would say. Oh, you’re right, the head honcho would reply. Let me get my checkbook.

“Crap,” she mumbled and lifted a basket full of golden French fries from the oil. She spread them on a parchment-lined cookie sheet and quickly salted them while the hot oil still showed as tiny bubbles on the fries. The secret to great French fries was soaking them in ice water before cooking, then salting them the instant they were out of the hot oil. She added a sprinkling of her own secret “house seasoning,” which was nothing more than a mix of paprika, cayenne pepper, chili powder and a smidgen of brown sugar. And sometimes something else, depending on her mood.

As soon as her customers left stuffed with hamburgers, French fries and chocolate brownies, she turned on the radio. Alan Jackson and Jimmy Buffet sang out “It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere,” which engendered a fantasy about quaffing margaritas and lying on a beach in Cancun. She had done that once. It had been fun until she drank too much tequila and got sick.

All day she had felt a small lift in her spirits, which she owed to the conversation with Terry Ledger. She even felt as though she had a few moments she could call her own. She walked back to the room that had been Mama’s bedroom when they lived in the apartment—now it served as an office of sorts—and dug her secret project out of the closet.

In a cardboard file box she had accumulated hundreds, maybe thousands, of recipes, some of which would end up in the cookbook she would publish someday. “Recipes That Work,” she called it. These days, she believed, folks knew so little about basic cooking, they couldn’t look at a recipe and tell if it resulted in something fit to eat. Her cookbook would solve that problem, would address hundreds of questions typical of wanna-be cooks. And God willing, it would make her a pile of money.

She sat down at the computer, logged onto her cookbook program and started with the bread pudding recipe she had recently made and burned.

Chapter 14

Instead of waking up Tuesday morning with his pitch to Larson’s site development team on his mind, Terry awoke thinking of Marisa and the possibility of bringing her into his camp. If someone asked him why, the explanation would be so complex and confusing he wouldn’t attempt to make it. He wasn’t sure he understood the reason himself. He only knew he felt a need to take her into his confidence and share his vision with her. Would doing that give her a stake in the project and win her over to his side? The question diminished in his thoughts as he drove toward the Midland airport to pick up Larson’s people, but the idea didn’t totally go away.

The closer he got to Midland, the more excited he became to meet with Larson’s team. The travel center was the linchpin of his project. He wasn’t comfortable moving ahead with the rest of his plans without a firm commitment from Larson’s. Bottom line, he needed the money from the sale of the land.

The site inspection by the Oklahoma company’s two representatives took less time than the trip to the airport. They listened to Terry’s presentation and looked over his exhibits, but made little comment. They didn’t even ask to be taken to Agua Dulce to see the site for themselves. They filled their briefcases with the documents and maps he supplied and he drove them back to their company plane. They told him they would be in touch and flew off to Oklahoma City uncommitted. Not a brushoff, but not a rip-roaring display of keen interest, either. Even as good as he was at zeroing in on the crux of most issues, this time, he hadn’t a clue about the Larson team’s true opinions.

Their lack of enthusiasm was a tear in his parachute, but he hadn’t hit the ground yet. Self-confidence was the keystone of his success. As long as they hadn’t said no, he could still pull a deal together. “It’s my own damn fault,” he mumbled. He hadn’t shown enough enthusiasm himself. Throughout the meeting he had been preoccupied with how he would tell Marisa and her mother, and even Bob Nichols and Mandan Patel, if Larson’s said,
It’s a deal.

Leaving Midland with Marisa and Raylene Rutherford still on his mind, he spotted a Walmart up ahead on his right. Almost as if his truck were being steered by one of Bob Nichols’ aliens, he turned into the parking lot. He came out of the giant retail store with watercolors, brushes and art paper. Sitting alone all day in a singlewide mobile home with nothing to do was no life for even a woman whose brain was out of order.

With a good feeling he couldn’t quite define or justify, he put Larson’s Truck & Travel Stop on the back burner and began to think about the second phase of his plan, Ledger Ranches retirement community. Phase I didn’t necessarily have to depend on Phase II and vice versa. He hadn’t yet met Lanny Winegardner, but there was no time like the present. When he came to the XO Ranch’s caliche road that intersected the highway, he made a right turn.

Two hours later, he came away from a meeting with Lanny Winegardner with more than a little hope and excitement. No question that Winegardner would sell. They only had to come to a meeting of the minds on a price and hammer out an agreement on mineral rights.

And he only had to figure out how to get the money to make the buy. His bankers had always had confidence in his developments, but he feared their reaction to this one. To quote one of Larson’s team members, “This place is pretty far off the beaten path.” For the first time ever, Terry wondered if his moneyman would go along with him. In the loneliness of his crew cab, traveling the long, empty highway from Midland to Agua Dulce, doubt he didn’t normally feel at the beginning of a new development crept in.

At last he saw Pecos Belle’s beat-up sign. Having not eaten since early morning, he was starved. He pulled into the place where he ate most of his meals lately. A dozen people sat at the tables and the lunch counter eating. He took a stool at one end of the counter and set his Walmart package on the floor.

Marisa spoke to him as if he were a friend rather than just another customer and took his order for a chicken salad sandwich. She was dressed as usual--tight jeans and boots, a belt with a big buckle and a bright yellow T-shirt with a black and white CRUEL GIRL logo across the front. Typically, he didn’t pay close attention to the color of clothing women wore, but the bright yellow shirt seemed to set off Marisa’s olive skin, black hair and light brown eyes. She looked beautiful

On closer observation he saw weariness in her eyes, but her mouth smiled at her customers and at him. Something new hummed between them, a connection resulting from their meeting yesterday. He ate slowly, enjoying the excellent sandwich, watching her and waiting out the departure of the last straggling customer.

After clearing off the last table, she came to him. “Dessert? Devil’s food cake with fudge frosting. I made it fresh this morning.” She threw her dish towel across her shoulder and grinned. “It’s full of real butter and heavy cream. Guaranteed to clog your arteries.”

“Sounds great. Might as well live dangerous.”

He watched as she lifted the glass dome off the dessert plate and sliced a thick wedge off a tall, three-layer cake. Her hands looked delicate, but fragile hands didn’t construct scrumptious pies and cakes and the delicious meals Marisa served in the café. Her outward appearance only served to remind him she had stores of inner strength.

“Something tells me living dangerous isn’t new to you,” she said, amusement lighting up her eyes as she looked him in the face and set the dessert and silverware on the counter in front of him.

Topaz. Mexican topaz. That was the color of her eyes. “How’s your mom today?” he asked.

“Better than yesterday.” She poured a mug of coffee and set it beside his plate. “Can’t have cake without coffee.”

He sliced a bite off the cake and savored it. The texture was moist and fudgy and the frosting melted in his mouth. Marisa Rutherford was wasting her talent in a café in Agua Dulce.

Excited to show her the art supplies, even before he finished his cake he picked up the Walmart sack. “I brought something for your mom.”