Lady Be Good (41 page)

“That was very nice,” she said briskly. “You could have made it much more difficult for Torie, but you didn’t.”

“What did you expect me to do? Lock her in the attic?” He regarded her searchingly. “Changed your mind about moving to a hotel, did you?”

“I simply decided to keep our private business private.”

“Good. I’ll help you carry your stuff into my room.” He turned to the stairs.

“No, thank you,” she told his back. “I’m staying where I am while we sort this out.”

He stopped on the second step, looked down at her, and sneered a spoiled brat sneer. “Like hell.”

It didn’t surprise her that he was being difficult about this, since he was difficult about everything that had to do with her. “It’s for the best. I don’t have any illusion that you’ll understand, but I’ve discovered that I don’t seem to possess the proper temperament for uncommitted sex.”

“We’re
married
.”

She fiddled with her wedding band. “Yes, well, that’s only a bit of paper. We’re not married in our hearts, are we?”

He descended one step and studied her. “I see where this is going. You want to tie me up, don’t you, in some needy little slobbering package you can take out and play with when it suits you, then tuck away when it doesn’t.”

Looking into those bleak, hard features, it was hard to believe this was the same lazy fool she’d met two weeks earlier. She spoke quietly, “You’ve just described your own motivations, not mine.”

“Yeah, right,” he scoffed.

“Oh, Kenny . . .” She sighed, threw up a hand, then let it fall to her side. “I can’t do this all by myself. You have to help a little.”

“I’m not the one locking the bedroom door.”

“But sex is all you want from me. Don’t you see how that hurts?”

“Even if that were true—which it’s not—I don’t see what would be so terrible about it. Since we didn’t go about this marriage in the regular way, we have to build on our strengths.”

“That kind of havey-cavey thinking might work with your old girlfriends, but not with me. Our sexual activities allow us to pretend everything is fine, but we both know it’s not.”

“Now, see, that’s where you’re wrong. Everything
is
fine if you just stop and let it be fine. You spend so much time worrying about what’s wrong with us that you never stop to consider what’s right.”

“Sex.”

“Is sex all you can think about? How about the fact that we enjoy each other’s company, that we like history, and Texas, and riding horses. We enjoy good wine, we both see right through Torie, Petie likes you, and you seem to be able to tolerate my father and Shelby. Neither of us is a snob, and we don’t have much patience with hypocrites. I happen to think there’s a lot that’s right between us.”

She’d always focused on their differences instead of their similarities, and she was so taken aback that she didn’t realize he’d been edging closer until he touched her elbow with his fingertips. Just like that, her insides turned to pudding.

His fingers skimmed her arm and brushed the outer slope of her breast. Her skin prickled, her limbs felt heavy, and her body urged her to give in to him. Would it be so bad to do it his way? Would it be so bad to go through the outward motions of having a real marriage, even though there was no lasting connection between them? What difference would it make? She reminded herself that she was accustomed to spending her life with emotional leftovers, but she didn’t want that from Kenny. More important, she didn’t deserve it, and she stepped back.

His arm dropped to his side, and his eyes darkened. She watched his lips thin and knew he was furious, just as she knew he would walk away without saying a word.

Not long after, he left for the practice range, and she forced herself to go to work on the laptop computer she found in his office—an office that, as far as she could tell, only Patrick used. For the rest of the morning and into the early afternoon, she alternated between working on her article about Lady Sarah Thornton and making notes for Penelope Briggs detailing the information she would need to get the spring term off to a smooth start. She stopped when Torie arrived for her driving lesson.

Emma made it into town and back to the ranch without hitting anything. As she carried the laptop out onto the sunporch to resume work, she decided that Torie’s happiness was the single bright spot in an otherwise depressing day. Patrick emerged from the kitchen with two glasses of iced tea topped with orange slices.

“The word’s out. The International Sports Channel just broadcast your wedding announcement.”

She could see that he was worried as he set her glass on the table, then carried his own over to the couch. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, exactly. I’m probably just being paranoid.” He took a sip of tea, then straightened the lamp on the table next to the couch. “The announcement was short, no comment on the fight at the Roustabout, just a brief statement that Kenneth had married a member of the British aristocracy, Lady Emma Wells-Finch, daughter of the fifth Earl of Woodbourne.”

“The press was bound to find out sooner or later.”

“That’s not what worries me.” Patrick slid his finger around the rim of his glass. “There wasn’t any mention of your occupation, no sense of the type of person you are. The announcement made it sound as though he’d married a flighty piece of Eurotrash.”

Emma finally understood why he was upset. “And so the legend of the spoiled playboy golf pro only grows bigger.”

“Exactly.” Ice tea sloshed over the rim of his glass as he set it down with a thud. “His image has already taken a beating, and this doesn’t help. By not making the announcement on his own, it’s almost as if he’s deliberately shooting himself in the foot. I can just imagine what that bitchy Sturgis Randall is going to say during his show this evening. I’m not even watching.”

But neither he nor Emma could resist, and after a dinner at which Kenny remained notably absent, Emma carried their coffee mugs over to the couch while Patrick turned on the television.

Sturgis Randall waited until the end of his program to pounce.
“The fact that his career is on the skids doesn’t seem to be bothering golfer Kenny Traveler. Instead, the troubled champion has taken a bride. And no ordinary American girl for our Kenny. Instead, the Texas millionaire, who also happens to be the heir to giant Traveler Computer Systems . . .”

“That’s not true!” Patrick exclaimed. “He made Warren disinherit him years ago.”

“. . . has chosen a British blueblood, Lady Emma Wells-Finch. That’s Wells-Finch, with a hyphen. It seems the beautiful noblewoman is the daughter of the fifth Earl of Woodbourne.”

“Beautiful!” Emma was outraged. “I most certainly am not beautiful!”

“In the meantime, Traveler’s troubles with the PGA have gotten worse since he was involved in a brutal barroom brawl with an elderly international businessman.”

Emma shot up out of her seat. “He’s not elderly! And it wasn’t a barroom brawl!”

“No official statement yet from acting commissioner Dallas Beaudine.”
Sturgis gave the cameras a smarmy smile.
“A word of advice, Kenny . . . Since your golfing career doesn’t seem to be going anywhere, maybe you and your socialite bride can take up fox hunting.”

Emma couldn’t bear it. “How can he get away with that?”

“His ratings are good. In America, that’s all that counts.” Patrick jabbed at the remote to turn off the television. “Let’s go to a movie. We need a diversion.”

It was a little after eleven and the lights were still on when Kenny returned to the ranch. He’d practiced all day, then stopped at his father’s house to play with Petie for a while. Afterward, he’d parked down by the river so he could nurse his various grudges against Emma for making something difficult out of something simple, but the river wasn’t a good place for him. He kept remembering that they’d made love there.

As he let himself into the kitchen, he felt a stab of guilt for leaving her by herself all day. Then he reminded himself that he wasn’t the one causing all the commotion in this marriage.

He headed to the refrigerator to see if Patrick had left him anything. As he pulled out a plate of cold chicken, the door that led from the backyard to the sunporch squeaked. He looked up and felt a catch in his throat as Emma walked in.

Her hair was tousled and her cheeks flushed from the breeze that had picked up outside. She looked so pretty, and he wanted her so much. He didn’t like the feeling. He didn’t like wanting things he couldn’t win with big drives, solid irons, and steady nerves.

She started as she saw him. “Oh, I didn’t know you were back.”

Guilt hit him again, but he determined not to let it get the best of him. “I do happen to live here.”

“I’m aware of that.”

Her calm response made him feel like a prick. “You want some chicken? There’s plenty here.”

“I ate earlier.”

“Some wine, then. We could take a bottle upstairs.”

“No, thank you.”

He moved around the counter toward her. He’d hit golf balls until his muscles ached, but he hadn’t been able to get her out of his mind. Now he knew he couldn’t keep his hands off her a moment longer. Somehow he had to talk her out of her stubbornness. Or seduce her out of it.

Maybe it was her steady gaze or that inherent sense of dignity she seemed to carry around with her whether she was buying lice shampoo or stealing salt shakers, but he suddenly wasn’t so sure he could seduce her.

Patrick came into the kitchen. “Well, well, look who finally remembered where he lives.” He waved the piece of paper he held in his hand. “This fax came in earlier. Looks like it’s showdown time in Dodge City.”

“What are you talking about?”

“It seems that a certain Dallas Fremont Beaudine is requesting the pleasure of your company on the first tee at Windmill Creek Country Club at seven o’clock tomorrow morning.”

“Great,” Kenny muttered in disgust. “This is just great.”

Patrick turned to Emma. “Francesca scribbled a note on the bottom. She’d like you to call her as soon as you get up in the morning.”

Kenny slapped down the drumstick he’d just picked up. “So he’s back in town. Now, doesn’t that just put the icing on the cake.”

Patrick folded the fax neatly in half. “If I were you, Kenneth, I’d be very nice to Lady Emma. Who knows what tales she might tell Francesca.”

But as Kenny looked across the counter into Emma’s solemn eyes, he knew she wouldn’t say one bad thing about him to Dallie’s wife. And somehow that bothered him more than anything else.

T
he morning sun formed a corona behind him, this man
whose legend was as big as the Texas sky. Although age had dabbed the temples of his dark blond hair with silver and deepened the brackets around his mouth, it hadn’t whittled away at the strength in his tall, lean body or dulled the gleam in those Newman-blue eyes.

A decade earlier, this man and the great Jack Nicklaus had met each other on a course people called the Old Testament and played one of the greatest golf matches in history. On that fateful day Jack Nicklaus had played for the glory of sport, but Dallas Beaudine had played for the heart of the woman he loved . . . and he’d won.

A shoulder injury had temporarily sidelined Dallie, forcing him into the role of acting commissioner, but he was nearly recovered now, his term as commissioner would soon be over, and the senior tour lay ahead of him like a juicy bone waiting to be devoured. First, however, he had some loose ends to tie up. One loose end, in particular.

Morning dew glistened on the toes of Kenny’s golf shoes as he stepped off the path and walked toward the first tee at Windmill Creek. His stomach gave a nervous twist as he saw Dallie standing there, even though he told himself he had no reason to be nervous. The two of them had played hundreds of rounds of golf over the years, beginning when Kenny was a teenager with the most expensive equipment money could buy and no idea how to use it. Dallie had taught him everything. No, Kenny shouldn’t be nervous, but a film of sweat had broken out on his chest.

He hadn’t seen Dallie since the day he’d been suspended, and he hid his sense of betrayal behind a cool nod as he stepped up onto the tee. “Dallie.”

“Kenny.”

Kenny turned to acknowledge the grizzled Jack Palance look-alike sprawled down on the bench with a red bandanna tied around his forehead and a rubber band holding back his thin salt and pepper ponytail. He was Skeet Cooper, the most famous caddy in golf. Skeet and Dallie had hooked up several decades earlier after a brawl at a Texaco station outside Caddo, Texas, when Dallie’d been a fifteen-year-old runaway and Skeet an ex-con with no future. They’d been together ever since.

“You got a caddy?” Dallie asked.

“He’s on his way.” Kenny’s regular caddy, a wizard named Loomis Crebbs, was carrying Mark Calcavecchia’s bag while Kenny was on suspension, and Kenny’d never missed Loomis more than he did right now. Still, he’d found a good substitute.