The Hellion (20 page)

Rachel remained where Callie Mae had left her, round-eyed and stunned, digesting what the woman had just said, quite horrified at the thought that she might be turning out just like her father. Was she really all those things? Merciless? Cold? A person who'd rather have the town's respect than smile a lot? She swallowed convulsively, closed her eyes, and bit her trembling lip, wanting to deny it.

But that made two people now who'd told her the same thing, for hadn't Tommy Lee called her a smug, supercilious socialite?

And if it wasn't true, why was she crying?

CHAPTER EIGHT

  
To Rachel's utter surprise, Tommy Lee showed up at church the following Sunday morning. He was standing on the steps when she arrived, and she realized her mistake the moment her feet stopped moving. Their eyes met, and her first thought was that he had new glasses, styled like the old ones, except that these had clear lenses through which she could clearly see him taking in her white and brown linen dress and matching spectator pumps.

She felt herself blush but could not tear her eyes away from him. He looked magnificent! His skin was brown and healthy looking, and he appeared thinner, dressed in a pale blue suit with a rich navy shirt. The midmorning sun caught the black and silver strands of his hair and threw chips of gold off his tie clasp and the rims of his glasses while a light breeze lifted the end of his tie and gently turned it back, then settled it into place again.

She wasn't certain how long she stood staring

before becoming aware of the girl at his side. She was tall and lanky with dark shoulder-length hair, and from the way she took his arm and gazed up at him, there was no question she adored him. Just then the breeze furled the girl's hair and blew it back from her temple, and as Rachel caught sight of the red button earrings, her heart sank.

Oh, no, she thought, not again. This one's young enough to be his daughter.

Just then the girl turned, revealing Lily's cupid's-bow mouth and brown eyes that might easily have belonged to Tommy Lee himself at age fourteen. Rachel stared, transfixed, feeling her composure slip as she confronted the girl who, had circumstances been different, might have been her own daughter. Her eyes were helplessly drawn to Tommy Lee again, and they stood like a pair of marble statues. Move! she told her feet. Half the town is watching you gape at him, including his daughter and your own father! For in that horrifying moment Rachel realized Everett had joined her, after parking the car, and stood watching the silent tableau with growing disapproval.

Beth's eyes flashed from her father to the pretty dark-haired woman and back again. Then,

to Rachel's relief, Tommy Lee
    
237 gave a silent nod and moved away with her.

Beside her Everett said stiffly, "Rachel, for God's sake, people are staring."

To her horror, she glanced around to find it was true. Several pairs of curious eyes had taken in the scene, but as Rachel looked up, they all quickly glanced away.

The church service seemed interminable. It took a great deal of self-restraint for Rachel to face front for a full ten minutes before checking behind her under the guise of picking up a hymnal from the seat. Just as she'd suspected, Tommy Lee and Beth were only a few pews back. Surreptitiously she glanced at her father, but he was facing front with a stern, forbidding expression on his face. When she opened the hymnal, the print seemed to blur, and she was terribly conscious of Tommy Lee's eyes boring into her back. In a panic, she wondered where Gaines and Lily Gentry were sitting. Were they watching him watch her? Undoubtedly they were as shocked as she was to see him here this morning. After countless years of absence, he couldn't possibly attend without being conspicuous.

When the service ended and everyone flooded the center aisle, she picked him out from behind by the thinning hair at the crown of his head. Odd how the sight of it lent him a certain vulnerability; she felt guilty to be studying it. And a little sad.

Outside, she witnessed the stunned reactions parade across the faces of Tommy Lee's parents as they paused to watch their son and granddaughter leaving the church behind them. Gaines Gentry's hand went to Lily's elbow, and her free hand covered her lips while their eyes followed Tommy Lee's progress until he became aware of them and halted in mid-stride, pulling Beth up short, too. Rachel sensed the girl's momentary confusion, and the yearning among the other three. But then Tommy Lee nodded brusquely and headed toward his car with long-legged steps, already lighting a cigarette as Beth trailed along beside him.

Everett drove Rachel home in stony silence, but the moment they were inside he confronted her directly, his face rigid and darkened by a scowl. "What's going on between you and Gentry?"

She spun to face him angrily. "Nothing!"

"Nothing?" He snorted. "I wasn't born

yesterday, Rachel. If nothing's going
   
239 on, then tell me what was all that about on the church steps?"

"All what? I didn't even speak to the man!"

"You didn't have to, to set the whole town talking."

Suddenly Callie Mae's words came back, and Rachel stiffened her spine. "The town, the town! That's always your first concern, isn't it, Daddy? What the town might be saying! What business is it of theirs anyway?"

"Rachel, are you forgetting what you have made of yourself? You're one of Russellville's leading citizens. You're a businesswoman whose reputation must--was

"Oh, for heaven's sake, Daddy, stop." She pressed one hand to her forehead and turned away. "I don't want to hear it."

He whirled her around by an arm. "Well, you're going to! I will not have you seeing Tommy Lee Gentry. Is that understood?"

For a moment she was a girl again, hearing those same words, experiencing the same eruption of anger she'd felt then. It swirled up in a red

haze, bringing with it the rage and rebellion she'd been unable to display then, when she could do nothing but bend to his will. But she no longer had to buckle under to her father's demands. She clamped her jaw in defiance, her face took on a belligerent expression, and there came a sweeping sense of a release in rebelling against him at last.

"I'm not seventeen anymore. By what right do you tell me whom I can and cannot see?"

"You're still my daughter. When a daughter behaves irresponsibly, what else is a father supposed to do?"

"You could try letting me make my own choices," she returned brittlely. "I'm forty-one. Wouldn't you say it's time?"

His face took on an apoplectic hue as he shouted, pointing toward the church, "And that's the choice you propose to make?"

"Suppose I did, would that be so terrible?"

"For God's sake, Rachel, Owen is scarcely dead in his grave and you're taking up with a ... a hellion like Gentry?"

"Tell me," she said, narrowing her eyes. "Exactly what do you think made him that way?"

"That's not the point!"

"Oh, and what is?"
               
241

"The point is, I will not have you spoiling your reputation by being seen with the most notorious skirt chaser this county's ever seen!"

She was every inch her father's daughter as she returned coolly, "And if I choose to see him?"

"So you are seeing him!"

She studied him levelly for some time before asking quietly, "What are you so scared of, Daddy?"

He let his shoulders wilt, blew out an exasperated breath, and gestured appealingly. "Rachel, for heaven's sake, he's been married three times, he drinks like a fish, and he--was

"No, Daddy," she interrupted, shaking her head slowly. "That's not it at all and we both know it. You're afraid that if I start seeing Tommy Lee again you may be forced to come face to face with your own guilt."

"My guilt!" He was enraged now, gesturing angrily. "You disgraced us with him once. Wasn't that enough?"

Again she shook her head, saddened by his inability to bend, to recognize his own fault in creating some of the wounds that had gone unhealed all

these years.

"No, Daddy, we didn't disgrace you. You disgraced us. By sending me away and treating me as if what we'd done was unforgivable. To us it wasn't. To us it wasn't sordid or ... or immoral. We loved each other!"

Again he gestured with an upturned palm. "Rachel, we did what we thought was best for all."

"Did you?" she asked softly, sadly. "Then tell me why you and the Gentrys never talked to each other again."

The room grew hushed and neither of them moved a muscle. Everett's face slowly grayed while Rachel stood firm, facing him squarely. Then suddenly he lurched around her, heading for the door. She grabbed his arm, begging, "Daddy, could we talk about it? Please?"

But Everett jerked free and proclaimed angrily, "There is nothing to talk about!" then slammed out the door leaving her feeling hopeless and sad and wondering if it would ever be possible to untangle the webs of the past.

Why did I goad him? Why didn't I just come right out and say that there really is nothing between

Tommy Lee and me?
               
243

The answer was simple. There would always be something between them, no matter how hard she fought it. And it seemed only a matter of time before it would all come to a head.

  
Rachel was still blue later that day when Marshall stopped by after his usual Sunday afternoon visit to his daughter's. She answered the bell to find him standing on her step with slumped shoulders and a dejected face.

"Why, Marshall, what's wrong?"

"Carolyn and I had a fight."

"A fight!"

Rachel might have chuckled; in a way it was amusing to think of the mild-mannered Marshall fighting with anybody. But she could see he was truly down in the dumps even before he added, "And furthermore, I hate the idea of facing the empty house. Want to take a ride?"

It was so rare to find Marshall in low spirits that Rachel wouldn't have dreamed of refusing. Especially not after all the times he'd cheered her up.

"Why not? I haven't been exactly on top

of the world myself today."

He drove as if he didn't care where he was going, and they ended up near the small town of Phil Campbell about ten miles south of Russellville. When he turned in at the entrance of the Dismal Gardens, Rachel teased, "The Dismals? On an evening when I'm supposed to be cheering you up?"

Marshall smiled distractedly. "Apropos, isn't it?" Then he glanced out the window. "I haven't been out here in years. Have you?"

"No, not since I was a child."

"Care to take a walk through?"

"Why not?"

They parked, and Marshall paid their admission as they entered the gardens through a little country museum house, then stepped down into a rocky depression surrounded by house-size boulders that created the gateway to the park. They wandered through the waning afternoon, companionably silent, letting the surroundings ease their troubles.

Unlike their name, the Dismal Gardens were stunningly beautiful, a refreshing breath of untainted nature in a setting left untouched by man since the canyon and its surrounding woods

and caves had been inhabited by the
        
245 Paleo Indians 10,000 years before. The gardens took their name from the dismalites, tiny incandescent worms that lived in the moss on the rock cliffs and shone like stars at night.

As Rachel and Marshall entered the park, the sun was still above the cliffs, and they followed a clear tumbling river into shaded coolness where the air was thick with the fecund smell of moss and leaf mold. They explored stunning rock formations with such names as Pulpit Rock, the Grotto, and Fat Man's Misery.

It was peaceful here, restorative. A pileated woodpecker flashed through the forest in a wink of red. Wild hydrangea vines clung to the high walls where trailing arbutus sprouted magically from the face of sheer rock. Farther along they came to Phantom Falls, a tiny opening no more than ten feet in diameter. Inside, they stopped and lifted their faces toward the small circle of sky overhead, listening to the roar of water echoing mysteriously through the depression, though the falls themselves were some 250 feet downstream.

When Rachel dropped her eyes, she found

Marshall studying her with an odd look on his face. She laughed nervously and moved along the trail, calling back, "Well, come on, slowpoke, get a move on!"

The expression changed to a sheepish grin as he followed at her heels. But when they reached Rainbow Falls, she again sensed his gaze on her as if he was puzzling something out. She lifted her eyes to the twin rainbows high overhead, which were caught by the sunlight that couldn't reach into the shady depths where they stood. She feared he hadn't invited her here for anything as simple as a breath of fresh air. In a moment her suspicions were verified as he spoke in a serious tone.

"Rachel, I heard something today that's rather disturbing."

"Oh?" She dropped her eyes to find he'd been studying her intently, but immediately he glanced at his feet.

"It ... well, it could be a rumor. You know how small towns are."