Lear Sister Trilogy
Including three full length novels:
Material Girl
Beauty Queen
Miss Fortune
By
Julia London
Copyright 2011 by Julia London
Smashwords Edition
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Dear Reader:
The Lear Sisters Trilogy was my first foray into contemporary women’s fiction with strong romantic elements. The three books were originally published in the early 2000s and have been out of print for a few years. I am very pleased to be able to offer them to you again, with new covers, and with some slight editing, in digital format. However, this is all new to me, so if you discover typos or errors, please don’t hesitate to contact me at Julia @ julialondon.com.
If you would like to know more about me, my books, what’s new and what’s old, I invite you to join my mailing list, or visit me on Facebook and Twitter and Tumblr and even Goodreads, where I can be found on any given day talking about my life and my books.
You can read about the series, and my other books, both women’s fiction and historical romance, at my website, http://www.julialondon.com.
You may also be interested in the Thrillseekers Anonymous series, a trilogy of contemporary romance about four men who operate a high-stakes, exclusive thrill-seeking club. They will be reissued in digital format in the summer of 2011.
Or, if you prefer more women’s fiction with strong romantic elements, you may prefer the Cedar Springs series. All three books (Summer of Two Wishes, One Season of Sunshine, and A Light at Winter’s End) are all available in paperback and as ebooks.
If you are curious about all of my books, here is a complete booklist.
Thank you for your purchase. I hope you enjoy this collection of novels.
Julia London
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Material Girl (Book One)
Prologue
NEW YORK
The news that he was going to die arrived like a distant rumble of thunder, a disturbing sound so far on the reaches of his consciousness that he lifted his head and wondered what he had heard. Aaron Lear looked to the windows of his office on the forty-third floor in lower Manhattan and noticed that the afternoon light was beginning to fade. Was it that late already?
He was still sitting where the call had left him—on his haunches, against the polished oak wall down which he had slid as his mind tried to grasp the words cancer and aggressive. His office was suddenly sweltering; the light was fading rapidly now, gray and black shadows draped his office. Aaron tried to breathe—he was not prepared for this, had not considered the possibility of his mortality. Even when he had first begun to have trouble—a strange bit of discomfort was all, really—he never thought it was something so . . . so foul. So goddamned final.
We don’t know much of anything yet. Just hold on to that for now, his doctor had advised. How could he hold on to something so vague? Aaron pulled himself to his feet, but his limbs felt as if weights had been tied to them and he leaned heavily against the desk. The room was now almost dark; he wondered how much time had really passed since he’d picked up the phone. A lifetime.
Of course he had suspected something was terribly wrong for weeks now, from the moment he had felt the hostile invasion of his body, had sensed the vague but undeniable state of war being waged within him when he had, by some internal monitor, felt the cancerous cells advancing like an army of ants through his stomach, into the winding turns of his colon, throwing their incendiary bombs down the chute.
He was only fifty-five!
It was impossible to even contemplate that he might be brought down. There was so much left to do, to see, to be! What about the dynasty he had built and still operated from his position as president and CEO? This vast shipping empire was all his doing, his creation, one he had started after he escaped West Texas and the life of a cotton farmer when he was nineteen. He had built this company truck by truck, plane by plane. He had begun by driving line-haul between Dallas and San Antonio, scrimping and saving until he could buy his own truck. Then there were two. Then four, then a fleet, expanding and growing under his guardianship until he was shipping freight around the world. Lear Transport Industries, better known as LTI, was like another child to him, the proud mark of a man and his life and accomplishments.
He was not ready to let go!
Bonnie. He had to talk to Bonnie, still his wife in spite of their fifteen-year estrangement, still his one and only true love. Bonnie Lou Stanton, his high school sweetheart, the homecoming queen with the laughing blue eyes, the only one to believe in him when the relationship with his father had soured. It was Bonnie who had come with him to Dallas when he had left the family cotton farm behind, Bonnie who had stuck by him those lean years when everything looked bleak and had encouraged him when he thought he was failing. And later, with a baby on her hip, smiling cheerfully as she made one can of ranch-style beans last two days. They had been closest then, drawing on one another’s strengths. Exactly when they had begun to drift apart, Aaron couldn’t really remember anymore, but he knew that he still loved her, would always love her.
His gaze fell to the picture of his daughters on his desk, and he felt the smile spread across his lips. They were the best thing he had ever done. There was Robin, his oldest, her curly black hair indicative of her spunk, her blue eyes steely with determination. And Rebecca, sitting gracefully in the middle, as pretty now as she had been the day she was crowned Miss Houston. Then Rachel, the baby, laughing when she should have been smiling, her blue eyes sparkling with the gaiety that was always with her. Three beautiful women who he had a hand in producing. Biologically perhaps, but he couldn’t claim much credit beyond that, could he?
He had been an absent father for the most part—one of the more egregious things about him, according to Bonnie. God, how many times had they argued about it? He insisting that his work was what enabled them to live a life of privilege, Bonnie arguing just as strongly that wealth and privilege were not as valuable as a father to the girls.
A thousand tiny spears of bitter disappointment jabbed Aaron; there was no denying the truth, not for a man being consumed alive by cancer. He had been a mean lover, a sorrier husband, and a pathetic excuse for a father while creating his empire. He had let Bonnie down in the worst way, his girls even more, and the pain of that realization was almost as lethal as the cancer in him.
The worst of it was that the cancer scared him to death, left him practically trembling in the dark at the prospect of what lay ahead. The coward in him needed Bonnie like he had never needed her before.
In the dim light, Aaron found the phone he’d thrown aside and dialed her cell. It rang three times before she answered it. “Hello?” The sound of crystal clinking in the background pierced his consciousness—Bonnie had her own life now. She wasn’t waiting for his call anymore. Hadn’t she made that abundantly clear?
“Aaron, I know it’s you, I have your number on caller ID.”
“Bonnie.” His voice sounded empty, hollow. “Bonnie, how are you?”
She covered the phone; Aaron heard her whisper to someone. “Ah, fine.”
“Good . . . good.” How exactly did one go about telling his wife he was dying? “How’s the weather in L.A.?”
Her sigh was full of tedium. “Aaron, I’m in the middle of something. What did you need?”
He cleared his throat, tried to force the ugly words out. “Actually, there is something I need to tell you—”
“Is it one of the girls?” she asked quickly.
“No, no, not the girls. I . . . I don’t know how to say this . . . .”
“Say what?”
He closed his eyes, squeezed them tightly shut against the burn of tears. “I’ve had some bad news. . . . I had a little thing happen this summer, and I went . . . well, I guess I don’t have to give you the blow by blow, but it’s . . .” He paused, pressed his knuckles into his eyes again, unable to say the words that would commend him to death.
He could hear Bonnie moving, the click-click-click of her heels on pavement. “Aaron,” she said low, her voice softer now, the way he remembered it. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
The burn of tears burst through his knuckles, slid hot down his cheeks. “I’m sick,” he whispered coarsely. “Really sick. And . . . and I know I don’t have any right to ask this, but . . . but I need you, Bonnie. I need you bad.”
There was no immediate response from her; Aaron caught his breath, felt the wet burn of his tears etch their grooves in his cheeks. He waited. Waited through the long pause in which he could hear the shortness of her breath, and when he thought he could not hold his own any longer, she said simply, “I will be there as soon as I can.”
Chapter One
HOUSTON
Everyone would always remember where they were the day they learned Aaron Lear was dying. For Robin, his oldest daughter, that day started off as usual—with a frantic search of her spacious, empty, and covered-with-dust Tudor mansion for a stupid shoe.
She was in something of a hurry, seeing as how she had a stack of reports six feet high on her desk, the result of having spent the entire month of January in London. And there was the business of the deal with Atlantic, an idea that had come to her at a cocktail party after the Atlantic rep had bought her several drinks. She had been working on landing them for four or five weeks now and needed the deal sooner rather than later because Dad didn’t like her region’s sales figures. Or anything else, for that matter.
Which was why she was a little worried about yesterday’s call from Mr. Herrera, the owner of one of LTI’s oldest accounts, Valley Produce. He had given her assistant, Lucy, quite an earful, complaining heatedly that an unacceptably large percentage of his produce LTI transported was arriving wilted and spoiled at the grocer’s destinations, and none of the LTI account reps seemed to want to do anything about it. Therefore, he had felt obliged to call the vice president of Southwest Operations (that would be her, Robin) demanding satisfaction. If he couldn’t rely on LTI to get his produce to the customer in the time or condition he required, he was very certain he could find a freight company that would.
What startled Robin about his call was not that he was unhappy, but how in the hell his unhappiness had escaped her. Valley Produce was one of the first companies to sign on with her father when he had begun his business some thirty-odd years ago, and she was very certain Dad would not be very happy to hear from Mr. Herrera right now. Especially since the last time they had talked, he had been very displeased with her handling of a similar situation in Austin.
Yeah, well, Dad was easily displeased; that went with the territory.
Where the hell was her shoe? Dressed in a sleek, black (all her sleek outfits were black) Donna Karan short skirt and jacket, Robin searched the wreckage of her bedroom for the left of a pair of Stuart Weitzman black leather pumps. This chaotic state of living, while not entirely foreign to her, was still highly undesirable, and she was, she realized, desperate to finalize the deal with Jacob Manning to do the renovations she had started and abandoned.
Okay, so her friends were right—the purchase of this house had been something of a lark. She had stumbled on it one Sunday afternoon as she drove, lost, through the Village, looking for the barbecue her friends Linda and Kirk were hosting. The house was nestled on a wide boulevard with giant live oaks and huge mansions. It was perfect, of course—not too big, not too small. So she had phoned her attorney, told her to buy it. When she’d moved in, she’d stored her belongings, shoved her clothes into one room, set up the dining room table with the leather chairs, and let the rest of it sit empty in anticipation of the renovations she would do herself.
At least she had every intention of doing them herself. But she had succeeded only in knocking a couple of huge gaping holes in the walls before she was off to Madrid, and then London, and New York, and then . . . whatever. How could she have known so many things would come up? Needless to say, she was hiring out the work before she went stark raving mad, and it was, come hell or high water, the one thing she would accomplish today.
When the wayward shoe was at last located, Robin emerged from her house looking completely cool and sophisticated. The only accessory that did not reek of chic was the black leather headband she had stuck on her head as a last resort for keeping her short, wildly curly hair in some sense of order.
Robin marched out onto the drive, passing Raymond, her yardman, with a jaunty wave, and proceeded to her Mercedes 500 E-Class. She fired up that sweet ride and sped out onto North Boulevard.
As she turned off the boulevard, a man on a Harley pulled into her drive. He parked the bike, waved at Raymond. “You doing okay?” he asked as the yardman walked up to the door to unlock it for him.
“Can’t complain, can’t complain,” Raymond said. “You gonna be long, Mr. Manning?”
“Nah. Just need to look at a couple of things. I’ll put the key out.”
“That’ll do,” Raymond said.
Jake Manning walked inside the empty mansion, pausing in the foyer to peer into the dining room, where Ms. Lear had obviously set up shop. His nose wrinkled as he surveyed the wreckage—empty yogurt containers, papers strewn about, a bra curiously draped over one chair, the obligatory computer, one running shoe, an empty wine bottle.
Jake moved on, up the great curving staircase to the upper floors.
Now here was the odd part, he thought as he reached the second- floor landing and surveyed the gaping hole in the wall directly ahead. That hole made no sense. She had freely admitted to it, had told him on the phone that she “had started the renovations.” It made no sense because first, that hole served no conceivable purpose, and second, while he’d never actually met Robin Lear (she preferred to have Raymond let him in), her house had all the markings of a society bitch. He should know—he did enough of their houses, could spot them a mile off. But this hole thing had given him pause. No dainty, cosmetically enhanced woman was going to make a hole that big.
With a shrug, he continued on to the master bath to double-check the dimensions.
In the meantime, Robin was cursing traffic, which was, as usual, moving at a snail’s pace. She punched a number into her cell phone, and used the morning crawl to reschedule a dinner date, return two business calls, and track down Darren Fogerty’s assistant—Darren being her contact at Atlantic—to set up a meeting for the next morning. When she clicked off that call, she was at the elevator, headed for the tenth floor suite of offices that housed the LTI Southwest corporate offices. All four of them. Oh, and a conference room.
She marched through the glass doors emblazoned with Lear Transport Industries, Inc., her briefcase swinging carelessly from her shoulder, and said hello to the receptionist as she stopped to pick up her phone messages. There were several new ones—from Bill (Flying in. Drinks tonight?), Darren from Atlantic, a sales manager of a cable manufacturer, and three that really caught her attention. Mr. Herrera (she needed a cup of coffee for that one), Dad (an elephant tranquilizer), and Jacob Manning, who would, if she was lucky, commence the renovation of her house today.
Pink slips firmly in hand, Robin marched on, right past Evan Iverson’s door—at which point her heart did a little start when she saw him seated at his desk—and stuck her hand in Lucy’s cubicle to signal that she had, indeed, arrived, before disappearing into her own office. Tossing her briefcase aside, Robin went immediately to her wet bar and the pot of coffee Lucy had put on. French roast. Pedestrian, but potable.
In the midst of pouring a cup, Lucy came in with a “Yo.” Robin glanced over her shoulder at Lucy, who stood in the doorway of her office wearing a lime-green sweater and black pants. Her long red hair was piled on top of her head with a pencil stuck through to hold it. Robin paused to sip the nectar of gods before asking, “Hey, did you take Dad’s call?”
Lucy came farther into the room, adjusted her black-rimmed matchbox glasses. “I took the first one. He said he assumed you would manage to drag yourself in before noon, and if you did, you should call him immediately. At the ranch.”
The ranch? Oh great. When or why Aaron had made the trek to Texas, Robin couldn’t imagine, and frankly, didn’t even want to think about it.
“Mr. Herrera has called twice. Are you going to call him? You need to call him.”
Well, hello, she knew that. Robin took another sip of coffee. “Was that Evan I saw?” she asked, trying very hard to be nonchalant.
“Yep.”
“What’s he doing here?”
“Don’t know,” Lucy said with a shrug, and plopped down in one of two leather armchairs in front of Robin’s desk. “But he needs to talk to you before he goes back to Dallas. He asked if you had lunch plans.”
Oh frabjous day, her father and a former lover all in one Monday. “Ah . . . I don’t think so.”
Lucy looked suspiciously at Robin. “Why are you making that face?”
“What face?”
“That face.”
“There is no face.”
It was obvious Lucy believed there was a face. There were a lot of things the old girl knew about Robin, but her affair with Evan was not one of them. In his position as chief operating officer, Evan was her father’s most trusted man—his loyalty to the company was unquestionable and he was very good at what he did. His was a classic rags-to-riches story—he graduated from The University of Texas in Austin and started by selling freight carriers to businesses. That’s how he met Dad and came to LTI. From there, he worked his way up, making LTI extremely profitable and himself rich in the process—Robin had heard the golden boy’s story enough times from Dad to know.
It happened that Evan was also a very handsome man in addition to being smart, and Robin could not help the attraction she had developed during her four-year stint with her father in New York.
But it wasn’t until she had talked Dad into opening the Houston offices and had moved back to Texas that the affair had begun. At a corporate meeting in Dallas, she had flirted, Evan had taken the bait, and the rest was the ancient history of inconspicuous dating, which had gone on until Robin began to realize that good looks did not necessarily mean interesting.
When he began to hint around about their relationship taking a more serious and permanent bent, Robin had balked outright and had bowed out under the pretense of work. There probably could have been a little more finesse on her part, but still, it did not end too terribly badly, she supposed, given that Evan promised her— “for the sake of the company” —that he would not make it uncomfortable for her.
Unfortunately, she clearly made it uncomfortable for him without even trying. She didn’t mean to do it, but every time she saw him, he looked at her with cow eyes and would ask, in that quiet, we-have-a-secret voice, “How are you?”
That was exactly the reason why, in the midst of another failed relationship in London, Robin had promised herself to never, ever, dip her pen in the company ink again.
“HUL-LO-OH!” Lucy all but shouted.
“What?” Robin exclaimed, startled.
“You drifted into Robin-land,” Lucy said with a snort and popped up out of her chair. “I’ve got some stuff for you to sign. I’ll be back.” As Lucy went out, Robin picked up her phone and phoned Guillermo, the sales rep at the Rio Grande Valley freight yard.
“Hey, Miss Lear, how are you?” he asked cheerfully when she got him on the phone.
“Good. Listen, I had a call from Mr. Herrera yesterday from Valley Produce? He’s a little agitated. He says we are delivering spoiled product.”
“Yes ma’am, we are,” Guillermo said matter-of-factly. “It’s those refrigeration units we got on the trucks. They don’t work for crap, pardon my French, and it seems like every time one goes out, it’s his freight we got on there.”
“What refrigeration units?”
“The refrigeration units! With all due respect, Miss Lear, I told you about this before Christmas. See, the coils, they’re not working like they should. It’s a short in the—”
“Guillermo, I don’t remember anything about coils,” Robin said sternly.
“Sure, don’t you remember? When we had that holiday party in Padre, I was telling you about the coils.”
Robin was suddenly struck with the memory of Guillermo holding a longneck in one hand, a half-eaten monster turkey leg in the other, which he used to emphasize his monologue about coils and refrigeration units . . . and something in there about the average lifespan of a head of lettuce. Robin groaned. “Yes, I remember that, but I didn’t realize at the time you were telling me there was a problem—it was a holiday party, for Chrissakes!”
“Well, sure, Miss Lear. That’s why I called you the next week.”
Oh.
Right.
She had been on her way to London and had stacked Guillermo’s message to call along with all the others she’d decided could wait. Of course, she’d expected to return in two weeks time, but then again, she hadn’t counted on meeting Nigel. That idiot savant had cost her two extra weeks—
“. . . so I told him, it’s all at corporate, but sure, go ahead and call. And he did.”
“What? Did what?” she demanded.
“Called. Mr. Iverson. He ordered all new units. We should get them in today, have ‘em installed by the end of next week.”
Fabulous. All she needed was to have Evan cleaning up this little mess for her. She punched a key on her computer—the e-mail screen popped right up. “Okay, thanks, Guillermo,” she said, and winced at the e-mail from Evan, Valley Produce refrigeration units. Her head was beginning to hurt.
Robin glanced again at the stack of pink phone messages. Jacob Manning’s number was a cell phone; he picked it up on the third ring. “Manning here.”
Having exchanged no less than fifteen phone tags with him, the sound of his voice actually startled Robin. “Oh! Uh . . . Mr. Manning, this is Robin Lear.”
“Hey, good to hear from you.”
Speaking of hearing, he certainly had a nice silky voice, Robin thought absently. “Listen, thanks for sending your estimate so quickly for the work on my house. I like all that you suggested.”
“Great. You’ve got a nice place.”
“Thanks. I just have a few questions if you don’t mind.”
“Sure. Fire away.”
Yes, a very nice voice. “I calculate this work to be about forty dollars a square foot, is that right?”
“Sounds about right—”
“I had other bids for the same work that came in much lower than that.” That was really a teeny-tiny lie—she’d actually had only one other bid.
Mr. Manning said nothing at first, then chuckled softly, a sound that sent a quick and curious shiver down Robin’s spine. “I’ll just bet you did, Ms. Lear. But if you want a quality job, you’re going to have to pay for it.”
Well, wasn’t that just a typical male response? “Really?” Robin asked in her shy, I’m-just-a-woman voice. “And do you think I should have to pay as much as ten dollars more per square foot than any other expert in renovations? Perhaps you didn’t notice, but it’s just a house, Mr. Manning, not the Galleria.”
“Well, now, Robin, even I can see that it’s not the Galleria,” he said, the amusement irritatingly evident in his deep voice. “In fact, I’d bet I’ve seen more of that house than you have in the last few days, and I can assure you, it is just a house. Now, if you don’t want to pay for the work I propose to do, I understand. Not everyone does. Won’t hurt my feelings one bit if you decide to go with someone ten dollars a square foot cheaper—it’s your call.”
His remark took her aback, but not nearly as much as the casual slip of her first name, which sounded, much to her surprise, incredibly sexy from his lips. With a shake of her head to clear it, Robin demanded, “What about materials? How can I be assured the materials are the quality I’m paying a premium for?”
“You can inspect everything I bring into your house.”
“Receipts?”
“I’ll copy you on everything I do.”
“And consult me if there is any change to your proposal?”
“I don’t know,” he sighed. “Are you going to want to pick the colors, too?”
The question was so ludicrous that Robin was left momentarily speechless.
“It’s a joke,” he said in that voice.
“I knew that!” she lied. “I need this work to be done right away and finished quickly. I suppose I could see my way to your cost if I could have your guarantee that you can start this week. How long will it take you to complete?”
Mr. Manning laughed. “Do you always bounce from one extreme to the other like that? There for a minute I thought you were going to fire me before you even hired me.”
Robin rolled her eyes heavenward. “Did you say how long?”
“You need to understand that this sort of work takes time. And once I get under that old paint, if there is any sort of abatement that needs to be done, you can count on two extra weeks at a minimum. That’s an old house you’re in there, Robin. It’s not going to be a six-week job, I can tell you that, not with what you want done to the bathrooms and kitchen. Not to mention the other work I’ve got going on, too. Let’s see . . .” Robin could hear a tapping sound. “We’re looking at two months, easy. Maybe three.”
“Three months!” she exclaimed. “But I can’t live like that for three months. Is there anything you can do to readjust your schedule?”
His laughter was full and very rich—Robin could just picture him, probably an older gentleman, gray at the temples, wearing a crisp white shirt and sitting in his luxury sedan—
“I’ll see what I can do, but I’m being honest with you—this is not going to go quick. You want a start of this week?” The tapping again. “I can rearrange a couple of things, I guess, but Thursday is the soonest I can get started. I sent a contract with the bid to your attorney. Let me know if there’s anything you want to change. Once that’s signed, we’ve got us a deal. Appreciate the business and we’ll talk soon.”
The connection was suddenly dead.
Surprised, Robin held the receiver out from her head and looked at it. Well, at least his reputation was excellent—she had called four references and they had all raved about the quality of his work. She supposed she ought to be happy that she had managed to get him at all, much less get him to agree to start this week—
“Robin.”
She started at the sound of Evan’s voice; she hadn’t even heard the door open. But there he was, half in, half out. Robin put the receiver down, suddenly embarrassed that she had avoided him so completely since her return from London.
“Hello, Evan,” she said, motioning him forward, and watched him walk in without actually looking at him. He was still as handsome as ever, his blond hair perfectly trimmed, his jaw clean shaven. And as usual, his style impeccable—from the crisp knot of his silk tie to the perfect pleats of his gray suit pants.
“I’m sorry to interrupt, but I need to talk to you before I leave for Dallas.”
“Not a problem,” she lied and stood, gesturing for him to sit. “Want some coffee?”
He shook his head, sat uneasily in the chair she had indicated. Robin made herself come around to sit next to him. “Sorry I didn’t stop in earlier. Lots of calls,” she said, motioning vaguely at her desk.
“You look great,” he said.
Her self-conscious smile burned. “Uh, thanks . . . so what’s up?”
“I was hoping we could do lunch—”
“Well, I—”
“But you look buried,” Evan quickly interjected with a shrug. His perfectly manicured hands fidgeted unconsciously with the bottom of his tie. Robin folded her hands in her lap.
“I just needed to talk with you before I talk to Aaron.”
“Aaron?”
Evan looked at her fully then, a slight frown on his face. “We lost the Valley Produce account. Herrera has gone to American Motorfreight. He told me this morning.”
The news stunned her. How could they lose the account? She hadn’t even spoken to Herrera yet! “You’re kidding.”
“No, I’m not kidding, Robin. Herrera was our biggest Texas account. And one of our oldest. He’s been with your dad since he started up.”
Yes, yes, she was aware of that, and nodded in complete agreement, but Evan’s frown just deepened. “Robin, you lost that account.”
“Me?” she exclaimed in surprise, but the twinge of guilt had already started to pierce her conscience.
“You’ve spent too much time looking for a big fish—”
“What’s that supposed to mean? I thought the object was to strive for the new and very big accounts, Evan, the ones that ship tons of freight—”
“The object is to take care of your customers.”
Ouch. “I hope you are not lecturing me,” she said defensively. “And you don’t need to talk to Dad for me. I am perfectly capable of telling him that we lost the account.”
“I know you are capable, but let’s not forget that I run this pop stand. I let you handle the valley accounts, just like you asked before you took off for London—”
“I did not take off—”
“Whatever. I’m just saying that Aaron is going to want an answer from me, too.”
Robin fought the urge to squirm in her chair. “All right, it’s my fault,” she admitted reluctantly. “I didn’t realize what it was Guillermo was telling me, and then I was gone for a month—”
“Five weeks, but who’s counting? Anyway, what’s done is done,” Evan said, then stood abruptly, shoved his hands into his pocket as he walked to the windows. “I’m going to fly to Harlingen tomorrow and talk to Herrera, but I don’t think it will do any good. Now listen, Aaron will know immediately that this was something that should have been easily handled. Don’t bullshit him.”
As if she needed to be reminded. “I’ll call Dad right now.” She stood, swiped her coffee cup off her desk, and marched to the wet bar to pour another.
“Still drinking too much coffee?” he asked, his voice noticeably lighter.
“I guess,” she said and dumped three sugars into her cup. She stirred her coffee slowly, aware of the silence filling the space between them. After what seemed an eternity, she heard Evan move behind her.
“I’m going back to Dallas this afternoon,” he said, standing directly behind her. There was that thing in his voice, that uncomfortable sound of longing. Robin did not turn around, but simply nodded, waiting. Evan sighed. “I’ll talk to you soon, all right?”
When Robin turned around, he had gone.
She stood at the wet bar for several long moments, staring at the door before finally, slowly, returning to her desk.
The phone message, on which the receptionist had written CALL YOUR FATHER AT THE RANCH IMMEDIATELY, was staring up at her. Damn.
Dad picked up the phone on the first ring. “Hello?” he said anxiously.
“Hey, Dad, it’s me.”
“Robbie! Good God, does the word immediately mean anything to you? I’ve been trying to get hold of you for two days now!”
“I was out yesterday with Mia. You remember her—”
“I asked that you call me when you came in. Did you just come in?”
Robin suppressed a groan. “Dad, I had some other calls to return. Listen, I know why you’re calling, and—”
“No, Robin Elaine, you don’t. I need you to come to the ranch.”
“Uh . . . to the ranch?” That was most definitely not in her plans. “Gee, Dad, I don’t think I can make it right now.”
“Rebecca and Rachel are coming, too,” he continued, as if he hadn’t heard her. “Bec is going to pick up Rachel in Dallas this morning and then they are driving down. You can get here tonight if you leave before rush hour—”
“Dad!” Robin exclaimed, laughing nervously at his sudden determination to see his daughters. “I can’t just up and come to the ranch—”
“Why the hell not?” he barked, then made a strange sound. “Robbie, listen,” he said, his voice hoarse and soft, “there is something I need to tell you, but I can’t do it over the phone. I need you to come here.”
That sobered her—her father was demanding, but not the sort to make anxious demands, unless . . . unless something was awfully wrong. “Has something happened?” she asked quickly.
“Yes. No. Well, is happening.”
“What?” she asked, unconsciously curling her hand into a fist, steeling herself. “Is it Mom? Did something happen to Mom?”
“Oh baby, no, your mom is fine,” he said softly and sighed wearily. “God, Robbie, I don’t believe it myself, but . . . it’s me.”
Chapter Two
The entrance to the Lear family ranch—massive limestone pillars framing iron gates, an overarching frieze of cattle and crosses with the name Blue Cross Ranch scripted in the middle—had stood open since Aaron and Bonnie arrived two weeks ago.
The event was remarked by the locals in and around the town of Comfort, Texas, and every so often, one of them would be curious enough to drive through the gates for a friendly look around. The caliche road, marked by cattle guards, wended through mesquite trees and old live oaks with branches so long and low that they formed a canopy for long stretches. To the right and left of the road, 1,500 head of cattle and about 500 sheep grazed on the green, hilly landscape. In the spring, bluebonnets, buttercups, and Indian paintbrush grew so thick that it looked as if the cattle slept on a bed of flowers.
Eventually, the road widened and a dozen gaslights lined the last 100 yards or so to the ranch house, which was nestled in the shadows of the long, twisting limbs of the live oaks along the banks of the Guadalupe River. Slung long and wide, the house was a two-story limestone, marked with an abundance of windows so that no vista was left unframed. A wide veranda stretched endlessly around the structure, dotted with wicker furniture, green ferns, and whitewashed porch swings. In the small front yard stood an old iron kettle, filled with antique roses that matched those planted along the railing of the porch. A century-old boot scrape and horse tether stood next to the path leading to the flagstone skirt spread around the entrance to the porch.
Robin had seen this house a million times, but today, as she coasted into the circular drive at dusk, she thought it looked strangely hollow—the setting sun reflected on the second floor windows, giving the house orange eyes and a gaping black mouth where the front door stood open.
As she climbed out of her car and gathered her things, she could see the familiar shapes of her sisters rise from two wicker chairs and move across the porch, Rachel distinguished from Rebecca by the wild curl of her long hair and the glowing tip of her cigarette. Rebecca, sleek and slender, had her hair pulled back—she was the first one to come off the porch, walking gracefully but purposefully.
It was the determination in her stride that unnerved Robin. She felt a small panic in the pit of her belly—she wasn’t ready to do this, or to hear it, or to feel it, and realized with surprise that her hands were shaking. God, this was so unlike her. She was always the one who was so put together, so sure of herself. Everyone said that of all of them, she most resembled Dad.
“Hey,” Robin said lamely as Rebecca came around the side of the car.
Rebecca responded by taking Robin into her arms and hugging her tight. “I’m so glad you’re here.”
She let go, grabbed a bag from Robin’s hand, and stepped aside.
Rachel dropped her smoke and ground it out with the heel of her boot. “Hey, Robbie,” she said.
Robin picked up her purse and put her arm around Rachel’s shoulders, giving her a gentle squeeze as they followed Rebecca up the flagstone path to the house. “Rach, you’re still smoking?” she asked, as the house loomed larger and larger before her.
“Sometimes,” Rachel answered sheepishly.
“Oh yeah?” Robin stopped, looked up at the windows of the master suite. “Then give me one.”
Rachel obediently fished a smoke from her pocket and handed it to her, then offered up a light. Robin grimaced at the taste, but welcomed the soothing race of smoke through her blood. In front of them, Rebecca dropped Robin’s bag at her feet, looked up at the master suite, too, and shook her head. “I can’t believe this,” she said, gesturing for Rachel to give her a cigarette, too. “This just all seems so unreal.”
Robin glanced at Rebecca, who shrugged as she inhaled, then daintily let the smoke escape her lips. It was a fact that Rebecca could, just by breathing, be the most elegant woman on the planet. She had that special air about her, as if she walked on spun gold—unlike Robin, who marched through life in army boots, kicking her way to clear a path, and Rachel, who pretty much floated along, barefoot and picking flowers.
“So how are Mom and Dad? I mean . . . is everything okay?” Robin asked.
Rebecca settled her pale blue gaze on her. “They are doing remarkably well. It’s weird. It’s like the last fifteen years didn’t happen.”
“That is so weird,” Rachel murmured.
Robin’s sentiments exactly. She took another drag from her smoke. “So has he told you anything? Like what his doctors are saying? H-how . . . long?” she forced herself to ask.
The question silenced them all; Rachel looked nervously at the ground. Rebecca, the rock, calmly shook her head. “He wanted to wait for you. He hasn’t said any more than what he told us on the phone—just that it’s bad.”
“Maybe he’s exaggerating. You know how some people are—they think things are a lot worse than they really are?” Rachel said, her hopeful expression dissolving with Rebecca and Robin’s pointed looks. “I mean, how bad can it be?” she asked no one in particular, tossing the cigarette aside. “God, is there any liquor out here? A beer at least?”
The three women looked up at the second-story windows of the master suite, none of them having the guts to take the next step forward.
From the sitting room of the master suit, Aaron watched as his three beautiful daughters gathered on the drive below him. “Since when do my children smoke?” he demanded gruffly as Rachel handed Robin a cigarette.
Seated in a comfortable armchair, Bonnie lowered the book she was quietly reading. “They don’t. At least not usually. Rachel can’t seem to kick the habit completely. When she feels stressed, she smokes.”
“I didn’t know Rachel smoked.”
Bonnie shot him a sidelong glance. Aaron knew that look; it was the there’s-a-lot-you-don’t-know look she had perfected in the last couple of weeks. He sighed, sat in a chair next to Bonnie, and closed his eyes, unable to shake the ill effects of the aggressive drug therapy.
“Why don’t you rest a bit? I’ll go see about the girls, then bring you some tea in a while.”
Bonnie, ah, Bonnie. How I’ve let you down. Aaron felt her hand on his forehead, opened his eyes, and took her hand, pressing his lips to her palm. “Thanks, but I’m good.”
Bonnie smiled; it was the same, sweetly beatific smile that had captivated him more than thirty years ago on that dirt football field in West Texas. No matter what had gone on between them—and the Lord God knew there had been a lot—he still loved her, and in moments like these, desperately so. It was just like her, Aaron thought, as he watched her put her book away, that in spite of their estrangement, she had come when he’d called. Her life in California had taken her down a new and different path, but they had never lost touch, neither of them able to completely let go, the bond between them amazingly resilient. She had, instinctively, felt his horror when he’d made that pathetic call to her, and had come to New York immediately to be with him through the surgery and first rounds of radiation and chemotherapy. She’d put the many years of discord and strife aside and had stepped into the old role of partner and soul mate. She had consulted with his doctors, had gotten up in the night to make sure he was okay, had filled him with comfort foods that he could not keep down, and memories and kindness that he could.
He would never have made it this far without her.
When the shock and trauma of aggressive treatment to his body had begun to wear him thin, it had been Aaron’s request that they come to the ranch to recuperate. Both of them had wanted some detachment from the world at large to put their minds and arms and hearts around the devastation of a sentence of six months to two years, and while they had not been at the ranch together for many years, it seemed the place to be. Aaron in particular needed to be in a place where he could be silent, in solitude, where he could think of all things that could not be left undone before he was gone.
And Bonnie, resolute, had come with him, her mouth set in determination as she gripped his hand on that interminably long flight from New York where he had, for the first time in his life, made use of the barf bag. Twice.
Fortunately, at the ranch, he had begun to improve, regaining some strength. They began every day as if it were his last. They did not call for the usual staff members to join them, preferring to spend the days alone. They took walks in the morning as far as Aaron could go, looked through old family albums and letters in the afternoon, drank from his cellar of very fine wines, and spent their evenings on the porch swing looking at the stars.
More importantly, they talked like they hadn’t talked in years. About all of it, their lives, their daughters. About all the things that they had seen grow and blossom between them, then wilt and die, and how exactly it had all happened, beginning with a clear and calm night on the Texas caprock. That was the night of the spring dance of their junior year at Ralls High, when Bonnie had willingly given herself to his wandering hands and neither of them had ever been the same again.
In fact, that night, and all its discoveries, had sparked the struggle within Aaron to be a man—he could still remember how fiercely he wanted to take Bonnie and all that she was, run away with her, find some place where the world did not exist except for the two of them.
Aaron’s father, however, saw a different vision for him. There was no one else to leave the family farm to, save Aaron’s sister and whomever she might eventually marry. The more Aaron struggled with that plan, the less anyone in his family seemed to understand why or how he could leave generations of farming behind. Only Bonnie had understood his need to see the world, to make his way by himself and escape the drudgery of cotton farming.
So in the weeks that followed their graduation from high school, when Bonnie had impulsively packed a bag and run off with him to Dallas to help him make their fortune, they had sealed their bond and their fate for the rest of their lives.
His father had died a bitter man and his sister’s husband, a no-account dirt farmer from Crosby, had reaped the reward of Aaron’s decision. It was, nevertheless, a decision Aaron never regretted.
At first, it had been very hard. Yet at the same time, it had been very good between him and Bonnie—they had been held together by young love and poverty. It was by chance that a foreman at Grantham Engines had taken a look at Aaron’s application, saw that he knew how to operate a cotton gin, and put him behind the wheel of a semi, driving line-haul between Dallas and San Antonio. With a little money, Aaron and Bonnie had found a tiny one-bedroom clapboard house on the east side of Dallas, and they were happy.
When Robin came along, Aaron immediately fell in love with her dark blue eyes and dark curls. He had worshipped that baby doll, had taken her everywhere he could, doting on her. Two years later, the same year Aaron bought his first truck, Rebecca had joined them, another beautiful baby girl with crystalline blue eyes. By the time Rachel was born three years after that, laughing and gurgling beneath a head full of black fuzz, he had a dozen of his own trucks running between Dallas and San Antonio.
Lear Transport had been born along with his daughters, but grew much faster. Aaron intuitively understood the fundamentals of a success in the business, and he quickly earned a reputation for delivering freight fast and cheap. As the business grew, so did his ambition. He moved the family to Houston to take advantage of the transatlantic shipping lanes that ended there, successfully bidding on several over the-road contracts to move a substantial amount of ocean cargo that did not end up on the rails. By the time he moved to New York and added air transport to LTI, Bonnie had long gone.
At what point, exactly, the arguments had started, he could no longer remember, but it seemed that was all there was in those last few years together. According to Bonnie, he was never home, never interested in them, had left the raising of their daughters to her. She never understood that building an empire for those three girls took all his energy. Bonnie was right about one thing, however—both of them had left the girls flailing about, throwing wealth and more wealth at them as they tried to sort out the mess of their marriage. The result? In spite of all outward appearances to the contrary, they had managed to raise three daughters who each carried the burden of their parents’ failure in their own way.
For Robin, as Bonnie had so brilliantly pointed out, it was the need for his acceptance and approval. She’d flailed about until Aaron took her on at LTI. Except that he didn’t really take her on. He didn’t teach her the business like he should have, but had given her a cushy position that had nothing to do with the running of company. She was a pretty woman, eye candy with a powerful name, and she made a great asset for entertaining his bigger accounts around the world. But in the last couple of years, as Robin had sought more influence and responsibility at LTI, he had found her business decisions to lack the maturity that solid experience would have given her. She was, in a word, a management disaster.
Rebecca, on the other hand, had, for reasons Aaron would never understand, latched on to the first loser to pay her compliments. It was mind-boggling to him, for Rebecca was the most beautiful and refined of his daughters. She could have had any man with the mere crook of a finger, but she had chosen Bud Reynolds. Bud wasn’t all bad—he was perhaps one of the best high school wide receivers Houston had ever seen—but he was a sorry excuse for a man. When Aaron had left Bonnie, Rebecca had latched on to him and held tight all the way to college, foregoing what had all the markings of a promising career in the arts to be the bastard’s doormat. Now, Bonnie said, Rebecca drifted from one social event to the next, miserable in a marriage to a man who would fuck his neighbor’s wife in the garage while she was inside, nursing their son.
And of course there was Rachel, sweet Rachel, the most hapless child a man might hope to have. She was still in some nebulous graduate program at Brown University, the same graduate program in which she had been enrolled four years now. The subject of her study? Ancient British languages. He had to shake his head in wonder every time he thought of it. The one time he had asked her what she intended to do with her graduate degree in languages—ancient British languages at that, the poor girl had blinked and looking very bewildered. “Well . . . research,” she’d said. She seemed to have no direction, no ambition, other than to poke around musty old manuscripts.
Yet Aaron continued to bankroll her.
It astounded him in an odd way, because his three daughters had grown up in the lap of luxury, had never wanted for a damn thing. But each of them was as forlorn in their own private way as if he had abandoned them at birth. If the goddamned doctors were right, he had precious little time left to right that wrong.
That knowledge had created in him a desperate sense of urgency like he had never felt in his life. If there was one thing he had to do before he left this earth, it was to make them face the voids in their lives, make them understand what was truly precious. Teach them to stand up to life and meet it head-on.
Aaron could hear the girls downstairs now, a wisp of nervous laughter floating up to him. He stood, pausing a moment to make sure nothing in him was going to object, his gaze falling to a picture of a younger Bonnie hanging on the wall of the bedroom study. It might be too late for them, but it wasn’t too late for his girls.
Determined, Aaron grit his teeth and walked slowly out of the room to tell his daughters that he didn’t have long to live.
Telling his daughters he was dying was the hardest thing Aaron had ever had to do. Judging by Bonnie’s drawn expression, it hadn’t been any easier for her. The girls had each received the news in characteristic form—Rachel disbelieving, waiting for a punch line that would never come; Rebecca, unobtrusive, off to one side, softly crying; and Robin, defiant, angrily insisting that he seek another opinion, hire the best doctors—fight it, Dad!
If only they knew. If only he could impart to them how hard he fought the battle being waged within him, how he begged for his life from a God whom he had not addressed in years. And then one night, the enormity of his fate had descended upon him and he had, miraculously and calmly, accepted what he must. Not that he intended to go down without a fight, no sir, and in fact, he and Bonnie were looking into alternative treatments. But something was different now. His thoughts had turned from himself to those around him.
“I am worried about them,” he said to Bonnie. They were sitting in silence in the dining room, both of them lost in thought.
Bonnie smiled sadly. “Me, too. Especially Robbie. She’s so headstrong. I worry how she’ll do . . . you know, after.”
Aaron paled.
“It’s just that she is so angry, so full of frustration. And I don’t know how to help her, I have never really known how, because I’m just not . . . you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Just that—ever since she was a little girl, Robbie has wanted to be just like you. And then Rebecca and Rachel . . .” Bonnie sighed, looked away.
Aaron could almost hear what she was thinking—how would she manage after he was gone? Frankly, he had wondered the same thing. Not that Bonnie wasn’t a good mother, but there was so much those three women had to learn, so much from which they had been sheltered. Not one of them seemed to be in control of their own lives, but why should he expect them to be? After all, he had controlled it for them from the moment of their birth.
And over the course of the next two days, Aaron became increasingly convinced that he had to do something drastic, had to break the pattern of their dependence on him. They were spoiled, unrealistic about life in some ways, self-indulgent in their own ways, and at times, self-centered.
Robbie was definitely the ringleader of their little band, and Aaron couldn’t help but think of the old adage, the blind leading the blind. When she wasn’t glued to her cell phone, she was stomping about, insisting to Bonnie that she couldn’t leave the office unattended for a few days, because they wouldn’t know what to do. What she obviously did not realize was that her office, the little four-member team he had allowed her to set up in Houston, was, in the greater scheme of things, so inconsequential to LTI that it was almost laughable. Her operation was window dressing, nothing more. Evan Iverson ran the Texas operation in addition to the corporate company. Robbie hardly knew how the company operated, no thanks to Aaron. It was something Evan had pointed out to him on more than one occasion, and something he had patently ignored . . . until now. Wasn’t Robbie the logical one to carry on in his stead? Had he thought himself so invincible that he would never need a successor? Worse, what sort of disservice had he done his own daughter?
And there was Rebecca, so like her mother, who called home every hour, or so it seemed, to check on her son, Grayson, and to see if Bud the Bastard had left a message for her. Of course he hadn’t. Yet she continued to call, continued to hope for the affection of a man so far beneath her that it made Aaron cringe every time she picked up the phone.
And his baby, Rachel. She had gained a few pounds since he’d last seen her. He pictured her in some stuffy library room, a package of Oreos on her lap as she leafed through some ancient manuscript. Rachel had always been the dreamer, and while he loved that about her, the girl was her own worst enemy. Yet she was quick to point to her boyfriend when she felt challenged—another winner, Aaron thought disgustedly. Myron was a professor at Brown, who encouraged her study of ancient British literature with an absurd enthusiasm.
Aaron listened to his daughters over those two days, observed them, felt their attention returning to their own lives, away from his fleeting mortality. The more he glimpsed their lives, devoid of any meaningful relationships, the less he could bear it. As sick and tired as he was, his patience had worn very thin. By the time dinner was served on Wednesday night, Aaron was feeling a sort of panic that only a dying man can feel. Something had to be done. The chicks needed to be pushed from their feathered nests and taught to fly, or be eaten by stronger predators.
His idea was drastic and perhaps cold, but desperate times called for desperate measures.
Chapter Three
It was Wednesday evening when all hell broke loose, beginning when Robin came back from a late-afternoon run. She was standing in the entry, speaking through short breaths to Darren Fogerty on her cell phone when Dad made his way downstairs, taking the steps very carefully, as if his whole body hurt.
“I’ll be straight with you, Robin,” Darren was saying. “I’ve got some other options on the table. Now you have guaranteed your transport times, but the rate is a little higher than I was hoping.”