He slammed the trailer door so hard that the structure shook. Taking a soda from the refrigerator in the narrow kitchen, he stood in the wedge of cool air and drank half the soda in one swallow. He rolled the cold can against his forehead. “Dammit.”
He didn’t welcome anything in his life that made him think or feel. Seven years ago, he had officially stopped feeling. More than his wife and son had been interred in those graves. He had buried his sentience, too. Nothing except his body had continued to exist. On the inside, he was hollow and empty. He liked it that way. He planned to keep it that way.
He had walked away from the house where Debra and Charlie had died, leaving everything behind. From that day on, he had kept himself detached from the world. He owned no property except for the few essentials that he could carry with him in his pickup. He remained indifferent to other people. He hadn’t stayed anywhere long enough to cultivate friendships. He hadn’t wanted any.
He had learned the hard way that no matter how well you did what was expected of you, no matter how good a person you tried to be, you still got your teeth kicked in. You were punished for wrongdoings you weren’t even aware of. Debts were always collected, and the tariff was the lives of the people you loved.
From this cruel lesson, Dillon had developed a logical philosophy: Don’t love.
His life was a safe, painless void, and that’s the way he wanted it to stay. He didn’t need a sap of a dog forming an attachment to him. He didn’t want to care about this job to the extent of being protective and possessive and to thinking of it as “his plant.” He sure as hell didn’t need a woman getting under his skin.
Cursing, he slammed the refrigerator door. Such was life. There was a dumb mutt curled up on his front step, licking his hand every time he went through the door. He was already as protective as a mama bear toward the TexTile plant, and ground hadn’t even been broken yet. And he was angry at Jade Sperry. Anger was an emotion. He didn’t want to feel any emotion where she was concerned.
After weeks of conferences and meetings in New York with men in Burberry suits, men who had never had blisters on their hands, he couldn’t wait for the actual construction to get under way. Now, it seemed that, just when he had allowed himself to get emotionally involved in his work for the first time in years, the project might be scrapped.
A fool could have predicted that Patchett wouldn’t roll over and play dead when another industry came to town, placing his business in a distant second place. Jade Sperry was no fool. She had known beforehand that she would make an enemy out of Patchett. After the words they had exchanged at the town meeting, Dillon believed that she had been enemies with him for a long time—with his son, too.
Old man Patchett had said, “Where in hell did you get the nerve to show your face in this town?” That suggested a scandal. Had Jade left Palmetto in disgrace?
Dillon drained his soda and crumpled the can in his fist. He couldn’t imagine the competent, calm, cool, and collected Ms. Sperry being involved in a scandal, especially one of a licentious nature. He didn’t want to imagine her in any context, but she frequently figured into his thoughts.
That was natural, he assured himself. She was his boss. He would be thinking about his boss if his boss were a man. If his boss were a man, however, he wouldn’t be having the same thoughts as those he often entertained about Jade.
He had been physically faithful to Debra for almost a year following her death. Then, one cold, lonely night in one of the plains states—Montana? Idaho?—he had picked up a woman in a bar and taken her to a motel room. Afterward, he was disgusted with himself and more lonely than before. He cried for Debra in dry, racking sobs. In spite of his emotional disability, his physical appetites recovered and grew to be strong and healthy again. The second time he took a woman to bed, he had less difficulty dealing with it. The third time, it was almost easy. By then he had developed the ability to disassociate the physical act from his conscience. His body could be stimulated without arousing his guilt. He could achieve pleasurable release without involving his heart and mind.
His aloof manner had made him even more appealing to women than before. They found his latent hostility exciting. His wounded demeanor beckoned to their maternal instincts. None, however, had appeased anything except his sex drive. He was just as haunted when he left them as before. Names and faces were never recorded in his memory.
A name and a face were now recurring with frequency in his thoughts. That bothered him considerably.
The mutt outside began to bark. “Shut up,” Dillon hollered through the door. Then he heard a car motor and pulled the door open. Jade Sperry alighted from a shiny new pickup truck with the TexTile logo stenciled on the door.
“Does he bite?” she asked, nodding toward the dog.
“I don’t know. He’s not mine.”
“I don’t think he knows that. He’s already guarding you.”
Bending at the waist, she beckoned the dog forward by making kissing noises with her mouth. “Come here, pooch.” The dog stopped barking, whimpered a few times, then crept down the steps toward her. She let him smell her hand. He licked it. She scratched him behind the ears.
“Some watchdog,” Dillon remarked drolly.
Straightening up, Jade tossed him a set of keys to the truck. “I hope you like it.” He snatched the keys out of the air with one fist. “It’s yours to drive for as long as you’re on the job.”
“I’ve already got a truck.”
She glanced at his battered pickup. “That’s for personal use. Anytime you’re representing TexTile, use the company truck, please.”
“Yes, ma’am. Anything else?”
She climbed the steps to the trailer. The dog trailed behind her, wagging his tail. She took a gasoline credit card from her purse and handed it to Dillon. “Use this, too.”
“Thanks.”
“The bills will be sent directly to me.”
“They sure as hell better be.”
He was being rude and obnoxious, but it bothered him to take gifts from a woman. It reminded him of being tutored by Mrs. Chandler on how to make love. Do this, do that. Not so hard. Harder. Slower. Faster. Dillon had been a quick learner and, before long, had mastered his own technique. He liked it much better when he had the upper hand.