“He wouldn’t give me a job.”
“Oh, I think he might,” Weldon argued. Then as if an unpleasant thought had come to mind, he frowned and snagged his beer. “Sometimes he takes a special interest in a kid from town, helps him out with jobs and loans for college. That sort of thing.”
“Helps him out?”
“Or her,” Weldon said.
“Has he ever helped out a girl before?” she asked, suddenly uneasy. She’d felt the weight of Mr. Fitzpatrick’s stare at company picnics or in church and it made her feel uncomfortable.
“I don’t know.” He reached for his pack of cigarettes, found it empty and crumpled the cellophane wrapper in his big hand. He settled on his chewing tobacco instead and twisted open the can. “Come to think of it, I can’t say I ever heard of him working with a girl.”
“So why would he want to help me?”
“Maybe ’cause you’re my daughter.” Her father contemplated his tin of tobacco. “Who knows? I’m just sayin’ we can’t afford to look a gift horse in the mouth.” Placing the tobacco next to his gum, he rubbed his lip pensively. “You didn’t win yourself any points by sidin’ with Jackson Moore, but then, Thomas has probably figured it’s time to let bygones be bygones.”
Carlie wasn’t convinced. Thomas Fitzpatrick’s memory was long and hard. Few people ever crossed him and though she respected him as her father’s employer, there was something about Fitzpatrick that bothered her. She hadn’t admitted as much to Ben, of course, when the subject had come up because Fitzpatrick had been good to her family. However, the truth was that she still felt uncomfortable around him. He looked at her a few seconds too long when he didn’t think she noticed and his gaze had drifted from her face to her chest and lower more than once.
“Well, I think I’ll check on the news,” her father said, grabbing his rifle and walking inside, but Carlie watched as the night turned black and she shivered despite the day’s heat that lingered.
Chapter Four
“YOU’RE DOING WHAT?” Ben couldn’t believe his ears.
“I’m gonna marry Sam,” Nadine replied, lifting her chin a notch, daring him to argue with her before she turned her attention back to the dishes in the sink.
“Why?”
She didn’t answer, just kept wiping the plates and stacking them in the drainer. She and Ben still lived in the little house by the river with their dad. Kevin had a place of his own, and their mother... Ben didn’t want to think of Donna Powell, how she’d left her family all because of Hayden Garreth Monroe III and his scheme to fleece the Powell family out of all their life savings.
Hate burned through his veins and he stared past her through the screen door. Outside, Bonanza, his father’s yellow lab, lay in the shade of a maple tree and a bottlebrush bloomed along the porch. The garden, once a source of his mother’s pride, was overgrown and dry. Clouds filled the sky and the air filtering through the patched screen door was sultry and hot.
The Powells had once been a happy family. Ben remembered his mother playing the piano and singing as she worked in the house they had in town. She spent her afternoons in the library, earning a little extra income, but her hours had increased when George had sold their house and moved out here, by the river, to this sorry two-storied home that they rented.
The money from their home in town, the savings earmarked for retirement and children’s educations, had been invested with the almighty himself: Hayden Garreth Monroe III. Even Monroe’s rich brother-in-law, Thomas Fitzpatrick, was part of the scheme to invest in oil wells that turned out to spit only worthless sand. Everything the family had ever saved had been lost, Kevin’s dreams had died an agonizing death and he’d lost his scholarship.
Kevin had felt he had no choice but to drop out of college and follow in his father’s weary footsteps by working for Garreth Monroe. Everything that had ever gone wrong with the Powell family could be laid at the feet of the Monroes and yet Nadine had seen fit to fall in love with the heir to the Monroe wealth—Hayden Garreth Monroe IV. It hadn’t worked out, of course, and Ben was glad, though it would have been sweet irony to see Nadine marry the guy and get a little of their money back.
But Garreth had been engaged to a woman of his social standing. Ben had hoped Nadine had gotten over the jerk, but to marry Sam Warne, a boy she didn’t love? That wasn’t an answer, it was desperation. “I don’t get it,” he told her as she wiped her hands on the dish towel.
“Nothing to get.” She snapped the wet towel and folded it over the handle of the oven door.
“You set a date?”
“Not yet.”
“Good!” Ben kicked out a chair and sat down, glaring at her stiff spine. “You can’t marry the guy just because Monroe’s not interested.”
Her lips compressed and when she looked at him her green eyes sparked with self-righteous fury. “We all have our ways of getting out, don’t we, Ben?”
He didn’t answer.
“Didn’t you go visit the army recruiter today?”
“How’d you know?” All of a sudden, he was on the defensive. That was the trouble with arguing with Nadine; she had an uncanny way of turning the tables on you.
“You don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to figure it out. The recruiter called today, confirming an appointment on...” She ran her finger along the calendar stuck onto the wall next to the kitchen phone. “Let’s see...Friday at—”
“I know when.”