He didn't know what he would have done without Alex those first desperate months when he had been scrambling to solidify his position with the stockholders and various boards of directors. Alex had guided him through the rocky shoals, fought with him for every advantage, done whatever he could to help with Noelle and Monica. Alex had grieved, too, for the loss of his best friend. Guy and Alex had grown up together, been as close as brothers. He had been stunned that Guy would actually turn his back on his family for the sake of Renee Devlin, and had left without even saying good-bye.
In some ways, Monica was stronger now than she had been before. She wasn't as emotionally needy, so dependent on others. She had quietly apologized to Gray for her suicide attempt, and assured him that she would never do something that stupid again. But if she was stronger, she was also more remote, as if that paroxysm of pain and grief had burned out her excess of emotion, leaving her calm but also distant. She had interested herself in his work and gradually became an excellent assistant, one on whom he could rely with every faith in her judgment and ability, but she was almost as reclusive as Noelle. Monica did go out into the community; she was particular about her appearance and got her hair styled regularly, and made an effort to dress well. She hadn't dated for years, though. At first Gray thought she was embarrassed by her suicide attempt, and would relax as the scars faded. She hadn't, though, and eventually he had realized that it wasn't embarrassment that had kept her at home. Monica simply wasn't interested in socializing with anyone. She would do it at a business function, but on a personal level she refused all invitations, and steadfastly turned aside his suggestions that she reenter the dating scene. All he could do to bolster her confidence was show her how he trusted her in their work, and pay her a good salary so she would have a tangible proof of her worth, and a sense of independence.
Last year, though, the new sheriff, Michael McFane, had somehow talked her into going out with him. Monica had been seeing him fairly regularly since then. Gray had been so relieved, he could have cried. Maybe, just maybe, Monica had a shot at a normal life, after all.
No, he would never forget what the Devlins had done to his family. And with luck, he would never see Faith Devlin again.
Thank you. Those had been the only words she'd uttered, other than to ask who was at the door. She had been cool and enigmatic, watching him as if faintly amused, her poise unshaken by his threat. It hadn't been a threat, though, but a promise. He would have had her escorted out of the parish for a second time if she hadn't left on her own. And he would have had to call the sheriff, because if he had touched her himself, he would have lost control, and he had known it.
She was a woman now, not the kid he remembered. She had always been different from the rest of the Devlins, a fey woodland creature who had grown up to be as much of a temptation as her mother. Some poor fool had evidently thought so, because the fact that her last name was now Hardy meant that she was married, though she hadn't been wearing a wedding ring. He had noticed her hands, slim, elegant, well kept, and been cynically amused by the absence of a wedding band. Renee hadn't worn one, either; it had cramped her style. Evidently her daughter felt the same way, at least when she was traveling sans the unknown Mr. Hardy.
She had looked prosperous, so, like a cat, she had landed on her feet. Gray wasn't surprised. It had always been a particular talent of the Devlin women that they could always find someone to support them. Her husband must be a good provider, the poor sap. He wondered how often she left her husband at home while she rambled.
And he wondered why she had come back to Prescott. There was nothing for her here, no family, no friends. The Devlins hadn't had friends, only victims. She had to have known she wouldn't be welcomed back with open arms. Probably she had thought she could slip in without anyone being the wiser, but folks around here had long memories, and her resemblance to her mother was too marked. Reuben had recognized her as soon as she'd taken off her sunglasses.
Well, it didn't make any difference. He had rid the parish of the Devlin vermin for the second time, and with a hell of a lot less trouble than it had been twelve years ago. He just wished she hadn't come back at all, hadn't revived the potent memory of his unwilling response to her, hadn't replaced his image of her as a young girl with the image of her as she was now, a woman. He wished he had never heard her soft, cool voice saying, "Thank you."
Faith drove steadily along the dark road, not letting herself stop even though her insides were shaking like jelly. She refused to let her reaction get the best of her. She had learned the hard way what Gray Rouillard thought of her, dealt with the shock and pain years ago. She would not let him hurt her again, or get the best of her. She hadn't had any choice but to leave the motel, because she had seen the ruthless determination in his eyes and known he hadn't been bluffing about having her thrown out. Why should he balk at that, when he hadn't balked at having her entire family removed? Her calm acquiescence didn't mean, however, that he had won.
The threat of the sheriff hadn't frightened her. What had her both scared and angry was the intensity of her reaction to Gray. Even after all those years, after what he had done to her family, she was as helpless as a Pavlovian dog to stop her response to him. It was infuriating. She hadn't rebuilt her life just to let him reduce her to the status of trash, to be gotten rid of as soon as possible.
The day had long passed when she could be intimidated. The quiet, vulnerable child she had been had died one hot summer night twelve years ago. Faith was still a fairly quiet person, but she had learned how to survive, how to use her own steely will and determination to get what she wanted out of life. She had even become confident enough to indulge in her redheaded temper from time to time. If he had wanted to get rid of her, Gray had made a mistake in forcing the issue. He would soon learn that what looked like a retreat just meant she was adjusting her position for attack from another angle.
She couldn't let him run her off again. Not only was it a matter of honor, she still hadn't found out what had happened to Guy. She couldn't forget about it, couldn't let it go.
A plan began to form in her agile mind, and a smile touched her lips as she drove. Gray would find himself outflanked before he knew it. She was going to move to Prescott, and there wasn't a thing he could do to stop it, because she would be ensconced before he knew it. It was past time she faced all of her old ghosts, cemented her own self-respect. She would prove herself to the town that had looked down on her, and then she could forget about the past.
And she wanted to prove to Gray that he had been wrong about her from the beginning. She wanted that so fiercely that she could taste it, the victory sweet in her mouth. Because she had loved him so intensely as a child, because he had been the stern, ruthless judge and executioner, so to speak, on the night when he had run them out of the parish, he had assumed far too much importance in her mind. It shouldn't be that way, she should have been able to forget him, but the fact was there: She wouldn't/*?*?/ like anything other than trash until Gray was forced to admit that she was a decent, moral, successful person.
She didn't just want to find out what had happened to Guy. Maybe it had begun as that, or maybe she had hidden the truth from herself, but now she knew.
She wanted to go home.
Seven.
"Yes, that's right. I want everything handled in the agency's name. Thank you, Mr. Bible. I knew I could count on you." Faith's smile was warm in her voice, something Mr. Bible must have heard, because his reply made her laugh aloud. "You'd better be careful," she teased. "Remember, I know your wife."
She hung up the phone and her assistant, Margot Stanley, gave her a rueful look. "Was that old goat flirting with you?" Margot asked.
"Of course," Faith said good-naturedly. "He always does. It gives him a thrill if he thinks he's being wicked, but he's actually a sweet old guy."
Margot snorted. "Sweet? Harley Bible's as sweet as a rattlesnake. Let's face it, you have a way with men."
Faith restrained herself from an unladylike snort. If Margot had seen Gray run her out of town again she wouldn't think Faith had such a "way" with men. "I'm just nice to him, is all. It's nothing special. And he can't be as bad as you say he is, or he wouldn't still be in business."
"He's still in business because the old fart is a smart businessman," Margot said. "He has an evil genius for sniffing out prime property right before it becomes prime, and buying it up for a song. Damn him, people only go to him because he has the land they want."
Faith grinned. "Like you said, a smart businessman. He's always been as nice as he can be to me."
She might have restrained herself from snorting, but Margot had no such inhibition. "I've never seen a man who wasn 't nice to you. How many times have you been stopped for speeding?"
"All total?"
"Just this past year will do."
"Ummm... four times, I think. But that's unusual; it's just that I've been traveling so much this past year."
"Uh-huh. And how many times have you gotten a ticket?"
"None," Faith admitted, rolling her eyes. "That's just coincidence. Not once have I tried to talk my way out of it."
"You don't have to, and that's my point. The cop walks up to your car, you hand him your license and say, 'I'm sorry, I know I was flying,' and he ends up handing your license back and telling you to slow down, because he'd hate to see your pretty face all cut up in an accident."
Faith burst out laughing, because Margot had been in the car with her when she had been stopped that time. The Texas state trooper in question had been a burly gentleman of the old school, with a thick gray mustache and a drawl as slow as molasses. "That's the only time a cop has said anything about my 'pretty face,' quote and unquote."
"But they were all thinking it. Admit it. Have you ever gotten a speeding ticket?"
"Well, no." She controlled her amusement. Margot had gotten two speeding tickets within the past six months, and now was having to stick strictly to the speed limit, to her great resentment, because a third ticket would result in the temporary loss of her driver's license.
"You can bet neither one of the cops who stopped me said anything about slowing down before I got my pretty face all cut up," Margot muttered. "No sirree, they were pure business. 'Let me see your license, ma'am. You were doing sixty-five in a fifty-five zone, ma'am. Your court date will be such and such, or you can mail in your fine by such and such date and waive your right to a court appearance.'" She sounded so disgusted that Faith had to turn away to keep from laughing in her face. Margot didn't see anything funny about her two speeding tickets.
"I'd never had a ticket before in my life," Margot continued, scowling. Faith had heard it many times before, so that she could almost say the words in unison with her friend. "I've been driving for half my life without so much as a parking ticket, and then all of a sudden the damn things seem to be coming out of the woodwork."
"You make it sound as if you could paper your walls with them."
"Don't laugh. Two tickets are pretty damn serious, and a third one is a catastrophe. I'll be poking along at fifty-five for two years. Do you know how much this throws off a schedule? I have to get up earlier and leave earlier, everywhere I go, because it takes me so long to get there!" She sounded so aggrieved that Faith gave up the struggle and began giggling helplessly.
Margot was a joy. She was thirty-six, divorced, and had absolutely no intention of staying that way. Faith didn't know what she would have done without her. When she had finally scraped up enough money to buy the agency, she had known how to handle the customer part of the business, but despite her college degree in administration, there was a great deal of difference between textbooks and real life. Margot had been assistant to J. B. Holladay, the previous owner of Holladay Travel, and had been glad to handle the same duties for Faith. Her experience had been invaluable. She had kept Faith from making some serious mistakes in financial matters.
More than that, Margot had become a friend. She was a tall, lean woman with bleached blond hair and a dramatic flair for clothes. She made no bones about being in search of a new husband "Men are a lot of trouble, honey, but they do have their good points, one big one in particular" and was so good-natured about it that she had no trouble getting dates. Her social life would have exhausted the strongest debutante. For her to claim that Faith had a way with men, when Faith seldom went out with anyone and she herself was seldom at home, was pushing it a bit, in Faith's opinion.
"Don't laugh," Margot warned. "You're going to be stopped by a female cop one of these days, and that's when your luck will run out."
"That's all it is, luck."
"Sure it is." Margot abandoned that subject and gave her a curious look. "Now, what's this about a house in Godforsaken Louisiana?"
"Prescott," Faith corrected, smiling. "It's a little town north of Baton Rouge, almost at the Mississippi state line."
Margot snorted again. "That's what I said. Godforsaken."
"It's my hometown. I was born there."
"You don't say. And you actually admit that out loud?" Margot asked with all the incredulity of a true Dallas native.
"I'm going home," Faith said softly. "I want to live there." It wasn't a step she took lightly; she was going back with the full knowledge that the Rouillards would do everything they could to cause trouble for her. She was deliberately placing herself once more in proximity with Gray, and the danger of it made her lie awake at nights. Besides trying to find out what had happened to his father, all those years ago, she had a lot of ghosts to face, and Gray was the biggest one. He had tormented her, in one way or another, for most of her life, and she was still caught in the helpless childhood whirl of emotions where he was concerned. In her mind he was omnipotent, bigger than life, with the power to either destroy her or exalt her, and her last meeting with him had done nothing to dilute that impres-siqn. She needed to see him as a normal man, meet him on equal footing as an adult, rather than a vulnerable, terrified young girl. She didn't want him to have this power over her; she wanted to get over him, once and for all.
"It was that trip to Baton Rouge that did it, wasn't it? You got that close and just couldn't stand it." Margot didn't know about what had happened twelve years ago, didn't know anything about Faith's childhood other than she'd been in foster care and was very fond of her foster parents. Faith had never talked about her past or her family.
"I guess it's true about roots."
Margot leaned back in her chair. "Are you going to sell the agency, or what?"
Startled, Faith stared at her. "Of course not!"
There was a subtle relaxation of Margot's expression, and abruptly Faith realized how alarming her decision could be for her employees. "Everything will go on just like before, with two minor exceptions," she said.
"How minor?" Margot asked suspiciously.
"Well, for starters, I'm going to be living in Prescott. When Mr. Bible finds a house for me, I'm going to put in a fax machine, a computer, and a photocopier, so I'll be as in touch, electronically speaking, as I am now."
"Okay, that's one. What's the other?"
"You're going to be in charge of all the offices. A district manager, you might say, except there's only one district and you're the only manager. You don't mind traveling, do you?" Faith asked, suddenly anxious. She had forgotten to consider that when making her plans.
Margot's eyebrows arched in disbelief. "Me, mind traveling? Honey, are you out of your ever-lovin' mind? I love to travel. You might say it expands my hunting area, and God knows I've already given most of the prime bucks around here their chance for a life of excitement. It's their hard luck if some lucky guy somewhere else takes me out of circulation. Besides, it's never a hardship to go to New Orleans."
"And Houston and Baton Rouge."
"Cowboys in Houston, Cajuns in Baton Rouge. Yum, yum," said Margot, licking her lips. "I'll have to come back to Dallas to rest."
Her plan fell smoothly into place, but then Faith went to a lot of trouble to make certain it did. She took a great deal of satisfaction in her efforts; she had been helpless at fourteen, but now she had resources of her own, and four years in the business community had given her a lot of contacts.
With Mr. Bible's help, she quickly located and settled on a small house for sale. It wasn't in Prescott, but was situated a couple of miles outside the town limits, on the edge of Rouillard land. Buying it put a sizable dent in her savings, but she paid for it in full, so Gray wouldn't be able to pull any strings with a mortgage holder and cause her any trouble. She knew enough now to foresee what steps he might take to make things rough for her, and counteract them. It gave her great pleasure to know she was outflanking him, and he wouldn't know anything about it until it was too late to stop her.
Very quietly, handling everything through the agency so her name didn't appear anywhere that it might cause an alert, she got the utilities turned on, the house cleaned, and gleefully shipped her furniture to her new home. Only a month after Gray had run her out of town for the second time, Faith pulled her car into the driveway of her house and .looked at it with extreme satisfaction.
She hadn't bought a pig in a poke. Mr. Bible had arranged for her to look at photos of the house, both inside and out. The house was small, only five rooms, and had been built back in the fifties, but it had been remodeled and modernized with an eye toward selling it. The previous owner had done a good job; the new front porch went all the way across the front, and there was a porch swing at one end to lure the new inhabitants out to enjoy the good weather. Ceiling fans at each end of the porch guaranteed that the heat would seldom become too uncomfortable. Each room inside also had a ceiling fan.
Both bedrooms were the same size, so she had chosen the back one for herself and converted the front one into a home office. There was only one bath, but she was only one person, so she didn't expect to have a problem with that. The living room and dining room were pleasant, but the best thing about the house was the kitchen. Evidently it had been remodeled several years before, because she couldn't imagine anyone spending the money to customize a kitchen when a more standard approach would have made the house just as saleable and cost a lot less. Someone had loved to cook. There was a six-eye cooktop, and built-in microwave and conventional ovens. Floor-to-ceiling cupboards all along one wall provided enough storage space for a year's worth of food, if she so chose. Instead of a work island, a six-foot butcher-block table occupied the middle of the room, providing plenty of work space for any culinary adventures. Faith wasn't that enthralled with cooking herself, but she liked the room. She was, in fact, thrilled with the entire house. It was the first place she had ever lived that belonged to her; apartments didn't count, because she had rented those. This house was hers. She had a real home.
She was fizzing with internal delight when she drove into Prescott to stock up on groceries, and take care of two necessary errands. Her first stop was the courthouse, where she bought a Louisiana tag for her car and applied for her Louisiana driver's license. Next was the grocery store. It was a subtle pleasure to shop without thought of cost in the same store where the owner had once followed her around every time she came in, eyeing every move she made to make certain she didn't slip something into her pocket and walk out without paying for it. Morgan had been his name, she remembered, Ed Morgan. His youngest son had been in Jodie's class.
Leisurely she selected fruit and produce, putting each selection in a plastic bag and twisting a green tie around the bag to close it. A gray-haired man in a stained apron came out of the stockroom carrying a crate of bananas, which he began arranging on an almost empty display shelf. He glanced at her, then looked back, his eyes widening in disbelief.
Though his hair was a great deal thinner and what was left had changed color, Faith had no trouble recognizing the man about whom she had just been thinking. "Hello, Mr. Morgan," she said pleasantly as she wheeled her buggy past him. "How are you?"
"R-Renee," he sputtered, and something in the way he said her mother's name made Faith freeze inside, and look at him with new eyes. God, not him, too! Well, why not? Guy Rouillard hadn't always been available, and Renee wasn't the type of woman to deny herself.
Her smile faded, and her voice cooled. "No, not Renee. I'm Faith, the youngest daughter." She was incensed on behalf of her childhood self, constantly humiliated by being treated like a thief, when all the while the man who had made such a production of following her around in the store had been part of the pack of hounds baying after her mother.
She pushed the buggy on down the aisle. It wasn't a large store, so she heard the flurry of voices as he hurried to tell his wife who she was. Not long afterward, she became aware that she had picked up a shadow. She didn't recognize the teenage boy, also wearing a long, stained apron, who blushed uncomfortably when she glanced at him, but it was obvious he'd been told to make certain everything went into the buggy and not her purse.
Her temper flared, but she held it in tight control and didn't allow herself to be hurried. When she had gotten everything on her list, she wheeled the buggy to the checkout counter and began unloading it.
Mrs. Morgan had been operating the cash register when Faith had entered the store, but Mr. Morgan had taken over the duty and his wife was watching intently from the small office cubicle. He eyed the groceries she was unloading. "You'd better have the money to pay for all this," he said unpleasantly. "I'm real careful who I take a check from."
"I always pay cash," Faith retorted coolly. "I'm careful who I let see the number of my checking account."
It was a moment before he realized he had been insulted in kind, and he flushed darkly. "Watch your mouth. I don't have to take that kind of lip in my own store, especially from the likes of you."
"Really." She gave him a smile and kept her voice low. "You weren't that particular when it came to my mother, were you?"
The flush faded as abruptly as it had come, leaving him pale and sweating, and he cast a swift glance toward his wife. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"Fine. See that the subject never comes up again." She pulled out her wallet and stood waiting. He began pulling the items down the counter, punching in prices as he went. Faith watched each price as he rang it up, and stopped him once. "Those apples are a dollar twenty-nine a pound, not a dollar sixty-nine."
He flushed again, furious that she had caught him in an error. At least, she assumed it was an error, rather than deliberate cheating. She would make certain she checked every item on the sales receipt before leaving the store. Let him get a taste of what it was like to be automatically assumed dishonest. Once she would have backed down, humiliated to the core, but those days were long past.
When he rang up the total, she opened her wallet and pulled out six twenty-dollar bills. Normally her grocery bill was less than half that, but she had let herself run out of a lot of things rather than going to the trouble of moving them, so she had to restock. She saw him eyeing the cash left in her wallet, and knew the story would fly around town that Faith Devlin had come back, and was flashing a roll that would choke a horse. No one would think she had come by it honestly.
She couldn't tell herself that she didn't care what the townspeople thought; she always had. That was one of the reasons she'd come back, to prove to them, and herself, that not all Devlins were trash. She knew in her mind that she was respectable, but she didn't know it in her heart yet, and wouldn't until the folks in her hometown accepted her. She couldn't divorce herself from Prescott; this town had helped shape who she was as a person, and her roots went deep. But wanting acceptance from the people here didn't mean she would let anyone insult her and get away with it. As a child she had been quietly obstinate about going her own way, but in the twelve years since she had lived here, she had grown up and learned how to stand up for herself.
The same boy who had followed her in the store carried the bags out to her car. He was about sixteen, she guessed; his joints still had the looseness of childhood, and his feet and hands were too big for the rest of him. "Are you related to the Morgans?" she asked as they walked across the parking lot, with him pushing the buggy.
He blushed at being personally addressed. "Uh, yeah. They're my grandparents."
"What's your name?"
"Jason."
"I'm Faith Hardy. I used to live here, and I've just moved back." She stopped at her car and unlocked the trunk. Like most teenage boys, he was interested in anything with four wheels on it, and gave it a good look. She had bought a solid, reliable sedan rather than a sports car; the sedan was better for business, and it took a certain type of attitude to drive around in a sports car anyway, an attitude Faith had never had. She had always been older than her years, and stability, dependability, were far more important to her than speed and flashy looks. But the car, a dark, sophisticated European green, was less than a year old and had a certain style to it, for all its reliability.
"Nice car," Jason felt moved to comment as he transferred the groceries from the buggy to the trunk.
"Thanks." She tipped him, and he looked at the dollar in surprise. By that, she could deduce that either tipping wasn't the norm in Prescott, or people usually carried out their own groceries and he had been pressed into duty so he could see if she kept the inside of her car clean, or something like that. She suspected the latter; the nosiness of smalltown people knew no bounds.
A small, white Cadillac wheeled into the parking lot as Faith was unlocking her car door, and abruptly braked as it came even with her. She glanced up and saw a woman staring at her, dumbstruck. It took a moment before she recognized Monica Rouillard, or whatever her name was now. The two women faced each other, and Faith remembered how Monica had always gone out of her way to be nasty to the Devlins, unlike Gray, who had pretty much treated them normally until Guy had disappeared. Despite herself, Faith felt a flash of pity; if her suspicions were right, their father was dead, and they had gone all these years without knowing what had happened to him. The Devlins had suffered because of Guy's actions, but the Rouillards had suffered, too.
Even in the shadows of the car, Faith could see how pale and strained Monica looked as she stared at her. This was one confrontation that would be best postponed; though she intended to stand her ground, there was no need to flaunt her presence in the Rouillards' faces. Turning away, she got into her car and started the engine. Monica was blocking her so she couldn't back out, but the space in front of her was empty, so there was no need. She simply drove out through the empty parking slot, leaving Monica still sitting there staring after her.
When she got home, she found several faxes waiting for her, all from Margot. She put up the groceries before settling down in the office to take care of whatever problems had cropped up. She enjoyed the travel industry; it wasn't without its share of headaches and crises, but for the most part, by the very nature of the business, the customers were upbeat and excited. The agency's job was to make sure their vacation tours were properly booked, with reliable accommodations. They gently steered vacationers away from inappropriate tour packages; for instance, a family with small children probably wouldn't be all that pleased with a cruise on a party ship geared more toward adult pleasures. Her employees knew how to handle things like that; most of the problems that came Faith's way were of a different nature. There was a payroll to meet, tax forms to complete, an unending parade of paper. Faith had decided that she would still handle the payroll, with the pertinent information faxed to her from the four office locations every Monday morning. She would do the paperwork, prepare the checks, and Express Mail them on Wednesday morning. It was a workable solution, and the convenience of working at home delighted her.
The biggest inconvenience was still doing her banking in Dallas, both business and personal, but she had decided against transferring her funds to Prescott or even Baton Rouge; the Rouillard influence had long arms. She hadn't checked to see if the family owned the new bank in town, because it hadn't really mattered; whether they owned it or not, Gray would have a lot of pull. There were rules and laws in banking, but in this part of the state the Rouillards were a law unto themselves. The balance in her accounts, even copies of her canceled checks, would be easy for Gray to get. She had no doubt that he could also cause trouble for her by delaying credit for checks deposited until the last possible minute, and bouncing her own checks if he could. No, it was best to keep her account in Dallas. Gravel crunched in the driveway and she looked out the window to see a sleek, gunmetal gray Jaguar come to a stop. Resigned, she let the curtain fall back into place and pushed her chair away from the desk. She didn't have to see who got out of the car to know who had come calling, just as she knew this wasn't the Welcome Wagon.
Going into the living room, she opened the door as she heard footsteps on the porch. "Hello, Gray. Please come in. I see you've given up your 'Vettes."
Surprise flickered in his eyes as he stepped over the threshold, immediately overwhelming her with his size. He hadn't expected her to calmly invite him inside, the rabbit offering the hospitality of its burrow to the wolf. "I'm slower in a lot of things than I used to be," he drawled.
It was on the tip of her tongue to say, "Better, too, I suppose," but she bit the words back. She doubted that Gray Rouillard would be making suggestive remarks to her, of all people, and if she took it as such, he would think it was just what he might have expected from a Devlin. There was no room for normal flirtatious byplay between the two of them.