“Thanks for saying that,” he said softly.
His eyes didn’t waver from her face. The air was thick with desires long suppressed. His body felt heavy and feverish with an emotion he couldn’t name, because he’d never experienced it before. All he knew was that at that moment he thought Ana Ramsey was beautiful. He wanted to hold her against him, to absorb her confidence and be worthy of it.
“I meant it.”
The atmosphere was hushed. A fly buzzed somewhere nearby, but otherwise everything was still. Sweat trickled down his face. Their bodies were taut as they tried to hold themselves separate. Still they inclined toward each other.
He rested his hand on the crown of her head and then gently brought it down to her neck. Her hair was soft against his callused palm. She tilted her head to one side and rested her cheek in his hand. He focused on her mouth. Her lips parted slightly even as he watched. They looked incredibly soft, solace-lending, pleasure-giving, vulnerable.
“Ana.” He lowered his head. His lips touched hers.
“Ana!” another voice called.
They sprang apart. Trent ’s curse was vicious and as blistering as the white-hot Texas sun that beat down outside. Rana stepped away from him quickly and ran to the door of the greenhouse. Her heart was racing.
“Yes, Ruby? Here I am. What is it?”
“Telephone call for you, dear.”
Rana glanced back at Trent. He shrugged and gave her a twisted smile, but it was strained with yearning. She crossed the yard at a trot and entered the house by the back door, which Ruby held open for her. “It’s your mother.”
Rana’s footsteps faltered. “My mother?”
Ruby nodded, an unspoken question in her eyes. Ana Ramsey had no mother that she knew about.
Rana trudged up the stairs. She and her mother had conveyed messages to each other through Morey for the last six months. They hadn’t spoken personally since Rana had walked out and thwarted Susan’s plans for her daughter’s marriage.
Why was Susan calling now? Rana wondered. Was she angry that Rana hadn’t accepted the contract? Was she calling just to say hello? Was she calling to say, “I love you”?
Rana ridiculed herself for holding on to that hope. Nonetheless her hands were shaking and her voice trembled as she picked up the extension in her apartment and said,
“Mother? Hello. How are you?”
“Morey is dead. I think the least you could do is return to New York for his funeral.”
Six
Morey is dead. Morey is dead.
It was now almost thirty-six hours since Rana had first heard those words from her mother’s lips, and she still couldn’t believe them. After standing at the grave site and seeing his casket, the very idea still seemed too incredible to accept.
So much had happened since her mother had broken the news of Morey’s death that it seemed as though the afternoon in the greenhouse with Trent had occurred in another lifetime. Both spiritual and physical fatigue settled on her as she reviewed the events subsequent to that phone call.
She had flung clothes haphazardly into a suitcase. Racing downstairs, she had asked Ruby if she could borrow her car. Ruby suggested that Trent could drive her to the airport, but Rana objected so strongly that Ruby gave her no further argument, even honoring her request that he not be called from the greenhouse to say good-bye. Rana told her friend that she would be away for an indefinite period of time. She didn’t specify where she was going.
When the landlady expressed concern for Rana’s obvious distress, the only explanation forthcoming was, “I’ll tell you when I get back.”
At Houston ’s Intercontinental Airport she had to watch two planes to New York take off without her before a standby seat on a third aircraft became available.
Once in New York, she took a cab to her apartment, where her mother was still living. They met face-to-face for the first time in six months. Susan was overtly hostile despite Rana’s need to be consoled.
“You look ridiculous, Rana. I hope you don’t expect me to claim you as mine, dressed like that.”
“What about Morey, Mother?”
“He’s dead.” She held a gold Cartier lighter to the end of a cigarette, inhaled dramatically, and then blew a cloud of smoke over her head.
Rana, exhausted from the ordeal of getting to Houston from Galveston, waiting at the airport for hours, the long flight, not to mention her mental anguish, collapsed on the sofa and closed her eyes. It was now two o’clock in the morning in New York. Her spirit was trampled and her nerves were frayed, she had just lost her dearest friend and staunchest ally, and her mother’s first comment had been about the way she looked. At that moment she hated Susan Ramsey.
“You told me that much on the telephone, Mother. What do you want me to do, beg you for the details?” She opened her eyes and confronted the woman she had never been able to please no matter how hard she had tried. “All right, I’m begging. What happened?” Her frustration finally got the best of her, and tears formed in her eyes.
Susan, with an almost smug expression, sat down on the far end of the long sofa. Despite the hour, she was immaculately groomed. Her satin robe was unwrinkled. “He died at home. One of his neighbors discovered the body late in the morning, when Morey didn’t show up for a brunch date they had.”
Morey lived alone; he and his wife had been divorced for years before Rana met him. He’d never gotten over the breakup of his marriage, but he could never give up gambling, either, which had been the crux of his marital problems.
“Was it a heart attack? A stroke?” Morey had been overweight, had high blood pressure, and smoked too much.
“Not exactly,” Susan said coolly, scornfully. “Drugs were involved.”
“Drugs!” Rana exclaimed, aghast. “I don’t believe it.”
“ Not Street drugs. Pills. Liquor. There was evidence in his apartment that he’d been drinking.”
Rana’s body seemed slowly to collapse, to fold in on itself like a house of cards. It couldn’t be. She would never believe it. Suicide? No! “Was it an accident?” she asked hoarsely.
Susan ground out her cigarette in a crystal ashtray on the marble coffee table. “I think the police are ruling it an accidental death.”
“But you think it was a suicide, don’t you?”
“All I know is that when I last spoke with him, he was extremely upset over your turning down that marvelous contract. He was as shocked as I am that you would rather live like this,” she said scathingly, waving her hand toward Rana as though she were filthy, “than like a princess. Morey was in financial trouble thanks to you.”
Rana covered her face with her hands, but Susan persisted. “He had to move from those plush offices he had leased. When you so selfishly deserted both him and me, he went back to representing second-rate models and has-beens.”
“Why didn’t he tell me?” Rana groaned, asking the question of herself as much as of her mother.
Susan was all too happy to answer. “What good would it have done? If you had cared for anyone as much as you did yourself, you wouldn’t have left in the first place. Why should you care what happened to some penny-ante agent- whom I wanted to discard years ago-if you don’t care about your own mother?”
She lit another cigarette. Rana knew Susan wasn’t finished yet, so she remained silent. It would serve no purpose to argue.