After Eden Page 16

  She smiled and nudged her mare into a canter. The sun dipped toward the western horizon. They must have been riding for seven or eight hours.

  At the northern end of the valley, they rode up a long gentle incline to the Burkhart casa grande. The gates to what Judy had called the “compound” slowly opened. Tía rode through last with Judy. Another hundred yards brought them to the front steps of the house. According to Judy, the house had started out as a one-room adobe hut half-buried in the ground. Now it rose like a monastery. Four curved arches spanned the front porch. The first level was still buried in the ground, but another level—its adobe bricks a deeper pink—had been added above the first. The wood-shake roof hung out over the small, deep-set windows to shade them from the hot sun and soared high overhead to keep the sun as far away from the rooms below as possible. Heavy, weathered shakes, the color of dry straw, shone like silver in the late afternoon sunlight.

  Two small Mexican boys ran out to take the women’s horses. Leading their own tired mounts, Steve, Johnny, and the riders fanned out toward the barns and corrals. A beaming, round-faced Mexican woman, who yelled at the boys as if they were her children, opened the heavy oak door and motioned Judy, Tía, and Andrea inside.

  Half-blinded by the transition, Tía could barely see the dim interior. A massive, blackened fireplace dominated one wall. A long sofa and three large leather chairs faced the fireplace. Hand-tied circular rugs covered the wood floor. In winter a crackling fire would warm this big, comfortable room.

  “Oh, it’s marvelous!” she gasped, glancing quickly at her sister. Andrea’s face was strangely closed and carefully guarded. She did not look at Tía.

  “Cruz! Lupe!” Judy yelled. As if they had been waiting just outside the room, two smiling Mexican women, shuffling their sandals on the wooden floor, appeared in the doorway, filed into the room, and lined up beside Carmen.

  Judy pulled Tía forward.

  “This is your new jefa and my friend, so take good care of her: Tía Marlowe. Tía, this is Carmen, Cruz, Lupe.”

  The women sobered instantly. Carmen was shaped like a brick. Her round face was open and smiling. Cruz looked as if she had been raised on lemons. Lupe, the youngest, probably popular with the young men on the ranch, ran her hands down her slender hips and tittered something in rapid Spanish to the other two. “La jefa está muchacha pequeña solamente.”

  “Si,” agreed the others.

  Judy scolded them in Spanish. “She may be just a little girl, but she is a very powerful and formidable little girl. One word from her, and you will all be out on your lazy butts.”

  Cruz and Lupe looked at Tía with barely veiled hostility. Carmen smiled at Tía with the same warmth she had shown the children.

  “And this is Andrea Garcia-Lorca, your new mistress, and half owner of all she surveys,” Judy said. She started with a false brightness that she could not maintain. At the end, she couldn’t seem to stop herself: she curtsied stiffly to Andrea.

  Coolly, Andrea nodded to the women. “I think I would like to go to my room,” she said.

  Judy inclined her head. “Of course. Lupe, please show Miss Garcia-Lorca to the room next to mine.” Judy seemed to recover momentarily, but the sparkle did not return to her eyes. “I hope that won’t be too objectionable to you, having the room between the head housekeeper and the poor relation.”

  Tía felt Judy’s pain keenly. Although the “poor relation” was struggling to seem unaffected by Andrea and the threat she perceived there, even Andrea seemed to sense her discomfort.

  For the first time since entering the house, Tía realized she had probably been conceived here. Mama had told her a little about Bill Burkhart and how she had met him. A chill rippled through Tía. She thought it too bad that Judy and Andrea were so busy being uncomfortable with each other; all she felt was their misery.

  “I find that quite acceptable, thank you.”

  Judy grinned suddenly, and this one seemed genuine. “Oh! You’ll find no gun rack in there, either! Sorry, but we didn’t expect a great huntress.”

  “That will be fine.” In silence Andrea followed Lupe out the door that opened onto a common hallway that appeared to run around three sides of the roomy parlor.

  “Do these women sleep in the house?” Tía asked, careful to keep her voice down so as not to aggravate an already tense situation.

  “No, they have quarters in one of the bunkhouses, but you will have the room next to Andrea’s. It is more fitting. And besides, I can keep a closer eye on you.” Judy smiled knowingly.

  Tía flushed. “You don’t have to do that. I don’t take things that don’t belong to me.”

  “Men aren’t like things. They sometimes take matters into their own hands.”

  “Well, what should I do first?” Tía asked to change the subject.

  “We missed supper. But Carmen will fix us something. I’ll show you to your room, and by then our supper should be about ready. We eat around six o’clock in the summertime, about five in the winter. You rest tonight. Tomorrow will be soon enough…I have lots of plans for this old house. After dinner, I’ll tell you all about it.”

  Chapter Twelve

  “How’s the new sister?”

  Judy wriggled her slim body as if she were trying to make a permanent imprint on the narrow cot. They were in her old playhouse at the north end of the compound. Her father had had it built for her when she was seven. Now it was a sanctuary.

  “Disgusting,” she said, wrinkling her pretty nose. “She’s beautiful and poised and talks exactly like a damned schoolteacher. She was a schoolteacher! Can you imagine? It couldn’t be worse.”

  Grant laughed. Pleased at his reaction, Judy smiled coquettishly. Grant always made her feel good. There was something about the way he reacted to her, even when she was being outrageous, that made her feel good about herself. Grant was sitting on the ground between the undersized door and the cot that had cradled several of Judy’s favorite dolls. A desert lily bloomed in the sand beside him. His hands, which almost could not keep themselves still, were busy making cone-shaped indentations in the dirt beneath the white blossoms.

  “I saw her from a distance,” he said tentatively.

  “Well?”

  “She is very pretty.”

  “And?”

  “She looks like someone who might be a good friend.”

  “Not to me. I hate her.”

  “Because she looks invincible. But if you discovered that she has as many problems as you do, you’d like her. I know you. Inside, you’re as soft as warm butter.”

  “She’s about as vulnerable as an armadillo. We’re talking about a woman with an income of three thousand a month.”

  “You gotta admit, it was a good try for a clown-faced runt,” he said, tossing a flower at her.

  Judy laughed. Grant had a wonderful smile. He called himself names because he was short and not handsome and because he had no pretensions. What he said was true, sort of, but it didn’t matter to her. Grant was her best friend. Friends didn’t need to be perfect specimens of masculinity; they just needed to be loyal and attentive and available. Grant Foreman was all three. She really hadn’t looked at him in years.

  “I’d be willing to stake a month’s wages on it,” he said.

  “A whole month? Forty dollars?”

  “Yep.”

  “Forget it,” she said. “I’m destitute.”

  “Hogwash!”

  “Well, close,” she said, grinning impishly. Grant knew Steve made sure she always had money. She just didn’t like being dependent on someone else. She had wanted her own money, her own inheritance. And she should have gotten it.

  “What did you do, go shopping again?” he demanded.

  “Cynic!”

  Grant laughed. “Where did you get that word?”

  “I read it in a magazine article. All about the new cynicism. I liked the sound of it. Don’t you think it sounds elegant somehow?”

  “I’m not a cyn
ic. I just know women,” he said easily.

  Sighing, Judy squirmed her bottom into the cot. That was what she liked about Grant: he seemed to know so much about everything. And he was comfortable with himself, not like her at all.

  “How did you get so smart about girls?”

  “Did I say I was smart?”

  “Well, didn’t you?”

  “No. I had three sisters. I made a life’s work out of watching them. I noticed that it doesn’t happen in real life the way they write it in the storybooks. Not one of my sisters found Prince Charming and then decided she wanted to marry him. They went out a lot and had a lot of fun until suddenly, one right after another, they decided it was time to get married. When that happened, each one of them looked around at all the fellas they were walking out with and took her pick of the litter. The best prospect suddenly became Prince Charming. He didn’t know he was a prince until she told him.”

  “Pish, tosh! You are a cynic!”

  “Me?” he asked, widening his eyes innocently. “The fella who suddenly gets elected Prince Charming should be the cynic. One day he is a happy-go-lucky bachelor, minding his own business, and the next this beautiful woman blinks her big brown eyes at him, and he can do no wrong. Until about three days after the wedding, anyway.”

  He laughed outright. “You watch that happen three times in a row—bing, bing, bing, to three perfectly ordinary men—and you realize it’s not who you are that matters, it’s being there at the right moment that counts.”

  “You really believe that?”

  “How could I help it? My sisters couldn’t be all that different from other girls. Besides, I saw their friends doing the same thing, except for one, maybe.”

  “Just all of a sudden, huh?”

  “Bing!” he said in a stern, remorseless tone. “Now you are Prince Charming.”

  Judy played along with him. “Who, me?”

  “Yes, you,” he said sternly, trying to sound like one of those men in the medicine shows.

  “But I’m not a real prince,” she protested, pretending surprise. “I was only having fun.”

  “That’s what you think,” he growled, delighting her.

  “Is there any way out for me? I’m not ready,” she cried.

  “Too bad. You have been chosen. You are Prince Charming.”

  “No. No! I’m a frog,” she demurred.

  “Not any more,” he said sternly.

  “Ohhh!” She covered her eyes with a tragic moan.

  Grant laughed. “You do that almost as well as they did. The only thing missing was the proper degree of panic when they found out it wasn’t a game.”

  “Your sisters are all married?”

  “Could you doubt it? Of course.”

  “Just like that, huh?”

  “Bizarre as it may seem.”

  “Bizarre,” Judy repeated. “You have the most wonderful words. Maybe that’s why I like to talk to you.” She stretched. “That would be a frightening thing for a man to watch,” she said, smiling lazily at the ceiling of the small dollhouse.

  “Like taking a shower from a mountain spring,” he agreed, smiling.

  “Hmmm.” Sitting up, Judy looked at him speculatively. “What does a man do if he falls in love with a particular girl?”

  The smile faded in Grant’s eyes. His restless hand stopped moving. “He stays close,” he said carefully. “Just in case.”

  “That’s all?”

  “Men have very little control over a woman’s love.”

  “I don’t think I would like being a man.”

  Grant grinned. “It has its moments.”

  “You like being a man?”

  “Yep!”

  Judy noticed Grant’s eyes reflected satisfaction with himself and a sureness she had never felt about herself as a woman. “Are you…is it okay if I ask a personal question?”

  “Sure.”

  “Do you ever do things that you feel…sort of ashamed of?” Grant’s gray eyes were still warm and accepting, but Judy looked away. They might change. She didn’t want to know it if they did.

  “Not for a long time,” he said gently. “But men don’t have the same opportunities women have.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  Grant chuckled. “You don’t see any women with gold coins in their hands lined up outside the men’s bunkhouse, do you?”

  He was referring to the men who paid Lupe for her favors. It wasn’t that obvious. No one stood in line, but everyone knew nonetheless.

  Grant picked a piece of straw out of his vest pocket and chewed on it reflectively. “Women have far more opportunities, and they are far more vulnerable to those opportunities. It’s incredibly easy for a man who knows what he wants to take advantage of a young girl.” He sighed as if he were remembering something unpleasant. “Nature provides, pretty one. The female of the species is physically weaker, more vulnerable. We are just now entering an era where a woman gets to choose her own husband—in most countries fathers still decide who gets to marry their daughters.”

  Judy squirmed playfully on the cot. “That sounds suggestive. Are you trying to seduce me?”

  “Think about it,” he said earnestly. “You’ll see I’m right.”

  “I know you are,” she replied, strangely affected. “You’re awfully smart, Grant. You almost sound like Andrea. Where did you go to school?”

  “New Haven, Connecticut.”

  “Oh, I remember,” she murmured.

  “I didn’t learn much in school, though, except by accident. I had a friend who was sort of a maverick. I learned a lot from him.”

  “Why did you leave home?”

  “It was time. I was twenty years old. I needed to find out if I could survive without my parents’ help.”

  “What are they like…your parents?”

  “Regulation parents. My mother serves tea at three-thirty sharp, and my father reads the newspaper and works hard.”

  “So now you know you can survive. What now?”

  He didn’t answer right away. He didn’t know the answer. He had gone to Yale University for two years, taking the business courses that schools in Georgia didn’t offer so he could take over the family business someday, but something inside him had rebelled. The summer before his junior year at Yale, he’d realized he didn’t want the proscribed life. He didn’t want a wife who was little more than a dainty bejeweled hand lifting her sparkling teacup to pale, precise lips. No matter how beautiful she was.

  Until Judy, it never mattered to him how beautiful women were, they simply could not reach him in any significant way. He had felt lust for other women, but even his lust had been impersonal.

  First in Atlanta and then at Yale, he had felt only partially alive. In Arizona he’d almost died six times, but he knew he was fully alive. And he wanted more. He wanted freedom and sweetness. Judy Burkhart was that sweetness. Being near her. Teasing her. Seeing her rosy lips, her flashing brown eyes…

  His father owned three general merchandise stores in Atlanta. He made a lot of money, but he did nothing else. Grant had worked summers for his father for six years, and the two of them had agreed on almost nothing. Grant could have run his father’s stores, but only in a manner that would give Grant Foreman, Sr., a heart attack.

  Grant smiled. His father had taken a vacation once, leaving him in charge. He had cut prices and moved items three times as fast as his father did, but his father had been furious. It didn’t matter that he had shown a greater profit. His father would not sell anything unless he could make a margin of at least as much as he had paid for the item. If something didn’t sell at the price he wanted, he would use it himself before cutting the price. To Grant, that was sheer, obdurate stupidity. His father was one of the richest men in Atlanta, but all the time Grant was growing up the family had only owned things they didn’t like or that didn’t fit, because his father had decided nothing would be wasted.

  “Grant…”

  “Yeah?”

/>   “Remember me?”

  Sighing, Grant closed his eyes. There were a few girls in the world who—once known—were never forgotten. With her downturning lips and eloquent brown eyes, Judy Burkhart was one of those. No man who had known her, who had shared her friendship, heard her lilting, mischievous laughter, or seen her face light with joy or cloud with sorrow, could ever forget her. Her every nuance of expression was stamped indelibly on Grant’s soul.

  “Judy, right?” he never gave her the details of his enslavement.

  Smiling, she hit his arm. “So what are you going to do?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. I’ll stick around here until you pick your Prince Charming, and then I’ll move on.”

  Dark eyes showing alarm, Judy sat up straight. “Why?”

  “I’m only human, pretty one,” he said gruffly. It hurt that she never thought of him as a man. Just a friend.

  “I know, but I thought you were my best friend. Friends don’t leave just because someone gets married.”

  Grant leaned forward. Judy was serious. There was real hurt in her eyes. The inevitable tightening in his loins caused him to ache.

  “Judy,” he said quietly, “I’m your friend because that’s the only position available to me.”

  “You mean you could just up and leave if I got married?” A tear welled up and trickled down her cheek to the corner of her mouth. Her chin trembling, she pulled in a ragged breath, and Grant groaned silently. How much was he expected to endure in the name of friendship? Did she think him so unfeeling that he could put up a tent and live on the fringes of her life forever—her own private court jester?

  “Dammit, Judy, I’m just a man—” Clamping his jaws tight against any more sniveling, Grant stopped. It wasn’t Judy’s fault he was hopelessly in love with her. He had known when he’d decided on this course of action that it would not be easy. “A man with a need to travel, to see the world, to climb that next hill.

  “Hey, pretty one,” he continued gently, “you aren’t married yet, so what are we worrying about? Besides, when your time comes, and the little bell in your head goes bing, you won’t even notice if I wander away.”