TWENTY-ONE.
"I know this sounds crazy, and a month ago if somebody had told me I"d be bored enough of being waited on hand and foot to tear out my hair I would have: one, suggested they were on drugs; two, insisted they were out of their minds; and three, told "em to their face that they were simply jealous and to know this sounds crazy, and a month ago if somebody had told me I"d be bored enough of being waited on hand and foot to tear out my hair I would have: one, suggested they were on drugs; two, insisted they were out of their minds; and three, told "em to their face that they were simply jealous and to get a life." get a life."
Her hands on her hips as she watched one of Johnny"s many housekeepers haul away Shamika"s dirty laundry, Shamika shook her head. "Is that all that woman ever does? Every time I change my underwear she s.n.a.t.c.hes them up and washes them. I"m starting to get a complex."
Shamika looked around at Leah where she lay across Val"s ma.s.sive bed, coloring within the black lines of the crayon book her son had been scribbling in the night before. "If Professor Carlisle could just see you now," Shamika laughed.
Leah tossed aside the red crayon and rolled to her back, sighed heavily, and shook her head. "How did my mother do it? No wonder she couldn"t get through the day without drinking. I can"t believe I once looked at this indulgence as commonplace, something to be expected in life."
"Val seems to be enjoying it."
Leah smiled. "Val is enjoying Johnny. He thinks it"s very awesome-his new word, not mine-to be driven to school by a chauffeur." new word, not mine-to be driven to school by a chauffeur."
"Call it what it is, girlfriend. Bodyguard. Bodyguard. Not a bad-looking one at that. I hear he played for the Broncos for a couple of seasons, until his back was injured. Divorced. Two kids. Thirty-two years old and makes nearly fifty grand a year." Not a bad-looking one at that. I hear he played for the Broncos for a couple of seasons, until his back was injured. Divorced. Two kids. Thirty-two years old and makes nearly fifty grand a year."
Leah laughed. "So when are the two of you going out?"
"Sat.u.r.day night. Dinner at seven. I got my eye on a little red number with spaghetti straps and a neckline cut down to here." Shamika sat down beside Leah and stared at the wall. "Seriously..."
"Yes, let"s be serious."
"I think it"s wonderful what Johnny is doing for you and Val, and me too for that matter. But especially Val. I"ve never seen him happier. Every day is like Christmas. Johnny"s there when Val eats his breakfast. Johnny makes sure he gets off to school on time. Johnny reads to him at night-"
"And you"re feeling as if you"re not needed anymore."
Shamika shrugged and grinned. "I confess, I"m missing the little guy." She flopped back on the bed and the two of them stared at the ceiling. "I don"t know what it is about Johnny, but Val is thriving and that"s all that matters. How about you, Leah? How are you doing with all this?"
"I feel like Cinderella."
"So why are you still holding out on the marriage proposal?"
"I married Richard for the wrong reasons: security, money, fear of surviving on my own. Probably all the reasons why most women get married. I don"t think I ever really loved him. He was simply a means to an end."
"But you love Johnny."
"Yes." She smiled dreamily.
"So you"ve got your cake and can eat it too."
"But I can"t give up me me again. I worked hard to get through school, to become the finest vet I"m capable of being. Not simply to survive, but because I love doing it. I don"t want to be like my mother, a fixture to take out and show off occasionally. I have to have a purpose." again. I worked hard to get through school, to become the finest vet I"m capable of being. Not simply to survive, but because I love doing it. I don"t want to be like my mother, a fixture to take out and show off occasionally. I have to have a purpose."
"Spoken like a true modern woman." Shamika rolled from the bed. "But from one modern woman to another, life is gonna suck real bad when you get to be fifty or sixty and you look up one day and find yourself alone. Think back over the last few years and your regret over having walked out on Johnny the first time-the love you felt like you missed out on."
"I failed once, Shamika."
"Get over it. Get over this fear you"ve got of having more children. Get over this hang-up you"ve developed over failure. Get over this absurd need for your father"s approval."
"Now that that is absurd." is absurd."
"Is it?" Shamika walked to the door. "He"s never going to change, Leah. He is what he is. Senator Foster is a machine. Cold, hard steel. So what if he offered you a job? You know as well as I do why he did it. To buy you over to his side. To woo you away from Johnny. To a.s.sure your loyalty when the caca hits the fan. Look at it this way, Cinderella. How many people in life actually get a second chance to recapture the greatest love of their life?"
As Shamika left the room, Leah got up and walked to the window. Below, men milled about the manicured grounds, most dressed casually in jeans and tee shirts, the telltale bulges of their hidden guns the only evidence that they were anything more than gardeners. Not that she wasn"t accustomed to men lurking around their home with guns tucked under their belts; since her father had won his seat in the Senate, weapon-toting companions had become the norm.
Certainly, that had been a half a lifetime ago; she"d been a teenager who thought it was cool to be driven to school by bodyguards. And this was now. She was an adult with a career; she thrived on fresh air and sunshine, her independence, and her privacy, of which she had become obsessive since Val"s birth. How would she learn to deal with living their lives in a fishbowl, unable to curl up under her blanket of denial whenever life threw her a curve she did not want to acknowledge?
But she also thrived on Johnny Whitehorse. Since he"d moved her into his house a week ago she had never felt so alive or happy ... or in love. At times she felt positively delirious ... so why couldn"t she shake this sense of impending doom, as if the sky would open up at any moment and rain catastrophe on her head?
At nine-forty that night Leah said goodnight to Roy Moon, patted the Arabian stallion she had ridden the last hour in the indoor arena, and headed for the house. Hopefully the meeting between Johnny and his staff would be ended. She wanted to talk to him again about her returning to work now that the media had backed off in the attempts to wrangle interviews and photos from them. Not that she was worried that she would lose her job; Johnny was one of the bosses, after all. In fact, the entire board of trustees had given their approval of her taking as much time as she needed for the media storm to subside, as they all knew it eventually would. Until the recent accident with Dolores, Johnny had managed to maintain his privacy in Ruidoso. To most of the locals he was simply Johnny, hometown boy made good. Had it not been for Dolores"s death and the frantic scramble to cover it in the media, life would have remained relatively normal at Whitehorse Farm except for the occasional out-of-towners who cruised by in their rent-a-car to snap photos of Johnny"s front gate.
Ed, Roger, and Jack filed out of the house and streamed down the front steps, briefcases in hand, faces somber as they marched toward their cars. They barely glanced at Leah, as if intentionally ignoring her existence. Robert Anderson tarried on the porch, the light overhead casting sharp shadows on his face.
"Everyone looks very serious," she commented as she mounted the front steps.
Robert didn"t smile. "It wasn"t much of a meeting. My client"s thoughts appear to be elsewhere."
Val"s laughter erupted from the house, bringing a smile to Leah"s face.
Anderson shook his head and with a muttered curse headed for his car. Watching him go, Leah yelled, "Robert, I take it you don"t have kids."
"No!" he shouted back.
"I didn"t think so," she replied, then said to herself, "Lucky kids."
Johnny met her in the foyer, pushing Val in his wheelchair. Shamika followed, the ex-Bronco football player at her side. He peeled away from the others and said, "I"ll bring the car up."
"Are we going someplace?" Leah asked.
"Johnny has surprise for Val," Val announced very clearly, looking up at Johnny and grinning.
"Oh?" She kissed Val on the cheek and smiled at Johnny. "Is it bigger than a breadbox?"
"Definitely," Johnny replied.
"Bigger than ... a twenty-one-inch television?"
"Absolutely."
"A ... six stack of hay bales?"
"Much bigger."
She feigned a frown and narrowed her eyes. Val"s grin grew wider and Shamika shrugged as Leah glanced at her for a hint. "Is it on the premises?" she asked.
"Nope," Johnny said.
The ear stopped at the foot of the steps and Johnny eased Val"s chair down each stair as the driver opened the car doors, then hurried over to help put Val in the backseat.
"Am I invited?" Leah asked.
Johnny turned and lifted his hand to her. "Would I go anywhere without you?"
"I don"t know. Would you?"
"Not unless I felt it would be detrimental to your life and happiness."
"You are such a smooth talker, Johnny."
"And you love it."
"Oh, yes." She took his hand. "I most definitely love it."
The lights of the Big Top Carnival and Circus lit up the night sky in a bloom of red, green, gold, and blue twinklers. The glowing marquee out front read: WELCOME VALENTINO STARR!.
There was a scattering of cars and vans in the parking lot, each showing handicapped license plates. As the driver parked the limo among them, Leah looked at Johnny, then Shamika, who had begun to grin. "What"s going on?"
"Johnny rented the carnival for tonight, for Val and his friends."
Leah sank back in the seat, glad for the darkness that hid the look of raw emotion she was certain was etched in her face. She couldn"t speak. She did not dare look at Johnny or she would burst out in tears.
Johnny took her hand. "I trust you remember this place."
She nodded and swallowed. "You brought me here on our first real date. I got a stomachache eating corn dogs and cotton candy. You won a giant walrus playing Skee-Ball. I still have it, by the way. And at closing time you got your friend who operated the Ferris wheel to stop us at the top so we could watch the fireworks exploding all around us. I think we ended up making out more than we watched the fireworks."
"We made our own fireworks." Johnny wiggled his eyebrows, making Shamika laugh and Leah blush.
Both children and adults rode the rides; played the games-all of which had obviously been rigged to allow the children to win-ate cotton candy, popcorn, and ice cream; and watched the circus of trained elephants, tigers, and horses, not to mention the lithe trapeze artists flying through the air with the greatest of ease.
Val rode the merry-go-round twelve times, Johnny and Leah at his side, coaxing him to hold fast to the rising and falling steed with arched neck and flaring nostrils. By the eighth ride he was gripping the pole with his own hands, his legs locked around the animal"s body, whooping and laughing and shouting to Shamika, who waved each time they flew by her: "Val flying now, Mika!"
Just before midnight everyone climbed aboard the Ferris wheel. It slowly rotated high into the night sky, allowing them to look out over the grounds of bright, vibrant lights the color of rainbows. With Val sitting between her and Johnny, Leah held her son"s hand and pointed to the distant glow of downtown Ruidoso; then they counted the stars overhead and watched a meteorite streak across the universe in a burst of fiery light.
At straight-up midnight, the Ferris wheel stopped, leaving Leah, Johnny, and Val swinging at the very top. Then the first streaks of fireworks whirred into the sky above their heads and exploded, sending red and green sparks mushrooming to what seemed to be forever. Then more, popping, banging, inundating the night with light, until the shapes of words formed before Leah"s eyes.
MARRY ME.
Smiling, laughing, acknowledging the applause and whistles of approval from Val"s guests, Leah turned her tear-filled eyes to Johnny"s and nodded. "Of course I"ll marry you. Of course."
The phone rang at three A.M. Johnny fumbled for it, glancing at Leah to see if it had disturbed her. A.M. Johnny fumbled for it, glancing at Leah to see if it had disturbed her.
"Johnny? Johnny, it"s Savanah. Are you alone?"
He sat up, shook his head in an attempt to clear his mind of its grogginess, then leaned slightly over Leah to see if she was really asleep. "Good as," he finally replied in a slightly slurred voice.
"What is that supposed to mean?"
"Exactly what it sounds like."
"Leah is there, isn"t she?"
"So what?"
"Tell me the rumors aren"t true. Are you marrying her or not?"
"What"s that got to do with anything?"
"Everything, considering what I"m holding in my hand."
He glanced back at Leah and partially covered the phone with one hand. "You got them."
"Those and more. Seems I"m not the only one who sneaks the occasional forbidden photo."
There came a m.u.f.fled voice, then a loud, "h.e.l.lo?"
Johnny jerked the phone from his ear.
"h.e.l.lo? h.e.l.lo? I don"t think there"s anyone there. h.e.l.lo? Mr. Whitehorse? Is that really you?"
Lowering his voice even more, Johnny whispered, "Who the h.e.l.l is this?"
"Maude Elliot, Mr. Whitehorse. This is really Mr. Whitehorse, isn"t it? The guy on Fifth Avenue? The one with his jeans unzipped?"
He rolled his eyes and left the bed, tucked the phone under one arm and walked to the bathroom, closed the door, eased the lid down on the toilet and sat down in the dark.
"h.e.l.lo? Is anyone there?" Maude Elliot seemed to scream.
"Obviously Savanah has a good reason for this," he finally replied, more to himself than to Maude Elliot.
"I"m a photographer, Mr. Whitehorse. I"ve worked for Formation Media for oh, golly, five years or so. Well, I really don"t work for FM. I"m freelance. I move around a lot. Sometimes the resorts contract me to, you know, take pictures of their guests or do promotional shots for brochures or ads or postcards. I work mostly with the island resorts: Barbados, Aruba-"