Night Moves : Dream Man/After the Night Read online

  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 impression. 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