Hard-Headed Texan. Candace Camp
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does Roberto put up with you?”
Rita laughed. “I make it worth his while. Who do you think I do all this suffering for?” She nodded toward her meager lunch.
“You,” Antonia retorted, grinning. “You can’t fool me. I heard Roberto last week worrying about how thin you were getting.”
“Oh, that!” Rita waved away the statement. “All the Delgado women get to be like bowling balls. He thinks it’s normal. But I can tell you he’ll notice it when I put on my negligee from Victoria’s Secret. But wait—you are not going to distract me from the subject of this conversation. Are you interested in Daniel Sutton?”
“I told you, I was curious. It isn’t as if he asked me out or anything.” Antonia wasn’t about to tell even a good friend like Rita what had happened that morning at Sutton’s ranch.
“Ah, but you’d like him to?”
“I didn’t say that.” Antonia sighed. “No. I don’t want to date him or anyone else. It’s too much trouble. I just want to do my work, get settled in Angel Eye….”
“Girl, you’ve been here two months. How much settling in can you do in a town this size?”
“I’m slow.” Antonia crumpled up the wrapper from her burger and tossed it in the trash. “Thanks for the info.” She paused. “But if I start hearing about Daniel Sutton from Lilian and the clerk at the Quik-Mart—”
“Antonia…you are so suspicious.” Rita smiled enigmatically.
“Yeah. Right.” Antonia gave her friend a knowing look and left the room.
Not surprisingly, Antonia’s work spilled over into the evening, and she did not get home until after seven-thirty. She was informed of her tardiness by Mitzi, the black-and-white, tailless street cat that had decided to favor Antonia with her presence last year. The white circle around one eye, in contrast to her mostly black head, gave Mitzi a look of faint surprise, and she carried herself with a feline hauteur that was rather comical, given her bobbed tail, a trait acquired in some accident, Antonia was sure, rather than a genetic anomaly. Mitzi, sublimely unaware of the humorous aspect of her looks, seemed to believe that she was a pampered registered Persian in a wealthy household. She greeted Antonia now with a long litany of complaints, plopping herself down in a seated position in front of the door.
“I hear you, Mitzi,” Antonia responded. “Too regal to bother with rubbing my leg, huh?”
She started toward the kitchen, and Mitzi jumped up, bounding forward to get in front of Antonia. Antonia smiled. She was more of a dog lover than a cat person, but Mitzi had been the perfect pet the last few months. Antonia’s dog of several years, a beautiful golden retriever named Bailey, had died about six months ago, and Antonia had been unable to bring herself to get another dog, although as a veterinarian she was provided with ample opportunities. Her heart was too bruised by Bailey’s death for another loving dog. However, her imperious, distant cat provided the perfect, amusing, faintly aloof companionship she needed.
She dumped out the dry food in Mitzi’s bowl, which, having lain there all day, was not fresh enough for Mitzi’s refined tastes, and refilled it with food straight from the bag.
“You know,” she reminded the cat as she set the bowl down on the floor beside her water, “when I found you, you were rummaging through trash cans for food. How soon we forget.”
Antonia knew that she ought to fix herself a nutritious dinner, given the burger that she had grabbed for lunch, but she was too tired, so she dug out one of her large supply of TV dinners from the fridge and put it in the microwave. She had barely sat down at the table with the dinner and a new paperback she had started the day before when the telephone rang. Antonia sighed and took another bite, contemplating not answering it. However, her instincts were too strong, and after two rings she jumped up and snatched the receiver from its cradle.
“Dr. Campbell.”
“Antonia, dear. It’s Mother.”
Antonia suppressed a sigh. “Hello, Mother.”
No doubt she was an undutiful daughter, she thought, but conversations with her mother invariably left her angry, depressed, guilty, or all three. It was not a prospect she enjoyed facing at the end of a long, tiring day. She wished sometimes for the warm, friendly relationship she had witnessed between other women and their mothers, but she had finally acknowledged that she would never have that with her own mother. They were simply too dissimilar. She had never been the daughter Elizabeth Campbell wanted, and, frankly, Elizabeth Campbell had never been the mother that Antonia would have chosen if she had been given the chance.
“How are you, dear?” her mother went on in her well-modulated, Tidewater-Virginia voice. “Is everything going well out there?”
“Yes, we’re fine out here in the back of beyond,” Antonia replied. Her mother had always acted as if her move to Texas had taken her to a foreign country.
“Now, Antonia, I didn’t say that.”
“Mmm. But that’s what you meant.”
“I will admit that that Angel place seems an excessively long way away from home. You could have had your practice in Virginia.”
“Being a long way from Virginia was the whole point, Mother. It’s better all around if I am nowhere near Alan.”
“But that was a long time ago, Antonia—almost four years. Don’t you think that now you—”
“Mother, we have gone over this before,” Antonia pointed out, shoving down her irritation. “I went to A&M because it was far away from Alan, but I like it here. It suits me. Angel Eye suits me.”
“Well, of course, dear, if you say so,” Elizabeth said doubtfully. “Although I cannot imagine why anyone would name a town such a preposterous name.”
“I like the name. It has character. The whole town has character. I feel…good here, relaxed.”
“But everyone’s foreign—”
“Foreign! Mother, what—”
“I can hardly understand that assistant of yours, that Delgado girl.”
“For heaven’s sake, Mother, Rita Delgado’s lived in Angel Eye all her life. She’s no more foreign than you or I. And she hardly even has an accent. I am sure you sound equally strange to her, with those Tidewater ‘ou’s and dropping all your ‘r’s.”
There was a pause, then Elizabeth went on. “Well, I didn’t call to argue.”
Antonia bit back the retort that rose to her lips and said mildly, “I don’t like to argue, either, Mother. Why don’t we just stay off the subject of my moving back to Virginia?”
“All right. I, uh, would you like to hear about the charity auction for the hospital?”
“Sure.” Antonia settled down to listen with one ear. She knew that her mother actually did a lot of good with all the energy that she expended on her various society charity projects. However, Antonia found the details of such projects deadly dull. Still, a dull topic was better than an acrimonious one, so she listened, murmuring enough “uh-huh’s” and “I see’s” to keep her mother going.
Finally Elizabeth paused, then cleared her throat. Now we’re getting to the real reason she called, Antonia thought.
“I ran into Alan yesterday. At the club.”
Antonia stiffened, her fingers clenching around the receiver. Her chest was suddenly so tight that she could not speak, could scarcely even breathe.
When Antonia said nothing, her mother went on. “Of course, it was a trifle awkward at first.”
“At first?” Antonia repeated incredulously. “Do you mean that then you settled down to a nice conversation with the man who put your