Texas Millionaire. Dixie Browning
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for sycophants which, over the years had led to a growing sense of isolation. From youthful recklessness that had carried him through a few high-risk military actions, he’d gradually slipped into a dull sense of reserve that occasionally bordered on the paranoid. He put it down to being who he was: the richest kid in town, who’d done little to prove his own manhood.
Not that he hadn’t tried. But ever since his youthful fit of rebellion, his lawyers, both corporate and personal, tended to get antsy if he went out with the same woman more than three times in a row. Pansy and Bianca checked out because they were in his income bracket, give or take a few sets of zeros.
As for Miss Manie, she turned into a fire-breathing dragon whenever she thought he was about to be trapped by one of the women she called scheming hussies and shameless gold diggers. And while he depended on her judgment on most things, the truth was, he was getting pretty damned tired of playing dodge-the-wedding-ring, and the only way he could figure to end the game was to pick out the best of the lot and do the deed.
The red light on his message machine was blinking rapidly when he let himself back into his rooms over the club. Knowing he wouldn’t be able to sleep unless he cleared the decks, he switched on the playback. Greg’s voice erupted into the quiet room.
“Greg here. Listen, Hank, I think I’ve got a situation brewing and I’m going to need your help. Probably Forrest and Sterling, too, before it’s over. I won’t lay it out over the phone, but I need to see you as soon as you can spare some time. It’s urgent.”
A situation? What the hell was that all about? Methodically, Hank unbuttoned his shirt, eased it off his shoulders, stretched his arms over his head and yawned. God knows, he could do with a distraction. This business of getting himself engaged was the pits.
Romania Riley eased her bunions into a basin of hot Epsom salts, breathed out a sigh and took a swig of her homemade blackberry wine. She’d learned to make it at the age of fourteen, when a jar of improperly sealed, homecanned blackberries had fermented and blown the lid off, spattering everything in the kitchen, Manie included.
For months she’d been fretting over what to do about all the women who were making nuisances of themselves over her boy. Not a single one of them wanted him for the kind, sensitive man he was. All they were interested in was the wealth and position he represented. As if money was the answer to life’s problems.
Money hadn’t made Hank’s father a happy man. As for that old goat, Tex Langley, he’d been the worst scalawag that ever walked on two legs, not that you’d ever hear a word of criticism from the folks of Royal, Texas. He might’ve fooled most of ‘em into thinking he was some kind of saint, but Manie had known the man behind the legend.
She’d been eight and a half years old when her mama had run off and her father, Alaska Riley, had picked up and moved to Louisiana, following the oil company that had been drilling off the coast of North Carolina. They’d lived there for a few months, camping out like gypsies, just the two of them and Pa’s old dog, Dog. Dog ran off one night in a thunderstorm. He never did come back, and it broke her father’s heart because Dog was family. He’d been even older than Manie at the time.
Manie didn’t know how old she’d been before she understood about her father’s drinking. She’d always been aware that his moods swung from high good humor to the mean miseries. Following the miseries he’d lay out for a few days, sick as a dog, and then he’d swear off drinking. Manie always got her hopes up, but it never lasted long.
From Louisiana they migrated to Texas. Pa swore off the bottle for nearly six months, and they moved into a tworoom house and Manie got to go to school. For a little while, everything was nice as pie. But then, her father fell into bad company. Before long he’d gone back to his old ways. Manie fussed at him because she was scared, but fussing only shoved him into the mean miseries.
There came a time when he took real drunk two days before payday, and Manie without so much as a bean or a biscuit in the house. She couldn’t even scrape up ten cents for a loaf of bread, so she hitched a ride into town in a feed truck—back in those days, Royal had been nothing at all like it was now.
Everybody knew where old Tex lived. The man owned practically all of West Texas. She’d hopped off the back of the truck, marched right up the front walk, banged on the door of the Langley mansion, and when the housekeeper had opened the door, she’d demanded the money owed her father for three days’ work.
The housekeeper had tried to shoo her away, but Manie refused to budge. Pa would skin her alive if he ever found out what she’d done, but she was desperate and hungry, and she couldn’t think of anywhere else to turn.
“You go ‘round to the back door, I’ll see if Mist’ Tex’s home.”
Manie went. Back door, front door—what difference did it make as long as she got what she came for?
Only she hadn’t. The housekeeper had come back and told her that Mr. Tex said to go by the field office Monday morning, and then the woman had slammed the door in her face.
She’d felt like throwing a flower pot through the window, but they’d only sic the dog or call the law, and Pa would find out and get really, really mad.
But she couldn’t wait, she was too hungry. She didn’t want a check from the field office, either, she wanted real cash money that she could take to the grocery store and buy food before her father got his hands on it and spent it all on whiskey.
So she banged on the door again, reminding herself that she was a Riley, and Rileys were Good People. She could still remember hearing her father say so, back before her mama had picked up and left. In Pa’s case, the stock might have run to seed, but Manie knew better than to act like trash. She might be hungry, but she had her pride.
Her knocks went unanswered, and she was too short to reach the big brass knocker. Finally, blinded by tears of sheer frustration, ten-year-old Manie had slammed out the front gate and run head-on into young Henry, who had heard her out, tears, sobs, runny nose and all. Then he’d kindly explained that her father couldn’t work out at the field any more because he was too unreliable, and on a drilling rig, that could be dangerous, but that he’d see that she got any back pay coming to him.
Then he’d taken her home to his wife—his first wife—who had given her a glass of buttermilk and offered her a job after school and on weekends helping out in the kitchen.
Mercy, had it really been almost sixty years since then? It had been a wild ride, keeping up with the Langleys, but she wouldn’t trade a speck of it for any amount of money. Child to woman, she’d been there through good times and bad, first when old Tex died, then when her father had passed away with the liver trouble, and a year later when Hank was born and a few years after that when Mr. Henry lost his wife and his newborn daughter.
She had watched young Hank grow up, loved him as if he were her own, and done her best to look after him when his father had taken up with one woman after another and gone chasing off to all those fancy places in Europe.
She’d done a fair job of raising the boy, too, if she did say so herself. She knew his shortcomings and his longcomings and would be the first to admit he had his share of both.
But right now, he was going through another dangerous stage, and it was up to her to see him through it. Temptation was a hard thing to resist when it came all dolled up in tight dresses and blue eye shadow, reeking of fancy perfume and using language no lady ever used in front of a gentleman. That kind of temptation spelled trouble, sure as the world.
But Manie had a plan.
Early on a Saturday morning, shoulders squared, head held high, Callie locked the front door, took one last walk around the house to be sure she’d remembered to close all the windows and fill all the feeders and headed for Texas.
“Grace, I’m on my way. Feed