"Meg!"
Chapter Seven
M eg dashed toward the futon. "I'm trying to sleep up here," she shouted, girding herself for battle. "Do you mind?"
Ted thundered up the steps to the loft, the floor trembling under his feet. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"
She sat on the edge of the futon and tried to look as though she'd just awakened. "Obviously, not sleeping. What's up with you, anyway? Barging in here in the middle of the night . . . And you shouldn't curse in church."
"How long have you been staying here?"
She stretched and yawned, trying to pull off her cool act. It would have been easier to do if she were wearing something more impressive than pirate-skull panties and the happy printing company T-shirt left behind by one of the guests. "Do you have to yell so loud?" she said. "You're disturbing the neighbors. And they're dead."
"How long?"
"I'm not sure. Some of those headstones date all the way back to the 1840s."
"I'm talking about you. "
"Oh. I've been here for a while. Where did you think I'd been staying?"
"I didn't think about it at all. And you know why? Because I didn't give a damn. I want you out of here."
"I believe you, but this is Lucy's church, and she told me I could stay as long as I want." At least she would have if Meg had ever asked her.
"Wrong. This is my church, and you're leaving here first thing tomorrow and not coming back."
"Hold on. You gave this church to Lucy."
"A wedding present. No wedding. No present."
"I don't think that will hold up in a court of law."
"There wasn't a legal contract!"
"You're either a person who stands by his word or you're not. Frankly, I'm beginning to think not."
His eyebrows slammed together. "It's my church, and you're trespassing."
"You see it your way. I see it mine. This is America. We're entitled to our opinions."
"Wrong. This is Texas. And my opinion is the only one that counts."
A lot truer than she cared to acknowledge. "Lucy wants me to stay here, so I'm staying." She absolutely would want Meg to stay here if she knew about it.
He planted a hand on the loft railing. "At first it was fun torturing you, but the game's gotten old." He dipped into his pocket and withdrew a money clip. "I want you out of town tomorrow. This is going to speed you on your way."
He removed the bills, stuck the empty clip back in his pocket, and fanned the money in his fingers so she could count it. Five one-hundred-dollar bills. She swallowed hard. "You shouldn't carry so much cash."
"Normally I don't, but a local property owner dropped by City Hall after the bank closed and paid the balance on an old tax bill. Aren't you glad I couldn't leave all that money lying around?" He dropped the bills on the futon. "Once you get back in Daddy's good graces, have him write me a check." He turned toward the stairs.
She couldn't let him have the last word. "That was an interesting scene I walked in on Saturday at the inn. Were you screwing around on Lucy through all of your engagement or only part of it?"
He turned back and let his eyes slip over her, deliberately lingering on the happy printing company logo across her breasts. "I've always screwed around on Lucy. But don't worry. She never suspected a thing."
He disappeared down the stairs. A few moments later, the church went dark and the front door snapped closed behind him.
She drove bleary-eyed to her job the next morning, the money burning a radioactive hole in the pocket of her revolting new khaki Bermuda shorts. With Ted's five hundred dollars, she could finally get back to L.A. where she could hole up in a cheap motel while she landed a job. Once her parents saw that she was capable of working hard at something, surely they'd relent and help her get a genuine fresh start.
But no. Instead of making a run for the city limits with Ted's money, she was sticking around to begin a dead-end job as a country-club drink-cart girl.
At least the uniform wasn't as bad as her polyester maid's dress, although it ran a close second. At the end of her interview, the assistant manager had handed over a preppy yellow polo shirt bearing the country-club logo in hunter green. She'd been forced to use her precious tip money to buy her own regulation-length khaki shorts as well as a pair of cheap white sneakers and some odious pom-pom sneaker socks she couldn't bear looking at.
As she turned into the club's service drive, she was furious with herself for being too stubborn to grab Ted's money and run. If the cash had come from anyone else, she might have, but she couldn't tolerate taking a penny from him. Her decision was all the more lamebrained because she knew he'd do his best to get her fired as soon as he discovered she was working at the club. She could no longer pretend, even to herself, that she knew what she was doing.