Beloved

She considered that. After a minute, she smiled. “Well, I do enjoy sculpting. I used to sell some of it occasionally.”

“See?” Corrigan said. “An idea presents itself.” He paused. “Of course, there’s always a course in biscuit-making…?”

Knowing his other three brothers’ absolute mania for that particular bread, she held up both hands. “You can tell Leo and Cag and Rey that I have no plans to become a biscuit chef.”

“I’ll pass the message along. But Dorie’s dying for a replacement,” he added with a grin at his wife. “They’d chain her to the stove if I didn’t intervene.” He eyed Tira. “They like you.”

“God forbid,” she said with a mock shudder. “For years, people will be talking about how they arranged your marriage.”

“They meant well,” Dorie defended them.

“Baloney,” Tira returned. “They had to have their biscuits. Fatal error, Dorie, telling them you could bake.”

“It worked out well, though, don’t you think?” she asked with a radiant smile at her husband.

“It did, indeed.”

Tira fielded a few more comments about her withdrawal from the social scene, and then they were on their way to the checkout stand. She deliberately held back until they left, to avoid any more conversation. They were a lovely couple, and she was fond of Corrigan, but he reminded her too much of Simon.

In the following weeks, she signed up for a refresher sculpting course at her local community college, a course for no credit since she already had a degree. In no time, she was sculpting recognizable busts.

“You’ve got a gift for this,” her instructor murmured as he walked around a fired head of her favorite movie star. “There’s money in this sort of thing, you know. Big money.”

She almost groaned aloud. How could she tell this dear man that she had too much money already? She only smiled and thanked him for the compliment.

But he put her sculpture in a showing of his students’ work. It was seen by a local art gallery owner, who tracked Tira down and offered her an exclusive showing. She tried to dissuade him, but the offer was all too flattering to turn down. She agreed, with the proviso that the proceeds would go to an outreach program from the local hospital that worked in indigent neighborhoods.

After that, there was no stopping her. She spent hours at the task, building the strength in her hands and attuning her focus to more detailed pieces.

It wasn’t until she finished one of Simon that she even realized she’d been sculpting him. She stared at it with contained fury and was just about to bring both fists down on top of it when the doorbell rang.

Irritated at the interruption, she tossed a cloth over the work in progress and went to answer it, wiping the clay from her hands on the way. Her hair was in a neat bun, to keep it from becoming clotted with clay, but her pink smock was liberally smeared with it. She looked a total mess, without makeup, even without shoes, wearing faded jeans and a knit top.

She opened the door without questioning who her visitor might be, and froze in place when Simon came into view on the porch. She noticed that he was wearing the prosthesis he hated so much, and she noted with interest that the hand at the end of it looked amazingly real.

She lifted her eyes to his, but her face wasn’t welcoming. She didn’t open the door to admit him. She didn’t even smile.

“What do you want?” she asked.

He scowled. That was new. He’d visited Tira’s apartment infrequently in the past, and he’d always been greeted with warmth and even delight. This was a cold reception indeed.

“I came to see how you were,” he replied quietly. “You’ve been conspicuous by your absence around town lately.”

“I sold the ranch,” she said flatly.

He nodded. “Corrigan told me.” He looked around at the front yard and the porch of the house. “This is nice. Did you really need a whole house?”

She ignored the question. “What do you want?” she asked again.

He noted her clay-smeared hands, and the smock she was wearing. “Laying bricks, are you?” he mused.

She didn’t smile, as she might have once. “I’m sculpting.”

“Yes, I remember that you took courses in college. You were quite good.”

“I’m also quite busy,” she said pointedly.

His eyebrow arched. “No invitation to have coffee?”

She hardened her resolve, despite the frantic beat of her heart. “I don’t have time to entertain. I’m getting ready for an exhibit.”

“At Bob Henderson’s gallery,” he said knowledgeably. “Yes, I know. I have part ownership in it.” He held up his hand when she started to speak angrily. “I had no idea that he’d seen any of your work. I didn’t suggest the showing. But I’d like to see what you’ve done. I do have a vested interest.”

That put a new complexion on things. But she still didn’t want him in her house. She’d never rid herself of the memory of him in it. Her reluctant expression told him that whatever she was feeling, it wasn’t pleasure.

He sighed. “Tira, what’s wrong?” he asked.

She stared at the cloth in her hands instead of at him. “Why does anything have to be wrong?”

“Are you kidding?” He drew in a heavy breath and wondered why he should suddenly feel guilty. “You’ve sold the ranch, moved house and given up any committees that would bring you into contact with me….”

She looked up in carefully arranged surprise. “Oh, heavens, it wasn’t because of you,” she lied convincingly. “I was in a rut, that’s all. I decided that I needed to turn my life around. And I have.”

His eyes glittered down at her. “Did turning it around include keeping me out of it?”

Her expression was unreadable. “I suppose it did. I was never able to get past my marriage. The memories were killing me, and you were a constant reminder.”

His heavy eyebrows lifted. “Why should the memories bother you?” he asked with visible sarcasm. “You didn’t give a damn about John. You divorced him a month after the wedding and never seemed to care if you saw him again or not. Barely a week later, you were keeping company with Charles Percy.”

The bitterness in his voice opened her eyes to something she’d never seen. Why, he blamed her for John’s death. She didn’t seem to breathe as she looked up into those narrow, cold, accusing eyes. It had been three years since John’s death and she’d never known that Simon felt this way.

Her hands on the cloth stilled. It was the last straw. She’d loved this big, formidable man since the first time she’d seen him. There had never been anyone else in her heart, despite the fact that she’d let him push her into marrying John. And now, years too late, she discovered the reason that Simon had never let her come close to him. It was the last reason she’d ever have guessed.

She let out a harsh breath. “Well,” she said with forced lightness, “the things we learn about people we thought we knew!” She tucked the smeared cloth into a front pocket of her equally smeared smock. “So I killed John. Is that what you think, Simon?”

The frontal assault was unexpected. His guard was down and he didn’t think before he spoke. “You played at marriage,” he accused quietly. “He loved you, but you had nothing to give him. A month of marriage and you were having divorce papers served to him. You let him go without a word when he decided to work on oil rigs, despite the danger of it. You didn’t even try to stop him. Funny, but I never realized what a shallow, cold woman you were until then. Everything you are is on the outside,” he continued, blind to her white, drawn face. “Glorious hair, a pretty face, sparkling eyes, pretty figure…and nothing under it all. Not even a spark of compassion or love for anyone except yourself.”

She wasn’t breathing normally. Dear God, she thought, don’t let me faint at his feet! She swallowed once, then twice, trying to absorb the horror of what he was saying to her.

“You never said a word,” she said in a haunted tone. “In all these years.”

“I didn’t think it needed saying,” he said simply. “We’ve been friends, of a sort. I hope we still are.” He smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “As long as you realize that you’ll never be allowed within striking distance of my heart. I’m not a masochist, even if John was.”

Later, when she was alone, she was going to die. She knew it. But right now, pride spared her any further hurt.

She went past him, very calmly, and opened the front door, letting in a scent of dead leaves and cool October breeze. She didn’t speak. She didn’t look at him. She just stood there.

He walked past her, hesitating on the doorstep. His narrow eyes scanned what he could see of her face, and its whiteness shocked him. He wondered why she looked so torn up, when he was only speaking the truth.

Before he could say a thing, she closed the door, threw the dead bolt and put on the chain latch. She walked back toward her studio, vaguely aware that he was trying to call her back.

The next morning, the housekeeper she’d hired, Mrs. Lester, found her sprawled across her bed with a loaded pistol in her hands and an empty whiskey bottle lying on its side on the stained gray carpet. Mrs. Lester quickly looked in the bathroom and found an empty bottle that had contained tranquilizers. She jerked up the telephone and dialed the emergency services number with trembling hands. When the ambulance came screaming up to the front of the house, Tira still hadn’t moved at all.

Chapter Two

It took all of that day for Tira to come out of the stupor and discover where she was. It was a very nice hospital room, but she didn’t remember how she’d gotten there. She was foggy and disoriented and very sick to her stomach.

Dr. Ron Gaines, an old family friend, came in the door ahead of a nurse in neat white slacks and a multi-colored blouse with many pockets.

“Get her vitals,” the doctor directed.

“Yes, sir.”

While her temperature and blood pressure and pulse rate were taken, Dr. Gaines leaned against the wall quietly making notations on her chart. The nurse reported her findings, he charted them and he motioned her out of the room.

He moved to the bed and sat down in the chair beside Tira. “If anyone had asked me two weeks ago, I’d have said that you were the most levelheaded woman I knew. You’ve worked tirelessly for charities here, you’ve spear-headed fund drives… Good God, what’s the matter with you?”

“I had a bad blow,” she confessed in a subdued tone. “It was unexpected and I did something stupid. I got drunk.”

“Don’t hand me that! Your housekeeper found a loaded pistol in your hand.”

“Oh, that.” She started to tell him about the mouse, the one she’d tried unsuccessfully to catch for weeks. Last night, with half a bottle of whiskey in her, shooting the varmint had seemed perfectly logical. But her dizzy mind was slow to focus. “Well, you see—” she began.

He sighed heavily and cut her off. “Tira, if it wasn’t a suicide attempt, I’m not a doctor. Tell me the truth.”

She blinked. “I wouldn’t try to kill myself!” she said, outraged. She took a slow breath. “I was just a little depressed, that’s all. I found out yesterday that Simon holds me responsible for John’s death.”

There was a long, shocked pause. “He doesn’t know why the marriage broke up?”

She shook her head.

“Why didn’t you tell him, for God’s sake?” he exclaimed.

“It isn’t the sort of thing you tell a man about his best friend. I never dreamed that he blamed me. We’ve been friends. He never wanted it to be anything except friendship, and I assumed it was because of the way he felt about Melia. Apparently I’ve been five kinds of an idiot.” She looked up at him. “Six, if you count last night,” she added, flushing.

“I’m glad you agree that it was stupid.”

She frowned. “Did you pump my stomach?”

“Yes.”

“No wonder I feel so empty,” she said. “Why did you do that?” she asked. “I only had whiskey on an empty stomach!”

“Your housekeeper found an empty tranquilizer bottle in the bathroom,” he said sternly.

“Oh, that,” she murmured. “The bottle was empty. I never throw anything away. That prescription was years old. It’s one Dr. James gave me to get me through final exams in college three years ago. I was a nervous wreck!” She gave him another unblinking stare. “But you listen here, I’m not suicidal. I’m the least suicidal person I know. But everybody has a breaking point and I reached mine. So I got drunk. I never touch alcohol. Maybe that’s why it hit me so hard.”

He took her hand in his and held it gently. While he was trying to find the words, the door suddenly swung open and a wild-eyed Simon Hart entered the room. He looked as if he’d been in an accident, his face was so white. He stared at Tira without speaking.

It wasn’t his fault, really, but she hated him for what she’d done to herself. Her eyes told him so. There was no welcome in them, no affection, no coquettishness. She looked at him as if she wished she had a weapon in her hands.

“You get out of my room!” she raged at him, sitting straight up in bed.

The doctor’s eyebrows shot straight up. Tira had never raised her voice to Simon before. Her face was flaming red, like her wealth of hair, and her green eyes were shooting bolts of lightning in Simon’s direction.

“Tira,” Simon began uncertainly.

“Get out!” she repeated, ashamed of being accused of a suicide attempt in the first place. It was bad enough that she’d lost control of herself enough to get drunk. She glared at Simon as if he was the cause of it all—which he was. “Out!” she repeated, when he didn’t move, gesturing wildly with her arm.

He wouldn’t go, and she burst into tears of frustrated fury. Dr. Gaines got between Simon and Tira and hit the Call button. “Get in here, stat,” he said into the intercom, following the order with instructions for a narcotic. He glanced toward Simon, standing frozen in the doorway. “Out,” he said without preamble. “I’ll speak to you in a few minutes.”

Simon moved aside to let the scurrying nurse into the room with a hypodermic. He could hear Tira’s sobs even through the door. He moved a little way down the hall, to where his brother Corrigan was standing.

It had been Corrigan whom the housekeeper called when she discovered Tira. And he’d called Simon and told him only that Tira had been taken to the hospital in a bad way. He had no knowledge of what had pushed Tira over the edge or he might have thought twice about telling his older brother at all.

“I heard her. What happened?” Corrigan asked, jerking his head toward the room.

“I don’t know,” Simon said huskily. He leaned back against the wall beside his brother. His empty sleeve drew curious glances from a passerby, but he ignored it. “She saw me and started yelling.” He broke off. His eyes were filled with torment. “I’ve never seen her like this.”

“Nobody has,” Corrigan said flatly. “I never figured a woman like Tira for a suicide.”

Simon gaped at him. “A what?”

“What would you call combining alcohol and tranquilizers?” Corrigan demanded. “Good God, Mrs. Lester said she had a loaded pistol in her hands!”

“A pistol…?” Simon closed his eyes on a shudder and ran a hand over his drawn face. He couldn’t bear to think about what might have happened. He was certain that he’d prompted her actions. He couldn’t forget, even now, the look on her face when he’d almost flatly accused her of killing John. She hadn’t said a word to defend herself. She’d gone quiet; dangerously quiet. He should never have left her alone. Worse, he should never have said anything to her. He’d thought her a strong, self-centered woman who wouldn’t feel criticism. Now, almost too late, he knew better.

“I went to see her yesterday,” Simon confessed in a haunted tone. “She’d made some crazy remark at the last cattle auction about trying to make me jealous. She said she was only teasing, but it hit me the wrong way. I told her that she wasn’t the sort of woman I could be jealous about. Then, yesterday, I told her how I felt about her careless attitude toward the divorce only a month after she married John, and letting him go off to get himself killed on an oil rig.” His broad shoulders rose and fell defeatedly. “I shouldn’t have said it, but I was angry that she’d tried to make me jealous, as if she thought I might actually feel attracted to her.” He sighed. “I thought she was so hard that nothing I said would faze her.”

“And I thought I used to be blind,” Corrigan said.

Simon glanced at him, scowling. “What do you mean?”

Corrigan looked at his brother and tried to speak. Finally he just smiled faintly and turned away. “Forget it.”

The door to Tira’s room opened a minute later and Dr. Gaines came out. He spotted the two men down the hall and joined them.

“Don’t go back in there,” he told Simon flatly. “She’s too close to the edge already. She doesn’t need you to push her the rest of the way.”

“I didn’t do a damned thing,” Simon shot back, and now he looked dangerous, “except walk in the door!”

Dr. Gaines’s lips thinned. He glanced at Corrigan, who only shrugged and shook his head.

“I’m going to try to get her to go to a friend of mine, a therapist. She could use some counseling,” Gaines added.

“She’s not a nutcase,” Simon said, affronted.

Dr. Gaines looked into that cold, unaware face and frowned. “You were state attorney general for four years,” he said. “You’re still a well-known trial lawyer, an intelligent man. How can you be this stupid?”

“Will someone just tell me what’s going on?” Simon demanded.

Dr. Gaines looked at Corrigan, who held out a hand, palm up, inviting the doctor to do the dirty work.

“She’ll kill us both if she finds out we told him,” Gaines remarked to Corrigan.

“It’s better than letting her die.”

“Amen.” He looked at Simon, who was torn between puzzlement and fury. “Simon, she’s been in love with you for years,” Dr. Gaines said in a hushed, reluctant tone. “I tried to get her to give up the ranch and all that fundraising mania years ago, because they were only a way for her to keep near you. She wore herself out at it, hoping against hope that if you were in close contact, you might begin to feel something for her, but I knew that wasn’t going to happen. All I had to do was see you together to realize she didn’t have a chance. Am I right?” he asked Corrigan, who nodded.

Simon leaned back against the wall. He felt as if someone had put a knife right through him. He couldn’t even speak.

“What you said to her was a kindness, although I don’t imagine you see it that way now,” Dr. Gaines continued doggedly. “She had to be made to see that she couldn’t go on living a lie, and the changes in her life recently are proof that she’s realized how you feel about her. She’ll accept it, in time, and get on with her life. It will be the very best thing for her. She’s trying to be all things to all people, until she was worn to a nub. She’s been headed for a nervous breakdown for weeks, the way she’s pushed herself, with this one-woman art show added to the load she was already carrying. But she’ll be all right.” He put a sympathetic hand on Simon’s good arm. “It’s not your fault. She’s levelheaded about everything except you. But if you want to help her, for old time’s sake, stay away from her. She’s got enough on her plate right now.”

He nodded politely to Corrigan and went on down the hall.

Simon still hadn’t moved, or spoken. He was pale and drawn, half crazy from the doctor’s revelation.

Corrigan got on the other side of him and took his arm, drawing him along. “We’ll get a cup of coffee somewhere on the way back to your office,” he told his older brother.

Simon allowed himself to be pulled out the door. He wasn’t sure he remembered how to walk. He felt shattered.

Minutes later, he was sitting in a small café with his brother, drinking strong coffee.

“She tried to kill herself over me,” Simon said finally.

“She missed. She won’t try again. They’ll make sure of it.” He leaned forward. “Simon, she’s been overextending for years, you know that. No one woman could have done as much as she has without risking her health, if not her sanity. If it hadn’t been what you said to her, it would have been something else…maybe even this showing at the gallery that she was working night and day to get ready for.”

Simon forced himself to breathe normally. He still couldn’t quite believe it all. He sipped his coffee and stared into space.

“Did you know how she felt?” he asked Corrigan.

“She didn’t tell me, if that’s what you mean,” his brother said. “But it was fairly obvious, the way she talked about you. I felt sorry for her. We all knew how much you loved Melia, that you’ve never let yourself get close to another woman since the wreck. Tira had to know that there was no hope in that direction.”

The coffee in Simon’s cup sloshed a little as he put it down. “It seems so clear now,” he remarked absently. “She was always around, even when there didn’t seem a reason for it. She worked on committees for organizations I belonged to, she did charity work for businesses where I was a trustee.” He shook his head. “But I never noticed.”

“I know.”

He looked up. “John knew,” he said suddenly.

Corrigan hesitated. Then he nodded.

Simon sucked in a harsh breath. “Good God, I broke up their marriage!”

“Maybe. I don’t know. Tira never talks about John.” His eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “But haven’t you ever noticed that she and John’s father are still friends? He doesn’t blame her for his son’s death. Shouldn’t he, if it was all Tira’s fault?”

Simon didn’t want to think about it. He was sick to his stomach. “I pushed her at John,” he recalled.

“I remember. They seemed to have a lot in common.”

“They had me in common.” Simon laughed bitterly. “She loved me…” He took a long sip of coffee and burned his mouth. The pain was welcome; it took his mind off his conscience.

“She can’t ever know that we told you that,” Corrigan said firmly, looking as formidable as his brother. “She’s entitled to salvage a little of her pride. The newspapers got hold of the story, Simon. It’s in the morning edition. The headline’s really something—local socialite in suicide attempt. She’s going to have hell living it down. I don’t imagine they’ll let her see a newspaper, but someone will tell her, just the same.” His voice was harsh. “Some people love rubbing salt in wounds.”

Simon rested his forehead against his one hand. He was so drained that he could barely function. It had been the worst day of his life; in some ways, worse than the wreck that had cost him everything.

For years, Tira’s eyes had warmed at his approach, her mouth had smiled her welcome. She’d become radiant just because he was near her, and he hadn’t known how she felt, with all those blatant signs.

Now, this morning, she’d looked at him with such hatred that he still felt sick from the violence of it. Her eyes had flashed fire, her face had burned with rage. He’d never seen her like that.

Corrigan searched his brother’s worn face. “Don’t take it so hard, Simon. None of this is your fault. She put too much pressure on herself and now she’s paying the consequences. She’ll be all right.”

“She loved me,” he said again, speaking the words harshly, as if he still couldn’t believe them.

“You can’t make people love you back,” his brother replied. “Funny, Dorie and I saw her in the grocery store a few weeks ago, and she said that same thing. She had no illusions about the way you felt, regardless of how it looks.”

Simon’s eyes burned with anguish. “You don’t know what I said to her, though. I accused her of killing John, of being so unconcerned about his happiness that she let him go into a dangerous job that he didn’t have the experience to handle.” His face twisted. “I said that she was shallow and cold and selfish, that I had nothing but contempt for her and that I’d never let a woman like her get close to me….” His eyes closed. “Dear God, how it must have hurt her to hear that from me.”