Lucky wanted to know.
"Nothing. Except…" Chase forced a laugh.
"She offered to help us out."
"Christ, Chase, the last thing we need is another loan to repay."
"She, uh, didn't exactly offer to make us a loan. It was more like an investment."
"You mean she wants to buy an interest in the business? Become a partner?" Lucky left his chair and began to pace. "We don't want another partner, do we? You haven't changed your mind about that, have you?"
No.
"Well, good, because I haven't either. Granddad and Dad wanted the business to be kept in the family.
I'm surprised Marcie even thought of it, and I appreciate her interest, but I hope you explained to her that we didn't want anyone outside the family in on our business."
"Yeah, I explained that, but—"
"Wait a minute," Lucky said, whipping around. "She's not thinking about a hostile takeover, is she? She wouldn't pay off the bank and expect to move in whether we liked it or not, would she? Jeez, I never even thought of that."
"Neither did Marcie. At least I don't think so," Chase said. "That wasn't what she proposed."
Hands on hips, Lucky faced his brother.
"What exactly did she propose?"
There was no way around giving Lucky a straight answer now. He reasoned that if Marcie could be blunt, so could he. "She proposed marriage."
"Excuse me?"
"Marriage."
"To whom?"
"To me," he answered querulously. "Who the hell do you think?"
"I don't know what to think."
"Well, she proposed to me."
"Marcie Johns proposed marriage to you?"
"Isn't that what I just said?" Chase shouted.
"I don't believe this!"
"Believe it."
Lucky stared at his brother, aghast. Then his eyes narrowed suspiciously. "Wait a minute.
Where were you at the time? What were y'all doing?"
"Not what you're thinking. We were having coffee and chocolate chip cookies."
"You weren't—"
"No!"
Lucky lowered himself into the chair again.
A long moment of silence ensued while Lucky stared at Chase and Chase attempted to avoid the stare.
Finally Lucky asked, "Was she serious?"
"Seemed to be."
"Son of a gun," Lucky mumbled, still obviously dismayed.
"She had her arguments all lined up. Friendship, stability, stuff like that. And of course, the, uh, money."
Lucky shook his head in amazement, then began to laugh. "I can't believe it. She actually said she would give you money in exchange for marrying her?"
"Well, sort of. Words to that effect."
"Can you beat that? I've heard when it comes to business, she's got brass balls, but who would have thought she'd do something like this? What did you say to her? I mean"
—he paused and winked—"I assume you said no.
"That's what I said, yeah."
This time Chase was the one to stand and begin pacing. For some unnamed reason, Lucky's laughter irritated him. He suddenly felt the need to defend and justify Marcie's proposal.
"You shouldn't make fun of her," he said tetchily. "If she had stripped naked in front of me, it couldn't have taken more nerve than doing what she did."
Lucky caught his brother by the arm and drew himself up even with him. "Chase, you can't be thinking what I think you're thinking."
Chase met his brother's disbelieving eyes and surprised himself by saying, "It's a way out of this mess we're in."
Lucky stared at him speechlessly for a moment, then reacted in his characteristic, short-tempered way.
He shoved his face to within an inch of Chase's.
"Have you completely lost your mind? Has all that whiskey you've consumed over the last several months pickled your brain? Or did a kick from that bull jell your gray matter?"
"Is this a multiple-choice question?"
"I'm not joking!"
"Neither am I!" Chase slung off his brother's hand and spun away from him. "Think about it. Name one single, productive thing
I've done since Tanya died. You can't. No one can. You've told me as much to my face. My lack of initiative has put the family business on the brink of bankruptcy."
"This slump has got nothing to do with your private life," Lucky cried. "Or your lack of initiative or anything else except a collapsed oil market."
"But I'm still the elder son," Chase argued, repeatedly stabbing his chest with his index finger. "I'm the one who's accountable, Lucky.
And if Tyler Drilling goes down the tubes, it'll be on my conscience for the rest of my life.
I've got to do whatever I can to prevent that from happening."
"Even going so far as to marry a woman you don't love?"
"Yes. Even going that far."
"You wouldn't have let me marry Susan
Young two years ago to save us from rack and ruin. Do you think I'd let you do something so foolhardy?"
"You won't have any say in the matter."
It suddenly occurred to him that he was arguing strenuously in favor of Marcie's plan.
Since when? His subconscious must have dwelt on it all night. Sometime before he woke up, he had made up his mind that her idea wasn't so unworkable after all.
Lucky let loose a string of obscenities.
"You're not over Tanya yet, Chase. How can you think of becoming involved with another woman?"
"I don't intend to become involved. Not emotionally anyway. Marcie knows that. She knows I'm still in love with Tanya, and she's willing to settle for companionship."
"Bull. No woman is willing to settle for companionship.
"Marcie is. She's not the romantic type."
"All right, and why is that? I'll tell you why. Because she's an old maid who—as a last resort—will buy herself a husband."
"She's not an old maid." It made Chase unreasonably furious to hear Lucky verbalize the very thoughts he had entertained twelve hours earlier. "It's not easy for a woman as successful as Marcie to find a man who isn't threatened by her success." That argument popped into his head and he was inordinately pleased with it.
"Okay, forget that for the time being," Lucky said, "and think of this. She's probably buying herself a clear conscience, too. Remember, she was driving when your beloved wife was killed."
Chase's face went white with fury. His gray eyes took on the cold sheen of slate. "The accident wasn't Marcie's fault."
"I know that, Chase," Lucky said patiently.
"You know it. Everybody knows it. But does she? Has she reconciled that yet? Is she trying to do something charitable to ease her bur" den of guilt, even though it's self-imposed?"
Chase ruminated on that for a moment before speaking. "So what if she is? We'll still both benefit from the marriage. We'll each be getting what we want. Tyler Drilling will be in the black again and Marcie will have a husband and a clear conscience."
Lucky threw up his hands in a gesture of incredulity and let them fall back to his thighs with a loud slapping sound. "Do you even like this woman, Chase?"
"Yes, very much," he said truthfully. "We were always good pals."
"Good pals. Great." Lucky's disgust was apparent.
"Do you want to sleep with her?"
"I haven't thought about it."
"You'd better think about it. I'm sure she has. I'm reasonably sure that sex is part of the bargain." Lucky used Chase's temporary silence to drive home his point. "Sleeping with a tramp one night and moving on the next day is different from sleeping with someone you have to face over the Cheerios."
"Thanks for the lesson on women, little brother," Chase sneered. "I'll make a note of it in case I ever need your words of advice."
"Dammit, Chase, I'm only trying to get you to think this through. You'll pay off the bank loan immediately, but you'll be committed to
Marcie for life. Unless you plan to dump her once she's fulfilled her part of the bargain."
"I'd never do that!"
"But you've said you still love Tanya."
"I do."
"So every time you take Marcie to bed, it'll be out of obligation, or worse, pity. It'll be a charity—"
"If you finish that sentence, I'll knock the hell out of you." Chase's index finger was rigid and aimed directly at his brother's lips.
"Don't talk about her that way."
Lucky fell back a step and gazed at his brother with disbelief. "You're defending her, Chase. That means you've already made up your mind, haven't you?"
In that moment Chase realized that he had.
"Thank you for coming, Pat."
Laurie Tyler ushered Sheriff Pat
Bush into her kitchen. He was
"back-door company." She would have been insulted if he'd gone to the front door and rung the bell.
All her married life, Pat had been a good friend to Bud and her. Bud had died several years earlier of cancer, but Pat had remained a steadfast family friend. He could be relied on in times of need. As now.
"What's going on? You sounded upset when you called." He set his brown felt Stetson on the kitchen table and shrugged off his uniform jacket, draping it over the back of his chair before sitting down. Laurie set a mug of coffee in front of him. "Thanks. What's the matter, Laurie?"
"Chase is getting married."
The rim of the mug was already at Pat's lips. Her stunning announcement gave him a start. He burned his tongue with hot coffee.
"Getting married!" he exclaimed.
"That's right. Pat, I'm so upset I don't know what to do."
"Who's he marrying? A gold digger claiming he gave her a kid or something like that?"
"No, no, nothing like that," Laurie told him, sadly shaking her head.
Her hair was pale. Formerly blond, it was now softened to beige by the addition of scattered white strands. It was cut short and fashionably styled. She could pass for ten years younger than she was. Her slim figure was the envy of her peers, and her blue eyes were animated and lively. Now, however, they were dulled by concern for her oldest child.