Wild Midnight Page 15

  That again, Rachel told herself, looking down at the briefcase in her lap. She didn’t look like a “socialist organizer” carrying an elegant accessory, a going away gift from her mother that came from one of Philadelphia’s most exclusive old saddlemakers in Walnut Street.

  She sidestepped the obvious opening to defend the work of the farmers’ cooperative and said quietly, “But the bank does make loans to small farmers, doesn’t it? Isn’t most of the bank’s business mainly agricultural?”

  “Corn. Cattle. Cash crops. Loans against collateral. Find anybody in your group what’s got collateral like machinery, unencumbered property, and we’ll talk to you.”

  “This is just an inquiry,” Rachel said patiently. She thought of the Yonges, who owned a John Deere tractor and grain drills for their corn, the only equipment that could qualify as collateral. But Billy Yonge had told her it was encumbered by a loan from one of the banks in Hazel Gardens. Mr. Wesley and some of the other tenant farmers had only mules and pickup trucks, if that much.

  “You could go up to Hazel Gardens to First Federal or DeRenne Farmers Bank, see what they say.” The loan officer’s attitude of dismissal was anything but courteous. “But farmer’s loans are scarce as hen’s teeth these days.”

  Rachel did not feel like being dismissed. She had dressed in a silk tailored shirtwaist dress, with quietly understated handmade kidskin purse and matching gray pumps which cost more than the loan officer’s monthly wages, although she would never say so. Her dark red hair was neatly if severely done up in its long thick braid, knotted low at the back of her slim white neck. She set her chin stubbornly. The loan officer was not looking at her now, otherwise he would have seen a very determined glint in her soft brown eyes.

  “Would it help if we had someone to back the co-op’s credit?” It had just occurred to her; she had no one in particular in mind, she just wanted to know.

  The cold smile became an unpleasant grin. “Credit? You mean a co-signer? That is, somebody who can back your loan?” His eyes raked her slyly. “How about Mr. Beaumont Tillson?”

  For the second time that morning Rachel felt a jolt of uneasiness. It couldn’t be happening. The loan officer couldn’t mean what he’d just said, but the expression on his face told her otherwise.

  “Beaumont Tillson?” she repeated.

  He leaned back in his chair and put the tips of his fingers together, looking over them at her. “Can’t tell where you might get help these days. Providing, of course, you got something to offer. Never pays to leave a stone unturned, as the old saying goes.”

  She heard him with the blood pounding in her ears. She was mistaken, Rachel told herself. She had to be.

  Nevertheless she got up without a word and walked through the tiny loan department, through the teller’s section, and with quickening steps, out the bank’s front door.

  Pembroke Screven called almost as soon as she got home. Rachel had barely time enough to put her briefcase and purse on the kitchen counter and take the telephone from its wall bracket.

  “Beau Tillson tells me that you two have come to an agreement over his field road. That was something of a surprise,” the lawyer observed dryly.

  Rachel sank into a kitchen chair and held the receiver to her ear. For me, too, she thought, shutting her eyes. What more could happen?

  “I thought we’d agreed, Mrs. Brinton, that you’d let me handle negotiations. And not try to meet with Tillson yourself.

  “I did speak to him,” Rachel said with an effort. The coils of deceit were winding around her tightly; she suddenly had great sympathy for people who were tempted, even forced to lie. “He ... ah, Mr. Tillson came to my house that night after we met in your office and wanted me to sign a paper. But I didn’t.” She hoped her voice didn’t betray her. But she was remembering the scene that had taken place in that very kitchen, in the early hours of the morning, and the cold look of fury on Beau Tillson’s face before he’d left. “He had a paper saying the co-op would not try to use the road in return for several hundred dollars.”

  There was a silence on the other end of the line, and then the lawyer said, “If Beau has that kind of money, he’d better pay some of his bills. I’m holding his creditors at bay with a pitchfork.”

  “Five hundred dollars,” she said miserably.

  “You didn’t sign it, I gather?”

  “No. I ... that was several days ago.” She took a long shaking breath. Surely Beau Tillson hadn’t promptly called the lawyer this morning and told him that there was some verbal agreement about the road. She clutched the telephone, knowing she had to say something. “I explained to him that he couldn’t come to my house. That I couldn’t sign papers for the cooperative without their agreement and permission, and certainly not like that, at my home. But there isn’t any verbal agreement.”

  “Mrs. Brinton, I have to have your cooperation.” The lawyer was firm. “I know Beau likes to take matters into his own hands, and he can be mighty persuasive and, ah, persistent when he wants to be.”

  Especially with young women, Rachel thought, staring at the telephone bracket on the wall before her. Pembroke Screven knew Beaumont Tillson better than she did, and he’d warned her.

  The lawyer’s voice went on in her ear, “Beau’s under a lot of pressure right now to keep that old place out there in the marshes afloat. All the Beaumont money’s gone, and when a man’s back is to the wall he gets pretty desperate. Right now Beau’s obsessed with the idea that developers will get into the riverfront through that road if it’s opened—but that’s no excuse to pester you. Now, what’s this about a verbal agreement?’

  He was more than desperate, she thought. She was at a loss to understand why he had called the lawyer. How much did Pembroke Screven know? After her experience in the bank she was suspicious of everyone. “He’s misrepresenting the matter,” she said, feeling trapped. ‘I don’t know what he’s told you, but there’s no verbal agreement.”

  The lawyer cleared his throat. “Mrs. Brinton, I’ll speak to Beau if you want me too. If he’s been bothering you, I can put a stop to it.”

  He knows, Rachel thought miserably. And he’s worried. It’s there in his voice. It’s all over Draytonville.

  “I don’t think the road makes much difference now,” she said. “The members of the co-op had a meeting in our main field this morning to survey the damage left by the rains, and we’re agreed that our tomatoes are a total loss. I doubt very much if we’ll need to use the field road anymore. If you see Beaumont Tillson, you might tell him so. That should take care of it.”

  Her mind told her it probably would. Her heart told her something far different.

  Rachel got her briefcase, sat down at her desk, and stared at the rich polished English leather without opening it. If, a year ago, she had planned to bury herself in Dan’s work to escape from problems she couldn’t handle, she was now finding this was no escape at all. She couldn’t bear to think about Beaumont Tillson’s betrayal; the only thing left was to try to concentrate on what the co-op could do about its unexpected failure.

  Rachel slid the records out of the briefcase and onto the desktop. If the board of directors approved, she would have to start approaching other lending institutions for a loan to replant their crop. That meant preparing some sort of presentation to show to the banks. Usually one started out with a list of assets and prospects. They were out of one, and the other looked dim.

  Rachel put her head down on her arms, folded on the surface of the desk. If only she hadn’t let things get in such a muddle. If only her heart hadn’t ruled her head. If only—

  She lifted her head, could almost hear what her mother would say. “Get to work Rachel Brinton and solve your problems. One at a time, if that is the only way to tackle them.” She picked up a pencil from the desk tray and chewed on the end of it.

  Right now the cooperative needed to replant what was lost, and to do that they needed financial help. Unfortunately their first project had failed. Banks,
rightfully enough, wanted a reasonable chance of getting their money back.

  Rachel stared down at the papers before her. Further, the co-op’s executive secretary—too young, too inexperienced in the opinion of many—had become involved with the town’s most notorious character. And, she told herself, the unthinkable—she’d fallen in love with him.

  The sound of a car drawing up in the yard broke into her thoughts, and Rachel turned in her chair, craning to see through the front windows. She had only the briefest glimpse of a tall figure in muddy blue jeans, boots, and a black Stetson hat jumping out of a battered jeep parked under the trees.

  A moment later there came a knock at her front door. Before she could even get to her feet the front door was pushed open and Beau Tillson stepped inside.

  “Hello, honey,” he drawled. She saw his eyes widen in approval at her gray tailored dress, the length of her legs in nylons, and her hair drawn sleekly in a fashionable knot at the back of her head. “How about some lunch?”

  Chapter Eleven

  “Lunch?” Her voice was a disbelieving croak.

  He was naked to the waist, arms and shoulders covered with a fine sheen of sweat, his thumbs hooked into tight, leather-belted western jeans riding low on his hips. The familiar faintly mocking look glinted from under the much-folded, frayed brim of the ancient black Stetson.

  “I’ll watch the mud,” he said quickly, mistaking the look on her face. “I’ve been stringing fence in the marsh, that’s all.” He looked down at his trail of wet black footsteps on the utilitarian plastic tile of the living room and shrugged. “I kept thinking of you, so I decided to come by and let you feed me.”

  “You can’t come in,” Rachel cried. It was too late; he was already in.

  He seemed not to hear her. The warm golden look slowly traveled over her from head to feet, as though the sight of her was what he’d come for. There was something unguarded in the way he stood with the Stetson in his hands, his virile, elegant maleness shining through mud and his rough attire. He didn’t look at all like a man who had seduced her, started gossip about her, then deliberately set a trap for her by telling the lawyer they had a verbal agreement over the road.

  “Get out,” she told him quickly. “I mean it.”

  The light faded from his face. “Don’t start that,” he said in a different tone.

  He brushed past her, lowered himself into the kitchen chair, and stuck out the long length of his muddy legs and western boots. He laid the black hat on the table. He looked casually down at the pile of the co-op’s papers Rachel had dropped there.

  “How about some lunch?” he repeated. “I have to get back before the tide is up. And if you don’t feed me, I’ll have to go without.”

  “Feed you?” she said in a strangled voice.

  The half smile, the challenging light in those strange eyes, the blatant sensual appeal in every line of his broad-shouldered, half-naked body dared her to say no to him.

  “Don’t keep backing away,” he said with the same ironic smile. “I’m not going to grab you, I’m too dirty. How about a sandwich?”

  Nothing in her experience had prepared her to cope with a man like this. He’d taken advantage of her at every step, and he was laughing at her now, knowing that she didn’t know how to get him out of her house, toying with her like a giant golden cat with some small thing he’d captured. She felt as though her sanity was crumbling, because all she wanted to do was reach out and touch the tips of her fingers against the muscles that moved under the smooth, glistening skin of his shoulders. He propped his elbows on the table and bent his head to look down at the co-op papers she’d left there.

  Perhaps if she fed him he would go away. “W-what sort of sandwich do you want?” she said weakly. “I really don’t have much to feed you.”

  He held up the pages of the draft she’d outlined of the bank presentation, and frowned. “You ought to dump this tomato project. It doesn’t make any sense this late in the season, and it’s a waste of time.” He half turned his head to her. “After a washout you need a subsidized crop so you can turn a decent profit. Get a loan and put in soybeans.” Then he added, not even lifting his head, “If you don’t take that look off your face, I’m going to take you into the bedroom and make love to you, even as filthy as I am.”

  Rachel started, lurching against the kitchen counter, turning over an empty milk jug she kept there.

  “I have some tomatoes, and some b-bacon left over from breakfast.” She hated the nervous stutter that attacked her when she was rattled. “And some sprouted wheat bed. Bread!” she corrected herself, blushing madly.

  She heard him laugh. “Sandwiches are fine. But what the hell is sprouted wheat bread?”

  Rachel shook her head wordlessly as she started for the refrigerator. You see, you couldn’t, she was explaining to herself. She couldn’t scream at him to get out because she was shaking all over, the words frozen in her throat. And not just with fear.

  “I still have this coffee,” she whispered, picking up the small jar of instant. She stared at it, not really seeing it as she remembered fixing coffee for him there in the kitchen and the awful scene before he’d left. Had it only been this morning?

  He was rummaging through the co-op’s papers as though she had given him permission to do so. He propped his head on one hand, using a pencil to scribble figures on the yellow legal pad she used as a work sheet.

  “I never saw such a damned shoestring operation,” he muttered as she moved around the tiny kitchen, fixing his sandwich. “It takes nerve to start up something like this without any real money.”

  She came to the table and put his food in front of him. She stood so close she had only to lift her hand to touch the side of his face and the hard edge of his jaw as he lifted the sandwich without looking at it and took a large bite.

  “We will have to get a bank loan to replant,” she murmured as she watched him. “We can market a tomato crop this summer in Charleston or Savannah. And the Yonges’ sweet corn—”

  “Hogwash,” he said, his mouth full. He kept his eyes on the yellow work sheet. “You haven’t got your mind on what you’re doing, Rachel. You’re hung up on some romantic picture of the old market boats going to Charleston full of happy blacks singing songs about peddling ripe strawberries. At best you could sell tomatoes to supermarkets and truckers, and they want Florida pinks so hard you can bounce them off the floor. That’s what ships and sells best, not soft lowcountry reds. But Claxton didn’t tell you that, did he? He’s a dumbass redneck if I ever saw one.” He slurped a mouthful of the hot coffee she put in front of him. “The labor costs alone harvesting tomatoes will kill you. Go to soybeans, they’re government subsidized. Billy Yonge’s got the equipment, he’ll do it on shares.”

  “But we can’t do that,” Rachel cried. “That’s sharecropping. It violates the whole idea of the cooperative! The small farmer—”

  “Hasn’t got a chance,” he finished for her. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand absentmindedly, ignoring his paper napkin. “It’s too damned bad you didn’t study the economics of this place before you came down here, it would have saved you a lot of trouble. But I suppose a bunch of peaceniks wouldn’t think about that. Tenant farmers and sharecroppers can’t compete with big agribusiness companies, can’t you get that through your head? And you damned well can’t work with a rural residue that’s too poor and shiftless to move up-country. Or old relics like Uncle Wes Faligant, who can’t. It’s a tough world. Hell, I run a middlerange cattle operation and I’m only hanging on by my fingernails.” He looked up at her suddenly. “You, went to the bank today, didn’t you? What did they say?”

  He knew about that too. By now she supposed all of Draytonville did. “They won’t lend us any money.” She didn’t try to keep, the dejection out of her voice. “They said to try the banks in Hazel Gardens.”

  He snorted. “They won’t either. I know, I’ve been there.” He turned back to the papers. “Tell Til Coffee,�
� he said very evenly, “your crowd needs a loan. Tell him to see what he can do.”

  She stared down at the top of that gold-streaked head. “Til Coffee?” For the second time that day she reacted blankly to the mention of that name. “Why Til Coffee?”

  “Just ask him. If he can get you some money, he’ll tell you. It will come from out of town, so nobody has to know about it.” Abruptly he scraped back the chair and stood up, gulping the last of his coffee. “I’ve got to go.”

  Rachel stared at him. In spite of everything, she’d fed him lunch. She couldn’t quite believe it. She said in a low voice, “The loan officer at the bank in Draytonville said I should see you if I needed any money. He was quite nasty.”

  He looked at her quickly. “I don’t have any money.”

  “So I gather,” she said in the same steady tone. “Loretha Bulloch came out to the field this morning. I don’t know why. I think she was curious—I think she wanted to look me over.

  “Loretha?” He smiled unpleasantly. “My, my, it must be all over town. Looks like Darla Jean’s been pretty busy. Did Poke Screven call you too?”

  If he had struck her, his indifferent reaction could not have been any more brutal. But then he wouldn’t suffer from gossip, she thought, staring at him with widened eyes. His reputation as Beau Devil Tillson was already accepted.

  It was a long moment before she could bring herself to say, “Does it give you so much pleasure to make a fool of me? Are you trying to drive me away, out of Draytonville—is that what you want?”

  He lifted his head and shot her a strange, tawny look. “I can’t leave you alone,” he said in a soft, even voice. “I thought we’d already established that. You want it too. Don’t tell me you don’t.”

  Their eyes locked; for once Rachel did not turn away. “I gave myself to you,” she whispered. “And for you it was nothing.”

  “Rachel, don’t whine.” He slammed the coffee cup down on the table so violently it made the other dishes rattle. “You sound like every other damned woman when you do that.”