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That was enough to encourage Eunice to launch into a familiar litany of her problems.
“It’s Mother. She’s driving me to distraction, Callie. She tried to run the tractor this morning, even though I told her over and over that Tom would come by as soon as he’d finished our fields and plow hers.”
“Has it occurred to you that perhaps she’d prefer to be independent, rather than relying on you and your husband?” It was the one area in which Callie could totally sympathize with her mother. She could imagine the kind of price tag that came with Eunice and Tom’s so-called help. Endless reminders of their generosity, no doubt.
“Of course she’d rather be independent,” Eunice snapped. “That’s not the point. She can’t do the work. She’ll wind up having a heart attack or something. And the other day in town she practically ran over Mr. Casey because she won’t wear the glasses the doctor prescribed. She’s fallen twice. Sooner or later, she’s bound to break her hip. I’m scared to death she’s going to burn the house down because she gets so distracted when she’s cooking that she forgets all about whatever she’s left on the stove.”
She heaved a put-upon sigh. “I’m telling you, Callie, I can’t take it anymore. You have to come home. She cannot be left in that big old house alone. And she certainly can’t come here. Tom would have a fit.”
Callie barely resisted the desire to scream, even though she suspected Eunice had plenty of cause to be anxious.
“It wouldn’t work for the two of us to be under the same roof, either,” she explained with careful patience. “In case you’ve forgotten the cold wars waged before I left home—Mother and I have never gotten along. She blames me... Well, who knows what she blames me for? Her whole miserable life, I suppose.” She couldn’t help the rare note of confusion that crept into her voice with the admission.
“I swear to you, Callie, if you don’t come back and take some responsibility for this, I’ll...I’ll...”
“What, Eunice? What will you do?” Callie prodded, tired of the guilt her sister had been heaping on her ever since the day she’d left Iowa.
It wasn’t that she didn’t love her mother. She did. But Regina Gunderson had not done anything to allow that love to flourish. Occasionally, in the darkest moments of the night, Callie regretted that their relationship wasn’t stronger, but she’d tired of making efforts that were never returned. She’d long since stopped trying to figure out exactly what she was to blame for. She’d just accepted that the gulf between her and her mother was wider than any Iowa river at flood stage.
“I’ll pack her bags and send her to New York, that’s what I’ll do,” Eunice threatened.
Callie sucked in her breath, stunned by the possibility that Eunice might very well do as she’d said. “That’s blackmail,” she accused.
“You bet it is. I’m telling you I am at the end of my rope. It would be one thing if she were the least little bit grateful, but she’s not. Tom’s about had it, too, and you know what a saint he’s been about helping out ever since Daddy died. I’m not ruining my marriage over this.”
It was not the first time Eunice had declared her marriage on the brink of disaster. If it wasn’t their mother’s demanding, ungrateful attitude, then it was the failure of the corn crop or the lousy supper Eunice had fixed because she was too tired to stand in front of the stove for an hour.
Callie could have told her that Tom Foster was a selfish pig, who liked to throw his weight around just to keep his wife in a constant state of terror, but she kept silent. That was one realization her sister was going to have to come to all on her own. She wouldn’t welcome Callie’s observations or her advice.
“Give me a couple of days,” she said. “I’ll think of something to help Mother.”
Jason Kane’s job offer flashed through her mind. The money would offer a solution, a way to pay for a competent farmhand, she thought, then dismissed the idea as ridiculous. She was not an actress. It was absurd to think about wasting all of her education, all of her experience in business, to prance around playing a cop.
Maybe she was more Regina Gunderson’s daughter than she’d ever realized. She could just imagine her mother’s reaction to her choosing a frivolous career like acting, rather than something solid and dependable. In their family the sternest of work ethics had prevailed. A career in make-believe hardly qualified.
No, taking that job was out of the question. Resisting Jason Kane and all of his considerable powers of persuasion was essential, too. He was clearly a give-him-an-inch-he’d-take-a-mile kind of man. There had to be another way.
“Maybe we could sell most of the land,” she began.
“Mother wouldn’t hear of it,” Eunice declared before she could finish the thought.
“She might have to,” Callie said grimly. “Especially if it meant she could keep the house and hire someone to help out.”
“But that land is our inheritance,” Eunice protested.
That, of course, was the real source of her sister’s objection, Callie knew. She and Tom wanted that land. Tom envisioned himself as some sort of land baron, the corn king of Iowa.
“Let me think about it,” Callie repeated.
“I’m giving you until the end of the week, then, so help me, Mother will be on the first flight to New York.” She slammed the phone down, apparently so Callie would get the message that she meant business.
“Well, that was pleasant,” she muttered to herself.
A key turned in her door just as Terry called out, “Knock, knock, dollface. I know you’re home because I can hear you talking to yourself.”
“Unless you have a very large bottle of gin with you, go away.”
Terry ignored the warning and came on in. “Uh-oh, Eunice must have called again,” he said, regarding her sympathetically. “Why don’t you change your number and not tell that witch?”
“Because that witch is my sister,” she said, unwilling to admit how much appeal his suggestion held, especially after a conversation like the one they’d just had. Maybe she’d move while she was at it, so no one could find her at all.
Terry sat down beside her, shifted her bare feet into his lap and began to massage them. This, she reminded herself, was why she put up with Terry’s tart tongue and his interference in her life. She sighed with pure pleasure, finally beginning to relax.
“I thought sisters were supposed to share some special bond,” he said.
“So they say,” she said wearily.
“On a scale of one to ten, how much guilt did she dump on you this time?”
“Seven,” she said. “But that wasn’t the worst of it.” She summarized Eunice’s threat to send Regina Gunderson to New York, if Callie didn’t come home to take over her care.
“There’s an obvious solution,” he said with such nonchalance that every muscle in Callie’s body tensed all over again.
“What?” she asked cautiously, though she knew perfectly well where he was headed. She’d taken a trip down that very road herself only moments before.
“You could become a star, darling.”
She promptly removed her feet from his lap and drew her knees to her chest. “Forget it,” she insisted. She might have been down that road, but she’d turned back.
He gestured toward Jason Kane’s latest floral offering. “Am I wrong or is Mr. Kane still in hot pursuit?”
“So it seems.”
“Would it be so terrible seeing your face on the cover of all the soap opera publications? Would it offend your sensibilities to be envied by several million women because you get something they all want—namely, me.”
“I already have you.”
He leered at her suggestively. “Who knows, a couple of love scenes with you, and I might go straight.”
She scowled at him. “I know for a fact that sexier women than I have tried and failed. Besides, you and Neil have a better relationship than most heterosexual couples I know. Why would I want to interfere with that?”
“The challenge, of course.” He regarded her speculatively. “Unless you’d prefer the challenge of getting Jason Kane’s pants off, something I hear is not all that difficult, by the way. Be careful with that one, dollface. He’s wicked.”
Callie prayed she wasn’t blushing, since that very idea had crossed her mind a time or two over lunch. The reaction had stunned her. She’d been pretty much convinced that all men were lower than slime ever since her divorce. Not that she intended to admit that Jason Kane had stirred any sort of response at all, especially to a man who would use it against her every chance he got. Badgering and blabbing were two of Terry’s less attractive traits.
“I am not interested in getting anybody’s pants off,” she said adamantly. “And aren’t we getting a little far off the subject?”
“Which is?”
“What to do about my mother.”
“I thought that was what we were talking about. If you become a rich, successful star, you’ll be able to set your mother up with twenty-four-hour companions, if that’s what she needs. You’ll be able to hire some big burly guy to run the farm.”
Terry seemed unduly fascinated by the latter. Callie shook her head. “You are such a fraud. I can’t imagine how Neil puts up with you.”
“That’s personal, darling. Now, come on, say you’ll at least give serious consideration to Jason Kane’s offer. If I have to do one more love scene with Penelope Frogface—”
“Her name is Frontier,” Callie chided.
“Whatever. She wears too damned much Giorgio. One of these days I’m going to start sneezing and never stop. They’ll have to close down the set and have it fumigated before I’ll go back to work. It’s up to you to save us all from that.”
“It is not up to me to do any such thing.”
“Besides that, a good friend would want to help out,” he added slyly.
Callie eyed him warily. “With what?” she asked, certain that the subject had slipped away from excessive perfume.
“I seem to be getting these odd little notes,” he confided with an air of mystery.
“Fan mail?”
His expression turned rueful. “Not exactly. My fans love me.”
Something in his voice alerted her that this was more serious than he was pretending with all of these enigmatic hints. “Terry, exactly what’s in these notes?”
He hesitated so long, Callie doubted it was just for dramatic effect. He seemed almost frightened to describe the notes aloud. “Terry?”
“I suppose someone totally paranoid might call them threats,” he conceded eventually.
Callie stared at him. “Threats? What kind of threats? Dear heaven, have you told the police?”
“Darling, first of all, I am not that paranoid yet. Second, I couldn’t possibly tell the police and risk the publicity.”
Since Callie had never heard of an actor being averse to publicity, she guessed that these threats must have something to do with Terry’s relationship with Neil. “Is someone threatening to reveal that you’re gay?”
“It’s nothing as overt as that,” he admitted. “But it sure is pointing in that direction. I mean, what else could it be?”
“And you think someone on the show is behind them?”
“It has to be. The notes keep turning up in my dressing room with no postage, even though they’re usually stuck in with the fan mail.” He looked vaguely shaken by the implications.
Callie thought of the file cabinet that had inexplicably fallen during her one scene on the show. “Terry, is it possible when that file cabinet fell it was no accident?”
The question shook him visibly. The color drained from his face. “Of course not,” he denied a little too heatedly. “I’m sure someone just tripped and knocked it over.”
“Who?” Callie asked reasonably. “No one admitted to it.”
“With the director carrying on the way he was, would you admit you’d caused an entire scene to be reshot?”
“No, I suppose not, but what if—”
“Forget it. The letters are probably nothing.”
“Then why did you bring them up?”
“Why else? To get you to take the job,” he said airily. His expression sobered. “Of course, just in case I’m wrong, you really would be doing me a huge favor if you came to work on the show and helped me figure out who’s behind this.”
It seemed everyone had new career plans for her. “I’m a stockbroker, not a private eye,” she reminded him.
“But you’d be playing a cop,” he said, as if that automatically would give her the requisite investigative skills. Terry had long since blurred the distinction between reality and fiction.
Callie groaned. She could tell he was dead serious about this. She wanted to help him, she really did.
“Terry, I’m having enough trouble with my own life without worrying about the little blips shaking up your serenity. If you think this is serious, you have to tell a real cop, not some pseudo-cop being played by a pseudo-actress.”
“Sweetie, I know your problems are real, but at least you have a solution right in front of you.” He plucked a business card out of his pocket and held it out. “The answer to your prayers is only a phone call away.”
Callie eyed the card warily. “Unless that card belongs to a good psychiatrist, I don’t want any part of it.”
“Next best thing,” he assured her. “A network president with the power to whisk away all your problems, answer all your prayers. Sort of a combination shrink and priest.”
“How much did he pay you to do the commercial for him?” she inquired irritably just as the doorbell rang.
Terry jumped up before she could budge. “Not nearly as much as he paid me to see that he got in here to talk to you tonight,” he admitted, flinging open the door to reveal a casually attired, devastatingly handsome Jason Kane on the doorstep. “Bye-bye, sweetie.” He turned and winked at her. “You, too, Callie.”
“Quite an exit,” Jason said, standing just inside the open doorway as if he actually meant to give her a choice about whether he stayed or went.
“Quite an entrance,” she retorted. “I’m not sure which of you has better timing.”
Hands shoved in his pockets, Jason rocked back on his heels and surveyed the room. “I see you got the flowers.”
“Yes, thank you,” she said politely. “I’ve been meaning to call.”
“But you were afraid to risk another round with my powers of persuasion,” he suggested.
“I was busy,” she corrected defensively, knowing that he was exactly right. She hadn’t wanted another encounter with the kind of temptation Jason Kane represented. It would be too easy to get swept up in the glamorous world he was offering her. Her inbred puritanical ethic required that success come through hard work, not some ridiculous fluke. She wasn’t too crazy about testing his impact on her senses, either. She hadn’t needed Terry’s warning to know that Jason Kane was a dangerous man.
“New job keeping you busy?” he inquired.
“No.” She had to fight to keep a defensive note from her voice.
“Volunteer work, perhaps?”
“No.”
“A new relationship?”
There was a dark glint in his eyes with that last one. Callie shuddered and reminded herself never to cross Jason Kane.
