Low Pressure

He took his lighter from her, abruptly turned, and walked away. Bellamy struck out after him, but had taken only a few steps when one of her father’s oldest friends stepped out of the bar and addressed her. She had no choice but to speak to him.

While the man was expressing his sympathy, Dale Moody once again disappeared.

Dent didn’t go through the receiving line. He entered the club through another door and then blended into the crowd as well as he could. He didn’t eat, didn’t drink, didn’t talk to anyone, and maintained his distance from the family, although he kept Bellamy within sight when at all possible. If she noticed him, she gave no indication of it.

She looked tired, beleaguered, bereaved. And gorgeous in a tragic heroine sort of way. Black suited her. Even the shadows beneath her eyes had a certain delicate appeal.

When the receiving line disbanded, he followed her as far as the double-door entrance into the bar. He didn’t go in, but saw her sitting at a table with Steven. He loitered in the hallway, and the next time he drifted past, he saw her leaving the bar by way of a terrace door.

Seeing his opportunity to talk to her alone, Dent ducked out the nearest exit, circled the swimming pool, and rounded the corner of the building, which brought him to a shaded terrace where she was in conversation with an elderly man, who was pressing her hand between his.

As soon as he left her, and before she could reenter the bar, Dent spoke her name. He feared she might hightail it when she saw him. She didn’t. She waited for him to come to her.

Up close, he could see that her eyes looked weepy. She could have stood a good meal or two. Always slender, she now looked fragile. After several moments of simply staring, he asked the question that had been torturing him for days.

“Why didn’t you call me?”

Her father, the person she’d said she loved most in the world, had died. But she hadn’t even called to tell him. He was surprised by how much that had hurt. She hadn’t responded to his dozens of voice-mail messages, either. He would have thought… Hell, he didn’t know what he thought. Or what to think now, because she still hadn’t said anything.

“I had to hear it from Gall,” he said, “who’d caught it on the news. Why didn’t you call to tell me as soon as you got word?”

“We hadn’t parted on the best of terms.”

“But your dad died.” He stated it like the settling point of an argument, as if nothing else need be said.

“Why would I bother you with that?”

“Bother me?” He stared at her with bewilderment for several moments, then turned his head away and looked out across the panorama of the golf course. “Wow. That speaks volumes, doesn’t it? It says a lot about your opinion of me. Turns out you’re even more like the Lystons than they are.”

After a time, he turned his head back to her and looked into her eyes. Then he sniffed with disdain, brushed past her, and entered the bar through the terrace door. He shot a glance toward the table where Steven was sitting with William. They were absorbed in conversation.

Olivia was standing with a group of well-dressed men and women of her ilk. She appeared to be listening to what one of the silver-haired gentlemen was saying, but there was an absent look in her eyes.

Dent thought about staying and ordering a drink for himself. His presence would spoil their party, make the situation awkward, and he was feeling just ornery enough to do it. He even checked to see if there were any vacant stools at the bar. And that was when he saw him.

Jerry.

He was seated at the bar, hunched over a beer. But his gaze was fixed on Bellamy as she entered through the terrace door, looking upset, blotting her eyes with a tissue.

Jerry quickly reached for something beneath the bar.

All this registered with Dent in a nanosecond. He processed the potentially dangerous situation and reacted with immediacy, only one thought in mind: Protect Bellamy.

“Hey!” he shouted.

Jerry did as everyone in the bar did. His surprised gaze swung to Dent and, seeing that he was the person being addressed, he froze. But for less than a heartbeat. Then he bolted.

Dent charged after him. Jerry ran like the devil was after him. In his haste, he didn’t see his way completely clear of the double doorway. He crashed into one panel of it, breaking several panes of glass and splintering the wood frame.

Women screamed. Men scurried aside.

Jerry, in a stumbling run, tried to get away, but Dent caught him by the collar, dragged him back into the bar, and slammed him face first against the wall. The man cried out in fear and pain as Dent crowded in behind him.

“What’s your story, Jerry?”

“Let him go!”

Dent paid no heed to the shout coming from someone in the room. He wanted an explanation from the man who’d tracked Bellamy from New York to Texas. “What were you reaching for under the bar?”