Two Alone

“Rusty!”

“Yes, Father.” She dropped back onto the edge of the bed and started yanking on her clothes.

“Is everything okay? Whose beat-up old car is that out front?”

“I’ll be right out, Father.”

Cooper was pulling on his clothes with considerably more composure than she. She couldn’t help but wonder if this was the first time he had found himself in an awkward situation like this, maybe with the untimely appearance of a husband.

Once they were dressed, he helped her to her feet and handed her her crutches. Together they went through the bedroom door and down the hall. Red-faced, knowing that her hair was in wild tumble and that she smelled muskily of sex, Rusty entered the living room.

Her father was impatiently pacing the hardwood floor. When he turned around and saw Cooper, his face went taut with disapproval. He treated Cooper to a frigid stare before casting his judgmental eyes on his daughter.

“I hated to let a day go by without coming to see you.”

“Thank you, Father, but it really isn’t necessary for you to stop by every day.”

“So I see.”

“You...you remember Mr. Landry.”

The two men nodded to each other coolly, taking each other’s measure like opposing champion warriors who would decide the outcome of a battle. Cooper kept his mouth stubbornly shut. Rusty couldn’t speak; she was too embarrassed. Carlson was the first to break the stressful silence.

“Actually, this is an opportune meeting,” he said. “I have something to discuss with both of you. Shall we sit down?”

“Surely,” Rusty said, flustered. “I’m sorry. Uh, Cooper?” She gestured toward a chair. He hesitated, then dropped into the overstuffed armchair. His insolence grated on her raw nerves. She gave him a baleful look, but he was staring at her father. He’d watched the Gawrylow men with that same kind of suspicious caution. The memory disturbed Rusty. What correlation between them and her father was he making in his mind? She moved toward a chair near Carlson.

“What do you want to discuss with us, Father?”

“That land deal I mentioned to you a few weeks ago.” Rusty’s lungs caved in. She could feel each membrane giving way, collapsing one on top of the other. Her cheeks paled, and her palms became immediately slick with nervous perspiration. A choir of funeral bells started tolling in her ears. “I thought we had that all settled.”

Carlson chuckled amiably. “Not quite. But now we do. Now the investors have had a chance to put some concrete ideas on paper. They’d like to present these ideas for Mr. Landry’s consideration.”

“Somebody want to tell me what the hell is going on?” Cooper rudely interrupted.

“No.”

“Of course.” Carlson overrode his daughter’s negative reply and seized the floor. In his typically genial manner, he outlined his ideas for developing the area around Rogers Gap into an exclusive ski resort.

Summing up, he said, “Before we’re done, working with only the most innovative architects and builders, it will rival Aspen, Vail, Keystone, anything in the Rockies or around Lake Tahoe. In several years I’ll bet we could swing the Winter Olympics our way.” Leaning back in his chair and smiling expansively, he said, “Well, Mr. Landry, what do you think?”

Cooper, who hadn’t so much as blinked an eye during Carlson’s recital, slowly rolled off his slouching spine and came to his feet. He circled the island of furniture several times as though considering the proposal from every angle. Since he owned some of the land that would be used—Carlson had done his homework—and had been offered the salaried, figurehead position as local coordinator of the project, he stood to make a great deal of money.

Carlson glanced at his daughter and winked, assured of capitulation.

“What do I think?” Cooper repeated.

“That’s what I asked,” Carlson said jovially.

Cooper looked him straight in the eye. “I think you are full of garbage, and I think your idea sucks.” He dumped those words in the middle of the floor like a ton of bricks, then added, “And for your information, so does your daughter.”

He gave Rusty a look that should have turned her to stone. He didn’t even deign to slam the door shut behind himself after he stamped out. They heard his car roar to life, then the crunch of gravel as he steered out of her driveway.

Carlson harrumphed and said, “Well, I see that I was right about him all along.”

Knowing that she would never recover from the wound Cooper had inflicted on her, Rusty said dully, “You couldn’t be more wrong, Father.”

“He’s crude.”