He shook his head with chagrin. “You dragged me out there, had me marking off yardage like a damn fool, and it was all for show?”
“I’ll admit that I used you. I apologize.”
“After what the Patchetts did to you,” he said, giving a slight shake of his head, “you don’t have to explain your motives or your methods.”
“This was my vendetta. I didn’t want to involve you or anyone else more than I had to.” Again she gazed into the distance. The day was warm and muggy, although summer was waning. Change was imminent.
“Gary hated being poor,” she said wistfully. “He hated it for himself, and he hated it for his family. He used to say that one day he was going to come back to Palmetto and dump a million dollars in his daddy’s lap.” She turned back to Dillon, her expression radiant. Reaching out, she gripped his bare biceps. “Dillon, I did it for him.”
Spanning her waist with his hands, he stood up, lifting her with him. He broke a rare, bona fide grin beneath his mustache. “I think this calls for a celebration.”
* * *
When the housekeeper peered into the den and asked Mr. Ivan and Mr. Neal when they would be wanting their supper, Neal threw a crystal decanter at her. She ducked out of its way in the nick of time and had the common sense not to bother them again.
The room reeked of the brandy dripping off the wainscoting onto the rug, but both were too besotted with all they had drunk to notice the fumes.
“The bitch,” Neal muttered as he splashed more liquor into his glass. “The hell of it is, she wasn’t even that good. She was a lousy virgin.” He made a broad gesture, waving his glass of liquor and sloshing it over his hand. “That’s what all this is for, yo
u know. For that time Hutch and Lamar and me had our fun with her. How the hell did we know that she’d take it so hard or that her boyfriend would hang hisself over it?”
“Sit down and shut up,” Ivan growled from his wheelchair. His head was sitting low on his shoulders, as though his neck were being swallowed by his body. His eyes were pinpoints of malicious light beneath his glowering brows. “You’re drunk.”
“I’ve got every reason to be.” Neal weaved his way across the room to his father’s chair and loomed over him. “In case you’ve forgotten, Daddy, we no longer have a pot to piss in. Among other things, we used next year’s estimated profit for collateral on that loan.”
“And who’s brilliant idea was that?”
“It was supposed to work,” Neal said defensively.
“Well, it didn’t!”
The pattern had been set when he was a boy. Neal was cocksure and arrogant until he got into trouble, then he turned to his father to get him out. “Whad’re we gonna use for money, Daddy?” he whined. “How’re we gonna pay our employees? The plant’ll have to shut down.”
Ivan looked at Neal with patent disgust. “Why in hell are you worrying about that? Soon we won’t have any employees, because they’ll all be working over at TexTile for Jade Sperry. Patchett Soybean Factory will be history.”
Neal’s battered face twitched with emotional upset. “Don’t say that, Daddy.”
“That’s what she planned on doing all along. She wanted to shut us down, ruin us.” Ivan stared at a target on the far wall as though the force of his stare could obliterate it. “And that’s exactly what she’s done.”
Neal fell onto the sofa and dug his fingertips into the sockets of his dark eyes. “I don’t know how to be poor. I don’t want to be poor.”
“Stop that goddamn whining!”
“Well, what do you care what happens, old man? I’m the one who’ll be left alive to shovel through this shit. The doctor says your heart and lungs aren’t worth crap. You’re gonna die soon anyway.”
“I don’t need a doctor to tell me that.” He didn’t look near death. His eyes shone with a fiendish light. “But one thing is for damn certain. I ain’t going to die without settling this score once and for all. That Sperry girl ain’t going to get away with this. Not completely. Let her have her small victory—in exchange for something else much more important.”
Sobering instantly, Neal set his drink on the coffee table. “Her son.”
“That’s right, boy. The Patchetts might be wounded, but we’re not dead. First thing tomorrow, you’re going to make a phone call and extend an invitation… to Myrajane Griffith.”
* * *
Dillon was manning the patio grill. “Good-looking fish,” he remarked to Graham, who was assisting.
“Thanks,” he replied, smiling proudly. “Every time I go to that spot in the channel, I catch at least one.”
“How’s school?”