Shades of Twilight

"You think he could be among the guests," Webb said. He’d already thought of that himself.

"I’d say there’s a good chance. You might want to take a look at the guest list and see if you recognize the name of someone you didn’t get along with, somebody who came out on the short end of some business deal. Hell, he wouldn’t even have to be invited; from what I hear, so many people will be there that he could waltz right in and no one would notice."

"You were invited, Carl. Are you coming?"

"Couldn’t keep me away. Booley will be there, too. Is it okay if I ran all of this by him? That old dog is still pretty sly, and if he knows to be watching, he might see something."

"Sure, tell Booley. But no one else, you hear?"

"All right, all right," Carl grumbled. He looked at Webb’s car again.

"You want me to give you a ride up to the house?"

"No, everyone would ask questions. Take me back to town. I have to get something else to drive anyway, and I’ll arrange to have this one taken care of. As far as anyone is concerned, I had car trouble." He looked at his watch.

"I’ll be pushing it to get home in time for the party."

The guests were due to arrive in only half an hour, and Webb was nowhere around. All of the family was already there, including his mother and Aunt Sandra. Yvonne was beginning to pace, because it wasn’t like Webb to be late to anything, and Lucinda was growing increasingly fretful.

Roanna sat very still, holding her own worry inside. She didn’t let herself think about car accidents, because she couldn’t bear it. Her own parents had died that way, and since then she shrank from the very idea of an automobile accident. If she passed one on the highway, she never rubbernecked but carefully kept her gaze averted and got past the accident site as soon as she could. Webb couldn’t have been in an accident, he simply couldn’t Then they heard the front door open, and Yvonne rushed to the door.

"Where have you been?" Roanna heard her demand with a mother’s asperity.

"I had car trouble," Webb replied as he took the stairs two at a time. He was back downstairs in fifteen minutes, freshly shaved and wearing the black-tie apparel on which Lucinda had insisted.

"Sorry I’m late," he said to everyone as he crossed to the liquor cabinet and opened the doors. He poured himself a shot of tequila and tossed it back, then set the glass down and gave them a reckless grin.

"Let the games begin."

Roanna couldn’t take her eyes off him. He looked like a buccaneer despite the fineness of his clothes. His thick dark hair was still black with dampness and brushed into a severe style. He moved with the lithe grace of a man accustomed to formal clothes, without a trace of self-consciousness. The jacket sat perfectly on his broad shoulders, and the trousers were just snug enough to look trim without being binding. Webb had always worn his clothes well, no matter what they were. She had thought no one could took better than he did in jeans and boots and chambray work shirt, and now she thought no one looked better in black tie. Jet studs marched down the front of his snow white shirt, which had rows of tiny tucks, and matching jet cuff links gleamed darkly at his thick wrists.

She hadn’t talked privately with him since the night he’d come to her room, and she had told him why she hadn’t seen the burglar. Webb had forbidden her to work at all until the family doctor had checked her and given her the all clear, which he’d done just the day before. Truth to tell, for the first several days after she’d gotten home from the hospital, she hadn’t felt like working or doing anything except sitting very still. The headache had been persistent, and if she had moved around much, she suffered a recurrence of that nausea that went with concussion. It was only 287

in the past two days that the headache had gone away, and the nausea with it. She didn’t think she would risk dancing tonight, though.

Webb had been busy, and not just with work. He had overseen the installation of steel-reinforced doors on the main entrances, dead-bolt locks on even the French doors, and an alarm system that had made her pull a pillow over her head to buffer the sound when it was tested. If she couldn’t sleep and wanted the veranda doors open so she could enjoy the fresh air, first she had to punch in a code on a small box installed by the window of every room. If she opened the doors without entering the code, the resulting blast would jolt everyone out of their beds.

Between her headache and his work, there simply hadn’t been time for a private talk. In the drama of her injury, most of her embarrassment had faded away. After his midnight visit to her room, the subject hadn’t come up again, as if they both wanted to avoid it.

"My, you look handsome," Lucinda said now, eyeing Webb up and down.

"Better than you did before, if you don’t mind my saying so. Wrestling cows, or whatever it was you did in Arizona, certainly kept you in shape."

"Steers," he corrected, his eyes gleaming with amusement.

"And, yes, I wrestled a few of them."

"You said you had car trouble," Yvonne said.

"What’s wrong with it?" "The transmission went out," he said smoothly.

"I had to have it towed."

"What are you driving then?"

"A pickup truck." His eyes gleamed greenly as he said it, and Roanna saw the fine tension in him, a sort of heightened state of alertness, as if he were poised for some sort of crisis that only -he anticipated. At the same time there was an obvious amusement in the line of his mouth, and she saw him glance expectantly at Gloria.

"A truck," Gloria said with disdain.

"I hope it doesn’t take long to get your car repaired."