Secrets in the Sand - Carolyn Brown Page 0,9

with Angel to the original three-room house on these twenty acres, Angel hadn’t owned an oil company.

Angel buttered the bread with sweet butter. Someday she might have to watch fat grams and calories, but not today. She liked real butter on her toast, just as her granny had. Thoughts of the past flitted through her mind.

She and her grandmother had arrived with all their belongings in the back of that old, rusty green truck that looked like an accident waiting for a place to happen. The old house had only three rooms—a small living room and kitchen, a tiny bathroom, and one bedroom where she and Granny put their twin beds. They’d lived there happily enough until four years later, when her granny had died peacefully in her sleep.

The preacher had read a poem and the Twenty-Third Psalm at the graveside service, and a few church members showed up along with the girls in her band. Three months later, Angel had mortgaged the property and drilled a gusher. From there, she’d taken one giant step after another, until today she was the major stockholder and president of her own oil company, based in Denison, with branch offices in Oklahoma and Louisiana.

Angel closed her eyes. She had all the money she could spend in a lifetime…all the excitement of unexpected success…all the peacefulness of a country home to enjoy for the rest of her life…but none of it would ever ease the cold, blue loneliness in her heart.

Chapter 3

The next Friday night, Clancy parked his Ford Bronco a comfortable distance away from the big, black bus sitting in the crowded parking lot of the Twisted Spur Honky Tonk, just off I-35 south of Davis. He could hear the thump, thump, thump of the music every time the doors opened and someone went in or came back out.

He wanted to pay the cover charge and go inside to listen to Angel sing, to watch her move with that sexy confidence she hadn’t had in high school, to breathe in the essence of her that sent his senses reeling, but he didn’t want her to know he was there. He had thought at first that he would simply wait beside the bus and try to talk to her when she finished the gig.

Whether she liked it or not, he was going to find out what really happened after he went away to college. It occurred to him that he didn’t deserve to know after the way he’d treated her, but perhaps she’d forgiven him. They were adults, now, after all, and he had a feeling that he wouldn’t be at peace until he knew the whole story.

The doors opened, but it wasn’t the band members who came out. A big man dressed in black jeans and cowboy boots with silver tips on the pointed toes stumbled out with his arm around a skinny, hard-looking blond wearing a denim miniskirt and red cowboy boots. Then another couple staggered forth, giggling as they held each other up long enough to get the car door open and drive away. Angel finally came out of the honky-tonk with her band members and started loading equipment. The lady she’d introduced as Patty, the rhythm guitar player, sat down in the driver’s seat and revved up the motor.

The bus pulled into the parking lot of an all-night convenience store across the highway from the honky-tonk. Patty went inside and came out carrying a big bag of chips and a brown bag full of what Clancy supposed was junk food. As he followed the bus, she made a sharp turn at the overpass bridge and headed south on the interstate.

Traffic was sparse at that time of night, so Clancy lingered a quarter of a mile behind them. They crossed the Red River into Texas. The bus made a quick stop in Whitesboro, and one of the girls got out. Allie, the drummer, waved and hopped into a new-model red minivan and drove north. Then the bus went on to Denison.

Clancy managed to keep the taillights in view as the bus stopped and started through town, finally going down an alley and disappearing through huge garage doors in the bottom floor of an enormous building. He eased into a parking place reserved for banking customers only in the lot across the alley and studied the sign, which was lit up with overhead bulbs.

“Conrad Oil Enterprises?” he said aloud. “Holy cow. Angel must have a rich uncle.” He wondered why she had