Texas Proud and Circle of Gold (Long, Tall Texans #52) - Diana Palmer Page 0,148
when she left the café, she went the long way around to the front door, so that she wouldn’t have to pass the table where he was sitting.
He finished his coffee and took the cup back to the counter. “You make good coffee, Cindy,” he told the employee, who was a married grandmother.
She grinned at him. “Thanks, Mr. McGuire. My husband runs on black coffee. He’s a trucker. If I couldn’t make it to suit him, I’d be in divorce court in no time,” she joked.
“Fat chance. Mack’s crazy about you,” he chuckled. He glanced toward the door. “The happy divorcée doesn’t eat with the common folk?” he added.
“Oh, you mean Ida,” she said. She grimaced. “She doesn’t go out much. She lives near us, you know. One night I heard her screaming and I called the sheriff’s department. I was afraid somebody might have broken in on her. Cody Banks, our sheriff, was working that shift, and he went by to see what had happened.”
He frowned, just waiting.
She sighed. “He said she was white as a sheet and looked as if she’d seen a ghost. She told him it was an old nightmare that she had from time to time and she apologized for disturbing the neighbors.”
“Nightmares.” He shook his head. “Who’d have thought it?”
“I went over to see her the next day, it was Sunday, on my way to church, to apologize for calling the law. She just smiled and said she didn’t blame me. She apologized, too, for making a fuss.”
“Did she say why she had the nightmare?” he asked.
She shook her head. “She mentioned something about her second husband making a threat. He’s involved in some illegal stuff, I gathered, and she’s rich.”
“Did she get rich by divorcing him?” he asked with a grin.
She shook her head. “Her first husband had the money. The second... Apparently he married her for what she had. Nobody knows much about it.”
“Did she move here recently?” Jake asked. “I don’t mix much with local people, even though I have my ranch and I still own the feed supply store here. I’m away on business a lot.”
“Her grandparents were from here. So was her mother. In fact, she was born here. But when her father got a good-paying job in Denver, they moved away. She was in fifth grade.” She drew in a breath. “It was just after Bess Grady killed herself.”
“My best friend’s brother had a crush on the Grady girl. He took it hard,” he commented, not going into details. Like Cindy, he’d gone through school here. He hadn’t always been rich. “What about Ida’s parents?”
She shook her head. “Her father had a massive heart attack when he was just thirty-five,” she said with a sigh. “Her mother lived on, but not happily. She lived only for Ida. When Ida was eighteen, her mother went on a cruise and fell overboard. They never found the body.”
“That would have been hard,” he conceded.
“So Ida was working for a graphics firm in Denver, right out of high school, and her boss felt sorry for her, I guess, because he married her shortly afterward. There was gossip, they said, because of the age difference. He was very wealthy and had never been married at all.”
“Was it a happy marriage?” He hated asking. He didn’t know why he even cared.
“Well...”
“Come on,” he teased. “You know I don’t gossip.”
“Well, my second cousin, who knew the owner of the graphics store, said he was gay.”
His eyebrows arched.
“I know, why would he want to marry Ida? But he was kind to her.”
“I heard he committed suicide.”
She nodded, looking around to make sure nobody was within earshot. “His boyfriend had left him. He’d had other problems, but this had sent him over the edge. He was so distraught that he went to the top floor of his building and jumped off. The boyfriend tried to sue Ida afterward. He thought he deserved something for his time with the older man. Ida took him to court and countersued. He had to pay court costs. She had a really mean attorney.” She grinned. “Her husband left her everything, and there was a lot. He left her a note, thanking her for being so kind to him.”
He was touched, despite his distaste for Ida.
“Maybe she’s not all bad.”
“Nobody is all bad, Mr. McGuire,” she replied. “Some people have worse lives than others, is all.”