Fit for a King (19 page)

148

Diana
Palmer

Fit for a
King

149

Elissa put
her head in her hands and leaned over
her coffee cup, feeling lost and miserable. "I don't
know what to do," she confessed. "I
don't know if
I can live without him
now."

"My
poor darling," Tina said quietly. She leaned
over and kissed her daughter's forehead.
"You have to find your own way, you know. I love you, and
nothing you do will ever change that. I know your
father and I must seem very
old-fashioned to you, but
we believe
in what we do, and the way we live has
to
reflect that. Earthly pleasures are fleeting. Love is
immortal, and it goes beyond satisfying some
fleeting
physical hunger. In other
words, sweetheart," she ex
plained with a grin, "sex won't
make up for the lack
of love, no matter how
good it is."

"You hussy, talking like that," Elissa teased.

"That's
me," Tina agreed. Her eyes twinkled.
"You don't
realize how much the world has changed
in recent years. When
I was in high school, girls could
get expelled for wearing a skirt an
inch above the
knee.
That was considered vulgar." She pursed her
lips with a smile. "Life is so violent these days that
I sometimes wish we were back in the
Amazon," she
muttered. "I
felt safe there."

"I can help you out,"
Elissa said. "I'll bring War-
chief over
here to live with us and he can make you
feel you're back in the jungle."

Tina,
who'd heard volumes about the big parrot,
frowned. "We
have neighbors with sensitive ears."

"Our
nearest neighbor is a mile down the beach," Elissa pointed out.

"That's
what I mean. Sound carries. Besides," she groaned, "parrots fly. I
have enough trouble with lit
tle bitty mosquitoes; imagine something that
has
wings and bites and weighs a pound."

Elissa
had never thought of him as a giant green
mosquito. She
laughed. She'd have to remember to tell King. King. Her gaze softened. What was
she going to do?

Tina
patted her hand. "Life generally goes on,"
she reminded her
daughter. "And God loves us. Even
when we're naughty
little girls and boys."

That was
a comforting thought. Elissa got up and
began to set the
table.

Fit for a
King

151

Elissa's first sight
of the Oklahoma plains drew a
helpless sigh from her. Oklahoma City, where
King had claimed his big gray Lincoln at the airport park
ing lot,
was beautiful and intriguing for its rising oil derricks within the huge city
itself. But the rolling
plains, sweeping toward the horizon as far as
the eye
could see,
brought tears to her eyes.

"I've
never, ever seen anything like it," she
breathed, her
expression mirroring total delight.

King
swerved the car as he darted a glance at her,
fascinated. "I
thought you'd hate it," he replied.
"You live on the
coast."

She wasn't even listening.
"The Plains Indians—
did they come down
this far? The Sioux and Chey
enne?"

"Well, honey, Oklahoma was where they
sent the

Five Civilized
Tribes back during the Trail of Tears,
during the late
1830s and 1840s. Some of them fought
for the Confederacy during the Civil
War—a few
were slaveholders, you see—and because of that, the
government
forced them to sell their western lands at a sacrifice. We have Chickasaws,
Choctaws, Chero-kees, Creek—and Seminole," he added after a pause.

Her face
brightened. "No wonder it seems like
home. Don't they say something about an
ancestral
memory? Perhaps some of my
ancestors came here."

"The
Seminoles were fierce warriors," he agreed
easily. "They fought the government
to a standstill."

"The Apache were pretty
fierce, too, I hear," she
murmured.
She smiled at him and then turned her
attention back to the undulating
hills. "How beauti
ful. There's so much
space, King."

"That's
what I like about it. No crowding yet
Plenty of room. Oil and gas and
cattle."

"The oil industry has been hard hit, though."

"Bobby and I had to
diversify," he agreed. "But
good
business management will spare us too much
grief. There it is." He
indicated a dirt road leading to
a grove of
trees and a sprawling white frame house
with huge porches. There were outbuildings and end
less fences and herds of white-and-red cattle
every
where.

"The ranch?" she asked, excited.

"The ranch." He chuckled at her expression as
he

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Palmer

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King

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pulled off the main
highway onto the winding dirt
road. "Like it?"

"Oh,
I love it,” she said softly, drinking in the lush
greens and the
wildflowers that seemed to be every
where. “Those are sunflowers!"
she exclaimed.

 
“You'll find a lot of
unfamiliar vegetation," he
said. "We don't have sea grapes and
palms out here. We have water oaks and hickory trees.... Of course,
we have
some fascinating animals here, too. I doubt
you've ever seen a
moose."

"I can hardly wait."

"You
shouldn't be this enthusiastic," he murmured
dryly, remembering
how much Bess had hated the
ranch when she and Bobby married. Of course,
Bess
had grown up in dirt-poor surroundings, and he sup
posed
she'd had her fill of roughing it. She'd probably
longed for something
completely different, more re
fined. But Bobby, like King, had loved the plains,
loved walking the hills in search of
arrowheads—one
of King's favorite
childhood pastimes. "You're a city
girl, remember?"

"I'm a country girl,"
she argued. "Just because I
work near
Miami doesn't make me citified. I like
wide
open spaces, like the beach and hills. Can I go
walking when I feel like it, or are there..."

"Wild
Indians?" he suggested with a wicked grin.

She hit him. "Wolves," she replied.

"Only this one," he murmured, winking at her.

She
gave up, shaking her head. She didn't remem-

ber the reason he'd
brought her here. The real reason. He still wanted her. It was in his eyes, in
the way he
smiled at her. And Bess was somewhere nearby....

"Where does Bobby live?" she asked suddenly.

The smile
left his face. "There." He indicated a
modern split-level
house in the distance. "Almost in
Jack's Corner. Bess
used to spend a lot of time in Oklahoma City, but Bobby said she's started
getting
interested in local society." He frowned. "Too bad
it's only
tea parties and such. She sure could do a lot
of social work if she
had a mind to."

He drove
the Lincoln up to the front steps, and Elissa sighed over the big green rocking
chairs and
the porch swing. "I love it!" She grinned.
"Can we sit in the swing?"

"Presently,"
he promised, climbing out to open her
door and help her, with old-world
courtesy, to the
ground.

The screen
door swung open, and a middle-aged woman stomped onto the porch. Margaret
Floyd, the housekeeper, was a big, buxom woman in her sixties with white hair
and dark eyes and a mean-looking
expression.

"Well,
it's about time," she said, parking her
hands on her broad hips. She was wearing a
pale-
yellow print housedress with purple
bedroom shoes, and a splattered white apron hugged her ample mid
dle. "You're an hour late. What did you do,
get hi-

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Palmer

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King

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jacked on the way
back? I've ruined dinner, you'll be
glad to know, and who's that?"

Elissa was
being dragged up the steps and pushed forward like a shield before she had time
to catch her
breath.

"This
is Elissa Dean," King said, holding her there
firmly, even though she wasn't struggling.

"Well,
glory be!" Margaret's broad face bright
ened like a sunflower.
"Finally!"

She rushed
forward, and Elissa found herself en
gulfed
in
the smell of flour and apples.

"I
thought he'd never get enough sense to bring
you home," Margaret gushed.
"Idiot, chasing after
them stupid city
women." She glared at King before turning back to Elissa. "You look
like a nice girl. He
says you still
live at home," she added with un
ashamed
curiosity.

"Well,
yes," Elissa stammered. "My folks
wouldn't have it any
other way."

Margaret
looked as if all her prayers had been an
swered. "Lordy,
child, do come in and let me feed
you. I've got a delicious pot roast,
even if I do say
so myself, and a pan of homemade rolls, and I baked
him an
apple pie."

King went
back to get the luggage, muttering
things it was just as well Margaret
didn't actually
hear. Margaret was a wonderful cook, had a mind like
a steel
trap and didn't feel the least bashful about
asking the most intimate kind of
questions.

King
finally ran her off so they could eat their meal
in peace. Elissa's
face was beet red by then, and he
looked a bit put out himself. Elissa
couldn't know that over the years, only Bess had ever been afforded such
courteous
treatment by the housekeeper. Margaret had
always found not so
subtle ways of showing her dis
approval for the type of woman King had
entertained so frequently in his younger days. Bess had been dif
ferent,
because Margaret knew her background and
was frankly sorry for her.

"It's a lovely meal," Elissa said finally.

"Lovely," he muttered.

She
didn't attempt conversation again. She finished
the food and allowed
Margaret to whisk her upstairs
to unpack.

King was
called out the minute he left the supper
table to attend to
sixty things the foreman—Ben
Floyd, Margaret's husband—hadn't been able
to, de
spite
neighbor Blake Donavan's help.

Elissa found herself alone
after Margaret went to
her own small house
below the stables, and when
King
didn't come back by midnight, she went to bed.
Her first day on the ranch had been an experience.

The next morning, she awoke to
strange noises. Cattle lowing. A rooster crowing. The barking of a dog. Clatter
from downstairs. She sat up in bed with
a
lazy yawn and drank in the sweet, clean country air.
It wasn't so far removed from the Florida coast,
after
all. Country was country, except for the noises.