Loe raamatut: «Texas Moon»

One

Tux Bishop shot bolt upright in bed, the sound of his pounding heart echoing in his ears. He took a deep, shuddering breath, then dragged both hands down his sweat-soaked face.

“Damn it,” he said, then threw back the sheet and left the bed.

The clock on the nightstand glowed the message that it was just after two in the morning. As his eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, Tux began to pace naked around the large bedroom.

This was the third night in a row, he fumed. He’d been jolted awake, heart racing, dripping with sweat, three times now.

The dreams he’d been having were not dreams... at least not in the usual sense of the word. That fact was what had him tied in knots and mad as hell.

Tux sank onto the edge of the bed, rested his elbows on his knees and made a steeple of his fingers, tapping it against his lips.

Slow down, calm down, he ordered himself. Ranting, raving and wearing out the carpet wasn’t going to get him anywhere. He had to analyze the situation and try to determine what in the hell was going on.

Yes, okay, he had psychic powers that enabled him to glimpse events taking place anywhere in the world.

But...and that was a very big but...the only way his psychic abilities could be put into operation was by him going into deep meditation, a near-trance, that left him drained and exhausted.

He preferred not to use his detested powers, and rarely did so. He had, in fact, totally ignored them for many years.

But now?

“Damn it,” he said, shaking his head.

He knew that the dreams he’d had for three nights now were not really products of his subconscious mind.

They were not dreams.

The images were psychic messages that had come to him unbidden.

Why?

Even more, how?

He commanded his psychic powers. Outside forces did not dictate when his unwelcomed ability would be activated.

Tux stretched out in the bed again, laced his hands beneath his head and glowered at the ceiling.

He had two choices. He could ignore what was happening and hope it was a short-lived fluke and had run its course. Or he could square off against it, take a close mental look at the scenes that had come to him, and attempt to sift, sort, then dismiss them once and for all.

“Yeah,” he said. “No contest. I’m the one who’s in charge here.”

So, okay, he’d start at the beginning.

The first night he’d seen a shadowy figure with no discernible features, or a clue as to whether it was a man or woman. Swirling around the figure was a dark maze of what appeared to be beads or balls of some sort.

The second night the maze had been clearer. The dark cloud had become brightly colored beads, as well as buttons. The beads had separated into straight rows. The shadowy figure had been far from clear, but it was most definitely a woman.

Then tonight there had been even more. He’d had a glimpse of a sign that read: Buttons and Beads.

He’d also seen the woman. She had dark eyes and a wild tumble of black hair that fell to her shoulders in curly disarray. She was very lovely with a gypsylike appearance that was accentuated by a bright blue shawl she’d been wearing.

She’d been holding out her hands, as though pleading for someone to come and help her, and tears had flowed down her pale cheeks.

And on all three nights, he’d sensed the cold chill of danger.

“Lord,” he said, and pulled his hands from beneath his head and dropped his arms heavily onto the bed.

He needed a plan of action. The thought of enduring a fourth night like this held no appeal. Whatever was triggering his psychic powers had to be stopped before he went nuts.

“Buttons and Beads.” He rolled onto his stomach, punched the pillow, then lowered his head again with a weary sigh.

First thing in the morning, he thought, as sleep began to creep over his senses, he’d track down a place named Buttons and Beads. Even if it meant talking to every telephone information operator in the country, he’d find it.

Nancy Shatner finished counting the glossy red beads, then scooped them into a plastic bag. She slipped the bag through a slot in a small white machine that sat on the table, heat sealing the bag.

Next came a sticker with the name, address and telephone number of the shop, which she pressed into place in the lower right-hand corner of the bag.

After checking off the red beads on an order form, she carried the rectangular hard-plastic bin to the front of the store and set it in its designated place, returning to the rear work area with a bin of blue beads.

Settled once more at the table; she checked the order form, nodded, then lifted a handful of blue beads from the bin to a large felt mat. Using what was actually a frosting spatula, she began to quickly move beads two at a time from one side of the mat to the other.

“Two, four, six, eight,” she said aloud, then continued to count silently.

She made piles of twenty beads, which she would recount before sealing them into a bag.

After making five piles of twenty, she took a sip of tea from a ceramic mug, wrinkling her nose as she discovered it was cold. Setting the mug to one side, she stretched her arms above her head, then dropped her hands to her lap, smiling as her gaze fell on the stack of orders she was filling.

Business is booming, she thought. Her reputation for quick service and a product of superb quality was growing. Her mailorder catalog with colored photographs of the buttons and beads was worth the extra money she’d crossed her fingers and paid.

Nancy switched her gaze to the far end of the large table where she was just beginning to start the assembly of a new catalog, which would have a special sale section to mark the celebration of Buttons and Beads being officially two years old.

The walk-in trade, she mused, was increasing nicely, much to her surprised delight. The area of town where she was located wasn’t exactly a high-class shopping mecca. It wasn’t a high-class anything, for that matter.

The decision to set up the front area attractively for whatever retail business she might garner had been a good one. It was easy enough to tote the bins to the rear area to fill mail orders, and she considered every face-to-face sale a bonus.

“Life is a bowl of cherries,” she said, then laughed. “Or whatever. Get to work, Ms. Shatner.”

Over the past two years, she’d perfected the knack of being able to count with one section of her brain, and think about whatever struck her fancy with the other part of her mind.

A fact, she thought merrily, that had probably kept her from turning into a blithering idiot from spending her days counting two, four, six...

Life is a bowl of cherries? she mentally repeated, as she slid blue beads from one side of the mat to the other. Now that she really thought about it, that didn’t make much sense. What if a person didn’t like cherries?

The bottom line was that her life was in shipshape order. She was happy, fulfilled and contented. Her fledgling business was doing well, and she had marvelous friends in the store’s shabby, run-down neighborhood. She had everything she wanted and needed.

Well...

Nancy frowned slightly as she continued to count the beads.

There were moments...not often, but once in a while... when she was a tad lonely. Sitting alone in her little apartment above the store, watching a romantic movie on her minuscule television, sometimes caused her to wistfully yearn for a special man, a wonderful man, to take her into his arms.

“Hush, Nancy,” she said. “Eighteen, twenty,” she added, completing a pile of beads.

She stared into space.

It was perfectly understandable, she reasoned, that she’d have fleeting thoughts of being loved and loving in return, of having a child that was a miraculous result of that love. She was, after all, a normal, healthy twenty-five-year-old woman.

But the fleeting thoughts were just that... fleeting. She valued her hard-won independence far too much to relinquish it for any reason. To enter into a relationship with a man would require her to give away a part of her being, and to be accountable to someone other than herself.

No.

Never again.

“Stop it,” she scolded herself. “You’ll make the bowl of cherries gloomy by thinking about that stuff.”

Blanking her mind beyond counting, she began to hum a peppy tune.

Tux stood across the street, frowning as he stared at the store with the sign hung on the top front that read Buttons and Beads.

It was a typical June morning in Houston, hot and humid, but Tux was oblivious to the trickle of sweat running down his back beneath his cotton shirt.

It had been ridiculously easy to find the store with the sign he’d seen so clearly in the images in his mind. He’d simply opened the Houston telephone book to the yellow pages, and there it was.

He folded his arms over his chest and leaned one shoulder against the chipped bricks of the front of the deserted building behind him, sweeping his gaze along the street.

It was a mishmash of structures. Some, like the one he’d propped himself on, were empty, the whitewashed windows and crumbling brick walls covered in spray-painted graffiti. Others had professionally produced signs like the one announcing Buttons and Beads, sparkling clean windows and walls, and nicely painted front doors.

He could see a variety of businesses—a bakery, a used clothes store called The Second Time Around, a pawnshop, a small grocery store, and some others he couldn’t quite decipher from where he stood.

The height of the buildings, combined with the curtains in the upstairs windows of the occupied ones, indicated that the owners, or possibly other renters, lived above the stores.

There was pride of ownership there, as well as evidence of broken dreams and a failure to succeed. But the effort of sprucing up that the tenants or owners had made couldn’t erase the section of the city they were in.

Dangerous.

“Damn,” he muttered.

He did not want to cross that street and go into Buttons and Beads. There was a knot in his gut the size of a bowling ball caused by the dread of what he might find.

Tux shook his head in self-disgust.

Some former government agent now a private investigator he was. He was shaking in his shorts over what he might discover beyond the door of that shop. The woman he’d seen in the visions, that beautiful, gypsylike woman, had been in danger, had been pleading for help as she cried tears of fear.

His psychic powers didn’t see into the future, never had. He could glimpse only what was taking place at the actual moment, or had very recently occurred.

Why the foggy and confusing images of what might have taken place in that store had reached him without him bidding them to come, he didn’t know. Hopefully it was a fluke that would never happen again.

Maybe... Yeah, that was a comforting thought. Maybe the scenario he’d witnessed had occurred years before, and had accidentally landed in his brain.

. Granted, the card on the door of Buttons and Beads said Open, but it could very well be that he’d walk in there and find a little old man running the place.

The old guy would relate a sad tale of a robbery years before that had caused the young woman, who then owned the shop, to be slightly...very slightly....harmed. She’d hightailed it out of there after recovering from minor injuries suffered during the assault, and was now happily married with five kids.

Tux blew out a puff of air from a pent-up breath, then told himself to cross that street.

Now.

Mumbling several earthy expletives, he pushed himself away from the wall and started slowly forward.

The brass bell above the door tinkled, alerting Nancy to the fact that someone had entered the store. She continued to count, cocking her head to listen for a greeting from a friend in the neighborhood. They all knew to call out a hello of some sort, then wait until she had finished counting the beads into a pile of twenty.

Realizing that a real customer was out front due to the absence of a familiar holler, she dropped the frosting spatula and got quickly to her feet to hurry from the rear area.

As she came through the doorway, she was smiling pleasantly.

Tux’s shoulders slumped in defeat when he saw the woman who had emerged from the back of the shop.

It was her, he thought dismally, the woman from the visions. There she was, with her wild tumble of shiny black curls, big dark eyes and lovely features.

She was wearing a white peasant blouse that accentuated her slender throat, and a multicolored skirt. There was a gypsylike aura to her, just as he’d seen in the haunting images.

She was absolutely beautiful.

And he wished to the heavens that she wasn’t standing there in front of him.

Also taunting him were the bins of beads separated by color, representing the columns he’d seen in the visions.

Tux frowned and shook his head.

“Oh...hell,” he said, glaring at the woman.

Nancy blinked in surprise at the man’s unconventional greeting.

Not, she admitted, that she had said anything cheerful or welcoming. She’d been momentarily struck dumb by the unexpected presence of one of the most gorgeous men she’d ever seen.

He was about six feet tall, had need-of-a-trim blond hair that was sun-streaked to nearly white in places, a marvelous tan, and incredible blue eyes. A pale blue dress shirt covered broad shoulders and chest, and a flat belly. His jeans were faded, the now soft material hugging narrow hips and powerful legs.

Gorgeous, she reaffirmed in her mind.

“Oh, hell?” she repeated, moving to stand behind the row of bins.

Still glowering, Tux closed the distance remaining to the bins.

“Do you own a bright blue shawl?” he said gruffly.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Just answer the question.”

Nancy planted her hands on her hips. “I certainly will not. If you’re attempting to sell shawls, you’ve got a lot to learn about how to approach potential customers, mister. You’re rude, pure and simple. Goodbye.”

Tux stared up at the ceiling for a long moment, then looked at the woman again.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Let me start over. I’m Tux Bishop.”

“Nancy Shatner,” she said, eyeing him warily.

“Hello, Nancy.” Tux paused. “Do you own a bright blue shawl?”

“Goodbye, Mr. Bishop,” she said, folding her arms beneath her breasts.

“No, no, wait,” he said, raising both hands. “I’m not selling anything.”

“That’s good,” she said dryly, “because with your oh-socharming personality you couldn’t pay the rent by being a salesman.” She leaned slightly toward him. “Just what exactly is it that you want?”

Oh, lady, Tux thought, that was not a terrific question for a beautiful woman to ask a red-blooded, healthy man. With no stretch of the imagination whatsoever, he could visualize taking Nancy Shatner into his arms, nestling her to his body, then capturing her tantalizing lips with his own.

Whoa, Bishop, he ordered himself. He could feel the heat low in his body, coiling, twisting, turning. He wasn’t there intent on seduction. He needed answers to what had happened to him and why it had taken place, before he went out of his ever-lovin’ mind.

“Mr. Bishop?”

“What? Oh, call me Tux.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s more friendly, Nancy.”

“It’s Ms. Shatner. You don’t evoke friendliness, not even close. Look, I’m very busy, Mr. Bishop. I don’t want to be rude, but I’m rapidly approaching having no choice. Please state your reason for being here...now.”

“It’s a long story.”

“I don’t have a long time to listen. Give me an edited version.”

This, Tux thought, was not going well. He needed to start over.

He flashed Nancy his best, hundred-watt, knock-’em-dead smile.

Good grief, Nancy thought, Tux Bishop smiling should be declared against the law. That smile probably had women dissolving into puddles at his feet. Well, not Nancy Shatner. So what if her heart had actually skipped a beat and a frisson of heat had slithered down her back? It didn’t mean a thing.

“Nancy,” Tux said, still smiling, “look, it’s an easy enough question that won’t cost you one penny to answer. Do you own a bright blue shawl?”

“No.”

“No, you won’t answer the question? Or no, you don’t own a blue shawl?”

Nancy sighed. “I have several shawls, but not a bright blue one. I have never owned a bright blue shawl. Does that complete your survey? Are we finished here?” She nodded. “We’re definitely finished. Goodbye, Mr. Bishop.”

“Tux. Listen, I... Oh, hell.”

“That’s how this conversation started. So, oh, hell, to you, too, and goodbye.”

“Nancy,” he began, a serious expression on his face, “I have to explain something to you. It’s very important, it really is. I realize that the last thing a woman wants to hear from some fool of a guy dumb enqugh to say it is ‘trust me,’ but that’s what I’m asking you to do. Trust me. Give me some time to tell you what’s going on.” He paused. “Please.”

No? Yes? Nancy thought. Darn it, he suddenly sounded, even looked, concerned, or worried, or... There was a sincere quality to his voice now, too, edged with a touch of... what? Panic? Urgency?

Trust him? Why should she? He was obviously after something, but heaven only knew what. Was the concern she was witnessing real, or was he a very practiced actor?

No, forget it. She was sending him packing right this second.

But then again, she was admittedly nosy enough to want to discover what he wanted from her.

“Well,” she said, “all right, you may have five minutes, but you’d better make this good, Mr. Bishop.”

“Thank you, Nancy. Is there somewhere we can go and sit down?”

“No. You stay right where you are. Speak. You’re using up your time.”

Tux sighed. “Yeah, okay. Try to keep an open mind, will you?”

Nancy looked directly at him, no readable expression on her face.

“You’re difficult to deal with, do you know that?” Tux said.

Damn, he thought, he’d decided to jump right in and tell Nancy about his psychic powers and the visions he’d seen. As uncomfortable as he was with his so-called gift, he’d felt there was no other way to handle this besides just blurting it out.

But he suddenly didn’t like that plan. He was standing in front of a very beautiful woman, and he had no intention of watching her narrow her eyes, take a step back, and mentally label him as strange.

He did not, however, want to lie to Nancy Shatner, either. This was going to have to be handled very carefully, with expertise, finesse.

“Hello?” Nancy prompted. “Your five minutes is ticking away very rapidly, Mr. Bishop.”

“Tux.” He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Okay, here goes. I know this guy who has psychic powers. We’re very good friends, even if he is a step off from normal because he has visions, you know what I mean?”

“And?”

“Well, I humor him, because he’s my buddy. Friends do that for friends.” He was not lying to Nancy. He’d read magazine articles that said a person should be their own best friend. “Besides, my...friend’s visions are usually right on the mark when he has them. Anyway, he had some visions about...about you.”

Nancy blinked, opened her mouth, closed it, then tried again.

“What?” she said, more in the form of a squeak.

“It’s true. He saw you, and you were wearing a bright blue shawl.”

“But I don’t own a blue shawl.”

Tux ran one hand over the back of his neck. “So you said, and that muddies the waters even more. Damn, this doesn’t make any sense.”

“It’s crazy, that’s what it is,” Nancy said. “Who is this friend of yours? Why didn’t he come here himself? I don’t know very many people in Houston. Why would he know me?”

“You don’t have to know a person to have psychic images about them. My friend is sensitive about his powers, and doesn’t like to discuss them, so that’s why he sent me. The thing is, he doesn’t have the ability to see into the future. He can only glimpse what is taking place at the moment, or very, very recently. That’s why I said this really doesn’t make sense.”

“Is he certain he saw me?” she asked, leaning slightly toward him. “Absolutely positive?”

He nodded. “Yes. He saw the Buttons and Beads sign that’s on the front of your store. That’s how I was able to find you this morning.”

“Dear heaven, this is creepy,” she said, wrapping her hands around her elbows.

No joke, Tux thought dryly. Nancy was having the usual reaction to an announcement like the one he was making. It was creepy. He was creepy. He was glad he hadn’t told her that he was the one with the psychic powers.

“Well,” Nancy said, “what was I doing? You know, what was taking place in the visions?”

Oh, hell, Tux thought, he didn’t want to scare her to death. What should he say? It wasn’t as though he had any experience in predicting the future. How did he even know there was any validity to what he’d seen? This whole situation was confusing and very disturbing.

“Mr. Bishop?” Nancy persisted. “Tux?”

“What?” he said, snapping back to attention. “Oh, the visions that you were in. Well, it was a mishmash of things, you understand.

“The buttons and beads were swirling around as though they were being whipped by a wind, then they settled into columns, rows, which I assume were those bins you have there.

“The painted sign saying Buttons and Beads came into view, then disappeared. My friend doesn’t see images like a movie, all neat and tidy and organized.”

Nancy nodded. “I’ve got it. So? What was I doing in the mishmash?”

Tux began to search his mind frantically for what he should say. For all he knew, the visions had meant nothing because he really didn’t possess the power to see into the future.

On the other hand, if by chance this once...and it better not happen again...he actually had glimpsed a scene of something that had not yet taken place, but was going to happen; Nancy deserved to be warned of the danger that she might be facing.

Then again, she didn’t even own a bright blue shawl.

He was going nuts arguing with himself. He was chasing his own thoughts around in his head like a hamster in one of those endless wheels that went nowhere.

Tux cleared his throat. “Yes, well, you want to know the part you played in what my friend saw. That’s certainly a reasonable request. I—”

He was interrupted by the tinkling of the bell over the door as a short, plump woman in her sixties bustled in, carrying a grocery sack. Breathing a mental sigh of relief at the reprieve, Tux stepped back out of the way.

“Hello, darling,” the woman greeted Nancy. “How are you this lovely summer morning?” She glanced at Tux. “Oh, you have company. Go right ahead with what you were doing. I’ll wait.”

“We’re just chatting,” Nancy replied. “Glenna Cushman, this is Tux Bishop. Tux, Glenna owns the used clothes store down the block.”

Tux smiled. “It’s a pleasure, ma’am. I saw your shop. The Second Time Around is a clever name.”

“I know,” Glenna said, laughing merrily. “I was so tickled with myself when I thought of it.” She slid her gaze over Tux from head to toe, then back again. “Hmmm, aren’t you a dandy hunk of stuff? Yummy.” She looked at Nancy. “Nancy Shatner, please say you noticed that this is one very sexy man.”

Tux laughed.

Nancy blushed a pretty pink and rolled her eyes heavenward.

“Glenna, please,” Nancy said, with a moan. “Hush. All right?”

“Well, facts are facts, dear,” Glenna persisted. “The man definitely does wonderful things for a pair of jeans. Beads and buttons simply won’t keep a woman warm on a snowy winter night.”

“Glenna,” Nancy said, leaning slightly toward her, “this is Houston, Texas. We don’t have snowy winter nights.”

“Figure of speech. You know what I mean,” Glenna said. “You’re young and beautiful. You need a man in your life. Tux, don’t you think Nancy is beautiful?”

“Glenna,” he said, his voice very low and rumbly as he looked directly at Nancy, “I think Nancy is extremely beautiful. She reminds me of a gypsy. Oh, yes, she is definitely beautiful.” And now he knew she was unattached, was not involved in a relationship with a man. Thank you, Glenna Cushman.

Dear heaven, Nancy thought, unable to tear her gaze from Tux’s mesmerizing blue eyes. She could hardly breathe and her heart was beating like a drum.

Tux’s voice had dropped an octave, and she felt as though it were caressing her like dark velvet, creating thrumming heat as it swept over and throughout her. Tux Bishop was having a very unsettling and unwelcomed effect on her, drat him.