Chapter Twenty-Three
A few hours later, Ted was headed south on I-5 in a rented Chevy Trailblazer. He drove too fast and stopped just once to grab a mug of bitter coffee. He prayed Meg had gone to L.A. with her parents when she’d left Wynette instead of heading off to Jaipur or Ulan Bator or some other place where he couldn’t get to her and tell her how much he loved her. The wind that had carried away the San Francisco fog had also swept away the last of his confusion. He’d been left with a blinding clarity that cut through all the turmoil of old fiancées and aborted weddings, a clarity that let him see how skillfully he’d used logic to hide his fear of having his easy life disturbed by chaotic emotions.
He, of all people, should have known love wasn’t orderly or rational. Hadn’t his own parents’ passionate, illogical love affair overcome deception, separation, and pigheadedness to last more than three decades? That kind of soul-deep love was what he felt for Meg—the complicated, disruptive, overpowering love he’d refused to admit was missing in his relationship with Lucy. He and Lucy had fit together so perfectly in his mind. His mind . . . but not his heart. It should never have taken him so long to figure that out.
He ground his teeth in frustration when he hit L.A. traffic. Meg was a creature of passion and impulse, and he hadn’t seen her in over a month. What if time and distance had convinced her she deserved something better than a boneheaded Texan who didn’t know his own mind?
He couldn’t think like that. He couldn’t let himself contemplate what he’d do if she’d gotten fed up with the whole idea of ever having fallen in love with him. If only she hadn’t cut off her phone. And what about her history of hopping on planes and flying off to the farthest reaches of the planet? He wanted her to stay put, but Meg wasn’t like that.
It was early evening by the time he reached the Korandas’ Brentwood estate. He wondered if they knew Meg hadn’t shown up in San Francisco. Although he couldn’t be certain they were the ones who’d put up the winning bid, who else would have done it? The irony didn’t escape him. What the parents of daughters most liked about him was his stability, but he’d never felt less stable in his life.
He identified himself over the intercom. As the gates swung open, he remembered he hadn’t shaved for two days. He should have stopped at a hotel first to clean up. His clothes were wrinkled, his eyes bloodshot, and he had a bad case of flop sweat, but he wasn’t going to turn back now.
He parked his car at the side of the English Tudor that was the Korandas’ primary California home. Best-case scenario, Meg would be here. Worst-case scenario . . . He wouldn’t think about worst-case scenarios. The Korandas were his allies, not his enemies. If she weren’t here, they’d help him find her.
But the cool hostility Fleur Koranda exhibited when she opened the front door did nothing to bolster his shaken confidence. “Yes?”
That was all. No smile. No handshake. Definitely no hug. Regardless of age, women tended to go all melty-eyed when they saw him. It had happened so many times he barely noticed, but it wasn’t happening now, and the novelty unbalanced him. “I need to see Meg,” he blurted out, and then, stupidly, “I— We haven’t been formally introduced. I’m Ted Beaudine.”
“Ah, yes. Mr. Irresistible.”
She didn’t say it like it was a compliment.
“Is Meg here?” he asked.
Fleur Koranda looked at him exactly the way his mother had looked at Meg. Fleur was a beautiful six-foot Amazon with the same boldly slashed eyebrows Meg had, but not Meg’s coloring or more delicate features. “The last time I saw you,” Fleur said, “you were scrambling in the dirt, trying to knock a man’s head off.”
If Meg had the guts to stand up to his mother, he could face hers down. “Yes, ma’am. And I’d do it again. Now I’d appreciate it if you’d tell me where I can find her.”
“Why?”
If you gave mothers like this an inch, they’d mow you down. “That’s between her and me.”
“Not exactly.” The deep voice came from Meg’s father, who’d appeared at his wife’s shoulder. “Let him in, Fleur.”
Ted nodded, stepped into a grand entrance hall, and followed them to a comfortable family room already occupied by two tall younger men with Meg’s chestnut brown hair. One sat on the fireplace hearth, ankle crossed over his knee, strumming a guitar. The other tapped away at a Mac. These could only be Meg’s twin brothers. The one with the laptop, Rolex, and Italian loafers had to be Dylan, the financial whiz, while Clay, the guitar-playing New York actor, had shaggier hair, ripped jeans, and bare feet. Both of them were exceptionally good-looking guys and dead ringers for an old movie idol, although he couldn’t immediately recall which one. Neither resembled Meg, who took after her father. And neither appeared to be any more welcoming than the senior Korandas. Either they knew Meg hadn’t shown up in San Francisco and blamed him, or he’d gotten it dead wrong from the start, and they weren’t the ones who’d entered the contest for her. Either way, he needed them.
Jake made perfunctory introductions. Both brothers uncoiled from their respective seats, not to shake his hand, he quickly discovered, but to meet him at eye level. “So this is the great Ted Beaudine,” Clay said with a drawl almost identical to the one his father used on-screen.
Dylan looked as though he’d sniffed out a hostile takeover. “No accounting for my sister’s taste.”
So much for hopes of cooperation. Although Ted didn’t have any practice dealing with animosity, he damned sure wasn’t going to back away from it, and he cut his gaze between the brothers. “I’m looking for Meg.”
“I take it she didn’t show up for your party in San Francisco,” Dylan said. “That must have been quite a blow to your ego.”
“My ego doesn’t have anything to do with it,” Ted countered. “I need to talk to her.”
Clay fingered the neck of his guitar. “Yeah, but here’s the thing, Beaudine . . . If our sister wanted to talk to you, she’d have done it by now.”
The atmosphere in the room crackled with an ill will he recognized as the same kind of antagonism Meg had confronted every day she was in Wynette. “That’s not necessarily true,” he said.
Mother Bear’s beautiful, blond fur bristled. “You had your chance, Ted, and from what I understand, you blew it.”
“Big-time,” Papa Bear said. “But if you give us a message, we’ll be sure to pass it on.”
Ted was damned if he’d spill his guts to any of them. “With all due respect, Mr. Koranda, what I have to say to Meg is between the two of us.”
Jake shrugged. “Good luck, then.”
Clay set down his guitar and stepped away from his brother. Some of his hostility seemed to have faded, and he regarded Ted with what seemed like sympathy. “No one else is going to tell you, so I will. She’s left the country. Meg is traveling again.”
Ted’s stomach twisted. This was exactly what he’d feared. “No problem,” he heard himself say. “I’m more than happy to get on a plane.”
Dylan didn’t share his brother’s sympathetic attitude. “For a guy who’s supposed to be some kind of genius, you’re a little slow on the uptake. We’re not telling you a damned thing.”
“We’re a family,” Papa Bear said. “You may not understand what that means, but all of us do.”
Ted understood exactly what it meant. It meant these tall, good-looking Korandas had circled their wagons against him just as his friends had done against Meg. Lack of sleep, frustration, and a self-disgust that was tinged with panic made him lash out. “I’m a little confused. Aren’t you the same family who cut her off four months ago?”
He had them. He could see the guilt in their eyes. Until this exact moment, he’d never suspected he had a spiteful nature, but a person learned something new about himself every day. “I’ll bet Meg never told you everything she went through.”
“We talked to Meg all the time.” Her mother’s stiff lips barely moved.
“Is that right? Then you know all about how she was living.” He didn’t give a damn that he was about to do something grossly unfair. “I’m sure you know she was forced to scrub toilets to buy food? And she must have told you she had to sleep in her car? Did she mention that she barely avoided going to jail on vagrancy charges?” He wasn’t telling them who’d nearly sent her there. “She ended up living in an abandoned building with no furniture. And do you have any idea how hot a Hill Country summer is? To cool off, she swam in a snake-infested creek.” He could see the guilt dripping from their pores, and he bore in. “She had no friends and a town full of enemies, so you’ll forgive me if I’m not impressed with your notions of how to protect her.”
Her parents had gone ashen-faced, her brothers wouldn’t look at him, and he told himself to back off even as the words kept coming. “If you don’t want to tell me where she is, then the hell with all of you. I’ll find her myself.”
He stormed out of the house, fueled by rage, an emotion so new to him he barely recognized it. By the time he reached his car, however, he regretted what he’d done. This was the family of the woman he loved, and even she believed they’d done the right thing by cutting her off. He’d accomplished nothing except venting his anger on the wrong people. How the hell was he supposed to find her now?
He spent the next few days fighting a grinding despair. An Internet search failed to yield any clues about Meg’s whereabouts, and the people most likely to have information refused to talk to him. She could be anywhere, and with the whole world to search, he had no idea where to start.
Once it was obvious the Korandas hadn’t been the high bidders in the contest, the identity of his matchmaker should have been immediately clear, but he still didn’t figure it out right away. When he finally put the pieces together, he stormed to his parents’ house and ran his mother to ground in her office.
“You made her life hell!” he exclaimed, barely able to contain himself.
She tried to wave him away with a flick of her fingers. “A dreadful exaggeration.”
It felt good to have a target for his anger. “You made her life hell, and then suddenly, without warning, you turn into her champion?”
She regarded him with injured dignity, her favorite trick when she was backed into a corner. “Surely you’ve read Joseph Campbell. In any mythic journey, the heroine has to pass a series of difficult trials before she’s worthy enough to win the hand of the beautiful prince.”
His father snorted from across the room.
Ted stalked out of the house, afraid of this new anger that kept erupting. He wanted to hop on a plane, to bury himself in work, to slip out of the skin that had once fit him so comfortably. Instead he drove to the church and sat next to Meg’s swimming hole. He imagined her disgust if she could see him like this—see what was happening to the town. With the mayor’s office sitting empty, bills weren’t getting paid and disputes were going unsettled. No one could even authorize the final repairs on the library that his mother’s check had made possible. He’d failed the town. He’d failed Meg. He’d failed himself.
She would hate the way he’d fallen apart, and even in his imagination, he didn’t like disappointing her more than he already had. He drove into town, parked his truck, and forced himself through the door of City Hall.
As soon as he stepped inside, everybody started toward him. He held up his hand, glared at each one of them, and sealed himself in his office.
He stayed there all day, refusing to answer either the ringing phone or the repeated knocks on his locked door as he shuffled through papers, studied the city budget, and contemplated the sabotaged golf resort. For weeks the seed of an idea had been trying to break through his subconscious only to wither in the bitter soil of his guilt, anger, and misery. Now, instead of gnawing over the ugly scene at the landfill, he applied the cool, hard logic that was his stock-in-trade.
One day passed, then another. Homemade baked goods began to pile up outside his office. Torie yelled through the door, trying to bully him into going to the Roustabout. Lady E. left the complete works of David McCullough on the passenger seat of his truck—he had no idea why. He ignored them all, and after three days, he had a plan. One that would make his life infinitely more complicated, but a plan nonetheless. He emerged from his seclusion and began making phone calls.
Another three days passed. He found a good lawyer and made more phone calls. Unfortunately, none of that solved the bigger problem or finding Meg. Despair gnawed at him. Where the hell had she gone?
Since her parents continued to dodge his calls, he made both Lady E. and Torie give it a try. But the Korandas wouldn’t crack. He imagined her sick with dysentery in the jungles of Cambodia or freezing to death on her way up K2. His nerves were raw. He couldn’t sleep. Could barely eat. He lost track of the agenda during the first meeting he called.
Kenny showed up at his house one evening with a pizza. “I’m seriously starting to worry about you. It’s time you get a grip.”
“Look who’s talking,” Ted retorted. “You went nuts when Lady E. ran out on you.”
Kenny pleaded memory loss.
That night Ted once again found himself lying sleepless in his bed. How ironic that Meg used to call him Mr. Cool. As he stared at the ceiling, he imagined her gored by a bull or bitten by a king cobra, but when he began picturing her getting gang-raped by a band of guerrilla soldiers, he couldn’t take it any longer. He threw himself out of bed, jumped in his truck, and drove to the landfill.
The night was cool and still. He left on his high beams and stood between the funnels of light as he stared out at the empty, polluted land. Kenny was right. He had to pull himself together. But how could he do that? He was no closer to finding her than when he’d begun, and his life had fallen apart.
Maybe it was the desolation, or the stillness, or the dark, empty land so full of untapped promise. For whatever reason, he felt himself standing straighter. And he finally saw what he’d missed—the glaring fact he’d overlooked in all his attempts to find her.
Meg needed money to leave the country. From the beginning, he’d assumed her parents had given it to her to make up for everything she’d gone through. That was what logic told him. His logic. But he wasn’t the one calling the shots, and he’d never once gotten out of his own head to slip into hers.
He envisioned her face in all its moods. Her laughter and anger, her sweetness and sass. He knew her as well as he knew himself, and as he opened his mind to hers, the essential fact he should have picked up on from the beginning became blindingly clear.
Meg wouldn’t take a penny from her parents. Not for shelter. Not for travel. Not for anything. Clay Koranda had lied to him.