Peggy Nicholson - Don't Mess With Texans

Colton shook his head. Razor-cut dark blond hair, shining and flawlessly parted, didn’t stir. The guy looked to be a few years older than his own age of thirty and Tag supposed women would think him handsome, in spite of those wirerim glasses. Pretty boy, would be the male opinion. Certainly it was his.

Colton’s smile was gently nostalgic. “In the stables of a business associate of mine in Texas. I flew down to buy a promising filly.” His eyes crinkled. “Came home with two, instead.”

“Self-satisfied ass!” Tag sat and turned up the sound while the interviewer chuckled appreciatively, then switched back to Deeply Concerned. “It sounds like Cinderella and her prince! A girl who loved horses and a man who bred and raced some of the nation’s finest. So what went wrong with this perfect fairy tale?”

Colton shrugged his pinstriped shoulders. “Why do people fall out of love? Who’s to say? We came from entirely different circumstances...”

“Different worlds,” crooned the woman.

He smiled sadly. “Mint juleps in silver goblets versus Lone Star beer in longneck bottles. I suppose I was a fool to think she could ever...” He shrugged again. “Anyway, we gave it our best shot for two years, but it was time to move on. At least...I thought so.”

The woman leaned forward, hanging on his every word, her expression avid. “You mean...?”

His good humor faded. “I mean, I asked Susannah for a divorce two nights ago.”

The interviewer quivered like a springer spaniel with a rabbit in sight. “The night that she...took Payback and drove away?”

“She stole Payback later that night. Yes.”

Tag swore softly, savagely. You used me for that, Susannah?

“So it was your asking for a divorce that triggered her...”

“That and the news—which I suppose I didn’t deliver as tactfully as I might have done. Perhaps that bit could have waited till later. I also told her that I planned to remarry. That I’d fallen in love with another woman.”

“Ohhh...” The interviewer sounded halfway to orgasm. “I see. Yes. So this was an act of...spite!”

“Spite, malice and revenge,” Colton agreed in his Kentucky gentleman’s drawl. It was quicker and more mannered than Susannah’s breezy twang.

“Payback, Texas style!”

“I’m afraid they do believe in getting their own back down there. Don’t mess with Texans, or however it goes. I certainly knew Susannah had a temper and I suppose I expected... some sort of tantrum. Maybe a few dishes smashed or possibly the whole table service, but...”

“But to...smash the finest racehorse you ever bred! That anyone in America ever bred! Payback was a national treasure. I think you could say he belonged to...all of us.” The interviewer held that thought for three beats of nationwide mourning, then cocked her head and wrinkled her charming nose. “You know, Freud’s somewhat out of fashion nowadays, but might one argue that there’s almost something... symbolic in a scorned wife’s gelding—” she giggled “—her husband’s most treasured stud.”

Colton’s eyebrows shot up, but apparently he decided not to take offense. His smirk was confiding. Merrily roguish. “Ah, but I have others!”

“And a spare set of gold-plated balls for dress occasions, rich boy?” Tag snarled.

The interviewer giggled. “Other stallions, you mean!”

What had Susannah seen in this...this... Tag’s head jerked around at the smell of—“Damn!” The eggs! He bolted for his smoky kitchen.

THE DAY SLID STRAIGHT downhill from there. Reporters were camped out at the back door of the clinic when Tag went in to work. He had to wade through the baying pack, hands jammed in his pockets to keep from punching the eager faces thrust into his own.

“Dr. Taggart!”

“Dr. Taggart, would you care to comment on—”

“Dr. Taggart, were you aware that—”

“Move it or lose it, pal.” He gained the back door and unlocked it, opened it wide enough to slide in sideways—

“Taggart, how much did Mrs. Colton have to pay you to get you to geld Payback?”

An ice cube slithered down his spine. They couldn’t think he’d—He halted, half in, half out the door. “We charged her our standard fee for—” His heart dropped a beat as he remembered. At least they’d tried to charge her the usual fee for that procedure. God, Susannah’s ring! Let it be zirconium, oh, please God!

He had a feeling God had gone south on vacation this week.

He slammed the door on his own aborted statement and locked it. Fists pounded, voices rose indignantly. Did they think they owned him? If Payback was a national treasure, then what was he? National whipping boy? He half ran toward the office. “Carol Anne!”

She sat behind her counter with a stunned and mutinous look on her face, her hair escaping its pins. Beyond the locked front door, he could hear more of the same mob. “Carol Anne, did you tell anyone about the ring? Her ring?”

“And good morning to you, too, doctor.”

“I’m sorry, good morning. The ring—did you tell anyone?”

Her glower turned to a blinking stillness. She sniffed, opened the appointment book and buried her nose in it.

Control, control. If he shook her she’d quit. “Who, Carol?” She flipped to the next page, as if today could simply be skipped over. He leaned above her, a silent growl vibrating deep in his throat. She hunched her shoulders. “Doc Higgins, okay?”

Higgins wasn’t so bad. Higgins was as stingy with his words as he was with his gauze pads. He wouldn’t—

“—and my sister,” she added in a mutter, not looking up.

Wonderful. “All right, I want you to toddle straight out that door and tell her—”

“She’s already gone in to work. Her shift starts at six.”

Carol Anne’s sister was a waitress at the best place—the only place—in town to get an early breakfast At six this morning the diner’s counter would have been lined elbow to elbow with newsmen, sucking down coffee and local gossip. “Cripes. Then I want you to call her and—”

“Call—ha! I unplugged the phone. Somebody’s got an automatic dialler locked in on us. You can’t call in or out.” She rubbed her nose and looked up. Her eyes were red-rimmed. “And you know what’s on our answering machine from last night? Loonytunes calling in from all over, threatening to burn us down, or blow us up, or do to you what you did to that stupid nag!” She snatched a tissue from her pocket. “If you’d only listened to me...”

All right, forget the ring. By now that horse was out of the barn. “What did Higgins say?” He’d not been able to face the old man last night. Nor call, not with his own line jammed with incoming viciousness.

“He said you should’ve listened to me.”

Tag counted backward from ten, then slowly up again. “What else?”

“He said you’d better get yourself a good lawyer and it better not be on his dime.”

“I was going to phone Glassman at nine. Guess I’ll have to go see him, first break in the schedule I get.”

That break came earlier than expected. The first appointment of the day was a no-show. Simply forgot, or something more ominous? The second, Mrs. Wiggly and her cat, Sherman, arrived on time, but after they’d run the gauntlet of newshounds, Mrs. W was near tears and Sherman was doing a Persian variation of the Saber Dance.

When the third and fourth appointments were no-shows, it began to look like a trend. The fifth was an overweight dachshund, who bit a newsman on his way in the door. The reporter threatened to sue. Tag came out and offered to punch his nose for him, which seemed to cheer the reporter and his photographer no end, after which Tag completed Bismarck’s exam, then declared the clinic closed for the morning. He hung a sign in the window and left Carol Anne trying to phone out to cancel the rest of their appointments.