Sandra Brown - Prime Time

"Are you sure he'll be here today?" Andy Malone asked impatiently and shifted her weight into a more comfortable position. The "padded" stool in front of the counter was inaptly namedwhat padding there was beneath the red vinyl was lumpy and hard.

"Nope, sure ain't," Gabe Sanders, proprietor and chief cook of Gabe's Chili Parlor, said as he ran an unbleached muslin towel around the rim of a clean, but cracked and stained coffee mug. "All I said was that he was likely to be in today. That don't necessarily make it so, ya see? He's likely to do just what he damn well pleases." The grizzled old man chuckled.

Andy's trained instincts twitched with renewed anticipation, and she forgot the hard, uneven surface of the barstool she was sitting on. She knew better than to attract the attention of the other lunchtime customers or to show too much interest in her quarry. At any moment Gabe Sanders might decide she was a nosy outsider and stop answering her questions altogether.

"Oh?" She took a nonchalant sip of iced tea. It had been served to her in a red plastic glass with the teaspoon standing upright in it. "Does Mr. Ratliff strike you as an impulsive person?"

The moment it was out, she knew the question had put Gabe on his guard. The towel stopped trying to polish the hopelessly stained coffee mug. Gabe's bushy eyebrows dropped low over shrewd, now perceptibly less friendly eyes. "Just why're you asking so many questions about Lyon Ratliff? Huh?"

Quickly composing a cover story, Andy leaned forward in what she hoped was a confidence-inspiring pose and said conspiratorially, "I had a classmate at SMU who came from here. She told me about this man who lived on a big ranch and drove a silver El Dorado. I thought he sounded like someone out of a movie."

Gabe eyed her speculatively, and her self-assurance seemed to seep out of her slowly as his eyes peeled away her facade. His look frankly told her she looked too old to be a college student and that that was just one of her fibs. "Who was she?"

Completely disconcerted, first by Gabe's intuitive appraisal of her and now by his question, she stammered,

"Who was... who?"

"Who was that classmate of yours? I probably know her. Been serving chili and burgers here since '47. Know most the families in Kerrville."

"Oh, well then you wouldn't know... uh... Carla.

Actually she grew up in San Antonio and only came here in the summers to visit cousins or something." Andy reached for the glass of tea and took a deep swallow as though it had a restorative tonic in it.

Ever since arriving in this community in the Texas hill country a few days ago, she had felt like a fish out of water.

The careful, polite inquiries that usually got her through doors that remained closed to anyone else, had gotten her nowhere. It was as though the citizenry of Kerrville were protecting Lyon Ratliff and her ultimate target, his reclusive father.

General Michael Ratliff was the last surviving five-star general of World War II. Andy had vowed to interview him for her television program. And if the sketchy news reports of his failing health were true, it would have to be soon. So far, her trip had produced not even a flicker of hope that she would accomplish that feat. Now Gabe Sanders was being as reticent and stingy with information as everyone else she had encountered.

Determination raised the chin of her heart-shaped face, but the corners of her mouth lifted into a sweet smile. Her sherry-colored eyes shone beguilingly. "Mr. Sanders, would you by any chance have a slice of lime for my tea?"

Her self-confidence returned when Gabe seemed momentarily flustered by the radiance of her smile.

"How 'bout lemon? Will that do?"

"Wonderful! Thank you."

She pushed back a strand of golden-brown hair. She used her attractiveness to wheedle out information only when she was forced to, and it always galled her. She'd rather be able to tackle a story with the same forthrightness granted a male reporter simply by virtue of his sex.

But when necessary, she wasn't averse to using any advantage, and if someone found her extraordinary coloring intriguing, there was no harm in being cordial. Her father, who had had a poetic flair, had once compared her to an ice cream parfait made with vanilla ice cream, Amaretto, and caramel sauce.

"Thank you," she said when Gabe returned with two lemon wedges on a saucer. She squeezed the juice of one into the glass of tea, which had been presweetened and tasted like syrup to her, since she rarely used sugar in anything.

"You're not from around here, are you?"

She was tempted to invent a lie in answer to Gabe's question, but suddenly the fun had gone out of the game.

"No, I'm not. I live in Nashville now, though I grew up in Indiana."

"Nashville, huh? You with the Grand Ole Opry?"

She laughed, shaking her head. "No. I work for an independent cable company."

"Cable?" Gabe's eyebrows jumped, and Andy decided they were his most expressive feature. "Ya mean television-like cable?"

"Yes."

"Are you on TV?"

"Sometimes. I have an interview show that's syndicated to cable stations across the country."

"Interviews?" He looked beyond her shoulder and around the room at his other customers, as though looking for someone she might consider interviewing. Then his eyes swung back to her with sudden comprehension. "You wouldn't be thinkin' 'bout askin' Lyon for an interview with his daddy, now, would ya?"

"Yes. I am."

He studied her for a moment. "There wasn't any classmate at SMU, was there?"

She met his eyes steadily. "No."

"I didn't think so." There was no censure in his voice.

"Do you think Mr. Ratliff will refuse to let me interview his father?"

"Sure as hell do, but we're fixin' to find out, 'cause that's him a-comin' in now."

Andy's eyes dropped to the wet ring her glass had left on the counter top just as her stomach dropped to her feet.

The cowbell that hung on the metal bar across the door clanged loudly as he pushed through it.

"Hey, Lyon," someone said from the corner of the diner.

"Lyon," another customer called out.

"Jim, Pete." His voice was deep and raspy. The sound rippled toward her, pricked the small of her back like a needle, and generated a shiver that feathered up her spine.

She had hoped he would take a stool on either side of her, so it would be easy to strike up a conversation. But the footsteps she tracked with her ears took him to the end of the bar, to an extension that ran perpendicular to the counter where she was seated. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a blue shirt. Gabe ambled toward it.

"Hiya, Lyon? What'll ya have? Chili?"

"Not today. It's too hot. Besides Gracie fixed chili the other night, and it took two doses of that pink gunk to get my stomach back in shape."

"Could that bellyache have had anything to do with the margaritas you were drinking with that chili?"

A low laugh rumbled out of what must surely be a massive chest. "Could've been, could've been." That voice. What kind of man had such a stirring voice? Andy didn't think her curiosity could hold out much longer. -

Surrendering at last, she looked at him just as he said,

"Give me a cheeseburger basket."

"Comin' up."

Andy didn't even hear Gabe's reply to Lyon Ratlif f s order. She was too taken with the man who had given it.

He wasn't at all what she had expected. She had pictured him as older, well into middle age, probably because General Ratliff was in his eighties. Apparently his son had been born after the war. She estimated Lyon Ratlif f s age at around thirty-five.

Thick, dark hair lay in sculpted strands around his head. It was threaded at the temples with silver. Two sleek, dark brows arched over eyes whose color she couldn't determine from that distance. Her eyes followed the length of the Roman nose, which reminded her of actors who play in Biblical films, to the sensual mouth, which reminded her of actors who play in another type of film.