That Boy From Trash Town Read online

  On returning to the bosom of the family, Anne and Whitney had taken possession of a graceful little two-story cottage at the back of the Harcourt's thirty-acre estate. The cottage had been built for Grandmother Harcourt, Whitney's great-grandmother, who had spent her last twenty years there. Uncle Ames called it the Dower House, a pretentious title from a pretentious man. Luckily for Whitney, the cottage sat on the back edge of the property, almost a quarter mile from the main house and Uncle Ames.

  When she first arrived in San Antonio, five-year-old Whitney knew nothing of Harcourt history. She had only known that she and her mother were going to be with family. And although her father's death had knocked the wind out of her, she comforted herself with the thought of having cousins to play with, children who would be more than friends because they were blood.

  It didn't take he long to discover her mistake.

  Whitney had five new cousins. Uncle Ames had two girls and a boy—Allie, Baby and Ames Junior—and Aunt CeeCee, Anne's older sister, had a boy and a girl—Tad and Muffy. Whitney could have gotten used to the ridiculous names, but their attitude was something else. For some reason, all her cousins hated Whitney on sight.

  With the exception of Uncle Ames's infant son, her cousins were all older than Whitney, but they went to the same private school that she did; they even had the same riding instructor and the same dance teacher. By all rights, that should have given them something in common. But somehow, from the very beginning, Whitney was out of step.

  The Harcourt cousins didn't hesitate to show Whitney that they noticed the difference and were offended by it. They played spiteful little tricks on her when the adults weren't looking. Sometimes the tricks were harmless—like tying knots in the ribbon straps of her ballet slippers, or telling nasty things about her in whispers to the other children at school—but sometimes the tricks were more serious, like the time one of them pot a burr under her horse's saddle.

  The day it all changed, the day she learned how to get along with her cousins, came almost a year after she and her mother had moved to Texas.

  On a muggy summer day, after their shared riding lesson, her cousins began teasing her, the way they always did. But this time a challenge had been issued, and a challenge had been accepted.

  To prove she wasn't a sissy-baby, Whitney was to go through the hedge that surrounded the Harcourt estate and bring back proof that she had gone all the way to Macon Street, in the middle of a section of houses that her cousins called "Trash Town."

  Ignoring her cousins' jeers, Whitney crawled under the hedge and marched away from them.

  It wasn't until she had passed a couple of streets that she realized what she had gotten herself into. During the two-block walk, Whitney had come to understand just why they had called it Trash Town. Rubbish was everywhere, and everything was broken-broken cars in the driveways, broken toys in the yards, broken furniture on the porches. Even the streets were broken. And it suddenly occurred to Whitney that if she stayed there, she might get broken, too.

  There was no one to help her. The people she had passed on the street stared at her. And without exception, they all had tight, mean looks on their faces.

  So she sat down on the curb and did what she would never have done in front of her cousins. She hid her face between her knees and cried.

  "What are you sniveling about, kid?"

  Wiping her eyes with the backs of her hands, she looked up. The person standing beside her looked like a man, but was probably little older than Tad. His skin was tanned a deep copper, and his dark hair was long and unkempt, with features that were strong in his thin face. And he had the same anger in his eyes that she had seen in the other residents of Trash Town.

  Staring up at him, Whitney stopped crying and swallowed several times in nervous reaction.

  "What are you doing in Trash Town?" the boy snarled at her, the anger blazing even hotter in his dark eyes.

  "I live here," she lied. "Down that way." She pointed vaguely in a direction. Rising to her feet, she added, "I'm going back home now. It was nice meeting you. Goodbye."

  She had begun to walk away when the sound of his laughter stopped her. She turned back to look at him and was instantly captivated by his laughing face.

  "Sure you live here," he said, still laughing. "Everybody in Trash Town wears riding pants. Now give. What're you doing here?"

  The question made her remember her predicament. She drew in a shuddering breath and sat down on the curb again. Leaning forward, she rested her chin against her fists and sniffed a couple of times.

  The boy sat beside her, and after a moment he put his arm around her shoulders. "Come on, kid. What's the problem?"

  "Do you know Tad Harcourt?"

  "Sure," he said immediately. "Me and Tad, we're just like this." He held up a pair of crossed fingers.

  The words made it sound as if he was teasing, but his voice had grown hard again. She studied his face. "You don't like him, either? He's my cousin."

  "Bummer," he said in sympathy, then an instant later he whistled softly through his teeth. "You're a Harcourt?"

  "Yes... bummer," she echoed mournfully. "At least, Uncle Ames says I am, but I don't know why I have to be a Harcourt when my name is Grant. It says so on my birth certificate. Whitney Daryn Grant. If my Daddy hadn't got drowned I could still be a Grant and live in Winnetka, but he did. Sometimes I cry, but not in front of Tad. The Daryn part of my name is from my father's mother. She's dead, too, but she was probably real sweet. The Harcourts are mostly mean. 'Specially Tad. He hates Amesy... that's Uncle Ames and Aunt Jocelyn's little baby. Tad hates a little baby. And just because he wanted to be the only boy. I think that stinks. Baby, now, she's not too mean. She's mostly just dumb. But the others are great big snots. Allie calls me Spitney and Muffy says I have cow eyes and I don't think she's ever seen a cow, because their eyes are brown and mine are blue. I like our house, but you know what? I don't call it Dower House like the others do. Don't you think that sounds like it would make your mouth pucker if you took a bite? I call it Sweet House because it's the sweetest house, and I-"

  "Quiet!"

  She stopped talking and looked at him, not in the least offended.

  "Do you always talk so much?" he asked warily.

  "Yes," she admitted, "but it's mostly to myself. Mother is always busy with something else, and I Wouldn't talk to my cousins for anything. I mean not like I'm talking to you. I have to talk to them at—"

  "I get the picture," he said, interrupting her again. "But what does all that stuff have to do with you being over here in Trash Town?"

  She studied his face. "It's an ugly name. I wouldn't call it that if I lived here. Don't you mind people calling your home something ugly?"

  Apparently it was the wrong thing to say, because the mean look came into his eyes again. "Are you gonna tell me why you're here or not?"

  She gave a heavy sigh. "Tad and the girls said if I'm not a sissy then I have to bring back proof that I've been all the way to Macon Street." She glanced around, then back to him. "Do you know which one is Macon Street? I can't find any street signs."

  He stared at her for a moment, his expression reflective, then he stood up. "Come on," he said abruptly.

  Without hesitation, Whitney followed him. They walked down a dirty, weed-infested alley and presently stepped across what had once been a chain-link fence, entering a yard filled with knee-high grass.

  "Stay here," he said as he jumped and caught a low limb on a huge oak tree.

  "Wait," she whispered urgently as he began to disappear into the leaves. "Whose house is this?"

  "Mine," he said without looking back.

  "Then why can't you use the door?"

  "Because my stepfather got laid off again," he called back to her. "If I go through the house, he'll pick a fight, and I'm not in the mood today."

  Whitney could certainly understand that. She felt the same way about her cousins.

  "Wait," she said again as he began to
move. "You didn't tell me your name."

  "Dean....Dean Russell. Now will you pipe down and let me take care of business?"

  She watched him climb in through a second-story window, then she stood quietly waiting for him to return. Seconds later he dropped out of the tree and landed a foot away from her. Pulling a battered street sign out of his shirt, he handed it to her. She turned it over gingerly. Macon Street.

  "I ripped it off a couple of weeks ago," he said.

  "You mean... you mean you're giving it to me?" she asked, surprise and pleasure making her voice squeak.

  He shrugged his thin shoulders. "You need it more than I do. Besides I can get all the street signs I want."

  Although he was making light of the gesture, Whitney knew he had given up a great treasure, and she couldn't thank him enough. She thanked him until he told her to shut up again.

  "What do you do when they start raggin' you?" Dean asked as they walked back through the streets of Trash Town.

  "I punch them," she said, swinging her fist at the air to give him a sample of her right hook.

  "Well, that's where you make your mistake," he told her. "Since they're all bigger than you, you couldn't do 'em much damage, and when you start fighting, you're showing them that they can get to you. I found out a long time ago that you gotta show bullies that nothing they can do bothers you, and they're not nothing but a fly buzzing around your head. If you act like their worst tricks are just a big, stupid joke, they'll get tired of doing it. They'll go find somebody that cries or gets mad. See what I mean?"

  Whitney nodded, taking in every word as though he had just come down from the mountain after having a long talk with a burning bush. She would follow his suggestion, she told him as they parted at the fortuneteller's parking lot. And then she would come back to Trash Town and tell him all about it. Because Trash Town no longer frightened her. It was where Dean lived.

  That day had been the beginning for them. In the eighteen years that followed, a lot of changes took place. Trash Town no longer existed. The old houses were considered fashionable, and the area was now called West Edge. Dean had gone through college and law school and had become a respected attorney. His stepfather had walked out years ago, and his mother lived with her sister in Florida.

  As for the advice Dean had given her on that first day, it had worked, and eventually a truce had been called among the Harcourt children. Whitney's cousins had mellowed with age, and sometimes she even found herself almost liking them.

  In eighteen years Whitney had grown from a little girl to a woman. She had been through six years of college and was on her way to becoming an expert in her field. And in all that time Dean, in her mind, had never once stopped being her hero. She still went to him when she was in trouble or when she had a triumph to share. And he was always there for her.

  Of course she was in love with him. How could she not be? But to Dean, Whitney was still just a little girl he had rescued on that day so long ago. Maybe she always would be.

  Chapter 2

  "You want to tell me why you're out here digging holes in my backyard?"

  From her stooped position Whitney glanced over her shoulder. Dean stood at the back door with a cup of coffee in his hand. He wore only jeans. No shirt, no shoes. He hadn't even combed his hair yet.

  "I'm digging for buried treasure," she said. "Inca gold... Marie Antoinette's jewels. Yeah, that's it."

  "You're too late." He walked down the steps and moved to stand beside her. "I hocked all that stuff last week."

  It was Saturday, more than a week since she'd brought Oscar to him. And, as Dean had predicted, the Watkins boy had taken one look at the disreputable animal and fallen in love. Pete Watkins had shown more resistance to Oscar's charms, but eventually Dean had talked him into giving the dog a home.

  "I brought you some flowers—" she held up a plastic pot "—to brighten up your backyard. It's a thank-you for rescuing Oscar. Aren't they pretty? I bought some just like them for the garden behind Sweet House."

  He frowned. "I thought I told you to stop buying me things."

  "I'm not trying to corrupt you with ill-gotten Harcourt booty," she said. "I used money gained from the honest sweat of my very own brow." She grinned up at him. "I baby-sat with Allie's three darlings, ill-gotten Harcourts all."

  "Then I thank you sincerely." He rubbed the top of his chest, and then, as if he suddenly realized he wasn't dressed, said, "I'll be right back."

  Minutes later he reappeared, this time fully dressed his hair neatly combed.

  Pity, she thought with a wistful little sigh as she turned back to the flowers.

  "It looks like you bought out the nursery," he said, squatting beside her. "What have you got here?"

  "A little bit of everything—impatiens, pansies, begonias. And these are caladiums. They'll look good against the house. You should have seen the plants the man at the nursery tried to sell me first. Pale, sickly things. The poor plants were practically coughing." "Camellias?" he suggested.

  "Smart aleck," she said, laughing. "You wouldn't have thought it was so funny if you'd got stuck with a backyard full of consumptive plants. Which is why I badgered him until he took me into the back where all the top-drawer plants live."

  "Better neighborhood in the back?"

  "Indubitably."

  Chuckling, Dean stared at her bent head. There were times, like now, when she was playing the clown, that Dean found himself suddenly taken aback by her beauty. She took her looks so completely for granted—the rich black hair that fell across her face as she worked, the complexion that was like antique porcelain, and the eyes that were bluer than ordinary eyes had a right to be—that he found himself taking them for granted, as well. Then the light would hit her at just the right angle, or she would move her head in a certain way, and the sight of her would take his breath away.

  In the past few years, Whitney's body had filled out. Beautifully. She was still slender, her curves not the conspicuous kind, but she' had legs that went on forever, and there was something about the way she moved that exuded vitality and subtle, energetic sensuality.

  Or maybe it was only subtle to him, he thought ruefully. More than once, the sight of her walking down a street had sent construction workers into a howling frenzy.

  Although Dean had always treated Whitney with casual indulgence, there was nothing casual about his feelings where she was concerned. He had been worrying about her for most of his life. He still worried about her, because, even though she was an adult, he couldn't stop thinking of her as fragile. She was a Harcourt orchid raised in an artificial Harcourt environment, an upbringing that had left her ill-equipped to deal with the harsh atmosphere of the real world.

  Maybe it would have been different if Whitney hadn't lost her father. From what she had told him, Lloyd Grant had been the exact opposite of his wife. He had been a man with both feet planted firmly on the ground, a man who would have made sure his daughter knew how to deal with reality.

  When Dean first met Whitney she had talked about her father constantly, telling Dean about all the things they had done together and how much she missed him. Although she didn't talk about him so much anymore, Dean knew that, even now, she felt his absence in a million little ways.

  But Lloyd Grant had died, and although Dean had done his best to provide a masculine influence in Whitney's life, it wasn't the same. His presence in Whitney's life had been a secondary thing, too equivocal to count for much. She had always needed—still needed—stability. She needed the strong, solid grounding of her father to neutralize the Harcourt influence.

  "How's the case going?"

  He glanced up, startled for a moment, and realized she was studying his face. Picking up another of the potted plants, he shook his head. "Nothing new yet. I walked Tess—she's Alvo's little sister—home from school yesterday, and I'm almost sure you're right about her, that she's holding something back, but she still isn't talking. She doesn't trust me."

  "She
will." Whitney smiled. "You have a way of getting right into the heart of a little girl." She took the pot from him and turned it upside down to dislodge a lush caladium, then she looked up and caught his eye. "Guess what? I may have a job for the summer."

  "Don't tell me. The nursery man took one look at you and said, 'By golly, I like a girl with spunk. Come work for me and nurse my gasping gardenias back to health.'"

  She tossed her head haughtily. "I don't doubt he was thinking exactly that, but the job I'm talking about is with Boedecker and Kraus."

  "The copier people?" He frowned. "What do you know about copiers?"

  "Nothing," she admitted readily. "But the Japanese who bought them need an apprentice art buyer. By a strange coincidence I happen to have a degree in Art History. If I get the job, I'll be flying all over creation this summer... maybe even to Europe. Sounds good, huh?"

  "It sounds great," he said slowly. "When will you know for sure?"

  "I have an interview on Monday. But I can't remember what time— Don't roll your eyes at me like that. It wasn't my fault. The secretary set a time, then changed her mind. But I'm almost sure it's either at ten, ten-thirty, or three."

  Dean laughed, finding her brand of emphatic ambiguity as irresistible as always. It was, however, another example of the distance that separated Whitney from the rest of the ordinary world.

  The first time Dean had gone out on a job interview he had been a nervous wreck for a week before. And then he'd showed up an hour and a half early to make sure he would be on time—that was the way it worked with most people. But Whitney wasn't most people. She was a Harcourt and therefore had never tasted the bitterness of defeat. She didn't even realize it was a possibility.

  She would most likely get the job. Whitney could charm an enraged bull out of its horns if she set her mind to it. But he was having a hard time picturing her in a fast-paced, nerve-racking, corporate atmosphere. She was too naive and, at times, too emotionally immature.