The Best Way to Lose Read online

  “You Could Always Arrange to Have a Male Escort to Parties, Pilar…”

  Trace said gruffly. “I don’t believe that you haven’t had volunteers.”

  Something about the way he looked at her set off little twinges of unease.

  “In case you haven’t noticed,” she replied, “there isn’t exactly a surfeit of single males over the age of thirty in Natchez. Besides, I’m not that desperate for a man.”

  “Aren’t you?”

  “No, I’m not,” she retorted.

  “You want to be looked at, but you don’t want to be touched . . . by anyone. Is that it?” he murmured.

  Pilar avoided his eyes. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I’m not sure that I do, either,” he said dryly.

  Books by Janet Dailey

  The Great Alone

  The Glory Game

  The Pride of Hannah Wade

  Silver Wings, Santiago Blue

  Calder Born, Calder Bred

  Stands a Calder Man

  This Calder Range

  This Calder Sky

  The Best Way to Lose

  For the Love of God

  Foxfire Light

  The Hostage Bride

  The Lancaster Men

  Leftover Love

  Mistletoe & Holly

  The Second Time

  Separate Cabins

  Terms of Surrender

  Western Man

  Nightway

  Ride the Thunder

  The Rogue

  Touch the Wind

  Published by POCKET BOOKS

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  Copyright © 1983 by Janbil, Ltd.

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce

  this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  For information address Simon & Schuster Inc.,

  1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  Originally published by Silhouette Books.

  ISBN: 1-416-58875-2 ISBN: 978-1-416-58875-7

  eISBN: 978-1-451-63982-7

  First Pocket Books printing August 1986

  Map by Ray Lundgren

  POCKET and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster Inc.

  Printed in the U.S.A.

  THE BEST WAY TO LOSE

  Chapter One

  Dr. Webster. Dr. Webster, please report to Emergency. Dr. Webster.” Striking chimes preceded the call by the disembodied voice paging through the hospital corridors.

  The sounds, the smells permeating the air, all seemed intensified to Pilar Santee as she stood by the window in the waiting room. Her slim body was tense almost to the point of rigidity. Everything seemed so loud—the hushed murmur of worried voices within the room, the rustle of polyester uniforms in the hallways, the alerting chimes of the hospital page. Like the strong, medicinally antiseptic odor that burned her nose, they had a highly irritating quality.

  “Would you like some coffee, Pilar?” The soft, solicitous inquiry came from a point near her elbow.

  Stiffly Pilar turned from the window and checked the impulse to respond with a sharp negative. The rawness of her violently churning emotions and aggravated senses had darkened her eyes to near-black. For an instant Pilar could only stare at the lingering traces of shock and tears in Sandra Kay’s face. The sight of all that sympathy from her friend nearly sickened her.

  “No, thank you.” It was a taut and quick reply.

  Her glance swung to the others who had gathered in the waiting room to share this vigil with her. All their expressions showed some form of deep concern. It seemed such a contradiction to her own feelings, which were dominated by anger. Her agitation increased because it was so wrong to feel this way. Pilar glanced at the heirloom ring on her wedding finger and rubbed it absently as if it were some kind of talisman. She didn’t understand why her eyes were so dry. Why wasn’t she upset like the others? Elliot was her husband.

  It became imperative to get out, to get away from all this caring sympathy. She didn’t understand the raw, raging anger that was bottled inside, and she was much too well bred to let it show.

  “Excuse me,” she murmured tautly as she started to walk by Sandra Kay Austin. “I’m going to step out for a moment.”

  “I’ll come with you.”

  “No.” Pilar paused, fighting the hot urges to scream at her friend that she wanted to be alone. With brittle control she managed to insist, “I’d rather you would stay here with the others. I won’t be long.”

  There was hesitation in Sandra Kay’s expression, an unwillingness to accept that Pilar really meant what she said. Before the searching gaze could uncover the feelings Pilar was trying to contain, she walked to the door and into the hallway. Her steps immediately slowed, her glance drawn to the closed door of the Intensive Care Unit room. She’d been allowed to see him once—for a very few minutes only.

  Her unusually acute hearing caught part of a remark made by someone in the waiting room. “—taking it very well.” She wanted to laugh, because she was “taking it” badly. Snatches of other conversations came rushing back. “—collapsed on the tennis court—massive coronary—heart damage—” Rage tumbled inside her, driving her forward.

  The chapel sign beckoned to her. With a challenging tilt of her dark head, Pilar entered the hallowed sanctuary. Beneath all the taut anger, there was a desperate wish that, here, she would find relief from these bitterly resentful feelings.

  A deep stillness surrounded her as she moved quietly to the polished oak pew in the front and sat down. Her gaze became fixed on the cross at the altar. The strength of her faith had always been something she could rely on, but it seemed to have forsaken her.

  Pilar sat very still and very quiet, her hands folded calmly in the lap of her smoke-blue skirt and her head unbowed. Light spilled from the altar to shine on her proud features and sable-black hair. Her mind’s eye brought back the riling image of Elliot as she had last seen him—so deathly pale, tubes stuck in his arms and nose, with all sorts of monitoring gadgets attached to him and surrounded by beeping machines.

  A raw groan came from her throat, almost animal in its origin. It wasn’t fair that this should happen to Elliot … with no warning … no reason. He was in excellent physical shape, trimly muscled and lean. Someone, attempting to comfort her, had tried to assure her that sudden attacks were to be expected for a man of Elliot’s age. Pilar violently rejected that reasoning. Elliot Santee was unquestionably the youngest fifty-five-year-old man she’d ever met.

  Anger trembled again, an emotion that should have been alien in this place of worship. Pilar quietly sank to her knees in front of the altar, clasping her hands in a prayerful pose and resting them on the smooth railing. But no words of prayer came to her lips.

  All she could remember was the way she constantly teased Elliot about his daily ritual of exercise—jogging, swimming, and weight lifting, plus a couple of games of golf or tennis each week. And Elliot, so handsome and charismatic, had always teased her back, insisting that a man his age had to stay in shape when he had such a young bride. After five years of marriage he still referred to her as his bride, surprising her with gifts of flowers or jewelry for no reason at all other than a desire to give.

  Their May-December marriage had raised many an eyebrow in Natchez and brought forecasts of its early demise, but the
ir age difference had never bothered them. It was something they joked about. Elliot was always fond of bragging that he’d swept Pilar off her twenty-four-year-old feet when they’d first met.

  So many plans for the future had been made, so many things they wanted to do together. It wasn’t right that he might be taken from her. Pilar railed against the thought, violently opposing the very idea of it.

  A hand touched her shoulder and she cast a startled glance upward into the benignly sympathetic eyes of the minister from their church. He smiled gently.

  “I thought I might find you here, Mrs. Santee.” When she started to stand up, his hand increased its pressure slightly to prevent the movement. “Let me join you in prayer.”

  As he knelt at the railing beside her, Pilar was plagued by the hypocrisy of her emotions. She didn’t want to pray; she wanted to demand. She wasn’t righteous—she was indignant.

  “Our heavenly Father…” As the minister began Pilar shut her eyes and ears to the words she couldn’t genuinely support. His quiet voice droned in the background of her hearing while she remembered how Elliot had carried her up the stairs of their beautiful antebellum home in Natchez just last week. Which was hardly the sort of thing to be recalling at this particular moment. “… and give comfort to those who love him. Amen.”

  Unclasping her clenched fingers, Pilar pushed at the railing to lever herself upright the instant he finished. “Thank you, Reverend Chasmore.” Her finely controlled expression showed none of the emotions smoldering within.

  He was slower to rise. “It was my pleasure, Mrs. Santee.” Again he spoke in a comforting tone. “I hope you haven’t tried to reach me earlier. I was out calling on some of my parishioners and decided to stop by to make my hospital rounds before returning to the parsonage. Mrs. Parker in Admissions told me the news about your husband.”

  “Yes.” She searched for something to say. “It was very good of you to come.” Words without meaning, polite phrases spoken because they were expected.

  “Have you taken the time to eat something since you’ve been here?” The minister fell in step with her as she turned away from the altar and walked to the door. Her soul had supposedly been nourished by prayer, so now he was trying to see that her body was fed.

  “No. I’m really not hungry,” she replied firmly even though she had missed the late breakfast Cassie had been preparing for her when Field Carlton had come by to break the news to her.

  “Mrs. Austin told me you haven’t left the waiting room since you arrived this morning.” It was a benevolent reproach. “Why don’t you come to the cafeteria with me and have some coffee?”

  “Honestly, I don’t want anything,” Pilar insisted, struggling not to snap at him. She sensed his desire to press the issue, but the set of her features seemed to make him hesitate as he opened the chapel door for her to exit the quiet room.

  “I’m not certain if you were informed that the authorities were successful in contacting your husband’s son. I understand he’s on his way to Natchez now.”

  “Good.” Her response was short and completely indifferent to the information. In her five years of marriage to Elliot she had seen his son no more than three times. There was no estrangement between father and son; they had simply never been close even though Trace Santee worked in the family-owned barge line. Pilar had long ago stopped trying to reason out why it was so. Neither Elliot nor his son had appeared to be bothered by the infrequent communication between themselves, so Pilar had ceased to be concerned by it.

  “Are you certain you won’t reconsider my invitation and come to the cafeteria? We can leave word at the nurse’s station where you’ll be if there’s any change in your husband’s condition,” the minister assured her. “You really should have something, if only a cup of soup.”

  “No, thank you. Cassie will fix me something when I go home tonight.” If she went home—but Pilar didn’t raise that point.

  The same group of close family friends were in the waiting room when she returned to it, even though only members of the immediate family were permitted to see Elliot, and only for specified periods. As Sandra Kay had said, they wanted to sit with her during the long vigil. Pilar knew she should have been moved by their thoughtfulness, but she truly wanted to be alone. She also knew they would never understand if she told them that, so she silently rejoined them to await further word from the doctor on his prognosis.

  The props of the tender’s motor boiled coffee-colored foam in the stern’s wake as the boat bucked the current of the silt-laden waters of the Mississippi River and aimed for the landing below a high bluff. Old wooden buildings were tucked back against the wall of the bluff—all that remained of the notorious hellhole of a town along the waterfront area known as Natchez-under-the-Hill. The long rays of a late-afternoon sun struck the buildings full force, glaringly revealing their age. There was a lot of talk about rebuilding the area as a tourist attraction, but it was mostly talk with some refurbishing accompanying it.

  Nothing changed, it seemed. Trace carried the half-smoked cigarette to his mouth, protectively cupping his hand around it to keep the wind from blowing any hot ash from the tip—a holdover from the times he’d pushed oil barges up the river. A worn captain’s hat was pulled low on his forehead, slightly off center in a rakish touch. His strong, jutting features were leather-tan from hours spent outdoors, and sun lines sprayed from the corners of his steel-gray eyes, their color made to appear an even lighter shade by ink-black lashes that matched the thick eyebrows and shaggy hair.

  As the tender from the towboat approached the landing, Trace tossed the cigarette over the side and reached for the duffel bag at his feet. There was a suggestion of impatience in the rippling muscles under the faded denim jacket. The small boat maneuvered close to the bank and Trace stood up, easily balancing on his river legs, and heaved his duffel bag ashore. He threw a glance at the man at the tiller.

  “Tell Ned I’ll buy him dinner the next time we meet up,” he said, raising his voice to make himself heard above the noise of the idling motor holding the boat in position by the bank.

  With an agile leap, he was ashore and hefting his duffel bag onto his shoulder. Trace paused to toss a saluting wave in the direction of the towboat, its engines screaming while it pushed a dozen fully loaded barges lashed together up the channel of the mighty river. A horn tooted in reply, and the hard mouth almost quirked into a smile, then sobered as Trace turned to face the long, steep hill to the town at the top of the bluff.

  Shifting the bag more squarely onto his shoulder, he started up the hill, long easy strides carrying him smoothly along. His frayed denims rode comfortably on his narrow hips, the frequency of wearing shaping them to his leanly muscled thighs and legs. Despite the steep climb Trace was barely out of breath when he reached the top of the hill, where the town of Natchez spread out before him.

  The last time he was back, two years ago, it had been a two-taxi town. It seemed unlikely that the cab company had expanded. He stepped into the street and followed the curb line, sticking out his thumb to the first vehicle that passed by. It didn’t stop and Trace kept walking. Another car came and went, weaving out around him.

  There was a short burst of a police siren as he turned around to face the front again. The police car was in the oncoming lane of the narrow street. The patrolman stuck his head out the window.

  “Hitchhiking is against the law—” Recognition broke across the older man’s expression. “Santee? Trace Santee? Is that you?” He pulled the patrol car into the opposite curb while Trace waited for a car to pass before crossing the street.

  “Hey, Digger. How’s it going?” he laconically greeted the graying man who had been a fixture on the local police force for as many years a Trace could remember.

  The officer shoved a pudgy hand out the window to shake hands with him. “Trace Santee, you ol’ rakehell son of a gun, how the hell are you?!” Digger Jones declared with a wide grin. “That’s a new scar on your cheek, isn’t
it? No need to ask whether you’ve had any better luck staying out of trouble. Ya gotta learn to stay out of those riverfront dives.”

  Trace absently rubbed the faint white scar that slashed his cheek and smiled indifferently. “Some Cajun got a little free with his knife one night.”

  “It couldn’t be that you were messin’ around with his gal?” the officer chided with a knowing look.

  There was a faint lift of one shoulder. “She wasn’t objecting.” He leaned a hand on the hood of the patrol car, bracing himself easily with it. “I need a ride to the hospital. How about giving me a lift?”

  “Yeah, I guess you heard about your daddy.” A grim kind of sympathy flashed across the aging lines of the man’s face, shortly replaced by a half-hearted smile. “I’ll take you there. An’ for a change, you can ride in the front seat.”

  Trace circled around the car to the passenger side, stowed his bag in the back seat, then climbed in the front. As Trace shut the door Digger shifted into driving gear and swung the car back into the street, making an illegal U-turn.

  “You’re an emergency.” Digger Jones briefly slid a smile at him. “I wondered how long it would take them to track you down.”

  “I wasn’t hard to find.” Trace settled loosely into the seat, showing a relaxed composure, but his fingers were lightly drumming on the door’s armrest—restless, impatient energy always just below the surface. “I took the Betty Lou out this time. I got the radio call when we were halfway between here and nowhere, headed downstream. Ned Hanks happened by, and it was quicker to catch a ride with him than wait until we reached a town.” He leveled a glance at the officer with disconcerting directness. “How’s Elliot?”

  Trace Santee had been rowdy as a youngster, giving Digger all kinds of trouble. There had been times when some had given up on him, calling him wild and worthless, but Digger never had. Maybe because he liked the way Trace looked a man square in the eyes.

  “Ten years on the river sure hasn’t tamed you down any.” Digger absently prefaced his reply with an observation. “It looks real bad, Trace.”