The sky above The Last Resort wasn't what any city had prepared me for. I'd spent years outside up there: rooftops, the park, the street at two in the morning. Whatever I'd been calling the sky, it wasn't this. No towers to interrupt it. Nothing to soften the edges. Just actual sky, being completely unreasonable about how many stars it thought the situation required.
I gave it three seconds and kept walking.
Sarge was already posted at the tent flap when I got back, apparently having decided this was his assignment for the duration without consulting me. He met my eyes once, planted himself, and resumed staring into the middle distance with the focus of a professional.
I lay there fully dressed and tried very hard to think about work. Mrs. Whitestone's Persian. The mini donkey, who was getting added whether I'd planned for it or not. Sarge breathed at the flap with the steady competence of someone who had this handled.
The canvas ceiling offered nothing useful.
What it kept coming back to, every single time, was a man at a fence post who'd watched the color climb my face and said absolutely nothing about it, patient and aware, watching me like he already knew what it meant and was in no particular hurry about any of it.
I was in significant trouble.
My apparent new personal watchdog already knew.
Chapter Two
Dutch
THE PROPERTY HAD GONEquiet the way a Texas spread does after a long day. Not silent, because it's never silent. Settled. The catering crew was still working on the far side of the tent, breaking down the rehearsal dinner, and I could hear the low scrape of table legs and someone calling out the final plate count. Past all of that, the cicadas were running full volume. Somewhere on the porch, Judge Judy had finally gone quiet, which was either sleep or strategy.
Jules was already gone.
She’d said her goodnights at the catering tent, warm and controlled, that client-voice deployed like a second outfit. Then she’d crossed toward the glamping tents, heels on gravel, and Sarge had materialized out of the dark at her side like he’d been waiting for exactly this assignment all evening.
I stayed on the back porch.
Stoney came around the corner of the house about a minute later. That was exactly how long he needed.
“Lovett.” He tilted his chin at me. “Your face.”
“Judge Judy started it,” I said.
He snorted and left it there, which was one of Stoney’s better qualities.
I waited until she’d have reached the tents. Then I went to help him break down.
I’d been caught since three this afternoon. He’d just been decent enough not to say so until now.
THE CATERING CREW WASefficient and quiet, the way professionals are when they’ve done this a hundred times and don’t need to discuss it. I worked the far end of the tent with Big Jim Hightower, folding tablecloths, while Houston Ralls moved linen crates down the other side.
Big Jim was in a good mood the way oil men get in good moods. Quietly, without requiring confirmation from anyone around them. He handed me a table end. I took it.
Big Jim Hightower ran one of the larger oil operations in the state. He was presently folding a tablecloth at ten at night without complaint. You find out things about people at the end of a party.
“Weather holding?” he said.
“All weekend, looks like.”
He nodded. Houston came around the end of the table and picked up the next crate without a word. Houston Ralls was a man of similar economy and I respected it. They both had their opinions and kept most of them, which I’ve always found to be a quality worth noticing in a person.
Big Jim handed me another end. “Stoney says your operation’s doing well.”
“Can’t complain.”
“Good,” he said.
And that was his full position on the matter. We finished the breakdown and I walked the long way back around the property,past the ceremony meadow, where four hundred white chairs stood in dark rows under the live oaks. Nobody in them yet. Tomorrow they’d all be full.
