Cornered! Read Online Free Page B

and closed it. His face flushed even more. One thing he’d learned for certain. He’d made himself the best producer in Hollywood he could. But that was just about all he was now. He certainly wasn’t a kid in the old home town any more. Going back to Bannerton was positive proof of that. Apparently Bannerton felt the same way about him. And what Gloria had just needled him about in a roundabout way, well…
    What was he supposed to do? So he’d walked away from the big Carwell kid’s insults. That had made Gloria mad. Good God, he thought, I can’t fight every young punk in Bannerton that comes along and dislikes me because I got out of the damned town and did something with my life.
    Sam’s hands gripped over the wheel tightly. All right. So maybe in some basic way she was right. Juvenile or not, right or wrong, sometimes there was honor in not running away. Because the Carwell punk wasn’t the only thing he’d run away from. He’d also run away from the situation in Hollywood.
    Maybe that had avoided a showdown between him and Johnny Masters. But only temporarily. Sooner or later he was going to have to face Masters. Fight him, in fact. Not with fists. But he was going to have to fight him just the same so the studio would know whose policy it was going to be when he produced a picture: his or Masters’s. With Masters’s young bull drive it was going to have to be one of them.
    So he’d run off from that and gone barreling back to his old home town.
    Why? To find something he’d left back there? His parents had been dead for years.
    What the hell was he looking for anyway, going back to Bannerton? Return to the womb, Gloria had called it. Maybe she was right. Because when you were forty-seven and in real trouble with your career, maybe it looked better back in that direction.
    Once again Sam Dickens glanced at Gloria. She was still sitting with her feet under her, still gazing stubbornly out the window.
    Sam’s mind, no matter how he fought it, kept going back to Marge. How long had they been together? Thirteen years? That dull ache hit him again. He thought of how she’d looked that last time he’d seen her alive, when she was dying in that hospital bed with a stinking disease nobody could do anything about.
    But it was no good thinking about Marge. It was no good thinking about Morla either. He should have known it was no more than a horrible loneliness for Marge that caused him to marry Morla. Now it was Gloria. And Gloria was really bitched off.
    “Look, honey,” he said, “why don’t you turn the radio on again? Find some music. Music always cheers you up.”
    “Not the kind of music they play around here. Ring dang doody, ring dang do. It’s got as much class as an old cow’s—”
    “Knock it off, Glory.”
    “Lullaby in turd land.”
    “Damn it, Glory—”
    It wasn’t any use. She was right. Walk away from everything that smacked of reality. Including the reality of Gloria’s foul mouth. How could anyone look as beautiful as Gloria did when she was on stage and still come up with the dirtiest talk this side of Brooklyn?
    But that was the way she was. It didn’t change anything else about her, certainly…
    Light was growing dim, the storm seemed to increase. Now Sam was able to drive no faster than forty-five miles an hour. They were coming into a little place. Bostwick. He remembered that. There was a motel up ahead. They couldn’t drive all night. They wouldn’t even come close to hitting Cheyenne until late tomorrow.
    Moreover, he was feeling a warm desire. He’d never quite got over that, ever since he and Gloria had been together. Now it was all the more intense.
    “What do you say we stop for the night, honey? Get some rest and a fresh start tomorrow. How about it? We’re both a little on edge, I think.”
    Gloria shrugged.
    He parked and registered. Others had been slowed by the storm. The motel was almost filled. There was one unit left, a double cabin.
    Sam unloaded their