Miss Sybil gave a disapproving cluck. “Well, we'll soon fix that, won't we? Bring the suitcases inside, boys. Dallas, are you chewing gum?”
“Yes, ma'am.”
“Please remove it along with your hat before you come inside.”
Francesca giggled as the old woman disappeared through the back door.
Dallie flicked his gum into a hydrangea bush. “Just you wait,” he said to Francesca ominously.
Skeet chuckled. “Looks like ol' Francie's gonna take some of the heat off us for a change.”
Dallie smiled back. “You can almost see Miss Sybil rubbing her hands together just waiting to get at her.” He looked at Francesca. “Did you mean it when you said you haven't read Fitzgerald?”
Francesca was beginning to feel as if she'd confessed to a series of mass murders. “It's not a crime, Dallie.”
“It is around here.” He chuckled maliciously. “Boy, are you ever in for it.”
The house on Cherry Street had high ceilings, heavy walnut moldings, and light-flooded rooms. The old wooden floors were scarred in places, a few cracks marred the plaster walls, and the interior decoration lacked even a modest sense of coordination, but the house still managed to project a haphazard charm. Striped wallpaper coexisted alongside floral, and the odd mix of furniture was enlivened by needlework pillows and afghans crocheted in multicolored yarns. Plants set in handmade ceramic pots filled dark corners, cross-stitch samplers decorated the walls, and golf trophies popped up everywhere—as doorstops, bookends, weighing down a stack of newspapers, or simply catching the light on a sunny windowsill.
Three days after her arrival in Wynette, Francesca slipped out of the bedroom Miss Sybil had assigned to her and crept across the hallway. Beneath a T-shirt of Dallie's that fell to the middle of her thighs, she wore a rather astonishing pair of silky black bikini underpants that had miraculously appeared in the small stack of clothing Miss Sybil had lent her to supplement her wardrobe. She had slipped into them half an hour earlier when she'd heard Dallie come up the stairs and go into his bedroom.
Since their arrival, she'd barely seen him. He left for the driving range early in the morning, from there went to the golf course and then God knew where, leaving her with no one but Miss Sybil for company. Francesca hadn't been in the house for a day before she'd found a copy of Tender Is the Night pressed into her hands along with a gentle admonition to refrain from pouting when things didn't go her way. Dallie's abandonment upset her. He acted as if nothing had happened between them, as if they hadn't spent a night making love. At first she had tried to ignore it, but now she had decided that she had to start fighting for what she wanted, and what she wanted was more lovemaking.
She tapped the tip of one unpainted fingernail softly on the door opposite her own, afraid Miss Sybil would awaken and hear her. She shuddered at the thought of what the disagreeable old woman would do if she knew Francesca had wandered across the hall to Dallie's bedroom for illicit sex. She would probably chase her from the house screaming “Harlot!” at the top of her lungs. When Francesca heard no response from the other side of the door, she tapped a bit harder.
Without warning, Dallie's voice boomed out from the other side, sounding like a cannon in the still of the night. “If that's you, Francie, come on in and stop making so damned much noise.”
She darted inside the bedroom, hissing like a tire losing its air. “Shh! She'll hear you, Dallie. She'll know I'm in your room.”
He stood fully dressed, hitting golf balls with his putter across the carpet toward an empty beer bottle. “Miss Sybil's eccentric,” he said, eyeing the line of his putt, “but she's not even close to being a prude. I think she was disappointed when I told her we wouldn't be sharing a room.”
Francesca had been disappointed, too, but she wasn't going to make an issue of it now, when her pride had already been stung. “I've barely seen you at all since we got here. I thought maybe you were still angry with me about Beast.”
“Beast?”
“That bloody cat.” A trace of annoyance crept into her voice. “He bit me again yesterday.”
Dallie smiled, then sobered. “Actually, Francie, I thought it might be better if we kept our hands to ourselves for a while.”
Something inside her gave a small lurch. “Why? What do you mean?”
The ball pinged against the glass as his putt found its mark. “I mean that I don't think you can handle a whole lot more trouble in your life right now, and you should know that I'm pretty much unreliable where women are concerned.” He used the head of the putter to reach out for another ball and draw it close. “Not that I'm proud of it, you understand, but that's the way things are. So if you've got any ideas about rose-covered bungalows or His and Her bath towels, you might want to get rid of them.”
Enough of the old proud Francesca still lingered that she managed to slip a condescending laugh past the lump in her throat. “Rose-covered bungalows? Really, Dallie, what on earth can you be thinking of? I'm going to marry Nicky, remember? This is my last fling before I'm permanently shackled.” Except she wasn't going to marry Nicky. She'd placed another call last night, hoping that he would have returned by now and she could talk him into advancing her a small loan so she wouldn't be so dependent on Dallie for money. Her call woke the houseboy, who said Mr. Gwynwyck was away on his honeymoon. Francesca had stood with the receiver in her hand for some time before she'd hung up the phone.
Dallie looked up from the floor. “Are you telling me the truth? No His and Hers? No long-term plans?”
“Of course I'm telling the truth.”
“Are you sure? There's something funny in your face when you look at me.”
She tossed herself down into a chair and gazed around the room as if the caramel-colored walls and floor-to-ceiling bookcases were far more interesting than the man in front of her. “Fascination, darling,” she said airily, draping a bare leg over the arm of the chair and arching her foot. “You are, after all, rather one of a kind.”
“It's nothing more than fascination?”
“Gracious, Dallie. I don't mean to insult you, but I'm hardly the kind of woman who would fall in love with an impoverished Texas golf pro.” Yes, I am, she admitted silently. I'm exactly that kind of woman.
“Now, you do have a point there. To tell you the truth, I can't imagine you falling in love with an impoverished anybody.”
She decided the time had come to salvage another small remnant of her pride, so she stood and stretched, revealing the bottom edge of the black silk underpants. “Well, darling, I think I'll leave, since you seem to have other things to occupy your time.”
He looked at her for a minute as if he were making up his mind about something. Then he gestured toward the opposite side of the room with his putter. “Actually, I thought you might want to help me out here. Go on and stand over there, will you?”
“Why?”
“Just you never mind. I'm the man. You're the woman. You do what I say.”
She made a face, then did as he asked, taking her time as she moved.
“Now slip off that T-shirt,” he ordered.
“Dallie!”
“Come on, this is serious, and I don't have all night.”
He didn't look at all serious, so she obediently pulled off the T-shirt, taking her time and feeling a warm rush through her body as she revealed herself to him.
He took in her bare breasts and the silky black bikini underpants. Then he gave an admiring whistle. “Now, that's nice, honey. That is real inspiring stuff. This is going to work out even better than I thought.”
“What's going to work out?” she inquired warily.
“Something all us golf pros do for practice. You arrange yourself lying down in the position of my choice on the carpet right there. When you're ready, you slip off those panties, call out some specific part of your body, and I see how close I can get with my putt. It's the best exercise in the world for improving a golfer's concentration.”
Francesca smiled and planted one hand on her bare hip. “And I can just imagine how much fun it is to fetch the balls when you're done.”
“Damn, but you British women are smart.”
“Too smart to let you get away with this.”
“I was afraid you'd say that.” He propped his putter up against a chair and began to walk toward her. “Guess we'll just have to find something else to occupy our time.”
“Like what?”
He reached out and pulled her into his arms. “I don't know. But I'm thinking real hard.”
Later, as she lay in his arms drowsy from lovemaking, she considered how strange it was that a woman who had turned down the Prince of Wales had fallen in love with Dallie Beaudine. She tilted her head so that her lips touched his bare chest and gave his skin a soft kiss. Just before she drifted off to sleep, she told herself that she would make him care for her. She would become exactly the woman he wanted her to be, and then he would love her as much as she loved him.
Sleep didn't come so easily to Dallie—either that night or for the next few weeks. He could feel Halloween beating down on him, and he lay awake trying to distract himself by playing a round of golf in his head or thinking about Francesca. For a woman who painted herself as one of the world's great sophisticates just because she'd run around Europe eating snails, Miss Fancy Pants would have learned à hell of a lot more, in his opinion, if she'd spent a few half-times on a stadium blanket under the bleachers at Wynette High.
She didn't seem to have logged enough hours between the bedposts to really relax with him, and he could see her worrying about whether she had her hands in the right place or whether she was moving in a way that would please him. It was hard for him to enjoy' himself with all that single-minded dedication coming his way.
He knew she had half convinced herself she was in love with him, even though it wouldn't take her more than twenty-four hours back in London before she would have forgotten his name. Still, he had to admit that when he finally got her on that plane, part of him was actually going to miss her, despite the fact that she was a feisty little thing who wasn't giving up her stuck-up ways easy. She couldn't pass a mirror without spending a day and a half looking at herself, and she left a mess everywhere she went, as if she expected some servant to come along after her and clean up. Even so, he had to admit that she seemed to be making an effort. She ran errands into town for Miss Sybil and took care of that damned walleyed cat and tried to get along with Skeet by telling him stories about all the movie stars she'd met. She'd even started reading J. D. Salinger. More important, she finally seemed to be getting the idea that the world hadn't been created just for her benefit.
One thing he knew for sure. He would be sending old Nicky back a hell of a better woman than the one Nicky'd sent him.
Chapter
14
Naomi Jaffe Tanaka had to restrain herself from jumping up from her desk and dancing a jig as she set down her telephone. She'd found her! After an incredible amount of work, she'd finally found her Sassy Girl! Quickly she called in her secretary and dictated a list of instructions.
“Don't try to contact her; I want to approach her in person. Just double-check my information to make certain it's right.”
Her secretary looked up from her steno pad. “You don't think she'll turn you down, do you?”
“I hardly think so. Not for the kind of money we're offering.” But for all her confidence, Naomi was a natural worrier, and she knew she wouldn't relax until she had a signature on the dotted line of an ironclad contract. “I want to fly out as quickly as possible. Let me know as soon as the arrangements are set.”
After her secretary left her office, Naomi hesitated for a moment and then dialed the number of her apartment. The phone rang again and again, but she refused to hang up. He was there; her luck wasn't good enough to make him magically disappear. She should never have agreed to let him stay in her apartment. If anyone at BS&R found out— “Answer, dammit.”
The line clicked. “Saul's Whorehouse and Crematorium. Lionel speaking.”
“Can't you just say hello like a normal person?” she snapped. Why was she putting herself through this? The police wanted Gerry for questioning, but he had received a tip that they planned to frame him on trumped-up charges of drug dealing, so he refused to go in to talk to them. Gerry didn't even smoke grass anymore, let alone deal in drugs, and she hadn't had the heart to turn him back out on the street. She also retained enough of her old distrust of the police to be unwilling to submit him to the unpredictability of the legal system.
“Talk to me nice or I'll hang up,” he said.
“Terrific,” she retorted. “If I get really nasty, does that mean you'll move out?”
“You got a letter from Save the Children thanking you for your contribution. Fifty lousy bucks.”
“Dammit, you have no business reading my mail.”
“Trying to buy your way into heaven, sis?”
Naomi refused to jump to his bait. There was a moment of silence, and then he made a grudging apology. “Sorry. I'm so bored I can't stand myself.”
“Did you look over that information on law school I left out for you?” she asked casually.
“Aw, shit, don't start this again.”
“Gerry...”
“I'm not selling out!”
“Just think about it, Gerry. Going to law school isn't selling out. You could do more good by working inside the system—”
“Knock it off, okay, Naomi? We've got a world out there that's ready to blow itself up. Adding another lawyer to the system isn't going to change a thing.”
Despite his vehement protests, she sensed that the idea of going to law school wasn't as distasteful to him as he pretended. But she knew he needed time to think it over, so she didn't press him. “Look, Gerry, I have to go out of town for a few days. Do me a favor and try to be gone when I get back.”
“Where are you going?”
She looked down at the memo pad on her desk and smiled to herself. In twenty-four hours, the Sassy Girl would be signed, sealed, and delivered. “I'm going to a place called Wynette, Texas,” she said.
Clad in jeans, sandals, and one of Miss Sybil's brightly colored cotton blouses, Francesca sat next to Dallie in a honky-tonk called the Roustabout. After nearly three weeks in Wynette, she had lost count of the number of evenings they had spent at the town's favorite night spot. Despite the raucous country band, the cloud of low-hanging smoke, and the tacky orange and black Halloween crepe paper hanging from the bar, she had discovered she actually liked the place.
Everyone in Wynette knew the town's most famous golfer, so the two of them always entered the honky-tonk to a chorus of “Hey, Dallie's” ringing out over the Naugahyde stools and the twang of the steel guitars. But tonight, for the first time, there had been a few “Hey, Francie's” thrown in, pleasing her inordinately.
One of the Roustabout's female patrons pushed her witch's mask to the top of her head and planted a boisterous kiss on Skeet's cheek. “Skeet, you old bear, I'm going to get you to the altar yet.”
He chuckled. “You're too young for me, Eunice. I couldn't keep up with you.”
“You said a mouthful there, honey.” Eunice let out a shriek of laughter and then went off with a friend who was unwisely dressed in a harem costume that left her chubby midriff bare.
Francesca smiled. Although Dallie had been in a surly mood all evening, she was having fun. Most of the Roustabout's patrons were wearing their standard outfits of jeans and Stetsons, but a few wore Halloween costumes and all the bartenders had on glasses with rubber noses.
“Over here, Dallie!” one of the women called out. “We're going to bob for apples in a bucket of draft.”
Dallie slammed the front legs of his chair down to the floor, grabbed Francesca's arm, and muttered, “Christ, that's all I need. Quit talking, dammit. I want to dance.”
She hadn't been talking, but his expression was so grim that she didn't bother pointi
ng that out. She just got up and followed him. As he dragged her across the floor toward the jukebox, she found herself remembering the first night he'd brought her to the Roustabout. Had it only been three weeks ago?
Her memories of the Blue Choctaw had still been fresh that night, and she was nervous. Dallie had dragged her onto the dance floor and, over her protests, insisted on teaching her the Texas two-step and the Cotton-Eyed Joe. After twenty minutes, her face had felt flushed and her skin had been damp. She had wanted nothing more than to escape to the rest room and repair the damage. “I've danced enough, Dallie,” she had told him.
He had steered her toward the center of the wooden dance floor. “We're just warming up.”
“I'm quite warm enough, thank you.”
“Yeah? Well, I'm not.”
The tempo of the music had picked up and Dallie's hold on her waist had tightened. She had begun to hear Chloe's voice taunting her over the country music, telling her that no one would love her if she didn't look beautiful, and she had felt the first flutters of uneasiness spread out inside her. “I don't want to dance anymore,” she had insisted, trying to pull away.
“Well, that's just too bad, because I do.” Dallie had snatched up his bottle of Pearl as they passed by their table. Without losing a beat, he had taken a drink, then pressed the bottle to her lips and tilted it up.
“I don't—” She had swallowed and choked as beer splashed into her mouth. He had raised the bottle to his own mouth again and emptied it. Sweaty tendrils had clung to her cheeks and beer had run down her chin. “I'm going to leave you,” she had threatened, her voice rising. “I'm going to walk off this floor and out of your life forever if you don't let me go right now.”
He had paid no attention. He had held on to her damp hands and pressed her body up against his.
“I want to sit down!” she had demanded.
“I don't really care what you want.” He had moved his hands high up under her arms, right where the perspiration had soaked through her blouse.