Rucker set his brandy down on the kitchen’s round oak table and stroked the little animal’s head. “He’s ugly and dumb. That sort of appeals to me.” Dinah felt a swell of sympathy. The man actually looked distraught over the idea of giving up the least lovable mammal God ever created. “Which way to the back door?” he asked sadly.
“Through the living room.”
He left, and when he returned five minutes later, he was possumless. “Little feller disappeared right into some honeysuckle bushes,” Rucker noted. He sat down at the kitchen table and tried to look stoic.
Dinah couldn’t resist such sincere, if bizarre, melancholy. She walked over to him, bent forward, and kissed him lightly on the mouth. “Everything’s on the table, honey bunny,” she murmured. “Come and drown your sorrows in boozed-up chicken.”
They talked, the mood quiet and relaxed, during dinner. She told him about her mother, who had preceded her as a Miss Georgia. Julie Sheridan, then Julie Meredith, had held the title in 1950. She had died of meningitis when Dinah was fifteen. Afterwards, Dinah’s father had devoted all his emotional energy to molding his daughter into the same image.
“My father wasn’t manipulative,” Dinah explained. “Mother had wanted to be Miss America, but never made it. Father thought the best way to honor her memory was to help me win what she’d always envied. I wasn’t interested in beauty pageants at first, but then I got caught up in the competitive spirit.”
“How many pageants did you win?” Rucker asked.
“Well, I started when I was fifteen and stopped when I was twenty-one, so about”—she paused, estimating—“forty. Out of about sixty.”
“I’m impressed.”
“The first was Miss Gum Spirits. I represented the Georgia turpentine industry.”
He groaned. “You were a real trooper. You must have all sorts of funny trophies.”
“They’re all packed away.” She shrugged. “I won’t kid you. It stopped being enjoyable after I won the Miss Georgia title. I used to smear mentholated lotion on my thighs, wrap them in plastic, and run five miles. Try it some time. You’ll have thin thighs, but you’ll smell like Ben Gay the rest of your life.”
“No, thanks.” He studied her quietly, no humor softening the frown on his expressive face. “And you walked out a day before the Miss America Pageant. Pretty gutsy. I heard it had to do with your father’s death.”
Dinah stood and began clearing the table. Careful, now, she warned herself. Be casual, be cool. “My father had a little Cessna airplane that he loved to fly. He took it out one Saturday morning. Something went wrong, and he crashed. That happened just a few weeks before the pageant.” She looked at Rucker helplessly. “I couldn’t go on. The pageant was important to him, not to me.”
Rucker frowned. What she’d done was like running away, as far as he was concerned, and something about it didn’t add up. He never ran from anything or anybody, and he had the feeling that Dinah was the same way. “But wouldn’t he have wanted you to hang in there?” Rucker asked. “I mean, you were a good bet to win. Wouldn’t that have honored his memory more than throwing in the towel did?”
“No. Look, I’d rather not talk about my father, if you don’t—”
“Well, yes, it would have,” he persisted. “I mean, he wouldn’t have wanted you to throw away all the hard work he did, and you did, and just run off, would he? He wanted you to be Miss America, and you should have—”
“Thank you for the hindsight critique,” she interrupted in a tight, wounded voice. Standing with her hands full of dishes, Dinah glared down at him.
He gazed at her speculatively. “I’ve got a big mouth,” he offered.
She wanted to tell him, but couldn’t, that winning the pageant would have done no honor to her father if a sleazy tabloid reporter named Todd Norins had accomplished his goal, which was to dig up dirt on the new Miss America.
“I did what was right, believe me,” she said hoarsely. “You’re not one of those people who believes I had some sort of tawdry photos to hide, are you? Well, I don’t.”
But what she did have to hide was worse, in its way. Todd Norins had suspected that. Now he co-hosted a network gossip show called USA Personal. Dinah considered it a no-class rip-off of 60 Minutes, and the thought that Norins might someday take an interest in her had given her nightmares over the years.
Rucker got up and took the dirty dishes from her. “You’re one helluva woman, and I know you had good reasons for what you did. I didn’t mean to make you feel bad.” Dinah inhaled softly, unprepared for such sensitivity. Her eyes filled with tears. Rucker saw them and winced. “Don’t, Dee,” he said softly. “You’ve got all this old sadness in you. I see it. I’m sorry I—”
“No. I … I’m sorry,” she said.
Looking distressed, he leaned forward and kissed her forehead. “If you cry, I swear I’ll cry, too, and that’s a disgusting sight. My nose runs and my eyes swell.”
Soft laughter burst from her lips. “It’s all right,” she told him, and she touched his cheek affectionately. “Let’s change the subject.”
The slight devilish lift to his right eyebrow warned her that he was going to sidetrack this somber mood of theirs. “If you do have some naked pictures of yourself, I know a guy named Guido who could turn ’em into a real nice calendar.” Dinah slapped his shoulder playfully. “We could make a lot of money—”
“Stop,” she begged, chuckling. “Put the dishes in the sink and I’ll get the champagne.”
She played more Chopin on the piano while he sat beside her sipping his champagne from a fluted glass that looked absurdly delicate in his big hand. The fire crackled softly, and a single lamp surrounded the two of them with intimate shadows. Rucker was quiet and attentive. When she finished he nodded his approval. “Pretty,” he said in a soft voice. “I like it. I could listen to it all night.”
The suggestion concerned more than Chopin. Dinah put her hands in her lap and studied them pensively. They were trembling a little. “And then what?” she whispered.
She could feel his eyes on her as he carefully set his empty glass on the floor. He spoke to her just as carefully, as if she might break. “Then I’ll bring you breakfast in bed. I can cook well enough to fry eggs and burn toast.” He paused. “I’ll find ways to keep you from noticin’ the burned toast.”
“I don’t think one night could bridge our culture gap.”
His leg was nearly touching hers. Affection and desire flowed from him in warm waves, and she knew that she returned it. His voice was a sensual rumble as he leaned closer and said, “I think one night would prove that we’re perfect together.”
“Or it could ruin an odd but enjoyable friendship.”
“That’s not really what worries you, Dee.” He made that comment as a statement, not a question. Rucker slid an arm around her shoulders in a comforting way. “I’m not a dangerous man.”
But he was dangerous, because newspaper columnists liked to ask probing questions. They also liked to write about the people in their personal lives, and she couldn’t have that. “What worries you?” he whispered. “What makes you sit here shiverin’ because you want me to hold you, but you don’t want to do anything about it? This is right, Dee, very right. Talk to me, Dee. I’ve got to know what’s wrong. Tell me—”
She stopped his upsetting interrogation with a kiss, then twisted her body to nestle tightly into the crook of his shoulder. She rested her hands against his chest, kneading the powerful muscles sheathed in his soft shirt. She caught roughly at that shirt, pressed herself close to him, and kissed him again, sliding her tongue into his mouth with aggressive passion.
The questions he’d had were lost in his amazement. His arms enclosed her in a hungry, breath-stealing embrace. He held her as if he were a desperate lover about to be separated from her forever, and he kissed her with a passion that sought to shove away the past and the future for a present that was sheer sensation.
“I want you,” he told
her. “More than I’ve ever wanted anyone.”
Rucker drew her onto his lap and ran one exploring hand up the outside of her body from knee to breast. The slow, gripping journey of his fingers set off volcanoes of sensation under her skin, and when he cupped her soft, full breast in his palm she nearly cried from the exquisite care and concern in his touch.
His mustache had a delicious, coarse texture that tantalized her as he trailed his mouth down the smooth skin of her neck. At the base of her throat he sucked gently at the skin over her pulse. The sensation was incredible, and Dinah sank her hands into his thick hair and let her head drape back.
“Tonight,” he murmured. “And after tonight.” He put his lips against the flushed skin beneath her ear. His thumb found the ridge of her nipple under the sweater and rubbed it rhythmically. “I’ll do anything for you, Dee. In bed, out of bed. Just give me a chance.”
She cried out in bittersweet protest and, putting both palms against his shoulders, pushed firmly. He leaned back, and she looked down at him with sorrowful eyes. “We don’t have enough in common,” she begged in a hoarse voice. “It’s all well and good to laugh about it, to tease each other, but you don’t want to get involved with a woman who doesn’t particularly like to cook, who doesn’t like the same music or hobbies you like, who has a full-time career and intends to keep it.”
“I want to be with you,” he emphasized. “And nothing else is important but that. ” He looked at her with a sudden frown, his worried eyes showing how wounded he felt. “Do you really think I’m some sort of stupid, backward cretin who needs a harem girl?”
“No,” she gasped, shocked. He was so hurt. Dinah shook her head fervently. “Oh, no, of course not. And I’m not some sort of elitist snob. But Rucker, there’s too much … we’re not compatible …”
“That’s an excuse, not a reason,” he said hoarsely. “You don’t want to compromise. You don’t want to take a chance. Dammit, this is a grand thing between us, a special thing, and I can’t believe you don’t want to admit it.”
“I do admit it. I don’t want to ruin it.”
His hands gripped her arms. “We’re not gonna ruin it.”
She took a ragged breath, inhaling determination with it. “That’s right. Because we’re not going to be anything but friends.”
His hand slid slowly down the center of her sweater and paused over her left breast. Anger and sorrow were molded in his features. “Your heart’s beatin’,” he said, “but does it feel anything?”
She nodded and thought, It aches as if you were tearing it out. But she only told him, “I’m sorry.”
“I pushed too hard, is that it? Too hard, too fast.”
“No. I let you push. I didn’t tell you how I felt because I didn’t know how I felt. But I do now. I think you better leave.”
One of his hands stayed on her arm as she moved off his lap and stood up. Dinah squeezed his shoulder, then forced her hand away from him before she gave into the urge to place her fingertips on his face and caress away all the bewilderment and sorrow she’d put there. “I’ll get your jacket,” she told him. He nodded and let his hand trail away from her.
When he stood at the door, the jacket in his hand, he looked down at her with a pensive frown, as if he were certain that he could understand her if he only studied her long enough.
Dinah cleared her throat and hoped that he couldn’t tell how close she was to tears. “If you’d like to go back to Birmingham right away, I’ll make your excuses about the pep rally tomorrow,” she assured him.
“I don’t run from problems, Dee,” he said in a low, grim voice.
“So I’m a problem?” She smiled wistfully.
“No. A mystery. One I intend to unravel.”
She gazed up at him with worried, searching eyes. “Is that the writer or the man speaking?” she asked.
“Both.”
Dinah almost reached out to him then. Her hand rose but halted in midair. “There’s nothing to know,” she said.
Rucker’s look said he didn’t believe that in the least. He raised one hand to stroke her cheek. The sensual gesture was a warning that he knew at least one way to destroy her defenses if he had to.
“Good night,” he said.
“Good night.” Her stomach in knots, Dinah followed him onto the porch and stood at its edge, watching as he walked to his car. He turned, held up one hand in a final good night, and got in the car. She waited motionless in the chilly night air, hugging herself as the Cadillac disappeared down the long driveway toward the paved road.
Dinah continued to stand in the dark, her throat closed with restrained sorrow, her mind blank. Suddenly she was aware of a soft clicking sound, the sound of small feet scraping across old wood. Frightened, she hurried inside and flicked a switch. Light poured onto the porch from an overhead fixture, and Dinah caught her breath.
“Possum,” she said tenderly, and knelt by the door as the rotund, ugly little creature waddled toward her. He stopped, sniffing the air suspiciously, and she knew that he was looking for Rucker, not her.
Dinah held out her hands to him, and eventually he came to her. Tears slid down her face as she picked him up. “You just couldn’t leave that rascal alone, could you?” she said raggedly. “I don’t know if I can either.”
Four
“Pump it, Ms. Sheridan, pump it!”
“Go for the burn, the burn!”
Dinah exhaled a long, strenuous breath and curled the twenty-pound barbell up to her chest one last time. Then she grabbed it with both hands and lowered it gingerly back to its rack. She straightened the delicate mauve material of her chic, double-breasted suit dress and eyed the two students with a mildly baleful gaze. Eddie Burcher captained the wrestling team. Lorna Lancaster was ranked highly in state track and field events. They were both in disgustingly fine, teenaged condition, Dinah thought.
“I just came down to the weight room to ask a quick question about technique,” she protested. “I’m an old woman who’ll be thirty in just three years. What are you trying to do? Give a teacher heart palpitations?”
They laughed. “If you want to learn, you’ve got to suffer and sweat,” Lorna told her. “We can’t just tell you how to lift the weight. You have to practice.”
“Suffering is beneath me,” Dinah joked. “I’ll work out devotedly, but I’ll never forget what Cicero said: ‘The pursuit, even of the best things, ought to be calm and tranquil.’ ”
“Cicero,” Eddie echoed. “Didn’t he play for the Rams?”
Dinah smothered a smile. “The Romans,” she corrected drolly. “An Italian team that was big on philosophy.”
“Oh,” he grunted. “Well, we better go. We gotta get a good seat for the pep rally. See ya at the game tonight.”
Dinah grimaced as she rubbed her aching arm. “Perk up, Ms. Sheridan,” Lorna urged. “It’s Friday afternoon. Class is over for the week.”
“Go away. I’m old and out of shape. I’ve got no perk.”
They laughed again, and she shooed them with a graceful wave of one hand. Dinah watched Eddie and Lorna stroll out of the weight room hand in hand. Love, Dinah thought pensively, can blossom even in the most unusual circumstances. But not with Rucker McClure, she added. Alone among the cool, concrete-block walls, she let sorrow and concern settle inside her again. She walked wearily to an ancient soft-drink machine in one corner.
Her small mauve purse lay atop her briefcase on a weight bench nearby. Dinah retrieved some change and put it in the machine, which rattled, hummed, and produced absolutely nothing in the way of a canned drink.
Dinah jiggled the coin return. No response. She put in more money. The machine ate it. Dinah’s eyes narrowed. She hadn’t slept well after last night’s disturbing dinner with Rucker. She wasn’t in the mood to be flamboozled by a mechanical monster. “ ‘These violent delights have violent ends,’ ” she muttered. “So sayeth Shakespeare.” Then she raised a fist and whacked the machine hard.
“Let?
??s hear some applause for the Mount Pleasant Masher and the Killer Soda Machine!” an unmistakable voice boomed behind her. “This rasslin’ match is one fall and a ten-minute TV time limit!”
Dinah whirled around to find Rucker leaning against the door to the weight room, his arms crossed over his chest. In honor of the pep rally he had on his speech suit: the boots, corduroys, houndstooth jacket, white shirt, and brown tie. A slight smile tugged at the corner of his mustache, but his eyes looked tired.
Flustered, Dinah said nothing for a moment. Then she pointed to the soft-drink dispenser. “I suppose, seeing as how you’re a macho man and all such men have innate mechanical ability, that you can retrieve the can that seems to be stuck in this thing’s craw?”
He nodded and walked toward her, smoothly sidestepping weight equipment, his stride easy and his body twisting in a confident, athletic way that riveted her eyes to the movements. Unanswered questions and emotion seemed to thicken the air as he stopped in front of her, his eyes intense.
“So you need a real man,” he said smugly. The smile hinted around his mouth again, belying the awkwardness between them. “Admit it.”
“I need a sledge hammer.” She bit her lower lip to keep from smiling back at him. “You’re a good substitute.”
He grasped his chest dramatically. “That’s no way to get what you want. Didn’t they teach you anything in those beauty parades? Like how to be sweet and simperin’ when you need something from a man?”
Dinah batted her eyelashes and looked up at him coyly. He provoked absurdity and silliness. She loved it and was glad they could still joke after last night’s unhappy discussion. “You big, strong, masculine toad, won’t you please help helpless, itsy-bitsy me?”
“Of course, little lady.” He squatted beside the machine and jabbed his hand under the metal flap that covered the dispenser opening. While he fiddled and felt, she studied him.
“What can I do for you today?” she asked.
He tugged his jacket sleeve back and wiggled his hand higher into the machine. A look of amused distaste crossed his face. “This reminds me of the time I went over to my cousin Lucy’s farm and the vet was payin’ a house call to an expectant cow.”