Down Home Dixie (8 page)

“Now you have me.” Kyle pulled her behind the concrete pillar, drawing her into a full-body hug. Dixie giggled, a sound like a purling brook, and they remained in an embrace until someone walked up to the booth.

In the next few hours, he and Dixie sold all the birdhouses and took orders for more. Kyle was astonished at their success.

In the afternoon, as crowds began to disperse, they closed the booth and loaded their unsold items into the truck. Out of habit, Kyle opened his cell phone before he started the engine. They were in range of a tower, and he quickly checked his messages. One from Elliott. One from his landlady, Mrs. Steidel, reporting she'd watered the dracaena. And two from Andrea. He frowned and snapped the phone shut.

On the drive back toward Yewville, Dixie counted out his share of the money and folded it into an old breath-mint tin in his glove compartment.

“I kind of have the urge to splurge with this windfall,” he told her. “Would it be enough for a down payment on one of your listings?”

“Doubtful,” she said with a little laugh.

“I'm not sure you took me seriously when I mentioned it. Really, I mean to check out some properties.”

A long pause, almost too long. “If you're sure you want to…” Dixie let her sentence taper off as if waiting for reassurance.

“It's an option,” he said, considering that it had only recently become one and that perhaps he shouldn't trust his gut feelings on this.

Before he could waver, Dixie rose to the challenge. “How about now?” she asked.

“You're serious?”

“Try me.”

“Okay, turn right at the next stop sign.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really.”

Dixie directed him to a small frame house with an attached garage. He liked the garage—it provided lots of space where he could store the tools of his trade—but the house was a disaster. Someone had altered the original three-bedroom, two-bath floor plan by chopping it into smaller spaces. It now had five minuscule bedrooms and hardly any living room.

“This won't work for me,” Kyle said, though he did like the location. By his reckoning, it wasn't far from Dixie's place.

As they walked back to the truck, it occurred to Kyle that he had no idea whether or not he would feel comfortable moving to the South. He could be viewing home ownership as nothing more than a way to stay close to Dixie. Which didn't seem like a bad idea as they drove home beneath big trees shading the road, their shadows growing longer as the sun slid toward the horizon. That elusive feeling of contentment wormed its way into his consciousness again, and he rested a hand on Dixie's knee. This stage of getting to know each other seemed idyllic, perfect and almost too good to be true.

By the time they reached the bypass around Yewville, Kyle was happily anticipating spending a cozy evening together. “What do you say we stop off and pick up a couple of steaks at Bi-Lo?” he suggested. “I could grill them outside.”

Dixie responded with enthusiasm. “Yes! I'll throw together a salad and we'll bake potatoes.”

Kyle was on the verge of asking what wine she'd like to drink with dinner. Before he could form the words, his cell phone rang.

His mind still on the wine, Kyle reached into the cubbyhole next to the glove compartment for the phone. When he glanced at the caller ID, he all but groaned. “Oh, great. It's my ex-girlfriend.” The words slipped out before he even thought.

Dixie stared at him, her eyes wide. At that moment, Kyle regretted to the depths of his soul that he'd never seen fit to tell Dixie about Andrea. He had the disconcerting feeling that he'd made a huge mistake, but continuing to ignore Andrea's calls would only compound it. He knew from experience that she wouldn't give up until he either answered or called her back.

With Dixie glaring at him accusingly and his heart sinking, he opened the phone and said, “Hello?”

Out on Pine Hollow Lake, someone was fishing from a rowboat. A noisy flock of geese landed, kicking up a spray of water nearby, and a trail of white vapor from the power plant faded into the darkening sky. Dixie and Kyle sat at the picnic table near the playhouse, where Dixie busied herself tearing apart bits of pine straw littering the top of it. She was still incredulous that Kyle had a girlfriend that he'd never mentioned.
Ex-
girlfriend, he swore. If that was the case, why then was the woman calling him?

Kyle finally spoke. “Her name is Andrea,” he said heavily.

“I gathered that.” Dixie picked up a new pine needle to trash and broke it into little segments.

“Andrea and I split before I left for the reenactment at Rivervale Bridge,” he said. “She even took her toothbrush back to her own apartment. She never did that when we broke up before.”

“Oh, well, taking her toothbrush, that's pretty final,” Dixie said, keeping her spine ramrod stiff. She lifted her eyes to his. “How many times have you broken up and gone back together?”

“Four or five. I'm telling you, Dixie, it's over. I told Andrea the same thing a few minutes ago. And you heard me.”

“She sounded as if she didn't believe it,” Dixie pointed out. “She sounded hot on your trail.” Maybe
hot
was a word she'd have been better off not using.

“I left Ohio three weeks ago and haven't called her, haven't sent her a postcard, haven't e-mailed. She was trying to find out if I was going to the reenactment of the battle of New Market, Virginia, in May. In his message my friend Elliott said he has been having trouble reaching me on my cell phone.”

“Maybe you need another phone plan,” Dixie said helpfully. “So you can stay in touch with all your old friends.” She couldn't quite keep the bite of sarcasm out of her tone.

“I don't care about any of them right now,” Kyle said, his eyes somber and begging for understanding. “All I care about is you.”

If they hadn't been sitting across a table from each other discussing this sanely and rationally, there was every indication that he might have taken her in his arms. She wished he would, but first she needed to find out more about this Andrea person.

“I'm so disappointed, Kyle. I thought we were being upfront with each other. You knew about Milo. And I've mentioned other guys to let you know I have something of a past but no one in my present.” Considering the spirit of openness that she thought characterized their relationship, she was bewildered that Kyle had kept her in the dark. Maybe being open and honest was an aspect of small-town life. Maybe the fact that everyone knew everything about you got things out faster, more easily, because if you didn't tell all, someone else would. And usually not with the same slant.

“Like I said, it's over. She took her toothbrush and her dog and—”

“She has a dog?”

“A yappy little Yorkie named Twinkle. She carries him around in her purse.”

Dixie was of the opinion that if a person was going to have a dog, it shouldn't be a fashion accessory. A dog should run around getting muddy in streams, shaking water on the carpet, terrorizing squirrels. However, that was a personal choice, and besides, she suspected that she was soon going to be transformed into a cat person.

“No wonder you broke up a lot.”

“It wasn't just the dog. I didn't have a whole lot of patience with her temper. Or the way she liked to boss me around.”

“What didn't she have patience for?”

“My truck. My hobby. My clothes, my friends, my work. Horse manure on my boots.”

“In other words, everything that didn't have to do with her. Unless the horse manure…”

“She hates it. Thinks horses are nasty creatures. She tried to smooth away all my rough edges, and I stopped letting her. I yam what I yam, like Popeye.”

Dixie shrugged. “Too bad she didn't get the picture before you'd invested all that time in this nonrelationship. How long were you a couple, Kyle?”

“About five years, more or less.”

“She'd like to go for six, right?”

“She probably saw a piece of jewelry she likes and figures that if she can manipulate me so I feel guilty, I'll buy it for her as an act of contrition.”

“Is that what you do to make up? Buy her jewelry?”

“I never bought her the piece that really counts. I never sprang for the engagement ring.”

This was way too much to absorb. “I'm going in the house,” she said.

“We didn't stop to buy the steaks. How about if we order Chinese food? There aren't too many problems that crispy duck won't fix.” The offer sounded desperate.

“There's no Chinese unless we go to Florence.”

“Oh.” He looked crestfallen.

Dixie regretted not having a Chinese restaurant nearby. She could use a fortune cookie right now, especially if it offered advice on where they should go from here.

She heaved a giant sigh. “Kyle, I need time out from all this. From
us.
I have to think about things.”

“You're entitled,” he said evenly. He eyed her with something akin to humor. “Want me to come inside and get my toothbrush?”

“I noticed that you have another one in the playhouse. The brush with Doc Johnson's name on it.”

“Okay. That's fair enough. Dixie, this—this pains me. And I swear, there's nothing between Andrea and me anymore. I swear it.” He stood, turned on his heel and strode off, hands in his pockets, a forlorn slump to his shoulders.

Dixie sat at the picnic table long after he'd gone inside. She imagined Kyle bumping his head on the rafters, showering in the small cubicle. She pictured him lowering himself onto the narrow cot. Of course he was naked, which was the way he always slept. Of course her imagination gave him a pillow to hug instead of her.

It was more than she could stand. She wrapped her arms around herself against the chill fog creeping across the lake and hurried inside the house to her own bed, which was just as lonely as his.

 

M
AYZELLE WAS ASTONISHED
when Dixie confided that she and Kyle were on the outs. Mayzelle had liked Kyle the few times they'd met. She evinced her surprise in a series of pertinent questions.

“You never heard of this Andrea person before she called on his phone?” Mayzelle asked skeptically. She sat at her desk across from Dixie at the real estate office and gave up all pretense of doing any work, which this morning was supposed to consist of printing out the contract for Dixie's recent sale to the Maine coon man.

“If Kyle didn't see fit to tell me about her, how would I?” Dixie retorted. She pulled out her PDA and checked the day's schedule. She was due at a chamber of commerce coffee in twenty minutes, and later, she'd take Lana to tour the house she liked. After that, nothing to do and nowhere to go except home, where Kyle was probably planting bulbs along the front sidewalk. They hadn't spoken yesterday, and she'd gone off and left him on his own, while she attended the regular Sunday family dinner.

Mayzelle was not about to quit. She pursed her plump cheeks and tilted her head to the side. “Are you and Kyle going to break up, Dixie? Or have you already?”

Dixie sighed. “I'm bummed out because he never saw fit to mention a recent ex-girlfriend, whereas I made sure I revealed everything about me and my exes. Andrea called. He answered the phone, and he wouldn't have had to, since her name popped up on the caller ID and he knew very well who it was.”

“Then what?”

“Kyle did seem put out about her calling, though that could've been because he was peeved that she'd called when I was in the truck with him. They could have talked before. Recently. Often.”

Mayzelle waved away this possibility with a flip of her bejeweled hand. “I don't think you should get all bent out of shape over this. You said Kyle's cell phone doesn't work in Yewville. How would Andrea reach him? How would he call her? There's no phone in that playhouse of yours, is there?”

“No, but he's around my house all day. He could have been carrying on conversations with Andrea on the landline while I'm at work. Maybe they were e-mailing.”

“You're a bit too suspicious, Dixie. Like someone who isn't very sure of herself? Like a person who isn't confident that she's all her man could want?”

Mayzelle was only trying to be helpful, but Dixie dismissed the idea of self-esteem problems. “That's not it.”

“What I do when I'm trying to solve a problem,” said Mayzelle, “is make a list of pros and cons. What do you like about Kyle? What are his good points?”

His performance in bed,
Dixie thought right away. She couldn't bring herself to say it out loud, though.

“He keeps his underwear picked up,” she said.

“What else?”

“He never forgets to sprinkle granola on my breakfast yogurt. And we really get along well. He encourages me and likes me and makes me think I'd like to spend the rest of my life with him,” she finished, all in a rush.

“Oh. Well. Maybe you're making a molehill out of a mountain over this ex-girlfriend of his.”

“You've got it backward, Mayzelle. Mountain out of a molehill.” Dixie had to laugh, in spite of herself.

Mayzelle recovered admirably. “Of course. And speaking of molehills, I need to run by the garden center and ask your cousin Jackson what to do about pests. Moles nearly drove us crazy last summer tunneling all over the place, and I suspect I've got aphids on my aspidistras.” Mayzelle nudged her poodle awake with one foot and snapped the leash onto the dog's collar. “Come on, Fluffy, let's go.” To Dixie she said, “You've got some deciding to do, girl.”

“I'll think about that tomorrow, like Scarlett O'Hara,” Dixie said, making a face.

“You be careful, or it's Kyle who will be gone with the wind,” Mayzelle cautioned. She tripped past Dixie's desk, Fluffy leading the way with her own peculiar waddle.

“Why is my life so difficult?” Dixie said to Mayzelle's retreating back. She suddenly remembered something. “Mayzelle, while you're at the garden center, ask Jackson to drop off a couple of bags of mulch on his way home tonight.” Kyle intended to spread it around the azaleas.

This caught Dixie up short. If she and Kyle parted ways, he'd be heading back to Ohio soon. The azaleas wouldn't get mulched, and she'd have to go back to her previous lonely way of life. Heck, she'd have to start remembering to sprinkle granola on her own yogurt.

Which brought her back to the central issue: Did she really want Kyle to go away? And wouldn't a permanent rift drive him right back into Andrea's arms?

“You know, Mayzelle,” Dixie said slowly, “I don't believe I will break up with Kyle over this.”

Mayzelle stopped walking halfway to the door and turned around. Fluffy did, too.

“Smart girl,” Mayzelle said approvingly.

 

I
N THE SPIRIT
of reconciliation, Dixie was waiting for Kyle in the playhouse that evening when he came in from building birdhouses in the garage. She'd parked her car behind a clump of bushes down the road and walked home, taking care that Kyle couldn't observe her through the garage window.

Kyle took his time about showing up, which only made Dixie more eager. Before entering the shadowy interior, he stomped his feet free of dirt on the slab of bluestone outside the door. Once inside, he proceeded to unbutton his shirt much too slowly for her expectations and untucked it from his jeans. These were cramped quarters, and his view of her in bed was blocked by the hanging light fixture suspended from the low ceiling. Dixie scarcely dared to breathe; she intended for Kyle to spot her unawares, wanted to watch color suffuse his face when he realized what she had in mind.

By the time he bent to untie his shoelaces, she was almost out of air. And then as he straightened, which was not really straightening because the ceiling required that he stoop, he saw her.

“Hey, Kyle, have you ever made love in a Hobbit house before?”

He stared back as if she were an apparition. For a long unbearable moment, she considered that this had been a terrible mistake. Maybe there was nothing between them, had never been anything but her own sexual hankerings.

“I think it can be managed,” he said.

He held her gaze and she began to feel the powerful stirrings that had become so commonplace when they were together. Her chest tightened with emotion. Everything between them up until this point flashed through her mind in fast-forward mode—her first sight of him in his Yankee uniform, the quiet breakfast the day after he arrived, his dark shape looming over her in the small sewing room where they'd made love the first time.

It was easy after that. All she did was open her arms to him. Her breath seemed to stop in her throat, and she clasped him to her, her hands tight against the muscles of his back. Above her, he was a vague outline in the half dark, and she moaned as he lowered his face to her throat. His lips teased her, and then his teeth, and she threw her head back so he would have better access.