Fancy Pants (39 page)
* * *
Francesca shut her eyes and leaned her head against the window ofDallie's car. The glass felt cool
against her temple. She knew she
should be filled with righteous outrage, lambasting Dallie for his
high-handed macho theatrics, but she was too glad to be away from all
those demanding, censorious voices. Abandoning Teddy upset her, but she
knew Holly Grace would settle him down.
A Barry Manilow tune began to play softly on the radio. Dallie reached
forward to punch the button,
and then, glancing over at her, stopped
himself and left it alone. Several miles slipped by, and she began to
feel calmer. Dallie didn't say anything to her, but considering what
they'd been through, the silence
was relatively restful. She'd
forgotten how quiet Dallie could be when he wasn't talking.
She shut her eyes and let herself drift until the car turned into a
narrow lane that ended in front of a two-story stone house. The rustic
little house was set in a grove of chinaber-ry trees with a line of old
cedars forming a windbreak along the side and a row of low blue hills
in the distance. She looked over
at Dallie as they pulled up to the
front walk. "Where are we?"
He turned off the ignition and got out without answering her. She
watched warily as he walked around
the front of the car and opened her
door. Resting one hand on the roof of the car and the other on the
top
of the door frame, he leaned in toward her. As she gazed into those
cool blue eyes, something
strange happened in the vicinity of her
middle. She suddenly felt like a hungry woman who had just been
presented with a tempting dessert. Her moment of sensory weakness
embarrassed her, and she frowned.
"Damn, you're pretty," Dallie said softly.
"Not half as pretty as you," she snapped, determined to squash whatever
strangeness was lurking in the air between them. "Where are we? Whose
house is this?"
"It's mine."
"Yours? We can't be more than twenty miles from Wynette. Why do you
have two houses so close together?"
"After what happened back there, I'm surprised you can even ask that
question." He stood aside to let
her out.
She stepped from the car and gazed thoughtfully toward the front porch.
"This is a hideaway, isn't it?"
"I guess you might call it that. And I'd appreciate it if you didn't
tell anybody that I brought you here. They all know about this place,
but so far they've kept their distance. If they find out you've been
here, though, it'll be open season and they'll be lining up with
sleeping bags and knitting needles and coolers
full of Dr Pepper."
She walked toward the front step, curious to see the inside, but before
she could get there he touched
her arm. "Francie? The thing of it is,
it's my house, and we can't fight in it."
His expression was as serious as she had ever seen it. "What makes you
think I want to fight?" she inquired.
"I guess it's pretty much in your nature."
"My nature! First you kidnap my son, then you kidnap me, and now you
have the nerve to say that
I want to fight!"
"Call me a pessimist." He sat down on the top step.
Francesca clutched her arms, uncomfortably aware that he'd gotten the
best of her on that exchange.
And then she shivered. He'd carried her
out of the house without her jacket, and it couldn't be much
more than
forty degrees. "What are you doing? Why are you sitting down?"
"If we're going to have it out, let's do it right here, because once we
go inside that house, we have to be real polite to each other. I mean
it, Francie, that house is my retreat, and I'm not going to have it
spoiled by the two of us going after each other."
"That's ridiculous." Her teeth began to chatter. "We have things to
talk about, and I don't think we're going to be able to do it without
getting upset."
He patted the step next to him.
"I'm freezing," she said, thumping down at his side, but even as she
complained, she found herself secretly pleased by the idea of a house
where no arguments were allowed. What would happen to
human
relationships if there were more houses like this one? Only Dallie
could have thought of
something so interesting. Surreptitiously, she
moved closer to his warmth. She'd forgotten how good he always
smelled—like soap and clean clothes. "Why don't we sit in the car?" she
suggested. "You only have on a flannel shirt. You can't be all that
warm yourself."
"If we stay here, we'll get done quicker." He cleared his throat.
"First of all, I apologize for making that smarmy remark about your
career being more important to you than Teddy. I never said I was
perfect, but still, that was a low blow and I'm ashamed of myself."
She pulled her knees closer to her chest and hunched into them. "Do you
have any idea what it does
to a working mother to hear something like
that?"
"I wasn't thinking," he mumbled. Then he added defensively, "But damn,
Francie, I wish you wouldn't
fly off the handle every time I say the
slightest little thing wrong. You get too emotional."
She dug her fingers into her arms in frustration. Why did men always do
this? What made them think they could say the most outrageous—the most
painful—things to a woman, and then expect her to keep silent? She
thought of a number of pointed comments she wanted to make, but bit
them back in the interest of getting into the house. "Teddy marches to
the beat of his own drummer," she said firmly.
"He's not like me and
he's not like you. He's completely himself."
"I can see that." His knees were spread. He propped his forearms on
them and stared down at the step for a few moments. "It's just that
he's not like a regular kid."
All her maternal insecurities jangled like bad music. Because Teddy
wasn't athletic, Dallie didn't approve of him. "What do you want him to
do?" she countered angrily. "Go out and beat up some women?" He
stiffened beside her, and she wished she'd kept her mouth shut.
"How are we going to work this out?" he asked quietly. "We fight like
cats and dogs the minute we get within sniffing distance of each other.
Maybe we'd be better off if we turned this over
to the bloodsuckers."
"Is that really what you want to do?"
"All I know is that I'm getting tired of fighting with you, and we
haven't even been together for a whole day."
Her teeth had begun to chatter in earnest. "Teddy doesn't like you,
Dallie. I'm not going to force him to spend time with you."
"Teddy and I just rub each other the wrong way is all. We'll have to
work it out."
"It won't be that easy."
"Lots of things aren't easy."
She looked hopefully toward the front door. "Let's stop talking about
Teddy and go inside for a few minutes. Then after we get warmed up we
can come back out and finish."
Dallie nodded his head, then stood and offered his hand. She accepted
it, but the contact felt much too good, so she let go as quickly as she
could, determined to keep the pressing of flesh between them to a
minimum. For a moment he looked as if he'd read her thoughts, and then
he turned to unlock the door. "You got a real challenge for yourself
with that Doralee," he remarked. Stepping aside, he gestured her into a
terra-cotta hallway lit by an arched window. "How many strays you
figure you picked up in the
last ten years?"
"Animal or human?"
He chuckled, and as she walked into the living room, she remembered
what a wonderful sense of humor Dallie had. The living room held a
faded Oriental rug, a collection of brass lamps, and some overstuffed
chairs. Everything was comfortable and nondescript—everything except
the wonderful paintings on the walls. "Dallie, where did you get
these?" she asked, walking over to an original oil depicting stark
mountains and bleached bones.
"Here and there," he said, as if he wasn't quite sure.
"They're wonderful!" She moved on to study a large canvas splashed with
exotic abstract flowers. "I didn't know you collected art."
"I don't collect it so much as just nail up a few things I like."
She lifted an eyebrow at him so he'd know his country-bumpkin act
wasn't fooling her for a minute. Hayseeds didn't buy
paintings like these. "Dallas, is it remotely possible for you to carry
on a
conversation that's not loaded down with manure?"
"Probably not." He grinned and then gestured toward the dining room.
"There's an acrylic in there you might like. I bought it at this little
gallery in Carmel after I double-bogeyed the seventeenth at Pebble
Beach two days in a row. I got so depressed I either had to get drunk
or buy me a painting. I got another one by the same artist hanging in
my house in North Carolina."
"I didn't know you had a house in North Carolina."
"It's one of those contemporaries that sort of looks like a bank vault.
Actually, I'm not too crazy about
it, but it's got a pretty view. Most
of the houses I been buying lately are more traditional."
"There are more?"
He shrugged. "It got so I could hardly stand staying in motels anymore,
and since I started finishing in the money at a few tournaments and
picking up some decent endorsements, I needed something to do with my
cash. So I bought a couple of houses in different parts of the country.
You want something to drink?"
She realized that she'd had nothing to eat since the night before.
"What I'd really like is food. And then I think I'd better get back to
Teddy." And call Stefan, she thought to herself. And meet with the
social worker to discuss Doralee. And talk to Holly Grace, who used to
be her best friend.
"You coddle Teddy too much," Dallie commented, leading her toward the
kitchen.
She stopped in her tracks. The fragile truce between them was broken.
It took him a moment to realize she wasn't following him, and then he
turned to see what was holding her up. When he spotted the expression
on her face, he sighed and reached for her arm to lead her to the front
porch. She tried to
pull away, but he held her fast.
A chilly blast hit her as he pushed her outside. She spun around to
confront him. "Don't make judgments about my mothering, Dallie. You've
spent less than a week with Teddy, so don't start imagining you're
an
authority on raising him. You don't even know him!"
"I know what I see. Damn, Francie, I'm not trying to hurt your
feelings, but he's a disappointment to me is all."
She felt a sharp stab of pain. Teddy—her pride and joy, blood of her
blood, heart of her heart—how could he be a disappointment to anyone?
"1 don't really care," she said coldly. "The only thing that bothers me
is what a disappointment you apparently are to him."
Dallie stuffed one of his hands in the pocket of his jeans and looked
out toward the cedar trees, not
saying anything. The wind caught a lock
of his hair, blowing it back from his forehead. Finally he spoke
quietly. "Maybe we'd better get back to Wynette. I guess this wasn't
such a good idea."
She looked out at the cedars herself for a few moments before she
nodded slowly and walked toward
the car.
The house was empty except for Teddy and Skeet. Dallie went back out
without saying where he was going, and Francesca took Teddy for a walk.
Twice she tried to introduce Dallie's name, but he resisted her efforts
and she didn't push him. He couldn't say enough, however, about the
virtues of Skeet Cooper.
When they returned to the house, Teddy ran off to get a snack and she
went down to the basement where she found Skeet putting a coat of
varnish on the club head he'd been sanding earlier. He didn't look up
as she came into the workroom, and she watched him for a few minutes
before she spoke. "Skeet, I want to thank you for being so nice to
Teddy. He needs a friend right now."
"You don't have to thank me," Skeet replied gruffly. "He's a good boy."
She propped her elbow on top of the vise, taking pleasure in watching
Skeet work. The slow, careful movements soothed her so that she could
think more clearly. Twenty-four hours before, all she had wanted to do
was to get Teddy away from Dallie, but now she toyed with the idea of
trying to bring them together. Sooner or later, Teddy was going to have
to acknowledge his relationship to Dallie. She couldn't bear the idea
of her son growing up with emotional scars because he hated his father,
and if freeing him
of those scars meant she would have to spend a few
more days in Wynette, she would simply do so.
Her mind made up, she looked over at Skeet. "You really like Teddy,
don't you?"
" 'Course I like him. He's the kind of kid you don't mind spending time
with."
"It's too bad everybody doesn't feel that way," she said bitterly.
Skeet cleared his throat. "You give Dallie time, Francie. I know you're
the impatient type, always
wanting to rush things, but some things just
can't be rushed."
"They hate each other, Skeet."
He turned the club head to inspect it and then dipped his brush in the
varnish can. "When two people
are so much alike, it's sometimes hard
for them to get along."
"Alike?" She stared at him. "Dallie and Teddy aren't anything alike."
He looked at her as if she were the stupidest person he'd ever met, and
then he shook his head and
went back to varnishing the club head.
"Dallie's graceful," she argued. "He's athletic. He's gorgeous—"
Skeet chuckled. "Teddy sure is a homely little cuss. Hard to figure how
two people as pretty as you and Dallie managed to produce him."
"Maybe he's a little homely on the outside," she replied defensively,
"but he's a knockout on the inside."
Skeet chuckled again, dipped his brush, and then looked over at her. "I
don't like to give advice, Francie, but if I were you I'd concentrate
more on nagging Dallie about his golf than on nagging him about Teddy."
She looked at him in astonishment. "Why ever should I nag him about his
golf?"
"You're not going to get rid of him. You realize that, don't you? Now
that he knows Teddy's his boy,
he's going to keep popping up whether
you like it or not."
She'd already come to the same conclusion, and she nodded reluctantly.
He stroked the brush along the smooth curve of the wood. "My best piece
of advice, Francie, is that
you use those brains of yours to figure out
how to get him to play better golf."
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