Heart of Dixie - Tami Hoag (1) (20 page)

She refused to answer, which was an answer in itself. She looked off toward the boats that bobbed like corks in the harbor, wiping her nose with her hand and smacking Cyclops in the head in the process. The cat yodeled a protest, jumped down from her and scampered sideways down the dock like a crab.

Fabiano put his big hands on Dixie's shoulders and gave her a grave look. "I will kill him, ya?"

"Yeah, you go on ahead and kill him, Fabiano," she said sarcastically. "That's not gonna solve my problems." She pulled away from him and tried to step around him. He blocked her path like a moving pillar of stone. "This is no day for the boat," he said sternly. "The storm is coming."

"Good. Fine. But I'm going out in my boat and I don't care if the thing sinks."

"Dixie! Dixie, wait!"

Dixie squeezed her eyes shut and stamped her foot as her heart gave a terrible lurch at the shouts that came from the parking lot. Jake came running toward them, his sneakers pounding on the boards of the walkway. Dixie turned toward him, setting her face in its sternest, most furious expression.

"Leave me alone."

"Honey, please," Jake said, stopping in front of her. "Let's go someplace and talk."

Dixie did her best to shut out thoughts of how he looked a little frazzled and very intense. She focused on her hurt and anger and drew on those emotions to sustain her. "I'm not talking to you. Anything I say could end up on the front page of a tabloid. There I'd be--a picture of my head slapped on someone else's body, right next to a story about Dojo the wild dog boy of the Ozarks."

Jake squeezed the bridge of his nose and heaved a much-put-upon sigh. "Dammit, Dixie, I don't write for the tabloids! I didn't come here to exploit you. Would you just give me a chance to explain?"

Fabiano stepped around Dixie, completely obscuring her from Jake's view. "It is best for you to leave now, Jake. Our Dixie doesn't need nothing from a man who would break her heart."

Jake ground his teeth, wrestling with his impatience. "Look, Fabiano, will you just butt out? This is none of your business."

Fabiano gave him a shrug and a roguish smile. "Our Dixie is my business. She is my friend, ya? I look out for her."

"Yeah, you and everybody else," Jake grumbled. He tried to step around the big man, but Fabiano moved with him. They eyed each other like wrestlers squaring off.

"I appreciate that everybody loves Dixie," Jake said. "But I love her too and I need a chance to talk to her, so back off. I don't want to have to hurt you here, pal, but my temper is running on a real lean mix right now."

"Hurt me?" Fabiano gave a derisive, arrogant laugh. He took one menacing step toward Jake and Jake laid him flat with one punch. The big man hit the dock like a felled sequoia. Dixie gasped and dropped down beside him on her knees.

"Fabiano! Are you all right?" She bit her lip nervously and fussed at him, touching his hair, his shoulder. "Are you hurt?"

He groaned and came up on all fours! shaking his shaggy head slowly from side to side like a bull. Dixie glared at Jake and scrambled to her feet.

"You big bully!" She rushed up to him to smack him on the chest with her fist. "Who do you think you are, beating up on my friends?"

"He had fair warning."

"Oh! Fair! Like you would know the meaning of the word! Why don't you just get in your Porsche and go back to California where everything is pretty and perfect, just the way you like it."

"I'm not going back. I'm not going anywhere until I convince you that I love you."

"Then you'll be here until your teeth fall out."

She turned and stomped down the dock, abandoning her fallen giant and calling for her cat. Jake rushed after her. The rain was starting to fall. Cold, hard pellets hurled down out of an angry-looking sky. The wind howled and whistled through the bare masts of sailboats that tugged at their moorings. Thunder rumbled overhead. Dixie fumbled with the lock on the gate at her pier, but managed to get it open and slammed shut before Jake could push through it. He merely scaled the thing, dropping down on the other side and stalking after her again.

"Dammit, Dixie," he yelled above the wind. "You can't go out in this!"

"Don't tell me what I can and can't do, Jake Gannon!" she shouted back, stopping at her slip.

Jake grabbed her and swung her around to face him. "Will you use a little common sense? If you go out in this weather you're going to get yourself killed. Is that what you want? You want to kill yourself because you think I'm a bastard?"

She stared up at him, working hard to maintain the defiance in her eyes and not let him see the scrap of the fear his question had aroused in her. A gust of wind drove the rain down harder, slanting it at an angle that made it cut like a knife against bare skin. It whipped her hair, and the wet strands slapped her face. Her shirt was soaked, sticking to her body. Lightning cracked across the sky. Beyond the shelter of the harbor the sea was churning and heaving, growing rougher by the minute. Had she really thought to go out in that?

Her first instinct had been to escape, to run away from the hurt, from the shame of her own weakness, from Jake and the threat he now posed to her peaceful life. But had he really driven her to self-destruction?

No, she thought, gathering her strength. She would stand her ground and endure whatever was to come. Mare's Nest was her home. She wouldn't let herself be driven from it. She was happy here. Yes, there would be a stampede of press once the story broke, but the furor would eventually die down and they would move on to stories more sensational than a star who had left Hollywood to get fat and live in an old house with a bunch of stray animals. She had run from her problems in California. She had run from her unhappiness. But now she had found herself and she wasn't running anymore.

She pulled herself back from the insanity of what she had been about to do. She pulled herself back from Jake. She dug the boat keys out of her pocket and tossed them to him, a wry smirk tipping up the corner of her mouth.

"No," she said. "On second thought, I'd rather you go out. Say hello to King Neptune for me."

With her head held high and her shoulders square, she turned and walked away, Cyclops dashing after her with his crooked tail raised like a flag.

"You love her, my friend?" Fabiano asked, pouring clear liquid from a slim bottle into two shot glasses on the table.

Jake stared at the glasses and the marred surface of the tabletop. They sat in the bait shop where it was warm and dry though rather aromatic. The clerk was filling in for the cook up the street at Clem's seafood place. Fabiano was filling in for the clerk. All around them, examples of Clem's prowess as a taxidermist stared with wild and beady glass eyes.

"I love her," Jake said. He tossed back half of his drink, shuddered and twitched and tried to focus his eyes. The stuff went down like acid and left a hot sweet aftertaste of licorice. When he spoke again his voice was as rough as gravel. "I love her more than life. I love her more than my Porsche. I love her more than anything." He finished off the drink and gasped for air. "Jeez, what is this stuff--paint thinner?"

"Homemade ouzo," Fabiano said with a proud grin. He slapped his massive bare chest with the palm of his hand. "Is good, ya? A real man's drink."

"Yeah. Remember to have that engraved on my tombstone."

Fabiano threw his head back and let go of a laugh that shook the rafters. Jake turned his head and frowned at a stuffed weasel that was posed on its hind legs in a contortion of rage, baring needle-like teeth at him. He stared glumly past the creature and out the window. The rain poured down relentlessly in cold sheets. The wind shook the palmetto trees as easily as if they were pompoms. Thunder rumbled and lightning cracked in a violent duet. There wasn't a soul on the street, only a few abandoned cars along the curbs where the runoff swirled in a frothing torrent. At the moment the world looked about as desolate as he felt.

"How's the jaw?" he asked.

Fabiano made a face and gave a dismissing motion with his hand. He evidently viewed getting belted as a normal male bonding ritual. Jake had spotted him standing on the dock as he'd started to follow Dixie away from the boat and had prepared himself mentally for a battle that hadn't materialized. The artist had merely grinned at him, clamped a big hand on his shoulder and steered him into the pungent interior of the bait shop where they had discussed the situation like old friends.

"I need a plan here, pal," Jake said with a sigh. Fabiano nodded. "Dixie is over at the Magnolia Bar. This is where everyone goes when a bad storm comes. It's tradition. They talk, tell stories, watch the Fortune Wheel on the big screen--the Trulove sisters bring videotapes."

Jake glanced across the street at the parking lot of the Magnolia Bar where pickups huddled side by side in the rain. Dixie's Bronco was there, as was Tyler Holt's black pickup.

"She's got a gun," Jake mused, rubbing his chin. "Do you think she'd shoot me in front of witnesses?"

Fabiano shook his head. "I don't think she'll shoot you. Not bad anyway. She loves you."

Jake gave a harsh laugh. "She hates my guts right now."

"Love. Hate." Fabiano's gigantic shoulders rose and fell. He narrowed his eyes and leaned toward Jake in a posture of conspiracy. "These are many times much the same thing. She loves you so she gives to you her heart. Now she thinks you are playing the games with her. She's angry-- with you, with herself, because she trusted you. You must show her her trust was not misplaced."

This seemed awfully sage advice from a man who was noticeably without female companionship, but Jake refrained from commenting. "Yeah, well, that's easier said than done," he grumbled. He propped his chin in his hand and absently reached out and stroked the snarling weasel as he thought.

Regardless of the source, it was sound advice. Dixie's fragile trust in him lay in scattered shreds like the damning papers and pictures that had fallen from their box to the floor of his cottage. She was too hurt to listen to him, too furious to even look at him without being driven to violence. He had to show her.

Show her.

He came to attention suddenly in his chair, excitement crackling inside him like static electricity. He snatched up the weasel by its throat and thrust it over his head like a trophy, shouting, "Yes! Yes! I've got it!"

He turned toward Fabiano, pointing at him with the snarling animal. "What kind of artist are you?"

Fabiano leaned back away from the weasel, regarding Jake with a wary look. He pursed his lips and shrugged. "I paint, I sketch, I do a little sculpture."

"How long do you think they'll all stay at the Magnolia Bar?"

"Well into the night. This is a big storm." Jake rose from his chair decisively. He tapped the weasel's head against the big man's shoulder and smiled like a champion, dimples flashing. "How would you like to do me a great big favor, amigo?"

"You're sure you don't want company tonight, Dixie?" Sylvie asked for the third time. "Now that Delia has made up with that schmuck Tyler and gone back to Myrtle Beach, you'll be all alone. Are you sure you don't want me to stay the night? I'd be more than happy to stay. Even though my sinuses would kill me from all those cats you keep and my lumbago acts up when I don't sleep in my own bed, I would stay with you. This is what friends are for."

Dixie pulled the key from the truck's ignition and stared up at her big empty house. She'd been with friends all day and half the night and she'd never felt more alone or more miserable since Jeanne had died.

They had been nothing but supportive, as they had always been with her. Leo and Macy Vencour had consoled her with quiet talk. The Trulove sisters had consoled her with chocolate pecan pie and ten rousing episodes of Wheel of Fortune. Eldon had offered to set Jake's Porsche ablaze and let the volunteer rescue squad have at it with fire hoses. None of them had managed to make her feel any better. When it came right down to it, there was nothing anyone could do to heal the hurt of discovering someone you loved had been using you. That was something that required a long and painful recovery process. She knew; she'd been through it before, more than once.

The pain welled up again inside her and pressed at the backs of her eyes. Why, oh why, couldn't a man just love her for herself?

With an effort she sniffed back the tears. "No thanks, Sylvie. I really kind of need to be alone tonight."

Sylvie frowned and patted Dixie's shoulder. "I understand." She gathered her handbag and tugged down the brim of her rain hat. "Remember, it's always darkest before the dawn. My Sid, God rest his soul, used to say that all the time. He drove me crazy saying that, but a lot of times he was right. I think maybe this is one of those times."

Dixie couldn't find her voice to make a comment. She couldn't see how this cloud could have a silver lining, how the darkness in her heart would ever see the dawn, but she was too tired to argue.

Sylvie climbed out of the Bronco, complaining enthusiastically about the height of the thing, then hurried off down the dark path toward her cottage. The storm had lost its fury, though the rain continued and occasional flashes of lightning brightened the sky. Dixie didn't bother with rain gear. She slid down out of the truck and walked across the yard, letting the rain wet her hair and dampen her new red Magnolia Bar sweatshirt. Her sneakers squished. In her arms she carried the shirt she had borrowed from Jake's closet that morning, wadded up and still wet from the soaking she'd gotten. She climbed the stairs to her house alone, her pets choosing to stay dry under the house rather than greet their mistress with their usual enthusiasm. Only Cyclops darted up the stairs after her, squeezing through the door before she had opened it more than a crack.

Dixie reached for the light switch beside the living room door, but her hand stilled before she turned it on. There were three candles burning on the coffee table, tall ivory tapers in brass candlesticks. All the magazines and baseball card albums had been cleared away. The mahogany table had been polished and shone like a moonlit lake. Beside the candles sat a box all done up in red and gold foil wrapping paper.