Heart of Dixie - Tami Hoag (1) (3 page)

"How do I know you're not a pervert? How do I know you're telling the truth?" she asked.

"Trust me," Jake said dryly, laying his hand over his heart. "I'm a real stand-up guy. I'm an ex-Marine. I pay my taxes. I'm a registered voter." Dixie scowled. "Ted Bundy was a Young Republican. It didn't stop him from being a serial killer." Her eyes widened and she gave a little gasp, motioning to Jake's outfit with the barrel of her pistol. "He even dressed like you!"

"Lots of guys wear chinos! They're not all homicidal maniacs." Heaven help him, he was about to be shot because he had impeccable taste in sportswear.

"I suppose they're not," Dixie admitted grudgingly. She let the nose of the .38 tilt downward. She nibbled on her lower lip in indecision as she looked Jake in the eye. "Do you swear you're not a pervert?"

Jake had to wonder at the intelligence of a woman who would accept the oath of a man she suspected of heinous crimes, but he played along with her just the same. After all, she was the one holding the gun and pointing it at a very important part of his anatomy.

"I swear," he said firmly. "I swear on my mother's life."

"Do you love your mother?"

"Yes. But not too much. Nothing unhealthy. Just regular love. None of that Norman Bates kind of thing. I'll give you her phone number, you can call her. And while you're mulling it over, would you mind pointing that thing elsewhere?" he said sardonically. "I think I'd rather be killed outright than shot where you're aiming right now. I'm kind of sentimental about that particular body part."

Dixie's cheeks tinted a delicate shade of rose as she sighted down the barrel of her gun. It was plain the good Lord had left no detail unattended when he'd fashioned this man. "Sorry," she mumbled, tipping the pistol a few degrees to the left of him and tearing her gaze away from his fly.

"Don't mention it," Jake said dryly. "Does this mean you believe me?"

"Well...I guess."

She stuck the pistol back in her purse and rested her hand on the gearshift. "I'm sorry, but a girl can't be too careful these days, you know. I mean, here I am alone on a road in a tow truck with a man from California, who I don't know from a goose. For all I know, the car breakdown could have been an elaborate ruse just to get some poor unsuspecting soul into your evil clutches."

One golden brow rose. "What a vivid imagination you have."

"Hey," she said, starting the truck and easing it forward. "I read the papers. I watch the news. The world is full of kooks and weirdos, and I don't mean to be rude, but the way I understand it, most of them come from California." Jake choked back the urge to laugh only because the gun was still within her reach. He wanted to ask her why, if all the kooks were in California, had everyone in California warned him about the red-necks of the South and told him to run like hell if he were to hear strains of banjo music in the hills. But it just didn't seem prudent to antagonize a woman who drove a one-ton wrecker and carried a gun in her purse, so he steered the topic toward saner, potentially profitable ground.

"I can assure you, Miss La Fontaine, I'm just a regular guy. No skeletons in my closet or basement or backyard or anyplace else for that matter. I'm a writer--a generally nonviolent profession, although it has its moments."

She hit the brakes, sending Jake skidding into the dashboard. His head smacked the windshield with a dull thud.

"You're a writer?" she asked with something like panic in her eyes. "What sort of a writer? You're not a reporter, are you?"

Jake rubbed his head, wincing, his attention torn between Dixie's extreme reaction and the little explosions of pain bursting in his head.

"No, I'm not a reporter. No need to pull the gun again," he said sardonically. "May I ask why you would care if I were one?" He held up a hand. "You don't have to answer if it's going to upset you and drive you to commit a rash act."

Maybe he really was on to something here, he thought, his heartbeat again picking up a stroke of excitement. If the tabloid hacks had been nosing around Mare's Nest, making people nervous, then he might indeed be on the right track. He was going to have to tread carefully, though. If the skittish star caught wind of someone on her trail and bolted, his hunt for her might drag on interminably.

"You have something in particular against reporters?"

"It's just that a reporter came here from Charleston a while back," Dixie said, a little hesitant, hurt furrowing her brow and tugging at the corners of her mouth. She stared out at the darkening ribbon of road and made up a tearjerker of a tale without the slightest hesitation. "He came in acting all friendly, asking folks all kinds of questions about life in Mare's Nest. Then his story came out and everybody in town bought a copy of the paper. Harper's Grocery Store never sold so many papers in one day before."

She sucked in a little breath and shook her head at the horror of it all. "That story was just pure mean. He made fun of the town and everyone and everything in it. Here we all thought he was a nice guy when he was just mean, as mean as cat meat." Jake watched, his heart wrenching with sympathy as Dixie's eyes became awash with tears and her chin gave a little quiver. She glanced at him self-consciously, sniffled and blinked. He felt an almost overwhelming urge to comfort her, to put his arms around her and protect her from the callous world. She had managed to strike a chord deep within him and bring out all his guardian male instincts. She seemed awfully sweet, if insane, and she was so sincere. Plus, she really was pretty, and she had those wonderful breasts....

"I'm sorry, Mr. Gannon," she murmured, sniffing. She swiped at her damp lashes with the heel of her hand. "I didn't mean to get so overwrought. It's just that that kind of thing..."

Shaking her head, she let the sentiment trail off, the silence speaking eloquently of her feelings.

"It's all right," Jake said, absently rubbing his elbow, completely enthralled by her earnest confession. "I understand."

He understood and yet he wasn't exactly coming clean with her. He didn't like keeping the truth from her, but he didn't have much choice. In view of her past experience, if he revealed his true purpose for being in Mare's Nest she was liable to pull that gun out of her handbag and shoot him dead. At least he could console himself with the knowledge that the job he had come here to do wasn't going to hurt anybody. Even after he found Devon Stafford, he realized that nothing might come of it. There was always the chance that she wouldn't want to share her story with the world, although Jake was determined to do his best to convince her otherwise.

He dug an immaculate white handkerchief out of his hip pocket and handed it to her, leaning close, the lure of her sudden fragility overpowering. He hovered protectively as she dabbed the last of her tears. When she looked up at him and smiled a tiny, embarrassed smile, he felt as if he'd been hit in the chest with a hammer.

"Thanks, mister," she whispered, her voice smoky and sensuous as she pressed the handkerchief into his hand. "It's awfully sweet of you to understand. Understanding is sure a rare quality in a man."

Jake sat back, feeling slightly dazed and amazed by the power of her charm.

"Anyway, you can see how we'd be leery," she said. "Folks hereabouts never did take much to strangers coming in asking all kinds of questions."

"That's kind of an unusual attitude for a tourist town, isn't it?"

"To be perfectly honest, we don't do very well in that respect," she confessed. She put the truck in gear and started once again for town. "Folks tend to like the fancier places like Myrtle Beach. We get our regulars, but that's about all."

She shot him a curious glance. "So, if you're not a reporter, what kind of a writer are you?"

"I'm a mystery writer," he said, hating the fact that the line tasted like a lie. "At least I will be as soon as I get a chance to revise my book and sell it."

"A mystery writer?" Dixie gave him a bright guileless smile. "That's great! And what do you mean `will be'? If you're working on a book then you're a writer whether you've sold it or not, and don't let anybody tell you different. It's the effort that counts, not somebody else's idea of what you ought to be called."

Jake stared at her, a little taken aback by her homespun wisdom, and even more surprised by how it went straight to his heart, sticking in a vulnerable corner he would have preferred to ignore. He liked to think of himself as a tough professional, able to handle the ups and downs of the writing business with aplomb. The truth was, his failure to sell his manuscript had chipped the rock of his self- confidence. Dixie's words soothed that small hidden hurt.

They wheeled into Eldon's Gas and Go, and Jake's attention was diverted to other matters. His heart flopped over and fell dead into the pit of his stomach as he looked around.

The place was not what anyone would have called state of the art. At least not since the days of Harry Truman. The gas pumps were antiques, the kind with the big glass bubble on top. They bore a greater resemblance to the robots in third-rate science fiction movies from the fifties than they did to the gas pumps he was used to seeing. The garage would have given Andre a migraine. It was a dark, dirty-looking, cavernous place--a far cry from the spic-and- span environment his Porsche was used to. The walls and shelves were crammed with every imaginable kind of car part, all of them black with grease. And all of it was housed in a wood frame building that looked as if it had survived one too many hurricanes.

"Don't let appearances fool you, Mr. Gannon," Dixie said with just the perfect edge of disappointment and censure in her voice. "Things aren't always what they seem."

Jake winced. "No, I'm sure it's a fine place," he said, not quite managing to sound convinced. "It's just that being from the city, I'm more accustomed to..."

"Perfection?" she queried dryly.

He thought there was a note of bitterness in her voice and he looked at her, but she was already halfway out of the truck.

She left the Porsche dangling from the back of the tow truck, saying it would be less of a temptation to anyone who might get a wild hair and try to take it for a spin. Jake suffered a cold flash at the thought, momentarily forgetting that the car wasn't capable of going anywhere anyway. He followed Dixie into the station office.

"I'll just jot a note for Eldon," she said, rummaging for paper and pen through the debris strewn across the counter. He identified pieces of mail, credit card receipts, candy wrappers, dirty rags, and spark plugs among the litter.

Jake had to jam his hands in his pockets to resist the urge to straighten things. He had had orderliness bred into him by a Marine father and a CPA mother, and was still a firm believer of "a place for everything and everything in its place." The sight of a mess the magnitude of this one tended to make him feel vaguely ill. He watched with a kind of horrified awe as Dixie finally unearthed a dirty scratch pad and a ballpoint pen that looked as if it had been chewed on by voracious rodents. With the pen held between the first and middle fingers of her left hand, she bent to compose her note.

"How long do you think it'll take him to fix it once he gets back?" Jake asked, absently noting the strange way she held the pen.

"Hard to say." She scribbled the last of her missive, signed it with a flourish, then lifted her head to give Jake a long look and a shrug. "Could take five minutes. Could take five days. Could take longer if you've blown--"

He held up a hand to cut her off. "Please, don't say it again," he said through his teeth. "I don't think I could stand to hear you say it again."

Dixie nibbled her lip. "Well...it could take longer. Depends on whether he has to send out for parts or not. You probably guessed Eldon don't have much call for Porsche parts. Do you have some place you need to be?"

"I have some...research to tend to." He sighed and fussed with the cuffs of his shirt, then, unable to stop himself, he reached out and straightened a dusty box of chewing gum on the counter. He was essentially where he needed to be, but he wasn't going to accomplish much if he was stuck on foot. "Is there a car rental place anywhere around here?"

"Nope. Eldon might have a loaner for you, though. You'll have to talk to him. It won't be a Porsche."

Jake flashed her a smile. "I won't be fussy as long as it can take me where I want to go." "Right," Dixie muttered under her breath as she watched him adjust the wall calendar so it hung properly. She led the way out. He'd practically broken out in hives at the sight of the station and he probably wanted to go have himself disinfected after having been inside it. The man was a perfectionist deluxe. Sure he wouldn't mind Eldon's loaner.

"I don't suppose there's a cab company around here either."

"Nope," she said. "But I'll give you a lift to the Cottages. I'm headed that way myself."

"Thanks. That'd be great." He stopped her with a hand on her shoulder as she headed toward a battered tan Bronco. "Dixie..."

Oh, dear, she thought. She turned to him, feeling wobbly and strange. Jake Gannon's touch went through her like currents of electricity, sizzling down through her breasts, sapping the strength from her knees. She hadn't counted on his touching her. She hadn't figured he'd want to. But he was, and even though his touch was casual, it was very strongly reinforcing the fact that she found him too darned attractive.

You're in big trouble here, Dixie darling.

If he tried to kiss her, she wouldn't be able to fight him off, she thought, swaying slightly toward him. He wasn't her type and she wasn't the kind of girl who let strange men kiss her, but there was a limit to her strength. A girl could only resist just so much magnetism, and Jake Gannon had a boatload of it. She leaned into the pressure of his hand on her shoulder and tilted her face up, resigning herself to her fate and wishing she had put on a little lip gloss.

"Yes, Jake?"

"I...just want to thank you," he said, staring down at her upturned face with a curious light in his eyes. "I realize you're going out of your way to help me."