Heart of Dixie - Tami Hoag (1) (8 page)

"Is good," he said with a thick indeterminate accent. "'Bout time."

Dixie raised up on tiptoe, trying to fix him with her most pointed look. "Was there something in particular you wanted?"

He ignored her and held out a meaty hand to Jake. "Fabiano. To meet with you is good, Jake." He tilted his big shaggy head at Dixie, grinning. "Our Dixie, she's some cookie, ya?" Jake grinned back, extricating his hand from a grip that could have cracked stone. "Yeah."

"Men," Dixie muttered. "Is that all you ever think about? For cryin' out loud, there's more to life than sex."

"But not so much as good for you." Fabiano's expression declared the subject closed. He reached behind his back again and with a short formal bow. presented Dixie with a sand dollar. "For your collection."

She gave a little gasp and accepted the flat round sea urchin. "Oh, my, you don't find these around here."

The big man made a thoughtful face and gave a shrug that was distinctly Continental. "Sometimes we find what we do not know we are looking for, ya?"

Dixie sniffed, but leaned up and kissed his cheek just the same.

"I must return to my work now," he said. He jammed his hands at his waist and grinned again at Jake. "Jake, my new friend, you break our Dixie's heart, I will kill you, ya?"

Jake smiled back. "I'd like to see you try it."

Dixie rolled her eyes. "Criminy." Laughing, Fabiano bid them adieu and strode back to his cottage. Dixie gave the sand dollar a final inspection and tucked it into the pouch of her sweatshirt.

"Interesting guy," Jake said, amused and astounded, his curiosity about the artist rising now that his protective instincts had gone off red alert.

"What is that accent?"

"His father is Greek and his mother is Swedish."

"An interesting combination, but then I'd say there wasn't much about him that seemed run-of-the-mill." They started up the beach again. He took a big breath of sea air and exhaled. "I thought he was going to try to tear my head off."

"He looks a little intimidating."

Jake gave her a look. "Your gun is a little intimidating. He looks like a homicidal maniac on steroids."

Dixie clucked at him in disapproval. "People aren't always what they look like. A mystery writer ought to know that."

"Maybe that's why I haven't sold the book yet," Jake said. Once again he wanted to defend himself. After all, he made a living out of delving beneath the surface and bringing to light all the different facets of human beings. But he bit his tongue. He snatched up a small stone and flung it out into the ocean. "What kind of artist is he?"

"I don't rightly know," Dixie admitted. "He's real superstitious about having folks see his work, and I respect that. I know he paints, but I haven't seen any of it. He comes here every November and leaves in May for who knows where."

"Maybe he's exploring the possibilities of excessive hair growth as an alternative medium," Jake suggested with a chuckle.

Dixie made a face at him, suppressing a giggle. "Oh, sure, you like all that hair on a woman, but on a man it's sissy."

"I wouldn't call it sissy. Not to his face, anyway."

"What a sexist you are."

Jake scowled. "I am not."

"Are so," Dixie declared. "You think women should all be skinny and top-heavy and have lots of hair. You said so."

Jake raised his hands in disbelief, looking aghast. "I never said such a thing!"

"I just described your version of the world's most perfect woman," Dixie said shrewdly, kicking herself mentally for being a masochist. "You can't deny it."

He shook a finger at her. "But I never said all women should look like Devon Stafford. Just that she was an ideal."

Dixie stopped and turned to face the ocean, crossing her arms beneath her breasts. "An unrealistic ideal."

"That's your opinion." Jake stood beside her, watching her closely. "I happen to believe people can improve themselves. I read somewhere that Devon Stafford works very hard to maintain her figure."

"She could afford to. She made a zillion dollars a year. And to make that money she had a trainer come in and work her like a horse three hours a day and maybe she got to eat a rice cake afterward if she did a few extra sit-ups."

Jake held himself very still. He studied Dixie's expression with a curious light in his eyes. "Could afford to? Made a zillion dollars? Why are you talking in the past tense? She's not dead."

Dixie dodged his gaze. "Well...no...of course not," she said haltingly. "But she's gone, isn't she? It's past tense if she doesn't do those things anymore."

"How do you know she doesn't do them anymore?" "You're missing the point," she snapped, still refusing to face him. "The point is for most folks with regular jobs and regular lives and friends and families, it just plain isn't worth it to be slaves to some Hollywood version of what people should look like. I, for one, have better things to do with my time than torture myself with leg lifts. I mean, I may not have the greatest hips, but I have time to take notice of the world around me."

She moved a couple of steps down the beach and bent to retrieve a beer can that had washed in, giving Jake a clear view of those hips that curved outward like a bell from her waist. They looked just fine to him. In fact, his palms itched to cup those womanly curves. That fast, his blood went racing. One little thought of touching her and he was chomping at the bit, forgetting all about his objective in taking this little walk with her.

Rein it in, Gannon, he thought. It hasn't been that long since you've enjoyed the company of a lady. It hadn't been long at all. Willing women were not among the problems of his life. But as he looked at Dixie with the sea wind tossing her hair around her head, a pensive frown on her ripe mouth, he couldn't for the life of him recall the name of the lady he'd been seeing off and on for the past several months. Karen? No. Kelly? Tall, slim. She was undoubtedly gorgeous, but she suddenly seemed a pale example of womanhood compared to Dixie with her lush curves and plump breasts. "I like your hair short," he said, the words finding their way out of his mouth without permission from his brain.

She looked up at him like a startled doe, as if she would have expected him to speak Latin before complimenting her. It threw her off balance, something the primal male in him took perverse pleasure in. He grinned and lifted his hand toward her short wild mane.

"It's very...perky."

"Perky," Dixie repeated flatly.

The man was going to drive her to violence. First she was a good sport, then she was a pal, now she was perky. Her temper simmered irrationally. Poodles were perky. Cheerleaders were perky. She didn't want Jake Gannon to look at her and see perky. She wanted him to look at her and see--what?

The question stopped her cold. What did she want Jake Gannon to see? The anorexic sylph with collagen-enhanced lips?

Shaken, she muttered a naughty word under her breath and stepped back from him, dragging her own hands through her sheared locks, as if to remind herself of who she was and why she was here. "I have to go back home," she said softly. She turned without looking at Jake. He was bad luck. He was a temptation that had come to test her resolve. He was too handsome to not want and wanting was something she had done too much of already. Contentment was what she had come to Mare's Nest for.

She fixed her gaze on the big old beach house and the dogs sunning themselves on the steps. Her vision had blurred and she realized with surprise that tears had sprung up in her eyes. She took a step forward but was held back. Jake's big hands closed on her upper arms, his grip strong but gentle enough to take her breath away.

"Dixie? What's wrong?" he asked, his voice soft with concern. "What did I say?"

"Nothing. I just have to get back, is all."

"Now who's in too big a hurry?" he whispered, giving in to the urge to draw her back against him--not into an embrace, just close enough so he could catch the faint scent of lilies of the valley that drifted from her skin. His hormones had decided Dixie La Fontaine was irresistible; his logical brain was not being consulted on the matter. He was losing sight of his objective, but for the moment he didn't give a damn.

His hands moved on her upper arms in a soothing motion as he murmured, "I don't always know the right thing to say."

Dixie forced a laugh. "That must be inconvenient for a writer."

"You don't know the half of it."

He turned her then and looked down into her face, into eyes full of uncertainty. The wind caught at strands of her hair and whipped them across the soft curve of her cheek. Jake brushed them back, his thumb skimming the corner of her mouth, sending heat through them both.

"Will you tell me the right thing to say, Dixie?"

Answers swirled in her head. Fanciful answers, romantic answers, suggestive answers. She banned them all from being spoken. The truth was, she didn't know what to say, either. Her feelings were caught in a whirl. Yesterday her life had been as calm and safe as a reflecting pool. Today it was like the ocean, tumultuous, unpredictable, and she had the distinct feeling she was in danger of going in over her head. She found herself wanting a man she shouldn't want, thinking of things she had left behind, and yet she couldn't seem to stop the wanting.

It wasn't just sexual. Despite everything, despite their differences and despite reason, there was something about Jake Gannon she genuinely liked. The tenderness in those summer-blue eyes. The gentleness in his hands. His readiness to protect her from Fabiano. Under the golden boy exterior, beneath the perfectionistic tendencies, there was a nice man, a man worth knowing, a man worth saving, a man worth--

"I guess maybe I should have been a mime," he murmured. "I'm not half bad at showing what I mean."

In the time it took Dixie to snatch a breath Jake lowered his head and pressed his lips to hers. She leaned against him, dropping the beer can, her hands coming up to grip the sweatshirt that clung to his chest. Her head fell back, offering no resistance, inviting him to take her mouth. He tasted warm and slightly salty from the spray of the sea. He tasted like something she had craved a long time and denied herself. That it would have been safer for her to continue denying herself was a fact she paid no heed to, not when he was this close, not when he was holding her. His nearness canceled caution.

A groan rumbled in his chest beneath her hands. She answered it with a sigh, her lips parting, granting him access to her mouth. He deepened the kiss, slowly, patiently; exploring, not claiming; tasting, not devouring. It was a kiss of discovery and wonder, and when he lifted his head that wonder was reflected in his eyes.

"Wow," he murmured. "I guess it's true what they say-- everybody loves a mime." "Everybody loves a clown," Dixie corrected him, her gaze locked on his. "People throw pennies at mimes."

"Who cares," he growled, bending down toward her again.

Madness threatened to overwhelm him. He would have given his last nickel for another taste of her. If he hadn't thought Fabiano would come charging out to try to rip him limb from limb, he would have pulled her down onto the sand and made love to her right there with the surf washing over them. This kind of sudden passion wasn't like him. It was crazy and wild. It was wonderful.

As he lowered his mouth toward Dixie's waiting lips, he caught a flash of silver, a glimpse of a svelte form in the corner of his eye. Jake jerked his head up, his gaze focusing on the beach house.

"What?" Dixie asked dazedly, blinking.

Jake let go of her and took two steps toward the house, staring at it as if it had just materialized out of thin air. Dixie's knees wobbled and gave out and she sat unceremoniously on the wet sand.

"I saw--" Jake cut himself off. He had been about to bolt and run, but the elusive vision had disappeared and the distant roar of an engine indicated she would be gone entirely by the time he arrived on the scene. He wheeled around and it took him a second to realize Dixie was sitting down--and glaring at him. "I saw someone come out of your house."

"It was probably Sylvie," she said, struggling to her feet.

"Not unless Sylvie has grown three feet of platinum-blond hair since we met half an hour ago."

"There are such things as wigs, you know," Dixie grumbled, grimacing as she dusted off the seat of her pants. Wet sand clung to her fingers. The damp had already seeped through her sweatpants into her panties. It felt disgusting.

"Why would she put on a wig?" Jake demanded. "Her hair looked fine to me."

"I don't know. Why do people do what they do?" she snapped crossly. "I don't know why. She just might, is all. My great-uncle Nub used to like to cut up bleach bottles and make hats out of them. Why would anyone want to do that? Maybe Sylvie just got a wild urge to wear a wig."

He gave her a long, steady look. "And maybe that wasn't Sylvie."

Dixie ground her teeth. Darn it all, she would have to get saddled with a mystery writer, a man who probably saw clues in his breakfast cereal, a nosy California perfectionist who wouldn't rest until he'd put everything in its place.

"I'll bet you were the kind of kid who had to take every blessed thing apart to see how it worked," she grumbled.

Jake looked down at his sneakers and snarled a little under his breath. Every machine he had ever managed to take apart had never been the same again. It wasn't something he cared to discuss.

"Would you mind giving me a lift into town?" he asked abruptly. "I need to buy some groceries."

Dixie smacked a hand against his back in a gesture of phony camaraderie that left a damp sandy print on his sweatshirt. "Why would I mind?" she said with a smile that looked more ferocious than friendly. "I'm such a sport. I wouldn't mind at all. You're a guest here. You need something, you just ask your perky pal, Dixie," she said, spitting out each P like a bullet.

Jake stared at her as she trudged toward the house. The lady was steamed.

Because he'd caught sight of her mystery guest or because he'd reneged on the second kiss?

He wasn't sure which answer would please him more. SIX