Hold on Tight (7 page)

He nodded, looking a little sheepish. “I forgot how fast news travels in a small town. We had a good time, though. He’s a great character. The best Baptist deacon I’ve ever known.”

“Come in before I lose all my heat from the fireplace.”

“I wouldn’t want you to lose all your heat,” he noted smoothly as he stepped inside. She closed the door and watched him look around the big, open living room at the piano, the mixture of abstract and classical art, the white-on-white contemporary decor, and the bookcases filled to overflowing. “This is some farmhouse,” he observed.

“I did some renovating and redecorating. Make yourself at home. Give me your coat.”

“I never had a home like this.” He handed her the grocery bag and the possum, then shucked off the same windbreaker he’d worn the day before. Underneath it, his soul stirring body was covered in a fresh selection from his collection of plaid shirts and jeans.

“Beer?” she asked, forcing her traitorous eyes to the grocery bag.

“Champagne. Hah. Surprised you, didn’t I?”

“I didn’t know our package store carried champagne. Everyone got excited last year when the owner brought
in some twenty-dollar bottles of wine. People went in just to look at them.”

“Ah, but I went to Birmingham yesterday, you recall. The big city. I bought it there. The best champagne, of course. Or at least, it cost the most.”

“Well … well, thank you. It’s very nice.” Feeling awkward and pleased, she set the possum down on her carpet and took Rucker’s jacket. “I’ll go put it in the refrigerator.”

“The champagne, not my jacket,” he requested coyly.

“Right,” she mumbled.

“You’re forgetting something, Miss Dinah.”

She took a step backwards, clutching the grocery bag in front of her. “No, I didn’t,” she said lightly.

His eyes were too serious, his mouth too enticing. “Yes, you did.” He cupped her face in both hands and watched her lips part in expectation as he stepped closer. “That’s the kind of reaction I like to see,” he whispered, and kissed her. “Hello.” He kissed her again, his tongue sweeping inside her mouth. “You look fantastic.” Another kiss. “I missed you.” A final kiss, damp and intimate, and by now she was leaning forward, her breath ragged and her eyes closed tightly. He nibbled the corner of her mouth. “I didn’t know you could play the piano, Madam Mayor. Takes sensitive fingers to do that. Wish I were a piano.”

He nuzzled her neck from shoulder to ear, tickled her earlobe with his mustache, then ran his fingers over her cheek bones and down to her lips. He caressed their sensitive surface with his fingertips while she let her eyes open languidly. His voice was throaty, and his chest moved in a quick rhythm that matched her own. “Will you tickle my ivories after dinner, Deedee?”

Blinking groggily, Dinah stepped back. “Deedee?” she rasped. “Deedee?”

“Yeah. It’s a good nickname. How do you like it?”

She stood silent for a moment, catching her breath, trying to think straight. Finally she managed to say, “I have not, nor shall I ever be, a ‘Deedee.’ That name conjures up images of a tiny person in ruffles and heavy mascara.”

“Well, I can dream, can’t I?” he joked.

Dinah put a hand to her forehead to test for cracks. No, she only
felt
as if she were falling apart and enjoying every second of it. “You, sir, may call me ‘Dee,’ if you insist.”

“Okay. I can compromise.”

“What may I call you, Rucker?”

“How about honey bunny, or handsome, or sweetcakes? ‘Your Majesty’ will do. That’s what my secretary uses.”

“She’s obviously unqualified to find a job elsewhere, poor desperate woman.”

She turned and hurried toward the kitchen, her knees still shaky from the effect of his kisses. Laughing, Rucker followed her. “Actually, she gives me no respect at all. She’s studying for a degree in psychology at night school. She’s a little bitty blond who served three years in the Navy. I used to protect her from the he-wolves at the paper, until I found out she has a black belt in karate and a wit like sharp steak knives.”

“Is this the fabled Miss Hunstomper?”

“Yeah.”

“Buon giorno!”
Nureyev called from the kitchen.
“Nein! Sprechen sie Englisch, amigo?”

“This is my pet crow,” Dinah explained as she stepped across the threshold. “His name is Nureyev.” She paused for smug effect. “After the ballet star. You’ll have to pardon him. He gets his foreign languages confused.”

Rucker paused, staring in amazement at the large black bird sitting on a perch stand by the room’s bay window. “I have the same problem,” he commented vaguely. He tracked Dinah’s graceful movements around the airy, windowed kitchen, watching her put the champagne in the refrigerator and then go into the dining room beyond. She came back with a crystal snifter half full of dark liquid.

“How about some brandy and soda?” she asked.

He took it wordlessly, and the gleaming amusement in her blue eyes alerted him that she was enjoying his intrigue over the crow. “It came from Arnold Westerby,” she finally explained. “He’s a ranger down at the county forestry station. He found it as a baby and brought it
to me. I never knew crows could talk, but they can. And they’re very intelligent.” She paused. “Arnold brought me the possum too. I think Arnold has a crush on me.”

Rucker took a swallow of the smooth brandy and regained his aplomb. “Now, how can I compete with a feller who gives you crows and possums?” he asked wryly. “I’ve got animal tendencies, but not that kind.”

Dinah glanced at him, but said nothing. She opened the oven door and removed a beautiful white casserole dish. “I hope you like coq au vin.”

“Ohhhh, chicken and vegetables in wine sauce. I can deal with that.”

Dinah looked at him in surprise. He arched one brow. “I’ve been in lots of nice restaurants. I know what coq au vin is. Hah.”

“Mr. McClure, you outshine all my expectations.” She fluttered her eyelashes. “Of course, I didn’t expect much.”

He bowed. At that point, the possum waddled into the kitchen.
“Nein! Nein!”
Nureyev screeched, eyeing the newcomer in dismay. “I think, therefore I am!”

“I sleep, therefore I am,” Rucker responded. Sighing, he bent over and picked the possum up gently. “Come on, little feller, I’m gonna set you free out in Dee’s woods.”

Dinah turned from the stove and studied the sorrowful expression on Rucker’s face. “Why?”

“Well, I don’t know if he’s happy bein’ a pet. I want to give him up before I get any more attached to him.”

“When I sent him to you, I assumed you’d have someone turn him loose the same day. I never expected you to keep him.”

Rucker set his brandy down on the kitchen’s round oak table and stroked the little animal’s head. “He’s ugly and dumb. That sort of appeals to me.” Dinah felt a swell of sympathy. The man actually looked distraught over the idea of giving up the least lovable mammal God ever created. “Which way to the back door?” he asked sadly.

“Through the living room.”

He left, and when he returned five minutes later, he
was possumless. “Little feller disappeared right into some honeysuckle bushes,” Rucker noted. He sat down at the kitchen table and tried to look stoic.

Dinah couldn’t resist such sincere, if bizarre, melancholy. She walked over to him, bent forward, and kissed him lightly on the mouth. “Everything’s on the table, honey bunny,” she murmured. “Come and drown your sorrows in boozed-up chicken.”

They talked, the mood quiet and relaxed, during dinner. She told him about her mother, who had preceded her as a Miss Georgia. Julie Sheridan, then Julie Meredith, had held the title in 1950. She had died of meningitis when Dinah was fifteen. Afterwards, Dinah’s father had devoted all his emotional energy to molding his daughter into the same image.

“My father wasn’t manipulative,” Dinah explained. “Mother had wanted to be Miss America, but never made it. Father thought the best way to honor her memory was to help me win what she’d always envied. I wasn’t interested in beauty pageants at first, but then I got caught up in the competitive spirit.”

“How many pageants did you win?” Rucker asked.

“Well, I started when I was fifteen and stopped when I was twenty-one, so about”—she paused, estimating—“forty. Out of about sixty.”

“I’m impressed.”

“The first was Miss Gum Spirits. I represented the Georgia turpentine industry.”

He groaned. “You were a real trooper. You must have all sorts of funny trophies.”

“They’re all packed away.” She shrugged. “I won’t kid you. It stopped being enjoyable after I won the Miss Georgia title. I used to smear mentholated lotion on my thighs, wrap them in plastic, and run five miles. Try it some time. You’ll have thin thighs, but you’ll smell like Ben Gay the rest of your life.”

“No, thanks.” He studied her quietly, no humor softening the frown on his expressive face. “And you walked
out a day before the Miss America Pageant. Pretty gutsy. I heard it had to do with your father’s death.”

Dinah stood and began clearing the table. Careful, now, she warned herself. Be casual, be cool. “My father had a little Cessna airplane that he loved to fly. He took it out one Saturday morning. Something went wrong, and he crashed. That happened just a few weeks before the pageant.” She looked at Rucker helplessly. “I couldn’t go on. The pageant was important to him, not to me.”

Rucker frowned. What she’d done was like running away, as far as he was concerned, and something about it didn’t add up. He never ran from anything or anybody, and he had the feeling that Dinah was the same way. “But wouldn’t he have wanted you to hang in there?” Rucker asked. “I mean, you were a good bet to win. Wouldn’t that have honored his memory more than throwing in the towel did?”

“No. Look, I’d rather not talk about my father, if you don’t—”

“Well, yes, it would have,” he persisted. “I mean, he wouldn’t have wanted you to throw away all the hard work he did, and you did, and just run off, would he? He wanted you to be Miss America, and you should have—”

“Thank you for the hindsight critique,” she interrupted in a tight, wounded voice. Standing with her hands full of dishes, Dinah glared down at him.

He gazed at her speculatively. “I’ve got a big mouth,” he offered.

She wanted to tell him, but couldn’t, that winning the pageant would have done no honor to her father if a sleazy tabloid reporter named Todd Norins had accomplished his goal, which was to dig up dirt on the new Miss America.

“I did what was right, believe me,” she said hoarsely. “You’re not one of those people who believes I had some sort of tawdry photos to hide, are you? Well, I don’t.”

But what she did have to hide was worse, in its way. Todd Norins had suspected that. Now he co-hosted a network gossip show called
USA Personal
. Dinah considered it a no-class rip-off of
60 Minutes
, and the
thought that Norins might someday take an interest in her had given her nightmares over the years.

Rucker got up and took the dirty dishes from her. “You’re one helluva woman, and I know you had good reasons for what you did. I didn’t mean to make you feel bad.” Dinah inhaled softly, unprepared for such sensitivity. Her eyes filled with tears. Rucker saw them and winced. “Don’t, Dee,” he said softly. “You’ve got all this old sadness in you. I see it. I’m sorry I—”

“No. I … I’m sorry,” she said.

Looking distressed, he leaned forward and kissed her forehead. “If you cry, I swear I’ll cry, too, and that’s a disgusting sight. My nose runs and my eyes swell.”

Soft laughter burst from her lips. “It’s all right,” she told him, and she touched his cheek affectionately. “Let’s change the subject.”

The slight devilish lift to his right eyebrow warned her that he was going to sidetrack this somber mood of theirs. “If you do have some naked pictures of yourself, I know a guy named Guido who could turn ’em into a real nice calendar.” Dinah slapped his shoulder playfully. “We could make a lot of money—”

“Stop,” she begged, chuckling. “Put the dishes in the sink and I’ll get the champagne.”

She played more Chopin on the piano while he sat beside her sipping his champagne from a fluted glass that looked absurdly delicate in his big hand. The fire crackled softly, and a single lamp surrounded the two of them with intimate shadows. Rucker was quiet and attentive. When she finished he nodded his approval. “Pretty,” he said in a soft voice. “I like it. I could listen to it all night.”

The suggestion concerned more than Chopin. Dinah put her hands in her lap and studied them pensively. They were trembling a little. “And then what?” she whispered.

She could feel his eyes on her as he carefully set his empty glass on the floor. He spoke to her just as carefully, as if she might break. “Then I’ll bring you breakfast in bed. I can cook well enough to fry eggs and burn
toast.” He paused. “I’ll find ways to keep you from noticin’ the burned toast.”

“I don’t think one night could bridge our culture gap.”

His leg was nearly touching hers. Affection and desire flowed from him in warm waves, and she knew that she returned it. His voice was a sensual rumble as he leaned closer and said, “I think one night would prove that we’re perfect together.”

“Or it could ruin an odd but enjoyable friendship.”

“That’s not really what worries you, Dee.” He made that comment as a statement, not a question. Rucker slid an arm around her shoulders in a comforting way. “I’m not a dangerous man.”

But he was dangerous, because newspaper columnists liked to ask probing questions. They also liked to write about the people in their personal lives, and she couldn’t have that. “What worries you?” he whispered. “What makes you sit here shiverin’ because you want me to hold you, but you don’t want to do anything about it? This is right, Dee, very right. Talk to me, Dee. I’ve got to know what’s wrong. Tell me—”

She stopped his upsetting interrogation with a kiss, then twisted her body to nestle tightly into the crook of his shoulder. She rested her hands against his chest, kneading the powerful muscles sheathed in his soft shirt. She caught roughly at that shirt, pressed herself close to him, and kissed him again, sliding her tongue into his mouth with aggressive passion.