Hungry Heart: Konigsburg, Texas, Book 8 (9 page)

Andy’s cheeks had been noticeably pink by the time they’d left.

The top of her head came up to his shoulder. That wasn’t unusual. He’d long ago gotten used to looking down when he talked to most people. But if he wanted to hold her hand as they walked, he’d have to reach down and take it. It wasn’t like he could just casually brush against her and take her hand in his.

Well, hell.
He’d never spent so much time thinking about how to hold a woman’s hand before. He leaned down in her direction and gripped her hand lightly.

Andy didn’t even pause. Instead she laced her fingers in his, glancing up at the moon through the pecan tree branches. “Nice night.”

“It is that.”

A couple walked by across the street. The woman’s head turned sharply, watching them as they turned the corner. He didn’t think Andy noticed. He hoped so, anyway.

“Where does your family live? I mean, I guess I’m assuming they all live around the same area, which may not be true, now that I think about it…” She shook her head. “Sorry.”

“Nothing to be sorry for. They live over on the west side of town. And yeah, they do all live pretty close together except for my brother Ed, who lives on his peach orchard over toward Stonewall.”

She smiled, raising her face to the moonlight. “Fresh peaches. Nice family connection to have.”

“Yeah, especially at this time of year. I’ll take you out to his farm stand sometime.” He said it easily, almost without thinking. And then almost stumbled on the sidewalk.

I’ll take you out to his farm stand sometime? Making some big assumptions there, aren’t you,
vato
?

Ahead of them a boy chased a soccer ball down his front yard, then stood holding it as he watched them walk by. Chico glanced his way and frowned. The boy turned and ran back toward his front porch.

Andy’s jaw tightened a bit, but then she relaxed again. She did move a little closer as they dodged around a pecan tree that leaned out of a yard close by.

Somewhere music was playing, maybe somebody’s radio in the backyard, the melody soft and lilting, the words too faint to be recognized. Chico felt almost like dancing for a moment, and then like catching his breath.

He didn’t dance. He never danced. Dancing, he looked like an elephant on roller skates.

Andy glanced up at him, smiling. “Do you recognize it?”

“The song?” He shook his head.

“‘The Tennessee Waltz’. My grandma had the record—Patti Page, the Singing Rage.”

“Oh. Yeah.” He blinked. He was a talent booker, for Christ’s sake. He should be able to recognize a song that had been covered by everybody from Otis Redding to Leonard Cohen. Once again, he felt that odd impulse to take Andy Wells in his arms and spin her around the front yard. He quickly kicked it away.

“We’re here,” she said.

He looked up. His truck was parked at the curb. Her porch light gleamed in the darkness. A couple dozen steps, and she’d be home. He pushed the front gate open, then followed her through.

Okay, you’ve got this. No problem.
Except, of course, that he didn’t. He hadn’t felt this awkward since middle school.

She turned on the top step, looking down at him, or as
down
as she could look when they were basically nose to nose. “This is where I say I had a great time and thank you. Which is true. I did have a great time. And I do thank you. But it still sounds sort of weird to me.”

He frowned. “Why weird?”

She gave him a slightly rueful smile. “Because it’s such a routine thing to say. I feel like I should come up with something better.”

He shook his head. “I’ll take it.” His right hand moved to the back of her neck, almost without his thinking about it, and he drew her lips down to his.

Random thoughts drifted through his mind. She was so soft, so warm. How long had it been since he’d touched a woman like this? Kissed a woman when it wasn’t just a prelude to something else, when kissing was the main event?

He moved his hand up to the back of her head, let his fingers slide into her hair, trace the shape of her skull. He changed the angle of the kiss, brought his tongue to her mouth and tasted her.

Honey. Sweetness. A hint of fragrance.
Gracious Lord above.

His arm went around her waist, pulling their bodies tighter, soft breasts against his chest. She gave a soft hum deep in her throat.

Okay. Time to stop.

He lifted his head slowly, pausing to rest his forehead against hers until he caught his breath.
Oh yes, Gracious Lord above.

“I want to see you again,” he murmured.

She nodded, her forehead pressed against his collarbone. “Yes. Me too.”

“There’s a band in the beer garden Sunday night. Come sit with me.”

“I can do that.”

“Okay, then.” He raised his head slowly, reluctantly, then dropped a quick kiss on her forehead. “Good night, Andy.”

“Good night,” she whispered.

He touched her cheek once, lightly, then turned back down the stairs. But all the way down the walk to his truck he was aware of her still standing there. Watching him from her front steps.

Chapter Seven

Darcy inched down the final fifty feet to the bridge that led to the King’s place with her hands wrapped in a death grip on the steering wheel. She was a good Midwestern girl. She’d been driving since she was fourteen. And she’d still never encountered a road quite this bad. She decided to park on the far side of the river, pulling off next to the King’s food truck.

This time she slammed the door before she headed over the bridge and across the meadow, following her nose toward the smell of smoke. A few yards beyond the trailer she saw a concrete-block building, maybe a storage shed of some kind. Although it seemed a little large for a storage shed.

Porky came galumphing in her direction again, yipping joyfully. Apparently, one meeting was enough to establish her as a beloved buddy.

She heard another door slam and turned back. The Barbecue King stood outside his trailer, grinning down at her. He wore another T-shirt with torn-off sleeves, this one stained with sweat. The afternoon sunlight caught red highlights in his dark hair, and she saw the flash of an earring in one ear. The Pirate King, this time around. “Hey there, Ms. Darcy. Got my sides?”

She nodded. “Back in the SUV.” She narrowed her eyes, nodding toward the concrete block building. “What’s that?”

“Kitchen,” he said shortly. “Let’s get those sides into the refrigerator. Then we can start the day’s lesson.”

Kitchen?
Darcy glanced back over her shoulder as they headed back across the meadow again. The storage shed looked less like a kitchen than anything she’d ever seen.

Porky lolloped ahead of them, long ears flying. “How old is that dog?” she asked.

He shrugged. “Hard to say. Somebody dropped him off back here a few months ago. We adopted each other.”

She grimaced. “I hate that. Abandoning animals along back roads is low.”

“Better than drowning him.” The King’s jaw firmed.

At her SUV, she opened the back door and reached for the eight-quart plastic container of potato salad. The King beat her to it, lifting the container into his arms. “Which one’s heavier?”

She shrugged. “Probably that one. The slaw doesn’t pack down as tight.” Actually, she found the idea that he’d save her from lifting the heavier container a little touching. She spent a lot of her day wrestling hotel pans full of food from one table to another. Nobody had offered to give her a hand for several years now.

Of course, if they had offered, she probably would have spat in their eyes.

She hefted the coleslaw into her arms and followed the King and Porky back across the meadow toward the concrete block storage shed. He rested the potato salad on one hip while he dug out a set of keys.

Darcy frowned. “You keep the shed locked?”

He shrugged. “Only thing around here that’s worth significant money is the meat and the cooking equipment. When I’m working up here I keep it unlocked. But when I leave or go inside the trailer, I lock it up.”

He pushed the door open and she stepped after him. He slammed the door before Porky could follow them, earning a mournful
woof
. Fluorescent lights blinked into life, and she stared around the room. A kitchen. It wasn’t large, and it definitely wasn’t fancy. On the other hand, it looked efficient as hell.

One wall was lined with a couple of freezers, along with a restaurant-size refrigerator. Another side had a double sink with stainless steel counters. Storage shelves lined the walls on the other two sides, filled with containers of spices, salt, oil, and vinegar, along with bags of beans and anonymous cans. An air conditioner hummed somewhere in the background.

“Quite a place,” she murmured.

He shrugged. “Passes health code inspection.”

“Where do you get the power?”

“We’ve got power out here. We’re not that primitive.” He gave her a dry grin.

She shrugged. “No offense.”

“None taken. I’ve got my own generator too. For emergencies.”

He opened the refrigerator door, placing the potato salad inside, then reaching for her container of coleslaw. As he took it from her, he paused, peering down through the plastic lid. “You didn’t use mayonnaise?”

She shook her head. “You serve brisket and sausage, right?”

“Yeah. And chicken.”

“Then you need slaw with vinegar dressing to cut through the richness. Makes for a better contrast.”

She lifted the coleslaw out of his hands and set it on a shelf in the refrigerator.
Thank you, Mom.
If he deigned to try it, he’d find pretty damn good slaw, if she did say so herself.

The other shelves were lined with rings of sausage, along with bottles of ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise, pickles, and some mysterious plastic containers. Four or five loaves of sandwich bread sat on the lowest shelf.

“If you leave bread in the refrigerator, it dries out,” she said.

“If you leave it on the counter around here, you’ve got penicillin in a couple of days. That’s just the leftover slices from today on the truck anyway. I’ll use it up tomorrow. The rest is in the freezer.” He grabbed a couple of the mysterious containers, then pushed the refrigerator door closed.

Darcy folded her arms across her chest, surveying the kitchen. “I never understood the whole sandwich bread thing. Why not serve rolls?”

He shrugged again. “History. Tradition. I’ll go over the background sometime, but right now, we got stuff to do.”

He placed the containers on the counter, pulling off the tops. Darcy stood on tiptoe to look over his shoulder. Each container held a massive cut of meat, bright red with spice rub. “Brisket?” she asked.

He nodded. “Yep. Packer cut. They need a few minutes to warm up to room temperature before I put them on the fire. Speaking of which, come on.”

He headed out the kitchen door again, turning up a winding path beside the kitchen without looking back. Darcy fell into step behind him with Porky bringing up the rear.

The path curved across the meadow, coming to a stop at another structure, this time a kind of lean-to in a grove of live oaks. It was open at the sides, with a cement slab as a floor and a corrugated tin roof supported by posts at the corners.

Four smokers of various sizes and stages of dilapidation were equally spaced across the slab. Two of them were oozing smoke from their stacks. The King stepped up to the first, raising the lid slightly and sliding a hand underneath for a moment, shaking it when he pulled it back. “Looks like we’re ready to go.”

“Ready?”

“To cook. Come on.” He headed back across the meadow toward the kitchen again.

Darcy trotted along behind him. “What about the other smoker?”

“If one’s ready the other one is too, more or less. I started them at the same time.” He opened the door to the kitchen, motioning her through, then closed it behind him before heading back to the refrigerator. “Beef cooks longest, so we put that on first. Chicken I do tomorrow morning before I head to town.”

She frowned. “What about that smoker on wheels down near the river? Is that for the sausage?”

He shrugged. “I’ll use it to cook the sausage and to keep stuff warm when I get downtown, but I do most of the real cooking out here. Beef takes eight to ten hours. Chicken takes around three. Sausage takes around forty-five minutes. I usually get the smoker set up down there around ten so the smoke can start making people hungry early on. But I don’t spend enough time down there to actually cook anything except the sausage and sometimes the chicken. It’s mainly for show.”

“So you cook it here and refrigerate it?”

He nodded. “Wrap it in foil when it gets close to done. Some of the old guys just toss it into a picnic cooler then until they’re ready to serve, just skip the refrigeration altogether. I’ll do that if it’s close to time for me to head to town—keeps the meat at the maximum point of delicious. But it’s too big a risk if it’s more than a half hour or so.”

Darcy nodded, thinking of the probable reaction of all the health inspectors she’d ever known. “So now what?”