Johnston - I Promise (6 page)

She turned to look at him in stupefaction. “I don’t even know your name.”

He shot her a charming grin. “I thought everyone knew me.” The grin cocked up on one side into something more cynical. “Or about me. I’m Marshall North.”

He said it almost defiantly. She raised a skeptical brow. He was right. She did know about him. No kid in town had a worse reputation. The North Ranch bordered the Circle Crown, where she lived, but her parents and Mr. North weren’t on speaking terms, which helped explain why she and Marsh had never crossed paths.

“Well? How about it, Miss Odelia Josephine Carson?”

“You know my name!”

His eyes twinkled.
“I
asked.”

She laughed. She admired his boldness. Oh, how she wished she could get to know him better. But it was impossible. “I’m sorry,” she said. “My father doesn’t allow me to go on dates.”

“If you’re worried about what your folks would say, I could meet you at the theater.”

She glanced sideways at him. He was so very good looking, with sun-streaked brown hair, a smile that created a single dimple on his left cheek, and a straight nose with a slight bump on the bridge. His gray eyes were shuttered against her in a way she recognized because she did it so often herself.

She wanted to go out with a boy close to her own age, like other girls. She wanted to pretend she wasn’t . . . what she was. And Marsh North was far from perfect himself, which made her deceit seem less profound. “All right,” she said. She felt her heart speed up slightly.

“I’ll wait out front for you. Seven-thirty?”

She nodded.

And felt guilty. Even though she didn’t have any intention of letting North touch her. She was only going to the movies with him. There wasn’t anything wrong with that.

She wasn’t able to dress up for the date, because that would have given away the game to her father, and she had been forced to bring Peggy in on her secret.

“I won’t lie for you unless you tell me who he is,” Peggy said.

“It’s Marsh North,” she admitted.

“Oh, geez, Delia! Marsh North! Oh, geez! He’s so—”

“Nice,” Delia inserted before Peggy could finish. “He’s been nothing but nice to me.”

“That’s not what Tricia Stewart said about him.”

“I don’t want to hear any gossip about Marsh. Will you cover for me, or not?” Delia asked.

“Of course I will,” Peggy said. “Oh, Delia, this is so exciting. Geez. Marsh North! Just be careful, okay?”

“I’ll be fine,” Delia said.

“You have to promise to call me later and tell me
everything!”

At the supper table Delia said casually that she needed her dad to give her and Peggy a ride to the movies. She said Peggy’s mom was picking them up, figuring North could take her home in his pickup. She held her breath until her father said, “That sounds fine.”

As Delia stood at the curb in front of the El Lasso next to Peggy, waving good-bye as her father drove away, her heart was pounding.

“He’s here, Delia,” Peggy whispered in her ear.

North was standing behind her and to her right by the Coming Attractions poster, a cigarette dangling from his mouth.

“Thanks, Peggy,” she said. “You can go in now.”

“Call me later.” Peggy gave Marsh one last surreptitious glance before she hurried over to buy her ticket.

Marsh didn’t move until Peggy had gone inside. He threw the cigarette down and snuffed it with his boot as he sauntered toward her. He was wearing worn jeans and a clean, long-sleeved plaid Western shirt folded up to reveal muscular forearms. His hair was still damp, as though he wasn’t long out of the shower.

“Hi,” he said with a lazy smile that belied the tension she saw in his shoulders. “I wasn’t sure you’d come.”

She gave him a shy smile in return. “I’m here.”

He paid for the tickets and took her elbow to usher her inside. To her surprise, she felt the same jolt she had earlier in the day.

“Popcorn? Milk Duds? Coke?” he asked.

She shook her head. “I just had supper. But you have something if you want.”

“I’d rather have my hands free for other things . . . like holding yours,” he said in a quiet voice. He reached down and slowly, gently twined his callused fingers in hers, giving her a chance to pull away if she wanted.

She stared at their joined hands before lifting her gaze to his face. There was no glib smile waiting there, no coaxing glint in his gray eyes. He was big enough to force himself on her, but he wasn’t demanding anything. She tightened her fingers slightly around his as her mouth curved in a warm smile.

He smiled back, letting what he felt—a corresponding warmth—show in his eyes.

They walked hand in hand into the dimly lit theater and chose secluded seats in the back near the side wall. They spoke in whispers, never stopping until the theater darkened and someone nearby shushed them.

The movie playing that evening was
Jaws
and featured a man-eating shark. Her eyes were riveted to the screen from the opening rumble of chords on the movie sound track. She left crescents in North’s arm with the fingernails of her free hand when the shark attacked its first victim.

North was a bastion of safety through the next two hours. Her body tightened with unbearable tension, which was released with laughter, only to build again. When the lights came up, it stunned her to realize her legs were still as wobbly as Jell-O from the last dose of adrenaline that had seen her through the destruction of the shark. She needed North’s arm to steady her when she rose.

“That was incredible!” she said.

Marsh chuckled. “Once or twice I didn’t think you were going to make it.”

She had hidden her face several times during the movie against North’s sleeve. Fresh heat washed already pinkened cheeks. “Well, I did, thanks to you.”

“Would you like to go have some pie and coffee at the Amber Sky?”

The busy cafe on Highway 90, the main east-west thoroughfare through town, had been run for as long as anybody could remember by Mrs. Black, who made the best chocolate chiffon pie in Texas. A lot of locals ate supper there with their families. “I don’t think that would be a good idea. Someone might see us.”

The smile left his face. “Oh. I see.” He turned his face away while he waited for her to exit up the aisle.

“Marsh . . .” She waited until he looked at her. His expression was closed again. “I had a wonderful time. But my parents think I’m out with Peggy. If we go to the Amber Sky, one of my father’s friends might see us and say something to him.”

“How about the Sonic?”

The Sonic Drive-In was a hamburger joint frequented by local teens. You could order from one of a dozen microphone boxes under a long red-and-white awning and have a tray of hamburgers and a couple of milk shakes delivered to your car window. Being seen by the wrong kids at the Sonic could be as disastrous to her as being seen by their parents. “I don’t think that would be a good idea, either.”

“How about if I buy some beer at the 7-Eleven, and we go drink somewhere private?”

She wasn’t sure that was such a good idea for entirely different reasons. But so far North had been a perfect gentleman. “All right,” she agreed. “But I’d rather have a Coke than a beer, and I need to be home in an hour.”

“No beer?”

She wrinkled her nose. “It tastes awful. How can you stand it?”

He shrugged. “I suppose you learn to like it.”

“I wouldn’t have guessed you were old enough to buy beer,” she said, as he handed her into the passenger side of his pickup.

“I won’t be for another month. But a friend of mine works at the 7-Eleven. He’ll usually sell me a six-pack of Pearl or some Dos Equis if no one’s around.”

“You won’t get drunk, will you?” she asked as he slid in on the driver’s side. “I’d hate for us to get into an accident.”

“I tell you what. If it’ll make you happy, I won’t even have the beer.” He put the truck in gear and headed north on Getty Street toward the 7-Eleven near the high school football stadium on the edge of town.

A thoughtful crease grew on her forehead as she waited in the truck while he went inside and bought the Cokes.

“Something wrong?” he asked as he headed the rattling truck north again toward the hill country where they had spent the afternoon tubing.

“Why do people think you’re so bad? You’ve been nothing but nice to me.”

“Disappointed?”

She shook her head. “No. I’m glad you asked me to come with you tonight.”

“You’re not scared I’ll get you off somewhere alone and turn on you, like some Jekyll and Hyde character?”

“Would you?”

“Naw. I like you.”

She arched a brow. “And if you didn’t like me?”

A devilish grin appeared. “You’d be in serious sh—trouble.”

He pulled the truck off the paved highway onto a dirt road that ended abruptly. The night was quiet and still, much as it might have been two hundred years ago, before any settlers had come to disturb the wilderness. He pulled the Cokes out of the paper bag, crumpled it, and pitched it on the floor. He pulled the metal tabs from the lids and dropped them inside, then gave a can to her.

She sipped it gratefully, the fizz easing the dryness in her throat. She thought about how exciting it was to be having her first date with a boy. She would have to call Peggy later, but she didn’t think she could find words to explain what tonight had been like.

It was too bad she couldn’t share this wonderful experience with her mother and father. But her mother agreed with her father that she was too young to date, and her father . . . He would be furious. Any boy she dated would be bad enough, but someone with Marsh North’s reputation was sure to be ten times worse. Her sister Rachel could have kept her secret, but she was too young to think a date with a boy was anything worth crowing about. Besides, Rachel had to be in bed by 9:00
P.M.

Marsh got out of the truck, came around to open her door, and held out his hand to her. He set his Coke on the Chevy fender as she stepped down, and eased his arms around her from behind.

She stiffened immediately.

“Don’t be afraid. Lean back against me,” he murmured in her ear. “Then look up.”

She did as he asked and saw an immense black sky filled with a million stars. A full moon was half-hidden by scudding clouds. “Oooh. It’s so beautiful.”

“Umm,” he agreed. He turned her in his arms, took her Coke from her and set it on the rusted fender next to his, then caught her chin with his forefinger and thumb.

She stood there, knees quaking, staring up at him, aware of what was coming. Her heart slammed against her rib cage, then climbed all the way to her throat and caught there.

“I don’t know what it is about you . . .” he said as he stared down at her. He fingered her hair, which she had worn down and parted on the side, and she felt it in the depths of her belly.

She looked up into his face, but his back was to the moon and all she saw was shadows. “Marsh, I—”

His fingertip stopped her speech. “Don’t say anything. I know this is crazy, but I have to kiss you. I won’t take advantage, I promise. Just . . . may I?”

“That wild North boy”
asking
if he could kiss her? Delia knew she had to be dreaming. She would wake up and be in her bed and it wouldn’t be Marsh at all. She wished she could see North’s features better.

She reached up with her hand to trace the shape of his brows, his nose—where she found the unfamiliar bump on the bridge—and his mouth. Her father had a scar on his cheek where he had been caught by an unraveling strand of barbed wire. The scar wasn’t there.

“All right,” she said. “You can kiss me.”

She stood frozen, waiting, wondering if it would feel different. If it would feel good . . . clean . . . right.

The lips that settled on hers were utterly soft and searching. He missed her mouth slightly in the darkness, and came back with better aim, slanting his lips more exactly across hers. He pressed more firmly this time, and his tongue danced across the seam of her lips, teasing, titillating.

It
was
different. Her body felt tingly, achy, and she was suddenly breathless. She opened her mouth to him hesitantly, and his tongue slipped inside, warm and wet.

She made a sound in her throat, half surprise, half pleasure. Her fingers curled around handfuls of his cotton shirt as she rose on her toes to make their bodies meet more completely. And felt his arousal.

A moment later she had freed herself from his grasp and was standing across from him, eyes wide with fright, panting for breath.

“Delia, I’m sorry,” Marsh hurried to say. “I . . . I know you’re not that kind of girl. I can’t help it if I’m attracted to you that way. I want to touch you. I want—”

“No,” she said abruptly, harshly. “Take me home, Marsh.”

She crossed past him toward the truck, expecting him to try to stop her. But he stepped aside and opened the pickup door and let her get in without touching her.

She felt sick. Not because of what had happened between them. The kiss had felt good . . . wonderful. But if she had let it go any further, if she ever let things move toward their logical conclusion, Marsh would find out the truth. He would know she wasn’t a good girl, like he thought, that she was worse than he could ever dream of being. She wouldn’t be able to bear the look in his eyes if he ever found out the truth.

They made the trip south out of town on Highway 83 toward the Circle Crown in silence. Twenty minutes later he turned off the highway and drove down the winding road to her house, which led through what was left of a pecan orchard. He stopped the pickup and turned out the headlights before they illuminated the white columns along the front of the two-story mansion.

Delia had no idea why her ancestors had built a Southern mansion more suited to Mississippi or Georgia instead of the more typical Texas dogtrot home. Four two-story white columns held up a railed veranda, and the double-wide doors downstairs led up an impressive staircase inside. A single twisted live oak shadowed the house.

“Will you go out with me again?” Marsh asked.

“I don’t think I should.”