Kicks for a Sinner S3 (21 page)

“Your key card,” the clerk said for the second time. “Enjoy your stay.”

“Here we go then.” He offered his arm to Cassie like an usher at a wedding.

She accepted his gesture with a funny little smile on her peach-painted lips. Whatever she used to cover her freckles tonight had a glitter to it, or the whiskey had affected his vision as well as his good sense. The dress draped down low in the middle. His eyes followed a sparkly trail to where her breasts came together held up by some kind of miracle bra that allowed her back to remain bare almost to the waist. The elevator moved them slowly and soundlessly upward without a single jolt. He wanted to crush her against its cool, stainless steel wall and slide his tongue between those peaches. That’s what Joe would do and exactly the reason why he shouldn’t, wouldn’t, couldn’t.

So, he stayed in his formal pose, her arm resting lightly on his until the elevator doors opened with a discrete chime. He led her to the suite, but fumbled with the key card putting it in upside down, then backwards until he finally got it right, and the green button lit. Inside, the place was vast, full of spindly chairs, draped with heavy curtains, and decorated with vases of tropical flowers so lush they put Brian’s roses to shame. The king-sized bed must be behind the ornate paneled door to the right.

“Oh, Howdy, this is—this is so unlike you.” Cassie moved to the swagged draperies and opened them. They looked down upon low-slung New Orleans, a city built for the most part on unstable swampland and so it spread out, not up. A cruise ship ablaze with lights moved down the Mississippi headed toward Cozumel or Cancun.

“You mean I’m kinda rustic. That’s what Brian says about my place.”

“I wouldn’t know. You’ve never taken me there. We always seem to meet at Brian’s condo or you pick me up.”

“Guess I didn’t want you to feel pressured by being alone with me—or to make fun of my cactus.”

“Your cactus? Is that a euphemism for…?”

“No. I have a cactus, a really big one, a saguaro that hardly ever needs watering, the perfect plant for a man on the road a lot the decorator said.”

“I’d like to see it sometime soon.”

A brisk knock announced the arrival of the champagne in a silver bucket on a linen-bedecked trolley. Howdy tipped the server and said he’d open the bottle himself to get rid of the guy as soon as possible. He didn’t do too badly peeling back the foil and getting prying off the wire. He worked the cork out slowly with his thumbs, though one was sort of sore, and released it with a jovial pop and no spillage.

“Nicely done, no waste,” Cassie remarked, holding out her flute. “I thought you only drank beer.”

“And wine with Brian. He taught me the correct way to open champagne. It shouldn’t spray all over the place if you go at it easy. That’s how I do most things.”

“Really, you have to show me.” Her brows, almost the same shade as her hair but darkened a little, arched.

“I will as soon as we drink some of this.” Howdy poured, chugged his first glass, and suppressed a burp.

Cassie sipped hers. “Brian didn’t tell you how to drink it though. Take your time. We have all night.” She turned down the lights and returned to her seat on one of the spindly chairs across a tiny, bandy-legged table from Howdy.

They sat watching the glimmers on the river and slowly finished most of the bottle before Howdy stood, moved behind her, raised that red-gold hair, and kissed her neck. He felt light in the head and light in his heart. He moved his kisses down the curve of her spine to her waist and worked his hands under the bodice of her dress where he encountered something very rubbery.

“Ah, what’s this?”

“That’s what’s holding my breasts up. Say, why don’t I see if they have a spa robe in the bathroom? Bet they do.”

“Sure.” He watched her move off to the lavatory for the sheer pleasure of it. “Ply with champagne, be gentle, go slow,” he repeated to himself. He was forgetting something.

“Durn it!” The words came out louder than he intended.

Showing only her head, Cassie peeked out of the bathroom. “Something wrong? Does your hand hurt? Put some ice on it.”

“I forgot to bring some protection. I mean I didn’t think we’d end up here.” For gosh sakes, he bet Joe never forgot condoms in his heyday. “I have to go out.”

“In my handbag.” She closed the door again.

Howdy upended the small, bulging purse. Two lipsticks, a comb, tissues, a twenty-dollar bill, a driver’s license, a credit card, and quarter of a brick fell out with two condoms wrapped in foil stuck to its bottom.

“You know you got a brick in here?”

“Sure.” Cassie emerged swathed in fluffy white terry and nothing else as far as he could tell. “I took this self-defense course. You know a purse or a high heel can be a weapon. Look how well it worked tonight. As for the condoms, Nell told me always to be prepared when I left for college.”

“Remind me to thank Nell next time I see her.”

“You want to change, too? There’s another robe in there and the most gorgeous bathtub I’ve ever seen.”

“Later, I think.” No way a terry robe would hide the hard-on he had right now.

“Should we go into the bedroom?”

She led the way. He scooped up the two condoms and followed her like a hound dog on a scent. She turned on the bedside lamp that gave a pink glow to the room, turned, and dropped the robe. “Well, what do you think?”

He had that goofy ear-to-ear Howdy grin on his face. Suddenly unsure, she glanced down at her body. “Are you laughing at my freckles?” They did spangle her everywhere not covered by makeup.

“Nope. My grandma didn’t care for most of the children’s shows on television. She gave me Biblical dot-to-dots to do instead. I’m real good at connecting dot-to-dots.” He moved forward and ran a slightly swollen index finger from one freckle to another across her breasts.

“My tummy, then? It’s not a flat as it should be because of having Tommy.”

“I like the way it curves a little.” He ran his hand down its slope and wrapped a curl of that red pubic hair around his pinky. She had a bikini wax but not one of those bizarre jobs he’d seen on some of the groupies only too eager to show him.

“So why are you smiling like that?”

“Because you’re beautiful, and you’re mine.”

Cassie flinched. She closed her eyes and remembered her first time with a man, with Bijou and with no others since that foul man made her his. He’d sung that old song to her their first time together.
You’re sixteen, you’re beautiful and you’re mine.
She realized now how sordid it had been, a man in his mid-thirties, scarred from bull riding, the moonlight glinting off his gold tooth, mounting her on a sleeping bag in his parents’ old, deserted house. He’d said the flattering words that a skinny, freckled girl with carroty-colored hair wanted to hear. She’d survived cancer same as Nell and doubted she would ever be attractive, ever be able to have children. She certainly proved that last worry wrong. Bijou hadn’t been rough, only insistent that they were meant to be together in this way because that’s what people in love did. She believed him.

Bijou stroked her breasts and down between her legs. After the first few times, she’d come to enjoy his handling, but it got rougher as time passed. He didn’t want the baby, had tried to get her to abort him, and sometimes, the way he pounded against her, she thought he was trying to make her lose the child. Then, he’d traded her services to pay his gambling debts. Thank God, none of those men wanted a pregnant teenager. One had even given her money for a bus ticket home.

“Cassie, am I doing something wrong?”

She opened her eyes. The vision of the gold tooth vanished, replaced by Howdy’s slowly diminishing smile. They stood in a luxury hotel room, not some third-rate motel, the best Bijou ever got for her when they weren’t sleeping in the truck. The young man who had stepped back a pace was as decent as they came. She wanted to bring back his goofy grin. Cassie stepped forward and crushed her lips against his. She fumbled with his shirt buttons and the aggravating buttons of his fly eager to make him smile again.

“Easy, Cass, easy. You like country-western music?”

“Huh? Not so much. I heard a lot of it when I was barrel-racing on the rodeo circuit.”

He stilled her frantic hands. “Do you recall a song about a wanting a man with slow hands. Cassie, I’m that man. I take my time. I’m not all flash and dash like Joe, so get used to it.”

“I think I can.”

“Good.” He lifted her onto the bed and gently spread her limbs, opening her to him, and worked her from the lips down and then from the bottom up, connecting all the dots, leaving none of them out.

* * * *

The cell phone placed on the elegant night table by her ear blasted
When the Saints Come Marchin’ In
. Cassie rolled over, checked the number. Mom. She cleared her throat and rubbed the sleepiness from her eyes before answering. “Hi, Mom. I’m fine, couldn’t be better. Don’t ask where or why. I am over twenty-one and entitled to stay out all night if I want. Yes, I had the brick and the condoms in my purse and got to use both. Am I trying to shock you? Yes. I’ll be home in a little while. No, I won’t be back in time for the eleven o’clock Mass. Yes, I’ll go to confession this week. Stop worrying. Later, okay?”

Howdy, ready to go again, pressed up against her freckled backside and splayed his hands over the soft warmth of her breasts. He nuzzled her red hair aside and kissed her nape. She responded with a contented sigh and a quelling comment.

“Hey, it’s ten a.m. We need to vacate the room at eleven. Besides, my mother is on my back.”

“No, I am.” He gave her a small nudge with his erection. “So, there is at least one good thing about having no family, a lack of interruptions.” His cell phone rang, merrily spewing out the song,
Oklahoma!

“A show tune. Really. If it weren’t for last night, I’d still think you were gay.”

“Brian’s idea of a joke. He programmed it for me. And speaking of the devil… Hi, Bri. Yes, I’m with Cassie. No, not at my place so don’t invite yourself upstairs. Yes, uh, yes and yes. How about you? Good. Look we need to check out of this place soon. None of your business. Yeah, see ya.”

“Brian says hi. He hooked up with the bartender and is mighty mellow this morning.”

“I could say the same about me. You know I have to go back to LSU tonight. My friends won’t believe what I did on
my
spring vacation.”

“Fleeing from Mexican banditos or sleeping with me?”

“Both are pretty spectacular. I’d say you scored two out of three field goals last night.”

“Would have done better, but we only had the two condoms. I could kick my own rear for not bringing my own, but I didn’t think…”

“I thought maybe and came prepared. I’ve been fighting off your cowboy charms for a while, but after that John Wayne act dragging me down into the arroyo and setting me straight in the van on the way home, I think you might be able to handle me.”

“All I want?” He stroked her breasts and moved his hands southward.

“In the shower. I can take care of your early morning urges with my nice, soapy hands since we’re out of protection. I don’t know where you suddenly got attitude, but I like it.”

“John Wayne,
The Quiet Man
. Grandma didn’t approve of many recent movies, but she’d watch any John Wayne flick over and over. Have you seen it?”

“I don’t think so.”

“In this one scene Wayne, an American, drags his Irish wife off a train and marches her five miles back to their home when she tries to leave him. Very inspirational for a guy like me.”

“I’ll get the DVD to see how it turns out.”

“They get married and stay married.”

She tensed under his hands. “Too soon, Howdy, too soon to mention those words even in a movie context. Let’s enjoy the moment in the shower and then go over to your place. You can show me your great big cactus. If I have to go to confession, I might as well make it a spectacular one.”

Bumping her hips playfully against him for a second, she slid from the bed and sashayed into the first class bathroom. He followed the sway of her hips all the way to shower stall. Incredible what two people could do with some imagination, a bar of soap, and spray jets when they’d run out of condoms.

Afterward, Cassie dried her hair with a wonderfully powerful hotel dryer while Howdy put on his wrinkled blue shirt and jeans and settled his gray Stetson into place for their march of shame in the same clothes worn last evening through the ritzy lobby. No one took the tiniest notice. This was, after all, New Orleans, a city of sin long, long before Las Vegas rose like a giant phallus out of the dry desert sands. Howdy squared the bill at the desk and turned in the key cards.

“Beignets?” he suggested. “We can walk to the Café du Monde from here and still beat the church crowd from St. Louis Cathedral. Beignets are one of my favorite things about this city.”

“Mine, too. Let’s go.”

“Say, I’ll drive you back to Baton Rouge tonight. I know you have classes and all, but maybe we could get together next weekend.”

Her peach-colored lips turned up at his uncertainty. “I’d like that.”

“After finals, well, I want to take you to see my ranch in Oklahoma before I have to leave for training camp. It sits right near the Texas border and has its own spring that forms a little lake. We could swim and ride and do other things. The house isn’t much, not like Lor—” No, he didn’t want to mention anything having to do with Joe or her exile from the place where Tommy lived and ruin this day.

Whether she caught what he’d almost said or not, he didn’t know. He only heard her answer. “Sounds great. Let’s plan on it.”

Cassie’s hair flamed under the sweltering morning sun, mid-April and already eighty degrees. Her golden dress glittered and drew the eyes of men as they moved through the French Quarter. Howdy kept a hold of her elbow, partly to steady her heels on the cracked sidewalks and partly to show possession, complete possession, of the beautiful creature he’d finally gotten into his bed—thanks to an assist from John Wayne. He didn’t hesitate to kiss the powdered sugar from her lips right there at an outside table with all the tourists watching and the cameras clicking. Because he was no Joe Dean Billodeaux, the paparazzi never followed him, but today he’d made the final score and won the game for sure.