His groin ached as he noticed that her underpants matched her bra. The panties, however, had only one heart on them, a large pink one right at the center that wasn’t quite big enough to hide the wisps of curly hair peeking around the sides. He experienced a perverse desire to strip them off her right here in the living room of his mother’s house, right here with Sparky looking on. He wanted to open those legs and see if she was as dried up as she claimed. And if she was, he wanted to use every trick he’d learned to make her sweet and wet and ready for him.
He actually found himself toying with the idea. Investing a couple of hours under the sheets with Miss Gracie wouldn’t kill him. It would almost be a humanitarian gesture. Then reality asserted itself. The last thing he needed in his life right now was another woman. He’d been trying to get rid of them, not add a new one to the menagerie. Besides, even though he had almost twenty years of sexual experience, none of it was with an almost middle-aged old maid who’d probably have a stroke if she saw a man naked, no matter how much she might think she wanted to taste the forbidden fruit.
He wasn’t heartless, however, and the misery on her face got to him. He walked over to take her in his arms. She gave a long, heartrending sigh and molded her body to his as if the two of them had been heat-fused.
Something went off inside him that felt like a Fourth of July rocket. She smelled sweet and old-fashioned, like lavender and lilacs. Her ugly hair was soft under his chin, the smooth skin of her back turned into silk beneath his fingers. He let his hands slide down along her spine to her waist and then lower still. He was surprised at how small she felt against him. Because of her bossy nature, she seemed like a much larger woman.
Her arms crept around his neck. “Are we going to have sex now?”
Despite his throbbing groin, he was amused to note that she sounded nearly as apprehensive as she did eager. His fingertips touched the top edge of her underpants and slipped inside. He caught her bare bottom in the palms of. his hands and pulled her tight against him, vaguely ashamed of the fact that he was copping a cheap feel from a maiden lady too drunk to defend herself. On the other hand, it had been a long time for him, and his reaction was understandable.
“Not yet, sweetheart.”
“Oh. Could we kiss?”
“I s’pose we could do that.” He looked down into her tear-smeared face. She had a nice mouth, wide and generous, with a Cupid’s bow perched right in the middle of her top lip. Bending his head, he covered it with his own.
She kissed like a teenager on her first date, and the innocence of it both excited and annoyed him. It wasn’t right that a thirty-year-old woman didn’t have any more experience with men than this. He started using his tongue on her, just a little bit, to get her used to the idea.
She was a quick learner, and it didn’t take long at all for her lips to part. With a soft sigh, she let him in.
She tasted like fruit and tears. He stroked her with his tongue, while his hands continued to enjoy the sheer pleasure of caressing female hips that weren’t as muscular as his own. As he enjoyed her small, soft body, he forgot about her bossy nature and aggravating ways. She made him remember exactly how many years has passed since he’d been with a virgin.
He heard little moans against his mouth, and her tongue took off on an adventure of its own. His body reacted violently. Drawing his hands out of her panties, he lifted her by the backs of her thighs. She splayed them automatically and wrapped them around his hips. As she gripped his shoulders, he realized he’d started to sweat. If he didn’t stop right now, he was going to forget who she was and take her right here on the floor of his mother’s living room. A room, he reminded himself, with a set of unlocked doors and the portrait of an innocent child looking on.
“Gracie . . .” He eased her legs from around his hips to set her back down, then reached up to unlock her arms.
“Sweetheart, we’re going to have to slow down a little here.”
“I don’t want to. I want you to show me what happens next.”
“I can see that. But the fact is, you’re not ready for anything more than kisses right now.” He set her firmly away from him and bent over to pick up her clothes, adjusting himself when his back was turned because he didn’t want to shock her to death.
He coaxed her into her clothes not a moment too soon because he’d just fastened her skirt when the doors slid open and his mother came in.
“How’s she doing?”
Before he could reply, Gracie gave a loud, offended sniff “Your son is no gentleman. He refused to have sex with me.”
Suzy patted his arm, her eyes dancing with amusement. “Words to warm a mother’s heart.”
Bobby Tom had definitely been around females long enough for one night. He turned to Gracie. “Now listen to me, sweetheart. You’re going to sleep here tonight, and I don’t want you to worry about a thing. Willow will be coming around to see you first thing tomorrow morning.”
Once again, Gracie peered past him to Suzy. “You don’t happen to have any dirty movies in the house, do you?”
Suzy shot her son a disapproving look, then linked Gracie’s arm with her own. “The two of us are going to take a little walk upstairs now.”
To his relief, Gracie went along without protest.
He followed them into the hallway and retrieved his hat from the rack. As they began to mount the stairs, he looked up at his mother. “Just how many of those wine coolers did she drink?”
“She had three,” Suzy replied.
Three! Bobby Tom couldn’t believe it. After only three drinks, she’d stripped off her clothes and demanded that he have sex with her.
“Mom?” He shoved on his hat.
“Yes, dear.”
“Whatever you do, don’t let her anywhere near a six-pack.”
Aspirin burned in Gracie’s belly and the late-morning sun knifed her eyeballs as she let herself out the sliding door that led to Suzy Denton’s patio. Bougainvillea grew along the back of the house and honeysuckle trailed over a rustic fence on one side of the yard, which was shaded by an old pecan and several magnolias. A colorful annual garden in a sunny spot held frilly pink and white petunias, geraniums, daisies, and periwinkles. A sprinkler hissed near some low shrubbery, and everything smelled clean and fresh from its morning watering.
Her hostess, wearing khaki shorts and a brightly colored T-shirt with a parrot on the front, knelt on the ground be-fore a small herb garden. She looked up and smiled. “Did Miss Craig leave?”
Gracie nodded and immediately regretted making such a drastic movement with her head. She winced, then walked slowly to the end of the patio where Suzy was working.
“Willow wants to hire me back.” She gingerly lowered herself to sit on the top step.
“Oh?”
“But not as a production assistant. As Bobby Tom’s assistant.”
“Oh.”
“I told her I’d think about it.” Gracie tucked the skirt of her sadly crumpled navy suit around her legs, all she had to wear since her suitcase was still tucked away in the trunk of the Thunderbird. She swallowed hard. “Suzy, I can’t tell you how sorry I am about last night. After all you’ve done for me, I abused your hospitality and embarrassed you in your own home. My behavior was reprehensible, the most reprehensible thing I’ve ever done in my life.”
Suzy smiled. “You really have been sheltered, haven’t you?”
“That’s no excuse.”
“You had a bad shock yesterday,” Suzy said kindly. “Any woman would have been upset.”
“I threw myself at him.”
“He’s used to it, dear. I’m certain he’s already forgotten about it.”
Gracie’s pride bristled at the idea that she was simply another in the long line of women who’d embarrassed themselves over Bobby Tom, but she couldn’t deny the truth. “Has he always had such a strong effect on women?”
“He’s had a strong effect on almost everybody.” Suzy withdrew a spading fork from the gree
n plastic garden caddy next to her knees and began to loosen the soil around the edge of her herb garden. “In a lot of ways, life has come easily to Bobby Tom. From childhood on, he was the best athlete, and he’s always been an excellent student.”
Gracie inwardly winced, remembering her offer to help him learn to read. Suzy crushed a sprig of lavender in her fingers and brought it to her nose to breathe in the scent. Grade assumed she wasn’t going to say any more and was surprised when she brushed off her hands and went on.
“He was popular with the other children. Boys liked him because he didn’t try to bully them. And even in elementary school, the girls made excuses to come to the house. He hated it, of course, especially in fourth grade, when they really made his life miserable. They’d send him love notes and follow him around on the playground. The other boys teased him unmercifully.”
Her hands grew still on the spading fork, and she spoke in a slow, measured manner, as if she were having difficulty choosing her words. “One day Terry Jo Driscoll—she’s Terry Jo Baines, now—chalked a big red heart in the driveway with ‘Bobby Tom loves Terry Jo’ written next to it. She was drawing flowers all around it just as he was coming up the sidewalk with three of his friends. When Bobby Tom saw what she was doing, he flew right across the front yard and tackled her.”
Gracie didn’t know much about nine-year-old boys, but she could imagine how embarrassing that must have been for him.
Suzy renewed her attack on a clump of weeds growing near the basil plants. “If the other boys hadn’t been watching that would probably have been the end of it. But by this time they’d seen what she’d written and all of them were laughing. She started laughing, too, and telling them that Bobby Tom wanted to kiss her. He lost his temper and punched her in the arm.”
“I suppose that’s an understandable reaction for a nine-year-old.”
“Not as far as his father was concerned. Hoyt heard the commotion and reached the front door just in time to see Bobby Tom hit her. He took off outside like a rocket, hauled Bobby Tom up by the scruff of his neck, and walloped him right there in front of all his friends. Bobby Tom was humiliated; his friends were embarrassed. It was the only time Hoyt every spanked him, but my husband didn’t believe a man could sink any lower than hitting a woman, and he refused to make allowances for the fact that his son was only nine at the time.”
She leaned back on her heels, looking troubled. “Bobby Tom and his father were very close, and he never forgot that lesson. This might sound foolish, but sometimes I think he learned it too well.”
“What do you mean?”
“You have no idea how many women have thrown themselves at him over the years. But even so, I’ve never heard him be impolite to a single one of them. Not to any of the football groupies, the married women, the parasites, the gold diggers. As far as I know, he’s managed to keep his distance without ever uttering an impolite word. Doesn’t that seem strange to you?”
“He’s developed a lot more sophisticated strategies than simple rudeness for getting around women.” Gracie wondered if Suzy knew about the football quiz.
“Exactly. And it’s become so automatic over the years that I’m not sure he realizes how thick the barrier he’s built around himself has grown.”
Gracie thought about that. “He’s incredible. He smiles at women, flatters them outrageously, tells them exactly what they want to hear. He makes every one of them feel like a queen. Then he does exactly what he wants.”
Suzy nodded, her expression unhappy. “Now I think Hoyt would have been smarter to have looked the other way when Bobby Tom socked Terry Jo. At least it was a straightforward statement of his feelings, and he was never a cruel child, so he wouldn’t have made a habit of it. Goodness knows, Terry Jo recovered. She was his first serious girlfriend.” Her mouth tightened in a grim smile. “The irony is that when I mentioned the incident to him not long ago, he said that his father did exactly the right thing. He doesn’t seem to have any idea what it might have cost him.”
Gracie wasn’t certain it had cost him anything. Bobby Tom possessed an abundance of charm, talent, good looks, and intelligence. Was it any wonder he’d grown an ego to match? He didn’t believe there was a female on the planet who was good enough for him. Certainly not a thirty-year-old from New Grundy, Ohio, with small breasts and bad hair.
Suzy slipped the spading fork back into the green plastic caddy and stood. For a moment she gazed around at the pleasant garden. The scent of basil, lavender, and freshly turned earth filled the air. “I love working out here. It’s the only place where I feel peaceful.” She looked embarrassed, as if she’d just made a deeply personal statement and wished she hadn’t.
“I know it’s not any of my business, Gracie, but I don’t think you should let what happened stand in the way of taking this job.” She picked up her garden caddy. “You told me you didn’t want to go back to Ohio, and you don’t have another offer. Bobby Tom’s used to women losing their heads over him; I’m certain last night held a lot more significance for you than it did for him.” With a reassuring smile, Suzy disappeared inside.
Gracie knew Suzy was trying to comfort her, but the words hurt, especially because she knew they were true. She meant nothing to Bobby Tom, while he meant everything to her. She had lost her head over him, and even more shattering, she was very much afraid she had lost her heart.
She squeezed her eyes shut against the knowledge that she didn’t want to face, but it was no use. She never lied to herself, and she couldn’t do it now. Wrapping her arms around her knees, she faced the fact that, in the past week, she had fallen in love with Bobby Tom Denton. She had fallen deeply and hopelessly in love with a man who was so far beyond her reach it would have been comical if it weren’t so very sad. Those deadly wine coolers had merely brought out the truth of what had taken place inside her the moment she had set eyes on him.
She ached for him. He was wild and reckless, larger than life, everything she couldn’t be herself, and she loved him with all the passion that had lain fallow inside her for so many years. Like a molting bird beguiled by a sleek and powerful swan, she was compelled by his physical beauty. At the same time, his self-confidence and his effortless charm made her feel giddy and young again.
She felt as if she’d lived a lifetime in these past six days, and, drawing her knees closer to her chest, she forced herself to face the harsh truth. Her dreams of a glamorous career in Hollywood were just that, impractical dreams spun out of desperation, as far removed from the reality of her life as outer space. She had been playing a game with herself, one she could no longer afford, and now she confronted the painful reality that no magical life existed for her in Hollywood. This silly job with Windmill wasn’t going to lead to an exciting career. That had been a fantasy. Instead, when this was over, she would go back to New Grundy and back to the nursing home. It was where she belonged.
Admitting the truth brought her a queer sense of peace. It wasn’t the nursing home that had been wrong with her life, she now realized; it had been her life that was wrong with her life. She’d loved running the nursing home, but she’d used her job to isolate herself from people her own age because she’d always felt like such an oddity. She’d hidden out in the nursing home, made it her entire life instead of merely her career.
As the peaceful scents of the garden stole over her, she felt a peculiar excitement. She was only thirty years old, still young enough to make changes. But not in the way she’d imagined. Not by running away. Instead, she was going to begin to live every moment of her life without fear. She would stop trying to protect herself from being laughed at or rejected—those things wouldn’t kill her—and she was going to begin by letting herself love Bobby Tom with every fiber of her being.
Her heart began to race. Did she have the courage? When this was over, she would have to go back to the nursing home—she forced herself to accept that. But in the meantime . . . Did she have the guts to throw herself off the top of a mountain knowin
g that the landing might very well kill her? Did she have the nerve to grasp this unbearably short period of time when she would be with him and live every precious second of it?
A rush of exhilaration exploded inside her as she made up her mind. She was going to take the job as his personal assistant and savor every moment of the time she spent with this star-kissed man her heart had chosen so unwisely to love. She would file away every look he gave her, every smile, every gesture. She would abandon caution and give herself to him, as much of her as be would accept. Maybe he would make love to her. Probably not. But either way, she was going to give herself to him without condition, knowing that when it was over, the best she could hope for was a treasure house of memories.
She made promises to herself. This fierce love she felt for him wouldn’t keep her from seeing him clearly, the good and the bad, his monstrous ego and too soft heart, his keen intelligence and dangerously manipulative charm. Her love wouldn’t let her compromise her principles either. She only knew how to be herself, and even though that wouldn’t be enough for him, it was all she had.
She closed her eyes and saw him in her mind, a cosmic cowboy with his big Stetson and killer grin, a man who scattered stardust when he walked. That stardust had fallen on her, giving new life to her parched body and waking up her shriveled heart.