D aytona was a modest golf, tennis and racket-ball club nestled in the hills near a tiny village named Dayton, a scant half-hour ride west of Osseo. Old Highway 52 that led to it was once a major westbound thoroughfare, but since the interstate had been built, it lazed in somnolence, its signs disappearing, its shoulders clothed in woods and grassland, dotted with cows and corncribs.
The afternoon sun lighted the hills to fresh spring green and reflected from the shimmering road surface. The air was fragrant. It was lilac time. Apple trees and wild plums were at their peak of blossom. The fragrant warmth of the spring day rejuvenated Win's spirit. Bouncing along beside Joseph on the ancient cracked seat of an old pickup truck, she was loath to bring up the subject that had so disturbed her earlier in the day. It was too pleasant, too peaceful riding with Joseph, listening to some old Jim Reeves song-it seemed he was always surrounded by vintage of one sort or another-with the wind blowing in the lowered window, gently lifting the hair on her arm.
Winn sunk low, wedged a knee against the glove-compartment door and let her eyes sink closed. Joseph glanced at her lazy pose but said nothing. She had not brought up whatever it was she wanted to talk about, and that was fine with him. She looked sensational in the mint green jogging suit she'd produced when they detoured to her house. She was slumped low with her nape catching the top of the seat, hair loose and messed, and the breeze from the open window occasionally billowing it. As he studied her, a spirited gust caught a strand and whipped it across her lips. Without opening her eyes she hooked it with the crook of a little finger and pulled it aside. Immediately it blew back and she spit it out, then threaded it behind her ear.
Her eyes opened, and she indolently turned her head to find he'd been watching her. He smiled. She smiled back. Neither spoke as he drove on as before, with a wrist hooked languidly over the wheel, softly whistling 'Four Walls' between his teeth.
At that moment Winn discovered something very wonderful: she could comfortably share silence with Joseph Duggan. There were at least a dozen men she knew, including Paul, who'd be chattering away a mile a minute. How pleasing it was to be with one today who was content to smile and whistle softly between his teeth, and let the true mellow voice of Jim Reeves do all the speaking.
Jo-Jo wondered what it was that was bothering her but decided not to probe. She'd get around to it whenever she was good and ready. In the meantime he was doing what he'd wondered if he'd ever have the chance to do again, what had kept him from readily falling asleep many nights since the wedding: he was simply being with her.
They passed Diamond Lake and soon turned the clattery old Chevrolet between two giant boulders, then rolled up the long gravel approach to the clubhouse that sat at the top of a hill. The golf links were verdant. Into the window came the smell of newly cut grass and fresh-turned loam from adjacent farms. On the club land itself were the ancient barn and farmhouse of those who'd owned the land previously.
When Jo-Jo and Winn stepped from the truck and slammed their doors, something fell off underneath it.
'Oops,' he said with a slanting grin. 'This old heap isn't in quite as good a shape as the Haynes.'
'I wasn't going to ask where the Haynes was.' Winn came around the truck to find him on one knee, bracing his palms on the gravel and peering underneath the truck's belly.
'This is my everydayer. New cars really don't do it for me. I like the old ones.' He reached beneath the truck and withdrew a piece of tail pipe. 'They've got character.'
As he straightened, he was still grinning. She smiled down at the rusted hunk of metal in his hand. 'This one's character is a little loose, wouldn't you say?'
He tossed the piece onto the bed of the truck, clapped a rounded rear fender as if it were the flank of a horse, brushed off his palms and took her elbow. 'I love her just the same.'
But he was looking into Win's eyes as he made the comment, and because his crinkle-eyed smile made her so very, very happy, and because his intentional double meaning made her far too giddy, she turned her eyes to the clubhouse as they approached.
Inside they passed a dining room with a field-rock fireplace in its center, and the bar where he'd brought Sandy when the groomsmen had stolen her. After Joseph signed them in at the desk, they parted to go to the locker rooms and check their tote bags.
He was waiting in the hall outside court number two, leaning back with one rubber sole against the wall, repeatedly flipping and catching a can of balls. As she walked toward him, he turned, and the can stopped doing cartwheels. He seemed to have forgotten he held it. His eyes made a quick scan of her length, and he slowly drew his hips away from the wall and smiled.
When she stood close before him, he grinned and said, 'Wow' in a soft way that made her blush.
She had a healthy curiosity about his bared limbs, too, but felt it prudent to refrain from ogling. Once inside the racket-ball court, however, with the door closed behind them, there was ample opportunity for more than surreptitious glances without being detected. Assessing each other was almost unavoidable.
The court was a brightly lighted cell with a twenty-foot ceiling, poured-concrete walls, and a twenty-by-forty- foot hardwood floor. It was stark, bare and echoing. Every sound within it became amplified. As Joseph idly bounced the ball, it gave off an audible ping while expanding to its original shape. When he spoke, his voice seemed to reverberate from the walls.
'A little warm-up first?' He tugged on a short white leather glove.
'Yes. I haven't played for a good four weeks. I'll need it.'
They looped cord handles around their wrists, spun them to take up the slack and gripped their rackets.
'Why four weeks?' he asked, bouncing a royal blue ball with his racket.
'Nobody to play with lately.'
'How about Silicon Chip?'
'He's done it occasionally to please me. But I told you, he doesn't much care for sweat.'
Joseph snatched the ball from the air, studied her expressionlessly for a moment, then turned away to face the front wall. Across the center of the court ran two parallel red lines five feet apart: the serving area. They stood just behind it as Joseph sent the ball bouncing off the front wall, giving her a direct easy return. Between them they made a total of eleven good returns before Winn missed.
She retrieved the ball and bounced it to him. As he nonchalantly juggled it above his head, bouncing it off the racket, he said, 'You're pretty good, huh?'
'Good enough,' she replied honestly. 'But I haven't played against many men. You guys usually have the edge on power.'
He turned away to the front again. 'We'll see.'
This time he gave her a more difficult serve, angling it so she had to cross behind him to return it from near the back wall. He didn't have time to turn around and watch her form before the ball sailed over his head and against the right sidewall. Then they concentrated on a volley of shots that lasted longer than the first. This time he missed.
She flicked the rolling ball up with the tip of her racket and gave him an impertinent grin. 'You're pretty good, huh?'
'Damn right. And I don't give no quarter to no woman.' His brown eyes danced mischievously.
'That's the way I like it.'
'Volley?' he suggested.
'You're on.'
She won the right to first serve, and as she walked to the red lines, his eyes skimmed down her lanky legs. With each step the muscles hardened and squared, but when she stood at ease, her limbs were shapely and feminine. She wore mint green athletic-style shorts trimmed with white cord around the notched legs. Her tank top was white and showed him the true spareness of the flesh across her ribs, for he'd never seen her in anything conforming before. Her tennis shoes were white with sturdy wedged soles, and as his eyes traveled down to them, he admired the shadows where her ankle tendons dove down into the shoes behind tiny white tassels.
Her first serve came whizzing off to his left, and he missed it completely. As a matter of fact, he moved a full second too late: he'd been engrossed with her shapely ankles.
She turned with a hand on her hip. 'Hey, you awake back there?'
'Yeah. Yeah… give me another one.'
She took three points before he executed a faultless roll-out shot, where the ball hit both floor and front wall at once, then rolled toward them as docilely as if a baby had pushed it with his chubby hands.
Winn swiveled to face Jo-Jo, raised one eyebrow and cooed,
