'What did you do that for?' she shouted, treading water.
'What'd I do?' The surfboard rocked and bucked him off. Immediately he began trying to master it again, giving it all his attention.
'You kissed me, Gentry, and you know it!'
'You call that a kiss? Hell, that was barely a nibble. I've learned a little more than that since we were teenagers.'
'I'll just bet you have. And with how many different women?'
'I lost count years ago.'
'And you have no compunction about admitting it, do you?'
'None whatsoever, because you could become my last if you wanted to.'
He had one knee on the board, his backside pointing her way as he struggled to make it to his feet. With several deft strokes she swam up behind him, hollered, 'Not on your life, you
no-account Lothario!' and gaily tipped him over.
Instead of bobbing up, he caught her ankles and hauled her under. She grabbed enough air to survive, but felt as if her lungs would explode as they struggled. His teeth nibbled the arch of one foot and his chin tickled it while she writhed and fought, needing to laugh. Their antics stirred up a froth of bubbles in the silent blue depths until at last she coiled around and pinched his nipple hard. He released her and they shot to the surface like geysers, both of them gasping and laughing, hair slicked down and gleaming.
'Ouch, damn you!' he scolded, rubbing the wounded spot.
'Good enough for you! You nearly drowned me, pulling me under like that.'
'I just wanted to find out if you were still ticklish.'
'Now you know, so leave me alone,' she spouted in mock indignation, striking out for the ladder with him right behind her.
'In all the same old spots?' he teased as she lunged up onto the first rung, streaming water into his face. He caught her around the
waist and hauled her back down with an 173 enormous splash. Again they became a tangle of arms and legs and slithery skin as his hands snaked along her ribs and his arms circled her playfully. But in the midst of the skirmish they suddenly fell still, staring at each other with a gripping sense of rediscovery while the only sound was that of water lapping against the boat. One of Tommy Lee's hands held a ladder rung, the other arm circled her waist, and her hands quite naturally had fallen against his chest where the wet hair felt as elusive as mercury. Their eyes remained fixed upon each other, taking in gleaming skin, tangled hair, dripping faces, and rapt expressions. Their drifting thighs brushed. A drop of water slipped down Rachel's cheek and his eyes followed till it fell over her lip and the pink tip of her tongue curled up to sip it away. 'Oh, Rachel,' he breathed softly, spreading his palm wide and warm on her cool, sleek back, drawing her infinitesimally closer… closer…
But she pressed a palm to his chest and turned aside. 'Please,' she begged breathlessly, 'don't kiss me again, Tommy Lee.
Please.'
Beneath the water their limbs brushed again, washed by the current they'd stirred up. His thighs were silicon-sleek and distractingly inviting. His gaze covered her face and she knew it beseeched her for more than she'd come here to give. At the small of her back his hand caressed the bare skin, then slid up between her shoulderblades.
'Are you sure you mean that?'
'Be sensible, Tommy Lee.'
'I've never been sensible in forty-one years. Why should I start now?'
And though she, too, would have welcomed an excuse to toss sense aside for a brief time with him, she realized she had the power to wound him terribly. 'Listen, I came out here today because I was very lonely and I… I needed someone. But I never meant for this to happen. Honestly I didn't, Tommy Lee.'
His eyes traveled across her face, as if memorizing each feature. 'If you needed me, only to make you laugh for one afternoon, that's a start.'
A start of what? she wondered, but realized if she continued seeing him the answer would be understood.
Yet he had made her laugh, for the first 175 time in months. And in the end, he'd made her forget Owen and the cares that had besieged her for so long. And though his kiss had been startling, and not unwelcome, much of the excitement had been generated by nostalgia and by the fact that he was socially off limits to a woman like her.
'I'm starved,' he said, with an abrupt swing of mood and a crooked smile. 'What do you say to some catfish and hush puppies?'
'You still go wild for catfish and hush puppies?'
He grinned, squeezed her waist once, and answered in one of his favorite catchphrases from long ago, 'You betchum, Red Ryder.' And once again Rachel was laughing, charmed by the Tommy Lee she'd known so long ago. And, oh, he could be so charming. It was no wonder the ladies like him.
CHAPTER SIX
They went to Catfish Corner, a tin-roofed shanty out in the country at the intersection of two county roads off the Huntsville Highway. They took his car, and he drove it exactly the
way they all said he did-too fast, too carelessly, and always with that everlasting cigarette crooked through one finger. Yet Rachel felt safe with him.
At Catfish Corner the crowd was mostly black, friendly, and vocal. 'Hey, Tommy Lee!' someone shouted as soon as they entered the smoky, low-ceilinged room. 'Been wonderin' when we'd see y'all around these parts again. C'mon over, boy, and bring yer lady with ya!'
Tommy Lee waved at the gregarious black man whose backside was twice as wide as the red plastic seat of the bar stool, but he took Rachel's elbow and guided her to a table instead. 'If it's all the same to you, Eugene, I'm gonna keep my lady away from a sweet talker like you. No sense takin' chances.'
A chorus of laughter went up from the group at the bar, while Tommy Lee directed Rachel to a vintage kitchen set with chrome legs and gray-marbled plastic seats amid a group of others much like it. He pulled out her chair, then seated himself across from her. Beside the table a crude window tilted outward, hinged at the top and propped open with a stick of wood. The trees
pressed close to the building and insects 177 worried themselves against the screen. A potted candle in a red glass snifter sent flickering light up to join that from the neon beer signs around the bar and the weak splashes of color from bare gold bulbs overhead.
When they were seated, Tommy Lee grinned teasingly. 'Well, there's one thing you can't accuse me of, and that's trying to impress a lady with atmosphere. I brought you here because Big Sam fries the meanest catfish this side of the Mason-Dixon Line. And I don't know about you, but I worked up an appetite swimming.'
Rachel studied the handwritten menu to cover her disappointment with his choice of restaurant. 'Mmm… me, too.' But she felt she needn't put catfish in her mouth to taste it-the smell was everywhere, mixed with a strong odor of onions and grease.
'Rachel?'
She met his eyes and found him still grinning, one shoulder pitched lower than the other as he leaned back against the chair. 'Don't judge until you've eaten, okay?'
Before she could answer, a buxom woman
appeared, her breasts the size of cantaloupes, earrings the size of handcuffs. She laid her hand familiarly on Tommy Lee's shoulder. 'Well, I declare, if it isn't the most handsome honky to put foot in Catfish Corner since the last time he was here. What you mean by stayin' scarce all this time?' And she shamelessly leaned over and kissed Tommy Lee full on the lips.
Rachel watched, shocked, as his hand rested on her hip while her breasts brushed his chest. She checked to see if others were watching, but just then the man behind the rectangular window dividing the main room from the
