One More Knight

powder.

She lifted one shoulder, but except for that, held herself rigid and still. As if, he thought, part of her wanted him to stop touching her and the rest of her was afraid he might. She cleared her throat and said gruffly, “Just don’t want you to feel obligated.”

Obligated? He didn’t know whether to laugh or shake her. So what he did was tuck a knuckle under that belligerent chin of hers and lean over and kiss her. Just lightly, letting his mouth brush hers, like feathers over satin.

“Ol’ Bubba looks pretty comfortable to me,” he murmured as he drew away. “Maybe I better leave him be, if that’s okay with you.”

“Okay, sure.” Her breath flowed across his lips.

So he kissed her again, this time slow and sultry, pouring into her like warm molasses, savoring the sweetness of it. He hadn’t planned to take it any further than that-he swore he hadn’t, even though his belly was already curling and his body heating and tightening, stirring against the towel.

But he felt her arms relax and ease up on the bedspread she’d been clutching to her chest like a shrinking maiden, and it seemed a natural thing to slide his hand on down there and check the situation out And then her breast was filling his hand so perfectly, the nipple was hardening under his thumb’s circular stroking and her hand was a sliding warmth, creeping up his thigh. With all that, it didn’t really surprise him that the kiss should take on a life and rhythm of its own. Nor did it surprise him, when he finally ended the kiss, to find that he wasn’t wearing the towel anymore.

The only thing that did surprise him was when he pulled away from her. For the first time since he’d known Charly, he thought he saw fear in her eyes.

His heart stumbled and started again with a new and unfamiliar cadence. “I just want you to know,” he said, “if I stay…no obligation.” His voice, even his breathing, seemed bumpy and strange to him.

There was a pause-a long one. And then she slowly pulled her hand out of the tumbled folds of the bedspread and held it toward him, the fingers uncurling like flower petals to reveal the small foil packet in its palm.

“I found it,” she said in a hushed and stifled voice, “in your pocket. When I was looking for the room key.”

Again her eyes took on a whiskey glow. Troy, laughing low in his chest, leaned over to kiss her. It was easy, then, to convince himself that he’d imagined the fear.

Chapter 6

July 4/5, 1977

Dear Diary,

It’s almost morning. So much has happened, but I don’t want to write about it. I just can’t right now. Maybe tomorrow. Right now I can’t even see straight, let alone think.

Thought for the Day: If you ask me, thinking is highly overrated.

Troy woke up in a state he could only think of as confused well-being. He couldn’t figure out how he could have behaved so badly and feel so good about it.

Here he was in a sleazy Alabama motel room, listening to the shower running in the bathroom and a woman banging around in there and dropping things, a woman he barely knew but had driven all the way from Georgia yesterday to bail out of jail and wound up spending what was probably one of-if not the most- incredible nights he’d ever spent in the company of a woman in his life. If that wasn’t reprehensible conduct, he didn’t know what was.

He just wished he could stop grinning whenever he thought about it.

About then Bubba, who’d been sitting at attention over by the door, happened to notice he was awake and came ambling over to give him a good-morning lick. And since Bubba hadn’t exactly been raised to be a house dog, Troy figured the first order of the day was going to be to take him out for a walk.

He was pulling on his pants when he heard the water shut off, and a moment later the bathroom door opened and there stood Charly with a little bitty towel knotted around her waist. She was holding another towel across her breasts and squeezing water from the ends of her hair with the end of it. Water droplets spangled her shoulders and arms and the fronts of her thighs. He hadn’t really had a chance to notice last night, but now he saw that her legs were long and looked as if she either walked a lot or worked out regularly. It was a sight to put a hitch in his breathing.

“Oh, good,” she snapped, “you’re up. I was startin’ to worry about that dog of yours. I was going to take him for a walk myself, but I thought the shock of seeing a naked woman running down the road with a bear on a leash might be too much for this town to handle.” Her voice was scratchy and sardonic. He found it stimulating as burlap on his auditory nerves.

He walked toward her, grinning and thinking about how good it was going to feel to kiss her, all fresh and wet from the shower. But the look she gave him made him change his mind about that. He could read all sorts of things in her eyes, most of which added up to one thing: the Charly Phelps who had woken up in his bed this morning was prepared to deny any and all knowledge of the wanton stranger who’d taken over her body last night. Which didn’t really surprise him. If he’d given it much thought, he probably would have expected it.

She dipped her head toward his bag, which was sitting on the dresser. “I don’t suppose you might have something in there that I could put on?”

He scooped up the bag, opened it and held it out to her. “Help yourself. How ’bout boxers and a T-shirt?”

“It’s a start.” She peered warily into the bag as if she thought it might have an unpleasant surprise hidden in it, then took it from him and backed up into the bathroom and shut the door.

Troy stood there and looked at the place where she’d been for a minute or two, then huffed out a breath. “Well, okay. You’re welcome, darlin’.” He pivoted, clapped his hands and said briskly, “Hey, ol’ Bubba, whaddaya say you and me go take us a little walk?”

Okay, he wasn’t surprised. But he couldn’t help feeling a little disappointed.

In the bathroom Charly propped Troy’s overnight bag on the sink and peered over it at the faceless blur in the steamed-up mirror. She reached toward the glass with the towel she’d been holding across her breasts…then slowly withdrew her hand without wiping away the fog. The prospect of looking herself in the eye didn’t hold much appeal this morning.

Selfish… irresponsible. She heard the words again, in her father’s cold, unfeeling voice, along with another word she’d last heard more than twenty years ago. Shameless

It was true. She was all of those things, and more.

A cold, hard knot took shape in her chest, and a cold, hard voice whispered in her ear things she’d tried for twenty years not to hear. Selfish, irresponsible…shameless. You don’t deserve…

A pair of eyes took shape in the mirror’s foggy blur-not her own ambiguous hazel, but darker ones, blue, with heavy lashes and laugh creases-kind, compassionate eyes. Nice eyes. Beautiful eyes. Troy’s eyes. When they’d looked into hers, she hadn’t felt shameless, or selfish, or undeserving. She’d felt beautiful, sexy, desired.

And I used him.

She closed her eyes on the vision and rocked herself slowly, dizzy with shame and remorse. It was true. Like some use drugs or alcohol, she’d used Troy, as something to dull her own pain, to help her forget, to get her through the night. Jack Daniel’s would have been a better choice-at least she’d only have a hangover to worry about this morning. But-oh. God, this was a person. A human being, and a pretty decent one, as far as she could tell. What was she going to do about him now? How was she ever going to get them back onto a casual footing?