Chapter 9
September 3, 1977
Dear Diary,
School starts tomorrow-oh, joy. I can’t believe summer vacation is over already. So much has happened-which of course you know about. I still can’t believe I’m writing to a book like it was a real person. Although I guess I’m sort of getting used to it.
Anyway, I’m not really sorry to be going back to school. It’s going to be such a bitchin’ year-can you believe I’m a junior? Kelly Grace and I are both sorry now that we didn’t try out for cheerleaders last spring when we had the chance-I know we would have made it, you should see some of those cheerleaders!-since we are both dating football players. We’ve become quite the foursome, K.G. and Bobby, Richie and I. Colin says we could probably still make the flag twirlers. No offense, Colin, but being a member of the marching-band auxiliary isn’t quite the same as being a cheerleader, if you know what I mean! Oh, well. I know we are going to have a lot of fun this year anyway.
Thought for the Day: I just hope I’m not coming down with the flu or something. I’ve been feeling kind of sick lately. Wouldn’t that be the pits!
Thunderheads were starting to build in earnest over the mountains by the time Troy got Bubba settled in a nice shady spot with his water dish and a rawhide bone to gnaw on. A breeze had sprung up, which he thought might mean the unsettled weather was about to move on through. He hoped it would cool things off; it was hard enough, having a dog to take care of, without worrying about the heat. He was beginning to regret the impulse that had made him invite Bubba along for company, although it had seemed like a good idea at the time, when he’d thought all he was doing was making a short foray to the mountains of Alabama to bail somebody out of jail. Little had he known.
He left Bubba looking forlorn but resigned and started back up the slope to the hospital. He was feeling a mite put-upon, if the truth were told. And to make matters worse, feeling guilty for that. He hadn’t been raised to keep score when it came to helping people out, but on the other hand, he didn’t much care for being treated like a handy crutch, either, something without either thoughts or feelings that could be easily ignored when it wasn’t needed.
But as soon as he spotted Charly pacing up and down on the walkway in front of the emergency entrance, he felt a familiar hitch in his breathing and a knot of desire forming in his belly. And he thought that actually, having to haul a dog around with him for a few days wasn’t
She’d taken off the suit jacket. The silky black thing she’d been wearing under it-which, if you asked him, looked too much like a slip to be called a blouse-left most of her chest and shoulders and every inch of her arms bare. Except for the dusky place where the seat belt had bruised her, her skin looked flawless. And unfashionably pale, especially in contrast with her hair, which was coming loose from the slicked-back hairdo to slash across her neck and cheekbones like black-ink commas. It surprised him some that he found that so attractive, considering he’d been raised in a sun-belt culture where anybody without a tan was considered to be either too poor to afford one, or sickly. He thought maybe it was Mirabella who’d started him thinking otherwise, with her redhead’s coloring and skin you could almost see through. Funny, he thought, how a person’s tastes and opinions could change almost overnight.
She’d managed to find herself another cigarette. She glared at him as he approached, daring him to say something about the fact that she was smoking. She looked wired and tense, like a caged cat, he thought, with her ears laid back and her tail twitching, just waiting for someone to lash out at.
Not wanting to disappoint her, he folded his arms across his chest and
She tipped back her head and blew smoke with an audible hiss, then quipped sardonically, “Ah have had to depend on the kindness of strangers.” And immediately she took another drag, her narrowed eyes a warning.
So he just shook his head and moved up beside her, resisting a strong desire to put a comforting arm around her shoulders. He wanted to touch that silky skin so badly he knew he’d better not. Instead he asked casually, “Had any news?”
She threw down what was left of the cigarette and stepped on it. “Still nothing.”
He suddenly realized that she was trembling. He could feel it, even though they weren’t touching, could almost hear it, like the humming of high-voltage power lines. His jaws clenched. He let out a breath and said softly, “Waiting’s tough.” But the same vibration had begun deep down inside him, as if it were a contagion he’d caught from her.
He wondered how much more of this he was going to be able to take. He was a patient man, but right now he wanted to grab her and shake her, slap her, scream at her, anything to bust loose whatever it was she was insisting on keeping bottled up inside. He’d never seen anybody wound so tight.
He was trying his best to be reasonable. All right, so her father had just had a heart attack. So they obviously had some unresolved issues, which he could see might make it that much harder. So she had plenty of reasons to be upset, and maybe he was being selfish to expect her to share her personal problems with him, a stranger. But last night she hadn’t treated him like a stranger. And she’d had reasons enough then to be upset, surely-lady gets off a plane from L.A., drives to Alabama, loses her purse, crashes her car, gets arrested and thrown in jail-who wouldn’t be at the end of her rope? And she’d turned to him for comfort the only way she’d known how, instinct driving her to seek the nearest warm body. Even now, in the cold light of day, it was something he understood.
But he’d had the feeling then that there was more to it than the obvious stuff, the accident and getting arrested and all. That there were things going on with her she wasn’t letting him in on. He felt that more than ever now. This wasn’t about her father having a heart attack. This was about whatever it was that had happened all those years ago to drive a young girl out of this town and away from her home and family, something she was ashamed of to this day. Something it still gave her nightmares and chills to think about.
Dammit, why couldn’t she see that he was there to help? And he didn’t mean just driving her around and picking up her meal tab. He understood things like nightmares and cold sweats all too well. Why wouldn’t she trust him?
And why did it bother him so much that she didn’t?
“Hey,” he said, disappointment filling his throat like gravel, “how ‘bout gettin’ something to eat?”
“I’m not hungry,” she muttered, shaking her head, behaving, in his opinion, like an obstinate child.
“You sure?” he asked, cajoling her like one. “It’s been a long time since breakfast.”
She aimed a frown past him, edgy and restless. “No. You go ahead.”
The need to touch her was a greater hunger than the one gnawing at his belly. To contain it, he tucked his hands against his ribs and clamped down hard on them with his biceps. “Hey,” he said, forcing a lightness he was a long way from feeling, “you need to eat. Trust me-I know.”
Her eyes flicked at him, full of controlled fury. “What are you, my mother?”
Patience, he thought. And he found that, in spite of all his efforts, his hand had found its way to her elbow. Her skin felt like cream on his fingers. “Come on, I’m buyin’.”
“Damn right you are,” she snapped, “since in case you hadn’t noticed, I still haven’t got a purse.”
“Don’t worry, I’m runnin’ a tab. Hospital’s got a cafeteria, I noticed. That okay with you?”
She looked at him as if he’d lost his mind. “God, no. Look, if you’re going to make me eat, it’s going to have to be worth it. A burger and fries, or no deal.”
He shook his head and muttered about her father lying in ICU with a coronary and her stuffing herself with french fries, but the truth was, the idea sounded damn good to him, too. “Okay,” he said, “it’s a deal. Do you need to tell anybody where you’re going? What was her name, your dad’s housekeeper-?”
“Dobrina.” She gave her head a quick, hard shake that was almost like a shudder. “No. Let’s just go.”
He dug in his pocket for his keys, and they started down the hill, Troy automatically shortening his stride to accommodate those high-heeled shoes she was wearing. Though she seemed to get around in the infernal things pretty well, he had to admit. Which probably had to do with her being a big-city lawyer, he reminded himself, and on
