It Had To Be You

He smiled at her. 'I know why you want to rush home. You're going to wake up your little sister so you can start slapping her around again.'

Mystified, she stared at him. 'What are you talking about?'

'Miz Molly and I had an interesting conversation tonight. But I'm not going to tell you about it unless you let me fix you something to eat.'

She saw the spark of challenge in his eyes. He was the coach now, testing her mettle, just as he tested his men. She knew he wasn't going to hurt her. If she ran away this time, would she ever stop?

'All right. Just for a bit.'

The unfamiliar path was difficult to maneuver in the dark. She stumbled once, but he didn't take her arm to help her, and she wondered if he knew that she would have fallen apart if he had touched her in the dark.

As they walked, he tried to put her at ease by telling her about the farmhouse. 'I bought this place last year and had it renovated. There's an orchard and a stable where I can keep a couple of horses if I want. I've got trees on this place that are a hundred years old.'

They reached the front porch. He bent down to retrieve the videotape she'd dropped, then opened the front door and flipped on a light before he let her in. She saw a staircase off to the left and an archway to the right that led to the side wing of the house. She followed him through it into a spacious open area that was rustic and welcoming.

The exposed stone on the longest wall glowed buttery in the light of the lamps he turned on. The room encompassed a comfortable two-story living area and a cozy, old-fashioned kitchen with a snug loft tucked above it under the eaves. The scrubbed pine floor held an assortment of furniture including a couch in a hunter green plaid with red and yellow accents, soft, oversized chairs, and an old pine cupboard. A wooden bench bearing decades of nicks and scars from tools served as a coffee table and held an old checkerboard sitting next to a pile of books. Chunky wooden candlesticks, stoneware crocks, and several antique metal banks rested on the mantel above the big stone fireplace. She had expected him to be surrounded by marble statues of naked women, not live in this comfortable rural haven that seemed so much a part of the Illinois prairie.

He handed her a soft blue chambray shirt. 'You might want to put this on. There's a bathroom off the kitchen.'

She realized she was still clutching the front of her dress. Taking the shirt from him, she excused herself and went into the bathroom. As she gazed at her reflection in the mirror, she saw that her eyes were large and vulnerable, windows into all her secrets. She straightened her hair with her fingers and rubbed at the mascara smudges with a tissue. Only when she felt calm did she leave the bathroom.

The shirt he had given her hung to mid-thigh, and she rolled up the sleeves as she came into the kitchen where he was pulling a loaf of whole wheat bread and a package of sandwich meat from the refrigerator.

'How about roast beef?'

'I'm not much of a beef eater.'

'I've got some salami here, or turkey breast.'

'Plain cheese would be fine.'

'Grilled cheese? I'm real good at that.'

He was so eager to please, she couldn't help smiling. 'All right.'

'Do you want wine or a beer? I've also got some iced tea.'

'Iced tea, please.' She took a seat at an old butternut drop leaf table.

He poured both of them a glass and then began fixing the sandwiches. A copy of Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time lay open on the table. She used it as an opportunity to restore some semblance of normality between them. 'Pretty heavy reading for a jock.'

'If I sound out all the words, it's not too bad.'

She smiled.

He tossed the sandwiches into an iron skillet. 'It's an interesting book. Gives you a lot to think about: quarks, gravity waves, black holes. I always liked science when I was in school.'

'I think I'll wait for the movie.' Taking a sip of iced tea, she pushed the book aside. 'Tell me what happened with Molly.'

He braced his hip against the edge of the stove. 'That kid's a crackerjack. I met her inside when I was making my phone call. She told me some pretty hair-raising things about you.'

'Like what?'

'Like the fact that you're keeping her a prisoner in the house. You tear up her mail, put her on bread and water when you're mad at her. And you're slapping her around.'

'What!' Phoebe nearly knocked over her iced tea.

'She told me it doesn't hurt.'

Phoebe was flabbergasted. 'Why would she say something like that?'

'She doesn't seem to like you too much.'

'I know. She's like a fussy maiden aunt. She disapproves of the way I dress; she doesn't think my jokes are funny. She doesn't even like Pooh.'

'That might be good judgment on her part.'

She glared at him.

He smiled. 'As a matter of fact, your dog was cuddled around her ankles most of the time we talked. They seemed to be old friends.'

'I don't think so.'

'Well, I might be wrong.'

'She honestly told you I slap her?'

'Yes, ma'am. She said you weren't evil, just twisted. I believe she compared you with somebody named Rebecca. The first Mrs. de Winter.'

'Rebecca?' Understanding dawned, and she shook her head. 'All that talk about Dostoyevski and the little stinker is reading Daphne du Maurier.' For a moment she was thoughtful. 'How do you know she wasn't telling you the truth? Adults slap children all the time.'

'Phoebe, when you were standing on the sidelines at the game, you looked like you were going to faint whenever anybody took a hard hit. Besides, you just don't have the killer instinct.' He turned to flip the sandwiches. 'For example-correct me if I'm wrong here-but I'm guessing it's more than a fickle appetite that made you turn down Viktor's barbecue that day we ate in your kitchen, not to mention that good sandwich meat I've got in my refrigerator.'

This man definitely saw too much. 'All those nitrates aren't healthy.'

'Uh-huh. Come on, sweetheart, you can tell Papa Dan your ugly little secret. You're a vegetarian, aren't you.'

'Lots of people don't eat meat,' she said defensively.

'Yeah, but most of them are on their soapbox about it. You don't say a thing.'

'It's nobody's business. I simply happen to like unclogged arteries, that's all.'

'Now, Phoebe, you're wiggling around the truth again. I have a feeling your eating habits don't have anything to do with your arteries.'

'I don't know what you're talking about.'

'Tell me the truth now.'

'All right! I like animals. It's not a crime! Even when I was a child I couldn't stand the idea of eating one of them.'

'Why are you so secretive about it?'

'I don't mean to be secretive. It's just-I'm not philosophically pure. I won't wear fur, but I have a closet full of leather shoes and belts, and I hate all those hair-splitting discussions people try to push you into. Some of my reticence is habit, I guess. The housemother at my old boarding school used to make it rough on me.'

'How was that?'

'We once had a showdown over a pork chop when I was eleven years old. I ended up sitting at the dinner table most of the night.'

'Thinking about Piglet, I bet.'

'How did you know?'