to go.
Cal came out into the foyer as she descended the stairs. He wore an old Stars’T-shirt that outlined all of those beautifully developed chest muscles and was tucked into a pair of jeans so tight, faded, and threadbare he might as well have been naked.
His gaze traveled over her like a lazy stream on a hot summer day. She flushed, then stumbled on the step and had to grab for the rail.
“Something wrong?” he inquired innocently.
“I’ll bet.” His eyes swept over her in a way that made her feel her primping time hadn’t been wasted. “Couldn’t find a halter top, huh?”
“They were all in the wash.”
He smiled, and as she watched that unexpected dimple pop into the hard plane beneath his cheekbone, she wondered what she was doing with a man like this? He was so far out of her league, he might have come from another solar system.
She realized she’d forgotten her jacket and turned on the stairs to go back and fetch it.
“Runnin’scared already?”
“I need a jacket.”
“Wear this.” He went to the closet and pulled out his gray zippered sweatshirt. She came down to meet him, and as he set it around her shoulders, his hands lingered there for a moment. She caught the heady scent of pine, soap, and something that was unmistakably Cal Bonner, an intoxicating hint of danger.
The soft folds of the shirt settled over her hips. She glanced down at it and wished she were one of those women who looked cute in men’s clothes, but she suspected she merely looked pudgy. He didn’t appear to find anything wrong with her, however, so she took heart.
He’d left the Jeep in the motor-court, and, as always, he opened the door for her. As he started the car and headed down the drive toward the highway, she realized she was nervous, and she wished he’d say something to break the tension, but he seemed content to drive.
They passed through town, where the stores were closed for the night, along with the Petticoat Junction Cafe. Down one of the side streets, she saw a lighted building with a number of cars parked around it. She deduced that was the Mountaineer.
They reached the edge of town and drove around Heartache Mountain. Just as she’d decided he was taking her to Annie’s, he slowed the Jeep and turned into a badly rutted gravel lane. The headlights picked out a ramshackle structure no bigger than a tollbooth sitting just beyond the heavy chain that stretched across the road.
“Where are we?”
“See for yourself.” He stopped the car and pulled a flashlight from under the seat. After he’d lowered the window, he shone the beam outside.
She ducked her head and saw a starburst-shaped sign made up of broken lightbulbs, peeling purple paint, and the words,
“You said you’d never gone on a drive-in date when you were a teenager. I’m making it up to you.”
He grinned at her dumbfounded expression, flicked off the flashlight, and got out of the car to unfasten the chain that barred the road. When he returned, he drove forward, jarring her as the car hit the ruts.
“My first date with a multimillionaire,” she grumbled, “and this is what I get.”
“Don’t hurt my feelings and tell me you’ve already seen the movie.”
She smiled and grabbed the door handle to keep from banging against it. Despite her grumbling, she wasn’t exactly displeased with the idea of being alone with him at this abandoned drive-in. It would benefit their baby, she told herself, if she and Cal got to know each other a little better.
The Jeep’s headlights swept the deserted lot, which looked like an eerie science-fiction landscape with its concentric mounds of earth and row upon row of metal speaker poles. The car lurched as he headed toward the rear of the drive-in, and she grabbed the dashboard with one hand while she instinctively covered her abdomen with the other.
He glanced over. “Waking the little guy up?”
It was the first time he’d acknowledged her pregnancy with anything other than hostility. She felt as if a blossom had slowly unfurled inside her, and she smiled.
He turned into the back row. “He can go back to sleep in a minute. That is, if he’s not too busy solving equations.”
“You won’t think it’s so funny when she starts grouping her Cheerios in multiples of ten while the other kids are gumming away at them.”
“I swear, you’re the most worryin’ woman I’ve ever met. You act like having a brain is the worst tragedy on earth. The boy’ll be fine. Just look at me. Having a brain didn’t bother me any.”
“That’s because you keep yours under lock and key.”
“Well, lock yours up for a while so we can enjoy the damn movie.”
There was nothing much she could say to that, so she didn’t try.
He moved to the center of the last row, just in front of a sagging chain-link fence, and pulled into one of the spaces so that the front wheels were elevated by the dirt mound. He picked up the speaker, brought it into the car, hung it on top of the steering wheel, then closed the window to shut out the chilly night air. She refrained from mentioning that the speaker had no cord.
He turned off the headlights and the engine, plunging them into darkness relieved only by a sliver of quarter moon. She shifted her attention to the distant screen, which was bisected by a silvery shaft of moonlight. “We should have gotten here earlier so we could get better seats.”
“The back row’s the best.”
“Why is that?”
“No little kids lookin’ through the windows. I like my privacy when I’m makin’out.”
She swallowed hard. “Did you bring me here to make out?”
“Pretty much.”
“Oh.”
“You got a problem with that?” The moon slipped beneath a bank of clouds, leaving them in darkness. He flicked on the overhead light, and she saw the corner of his mouth kick up, making him the very picture of a self- satisfied man. He twisted toward the backseat, reached down, and came up with a large bag of grocery-store pop- corn.
Her brain was flashing out warning signals at the exact speed of light, but she was in no mood to listen. She’d wanted to be courted, and he was doing that, even if he’d chosen a peculiar way to go about it. And no matter what he said, she didn’t think he still hated her because he smiled too much when they were together.
He was also wily as a fox, she reminded herself, and he’d made no secret of the fact that he desired her. Since his moral code seemed to dictate fidelity, at least for the next few months, he either had to seduce her or go without. She wanted to believe he would be pursuing her even if they weren’t caught in this impossible situation, but she couldn’t quite make that leap of faith. Maybe she could strike a compromise.
“I don’t have a problem with it as long as you understand that I won’t go all the way on a first date.”
He opened the bag and took out a handful of popcorn. “I respect you for that.’Course, maybe we should discuss exactly how you’re calculating when we had our first date. I seem to remember a surprise birthday-”
“Cal…”
He tossed the popcorn into his mouth. “There’s some beer and juice in a cooler in the backseat. See if you can reach over there and get it.”
She turned around and saw a small Styrofoam cooler resting on the seat. She knelt and reached back for it, only to find herself being gently, but forcibly, upended. As she awkwardly scrambled to balance herself on the rear seat, she heard a chuckle that had a faintly diabolical sound to it.
“Good idea, sweetheart. I’ll just come right back there with you.”
Before she could react, he had let himself out the driver’s door, opened the back, and settled down next to her.
