Allison’s soft voice caught his attention again and he glanced to where she and Winnie were laughing with Marie over some television program they’d apparently all seen as they said good-night at the front door.
He waved in their general direction and went up to his room. He wondered if Winnie was going to talk Allison out of tomorrow’s date. If she did, it might be the best thing for both of them, he decided.
But Winnie didn’t manage that, despite the fact that she coaxed and pleaded all the way home that night.
“Your reputation...!” she concluded finally, using one last desperate argument.
“It will survive one or two dates,” Allison said firmly. “Oh, Winnie, he’s so alone! Can’t you see it? Can’t you see the pain in his eyes, the emptiness?”
Winnie pulled up in front of her house, turned off the engine and the lights with a long sigh. “No. I don’t suppose I’m blessed with your particular kind of empathy. But you don’t know what it’s like with an experienced man. You’ve hardly even dated, and Gene has been around. If you drop your guard for a minute, he’ll seduce you, you crazy little trusting idiot!”
“It takes two,” Allison reminded her.
“Yes, and I can see sparks flying between the two of you the minute you’re together! Allie, it’s an explosive chemistry and you don’t have the faintest idea how helpless you’d be if he turned up the heat!”
“Aren’t you forgetting how my parents brought me up?” Allison asked gently.
“No, I’m not,” Winnie replied tersely. “But I’m telling you that ideals and principles have a breaking point. Sexual attraction is physical, and the mind doesn’t have a lot of control over it.”
“I can say no,” Allison replied. “Now let’s go and watch some television. Okay?”
Winnie started to speak, but she realized it was going to be futile. It was like trying to explain surfing to an Eskimo. She could only hope that Allie’s resolve was equal to Gene Nelson’s ardor when it was put to the test.
Gene pulled up in the yard at exactly five o’clock the next afternoon. He was wearing gray slacks with a Western shirt and a bola tie, a matching gray Stetson atop his head and hand-tooled gray boots on his feet. He looked elegant, and Allison’s heart skipped when he came in the front door behind Winnie.
She looked good, he mused. She had on a pretty lilac vintage shirtwaist dress with a flowery scarf, and her hair was loose, hanging down her back like a wavy dark curtain almost to her waist. The dress clung gently to her slender body in just the right places, enhancing her firm, high breasts and narrow waist. She had it buttoned up right to her throat, but it only made the fit more sexy to Gene, who assumed that the prim fashion statement was a calculated one. He smiled gently, liking her subtle gesture.
Allison, unaware of his thoughts, smiled back. “Is this dressy enough, or should I wear something else?” she asked. “I’m not used to fancy restaurants.”
“You look fine,” Gene assured her.
“Indeed you do. Have fun,” Winnie said gently. She glanced at Gene. “Take care of her,” she said worriedly.
“No sweat.” He linked Allison’s soft hand in his and led her out the door, leaving an unconvinced Winnie behind.
“Why is she so protective of you?” Gene asked when they were out on the main highway in his sleek black Jeep.
Allison studied him from the comparative safety of her deep bucket seat. “She thinks you’re too experienced for me.”
He raised an eloquent eyebrow. “Am I, cupcake?” he asked with cynical mockery.
She laughed softly. “Probably. But you don’t scare me.”
“Give me time.” He draped his hand over the wheel casually. “You haven’t asked which movie I’m taking you to.”
“No, I haven’t. Is it a good one?”
“I don’t know. I don’t see movies too much these days. This one is supposed to be about the cattle business. But if it follows the trend, it’ll be about people taking their clothes off to discuss gene splicing and cloning of pedigree cattle.”
She laughed involuntarily at the disgust in his voice. “You don’t think much of ‘modern’ films, I gather?”
“No. Too much skin, not enough substance. Sex,” he replied with a glance in her direction, “should not be a spectator sport.”
“You’re right,” she said, averting her eyes to the darkening skyline. She was glad of the dimly lit interior of the Jeep, so that he couldn’t see the slight embarrassment the remark caused her.
They drove in silence for a few minutes. He took a detour to let her see a bit more of Wyoming, going north and west several miles out of the way so that she could see one of the area’s most fascinating sights.
When he mentioned that they were traveling through Shoshone Canyon, Allison didn’t need to be told that, because the eerie sound of the wind and the gnarled outcroppings of rock in their desert colors gave her cold chills. She remembered what Winnie had said about the area, and she almost asked Gene about it, but the tunnel through the mountain came into view ahead and her curiosity vanished in sheer fascination at the engineering job it must have been to put that long tunnel through solid rock.
Once they were through the tunnel, it was just a little way into Cody. Gene pointed out the famous Buffalo Bill Cody museum and the rodeo grounds on the way through the small city, adding that one of the first water systems in the West had been funded by Bill Cody with labour provided by the Mormons.
“Why, this looks like southern Arizona!” Allison exclaimed as she looked out the window when they were driving north out of Cody.
“Yes, it does,” he said. “But when we go
