by Sandra Brown
“Well, sure, I do a bit of that.”
He braked the truck in front of a restaurant, swung open his door, and came around to assist her out. The wind beat against them as they hustled to the door of the restaurant. Leigh hadn’t paid attention to where they were going, but as soon as they went through the door, her nose informed her she was in a barbecue house. The aroma was spicy and potent and full-bodied, tangy with wood smoke.
From the jukebox in the corner, Willie Nelson begged mammas not to let their babies grow up to be cowboys. All the stools at the long counter running the breadth of the building were taken by businessmen in three-piece suits, roughnecks in oil-slicked jeans, and cattlemen in high-heeled riding boots.
Chad took Leigh’s arm and propelled her toward one of the few booths along the tinted windows, which were fogged by grease and dust. He slid into the red imitation leather-covered seat across from her, took off his hat, and set it, crown side down, in the windowsill. Boyishly his fingers ruffled through his hair. Leigh found the gesture strangely seductive.
“Do you want me to hang it up?” he asked of her coat as she shook it off.
“No, thank you. I’ll just leave it here.”
“That’s a very becoming outfit,” he said. His eyes toured the black bouclé knit sweater that clung provocatively to her breasts and traveled down to the wide belt of woven yarns in various bright colors that cinched her waist. Her black wool slacks fit hips and thighs enviably trim. “Or perhaps I should say it’s you that makes the outfit look good.”
“Thank you. You’re looking good yourself.” She hoped he didn’t feel damned with faint praise, but she could scarcely blurt out the truth: that he looked too downright sexy for words.
Chad waved to the harassed waitress behind the counter and she made her way around the corner of the bar toward their booth.
“What would you like to drink?” he asked Leigh.
“Iced tea.”
He smiled broadly. “You’ve become a Texan whether you like it or not. Iced tea isn’t a seasonal drink around here, but a year-round one.”
“Hiya, Chad,” the waitress said warmly as she sauntered up to the table. Her generous bosom was practically bursting from her pale blue polyester uniform, and she wore flamboyant rhinestone-rope earrings beneath the teased platinum hair that was lacquered with hairspray. The woman’s garish makeup would have been more appropriate on a Las Vegas runway, and Leigh was reminded of the golden-hearted madams in Western movies. “How’ve you been?”
“Fine, Sue. How’s Jack?”
“Mean and fat. Have you ever seen him any other way?” She laughed flirtatiously. “Where’ve you been, Chad? We missed you at that big dance a couple of weeks ago.”
“I was out of town.”
“Big job?”
He shrugged, dismissing the subject. “This is Leigh Bransom. She’d like a glass of iced tea.”
“Hiya, Leigh,” Sue said, smiling broadly and revealing a jaw full of gold teeth. “What about you, Chad? What’ll you have?”
“Got a cold beer back there?”
“Ever known me not to?” She laughed again. “Be right back with it to take your order.”
“Do you like barbecue?” he asked Leigh, opening up the menu, which had seen better days—better years.
“Yes,” she said slowly. It was a qualified answer.
“But?” he prodded.
She smiled. “But I usually don’t eat so much for lunch.”
He folded his hands on the green Formica tabletop and leaned toward her. “Did you deny yourself nutritional food when you were feeding Sarah?”
Leigh felt as if a magic wand had swept down her body and painted it with hot color. She swiftly dropped her eyes. They fell to Chad’s clasped hands where they rested on the table between white paper napkin-wrapped silverware. They were nice hands, strong, lean, tanned, sprinkled with brown hair. She knew how sensitive, how soothing, they could be. He had stroked Sarah’s cheek when it was still sticky with amniotic fluid. He had watched as Leigh had bared her breast and offered it to Sarah. He had touched her baby’s face while Sarah suckled at Leigh’s breast.
Yet now, talking about it embarrassed her. Ever since the kiss last night. That had changed things. The kiss in the hospital didn’t count. That had been a comradely, congratulatory kiss for a job well done. But last night had been something else. His probing tongue had unleashed a well of eroticism Leigh hadn’t known she possessed, and now everything they said took on a sexual connotation. But only in her mind. He probably
“Leigh?”
She whipped her head up and knew he had read her mind. His glorious sapphire eyes pierced into her like two lances, breaking the seals on her most secret thoughts. She queried him with her answering gaze.
“Yes, I remember,” he said on a decibel only her ears could hear. “I remember it exactly, what you looked like, how incredibly soft you looked, your color, everything. I’ve taken the memory out and played with it a thousand times since then. Most often when I’m alone. In bed. And each time, I ache with the longing to touch you just like I did that day. Yes, I remember. I thought it only fair that you should know.”
They both jumped at the sound of an intrusive voice. “Decided yet what you’re eating?” Sue asked, pencil poised over her tablet.
Chad cleared his throat. “Leigh?”
She hadn’t even looked at the menu, but she quickly said, “Sliced barbecue sandwich, please.” The words were little more than mumbled syllables strung together.
Chad said, “I want two sliced sandwiches, extra sauce, but cut the onions.” He seemed fully recovered from the puissant exchange of a moment ago and smiled naughtily for Sue’s benefit at his request to hold the onions. “An order of French fries. No, make that two fries.”
“I made some of that good slaw with the sour-cream dressing you like,” Sue informed him.
“Two slaws.”
“Chad, I don’t think I can…” Leigh’s objection trailed off as he scowled at her threateningly.
Sue laughed. “You got a thin one this time, Chad.”
His eyes never left Leigh’s bewildered face. “I like them that way.”
“Well, they all like you, honey,” Sue said, patting his cheek before she left with their order.
And they all did, Leigh learned. While they ate the appalling amount of food, Chad was spoken to by virtually every woman in the place. Three country-club types with frosted hair and sculptured nails and karats of gold jewelry came by their table. Courteously Chad introduced them to Leigh. She was ignored.
One of the women laid a caressing hand on Chad’s broad shoulder. “Bubba built me that indoor pool I’ve been wanting, Chad. It’s got a hot tub on one end and a bar in the middle of it. That’s where we’re going now, to languish away the afternoon in all those hot bubbles. Come on over any time. Cold booze and hot water. You can’t beat that. You have an open invitation.”
An invitation to avail himself of the pool, the booze, and Bubba’s wife, Leigh thought wryly as the group strolled away in a cloud of musky perfume. How did an airplane mechanic come to know obviously wealthy women like that? And how intimately did he know them? a jealous voice inside her prodded.
But Bubba’s wife and her friends weren’t the only type that loved him. An elderly couple on their way out of the restaurant stopped by the table and the woman exclaimed, “Well, Chad, how is my boy?” She wrapped her arms around him, kissing him smackingly on the cheeks. “It’s been so long since we’ve seen you. Been busy? How is your mamma? I was telling Daddy just the other day that we haven’t seen your mamma and daddy in a coon’s age. Everybody’s so busy these days. I think I liked our little town better before so many strangers started moving in. You know? I don’t see my friends anymore.”
“Mr. and Mrs. Lomax, I’d like you to meet Leigh Bransom,” he broke in politely.
“How do you do,” Leigh barely had time to say before the woman launched into another monologue.
“Well, aren’t you the prettiest thing! Of course. Chad always had the girls tagging after him. My boys were so jealous. But then, Chad’s always been such a darling boy, so handsome, but not stuck-up. A good boy. That’s what I’ve always said, haven’t I, Daddy? Chad Dillon is a good boy.”
Daddy never got to say a thing before he was ushered out by his loquacious wife.
“I’m sorry about that,” Chad said. “It’s what comes of knowing so many people in town. There’s never any privacy.”
“It’s fine, really,” Leigh replied wanly.
“No, it’s not. I wanted you all to myself.” For a moment their eyes held and Leigh felt her insides melt with longing. “Is that all you’re going to eat?”
She had consumed most of the beef, none of the bread, some of the slaw, a few French fries. She nodded. “Yes, it was delicious, but I’m full.”
“Let’s get out of here. Unless you have a predilection for kissing in public places,” he added seductively.
A tickling sensation feathered up from the center of her body to her throat. Clumsily she slid out of the booth when his hand closed around her elbow. He paid the bill at the old-fashioned cash register. It was flanked by a selection of cigars, chewing gum, stomach aids, candy, road maps, key chains, and ceramic ashtrays shaped like armadillos.
Returning to the mall parking lot, Chad parked as near the entrance as he could. “When do those reindeer start flying?”
“The Sunday before Thanksgiving.”
“Before?”
“Yes. The Friday and Saturday after Thanksgiving are the busiest shopping days of the year. The mall should be decked out for Christmas by then to get everyone in a buying mood. Since we have to do the actual work when the mall is closed, we do it on a Sunday.”
“Like the elves who came in during the middle of the night and made the shoes for the cobbler and his wife?”
“You know that story?”
He looked wounded. “My mother told me bedtime stories just like everyone else’s mom did.”
“And you were such a darling boy,” she parroted Mrs. Lomax. “A good boy.”
Chad groaned. “I can tell I’ve got to change my image with you fast. Starting now.”
He leaned over the space between them and cupped the back of her head, pulling her toward him. “I don’t think you appreciate the restraint I’ve placed on myself today. All through lunch, all I could think about was this.”
His lips were warm, urgent, demanding. He expected acquiescence and wasn’t disappointed. Leigh opened her mouth at his subtle encouragement and all the sensations she had strived to suppress flared to life again. As before, her nerves ignited under the heat of his mouth. His tongue was governed by whimsy, taking or giving as mood dictated, but always with fervor.
He eased his lips over her cheek to her ear. “Do you still think of me as a ‘good boy’?” His breath was as much a caress as his searching lips.
“No,” she sighed. “No.”
He caught her hand and brought it to his mouth, planting a hot kiss in the palm. Her heart thumped loudly in her breast. “I didn’t know what you’d think of me showing up unexpectedly last night. That’s why I didn’t call first. I was afraid you’d refuse to see me.”
“I wouldn’t have.”
“I couldn’t risk it. I had to see you.”
“Why, Chad?”
His thumb drew circles on the pulsing veins in her wrist. Lifting her hand to his lips again, he spoke against her fingers. “Because ever since I left you in that hospital, you’ve dominated my thoughts.”
“As the woman whose baby you delivered?”
“No.” His wandering finger toyed with the lobe of her ear. “As the woman I wanted to get to know better and who was probably devastated by what had happened to her. God, the way I looked that day, you must have been scared to death of me.”
“Only for a few minutes. You were so kind.”
“You were so beautiful.”
“I looked ghastly.”
“You looked like a painting.”
“Sure—Dali!”
“Della Robbia. I told you then and I still think so. Every time I see you, Leigh, you’re more desirable.”
He kissed her again, seeming to draw sustenance from her. She had no reservoir of strength to use against the assault of his lips and tongue. When he had drunk his fill and moved to her neck, tremors continued to vibrate through her body, leaving her weak and dizzy. His hand at her waist drifted upward over her ribs, back down, up again, more dangerously close to her breast this time. His thumb curved beneath the soft swell. “Chad,” she gasped, pushing against his forearm. “I… I’ve got to go back to work,” she said, avoiding his eyes and running nervous hands over her clothes in an effort to straighten them.
He looked at her a moment. She knew he was watching her face, though she kept her eyes glued to the crease in her slacks. She heard his sigh a moment before he shoved open his door.
He helped her out of the truck and they rushed across the parking lot, huddled together against the frigid wind. Gaining the entrance to the mall, he pulled her against the brick wall of the building and protected her from the wind with his powerful body.
“Can I come by tonight?” He saw her caution, her hesitation, her intention to say no. “Am I coming on too fast, Leigh?”
Despite the eroticism of her thoughts the night before, she knew she couldn’t enter into a casual affair. She had not only her life to think of, but Sarah’s, too, and such an arrangement would compromise them both. Accepting Chad as a lover would be so easy to do, but sex for sex’s sake went against everything Leigh believed in. It was best to let him know how she felt now. “If you’re looking for a quick, flash-in-the-pan fling, I’m not the one,” she warned sternly.
“I know that. And personally I like my sex slow and well done.” His mouth quirked into a beguiling grin, and his charismatic eyes sparkled mischievously. Like Bubba’s wife, like old Mrs. Lomax, like Sue, like her own baby daughter, Leigh succumbed to his charm. Her austerity deflated like a parachute settling onto the ground. “I’ll see you tonight, okay?” he pressed.
“For dinner?” she asked in a surrendering voice.
“No,” he said regretfully. “I have an obligation until around nine. Is that too late?”
“No.”
“Good.” Ducking his head, he kissed her quickly. “What is it?” he asked when he felt her laughter.
“I’ve never been kissed by anyone wearing a cowboy hat before.”
His eyes were piercingly blue through a forest of dark lashes. “Get used to it,” he growled.
He pushed them inside the heavy glass doors and they went toward her office. The crew of maintenance workers was congregated around the large fountain where she had left them.
“See you around nine.” He cuffed her playfully under the chin. “You go on and get rid of your coat and do whatever it is that takes ladies so long to do in the restroom. I’ll tell the gang you’re on your way.” He nodded toward the men waiting for her.
“All right, thank you for lunch. I’ll see you tonight.”
* * *
It was ten o’clock. The cake Leigh had baked had cooled. Sarah was already asleep in her crib. And Chad wasn’t there yet.
Her work at the mall had progressed well for the remainder of the afternoon. She had finalized plans for the Christmas decorations with the crew assigned to her. They would be ready to go to work on the following Sunday. Leigh didn’t anticipate too many problems.
Her meeting with the Saddle Club Estates group was another matter. Leigh had been approached by a committee of homeowners representing the more exclusive residential area of Midland. The committee wanted her to coordinate the exterior Christmas decorations for each house in the neighborhood, but they couldn’t agree on a color scheme. Leigh, ready to pull her hair out with impatience, had reminded them that time was running out.
“If you want any decorations up by the second
week of December, you’ll have to let me know by the end of this week.”
With their promise to do so, she had left the meeting to pick up Sarah. She had fed the baby, played with her until she grew fussy, then put her to bed. That allowed her time to take a bubble bath and reapply her makeup.
She giggled as she looked at her image in the mirror. It was ego-elevating to be dressing for a man. She didn’t remember having been this excited in a long time. Would Chad think she was trying too hard? Would he back off, thinking she was a lonely widow, pathetically eager for the first unattached male to pay attention to her? Would he think her avowal that she didn’t believe in casual sex was only a coy come-on?
Play it cool, Leigh, she cautioned herself. But it was hard to pretend indifference when every time she thought of Chad, she became as giddy and breathless as a teenager. And he was “rushing” her with a determination that was as flattering as it was disturbing.
But as the hours of the evening passed and he hadn’t even called, Leigh began to think she had been self-deceptively foolish. At lunch it had seemed that Chad had every woman in town panting after him. What did he need with her, whom he had met under the least erotic of circumstances, and who had an infant as well? His virility was too blatant to question. No doubt since this afternoon, when she had cautioned him that she wasn’t interested in an insouciant fling, he had had a change of heart. A reluctant widow, not to mention a baby, would surely cramp his style.
“You’ve blown it, big mouth,” she grumbled to herself. Why had she felt compelled to say anything? He had kissed her in broad daylight in a parked truck. He had almost touched her breast. So? Maybe it had been an accident. Maybe her kiss had robbed him of rational thought. Could a healthy man be held responsible for his actions when a woman kissed him back with the enthusiasm she had shown? Why had she panicked like some puritan maiden?
When she had felt his hand inching its way in oh-so-sensuous a manner toward her breast, why couldn’t she have merely tapped him playfully on the hand in teasing rebuke? Bubba’s wife would know how to say “no,” but leave room for a “maybe when we know each other better.” But she wasn’t Bubba’s wife, Leigh chided herself. She was what her mother would term “a well-brought-up young lady,” and she thought of sex as a commitment. She had been a virgin on her wedding night. She
