She pressed her thighs together and squirmed. Bobby Tom shifted his weight. She glanced at him out of the corner of her eyes and saw to her dismay that he was watching her instead of the screen. And he was no longer laughing.
“I have some work to do,” he said abruptly. “Turn it off whenever you want.” Snatching up his laptop computer, he stalked into the bedroom.
Gracie stared after him in bewilderment. Why had he gotten so grouchy all of a sudden? And then her gaze shot back to the screen.
Oh, my!
Bobby Tom stood in the darkened bedroom and stared blindly out the windows. In the background he could hear breathy moans coming from the television. Jesus. For the past six months he hadn’t been able to summon up the slightest bit of interest in making love with any of the beautiful women who dangled themselves in front of him like game trophies, but now Gracie Snow, with her skinny body, ugly clothes, the worst hairdo he’d ever seen on a female, and a bossy manner that set his teeth on edge, had given him a hard-on.
He rested his knuckles against the window frame. If it weren’t so ludicrous, he’d laugh. That movie wasn’t even close to hard-core pornography, but five minutes into it, she’d gotten so turned on that a bomb could have exploded in there and she wouldn’t have noticed.
For a moment when he was watching her, he’d actually considered taking advantage of what she’d been all too ready to offer, and that was the stupidest thing of all. He was Bobby Tom Denton, for chrissake. He might be retired, but that didn’t mean he’d sunk so low he had to get it on with a charity case like Gracie Snow.
Turning his back to the window, he walked over to the desk, hooked the modem from his laptop computer into the telephone line, and sat down. But his hands fell still before he typed in the commands to access his electronic mail. He wasn’t in the mood to work on any of his business deals tonight.
He kept seeing the expression on Gracie’s face when she’d spotted the Mississippi River. How long had it been since he’d felt that kind of enthusiasm? All day, Gracie had pointed out things he’d ceased to notice years ago: a cloud formation, a truck driver who looked like Willie Nelson, a child waving at them through the rear window of the family van. When had he lost touch with ordinary pleasures?
He glanced down at his keyboard and remembered how much he used to enjoy wheeling and dealing. At first he’d played around in the stock market, but then he’d bought into a small sporting goods company. After that, he’d invested in a radio station followed by an athletic sneaker company. He’d made mistakes along the way, but he’d also made a lot of money. Now he couldn’t seem to remember what the point of it all had been. He’d thought that making a movie might be a good way to distract himself, but with shooting about to begin, he couldn’t work up much enthusiasm for that idea either.
He rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. Tonight he’d promised Shag to help launch his new restaurant. He’d lent Ellie money and told AJ. he’d let his nephew interview him for his high school newspaper. To his way of thinking, a person who’d been star-kissed from the moment he was born didn’t have the right to say no, but sometimes he felt as if he was slowly suffocating from all the demands people made on him.
Now he had to go to Telarosa to make another payment on the debt he owed the small town that had nurtured him, and he’d gotten cold feet. Despite the fact that he was the one who’d insisted the filming take place there, he wasn’t ready to face all of’ them. He knew he was a has-been, but they wouldn’t have figured it out yet, and they were still going to want a piece of him.
His presence would stir things up, as it always did, and not everybody would welcome him with open arms. He’d had a nasty confrontation with Way Sawyer a few months back over Sawyer’s plan to move Rosatech, the electronics firm that supplied Telarosa with its economic lifeblood. The man was ruthless, and Bobby Tom didn’t look forward to seeing him again. He’d also have to deal with Jimbo Thackery, the town’s new chief of police and Bobby Tom’s enemy from grade school days. Worst of all, there would be a whole flock of women who had no idea that his sex drive had just about disappeared along with his football career, and, no matter what, he had to make certain they stayed ignorant.
He stared blindly down at the keyboard. What was he going to do with the rest of his life? He’d lived with glory for so long that he had no idea how to live without it. From childhood he’d always been the best: All-State, All-American, All-Pro. But he wasn’t the best any longer. Successful men weren’t supposed to face this kind of crisis until they retired in their sixties. But he’d retired at thirty-three, and he had no idea who he was any longer. He knew how to be a great wide receiver, he knew how to be the Most Valuable Player, but he had no idea how to be an ordinary human being.
A particularly prolonged female moan coming from the television interrupted his thoughts, and he frowned as he remembered he wasn’t alone. Genuine amusement had become increasingly rare in his life, which was why he’d kept Gracie Snow around for the day, but as he recalled his body’s reaction to her arousal, he no longer felt like laughing. Getting turned on by a charity case like Gracie was—in a way he didn’t want to examine too closely—somehow the final indignity, a tangible symbol of how far he’d come down in the world. Not that she wasn’t a real nice lady, but she definitely wasn’t Bobby Tom Denton material.
Right then he made up his mind. He had enough problems in his life, and he didn’t need any more. First thing tomorrow, he was getting rid of her.
4
Church bells rang outside the window as Gracie crossed to the bedroom door and tapped gently. “Bobby Tom, breakfast is here.”
Nothing.
“Bobby Tom?”
“You’re real,” he groaned. “I was hoping you were only a bad dream.”
“I ordered breakfast from room service, and it’s here.”
“Go away.”
“It’s seven o’clock. We have a twelve-hour drive ahead of us. We really need to get on the road.”
“This room has a balcony, sweetheart. If you don’t leave me alone, I’m throwing you right over the top of it.”
She retreated from his bedroom door and walked to the table, where she nibbled at a blueberry pancake, but she was too tired to eat. All night long, she’d awakened at the slightest noise, certain Bobby Tom would slip out while she slept.
At eight o’clock, after she’d called Willow to report on her questionable progress, she tried again to rouse him. “Bobby Tom, are you finished sleeping yet because we really must leave?”
Nothing.
She opened the door gingerly and her mouth went dry as she saw him sprawled naked on his stomach with the sheet twisted around his hips. His legs were splayed, one of them bent. Despite the angry scars behind his right knee, they were strong and beautiful. The skin looked bronzed against the stark white sheet and the golden hair on his calves shimmered in the morning light that crept through a slit in the drapes. One foot was buried in the blanket at the bottom of the bed; the other was long and narrow with a high, well-defined arch. Her eyes lingered over the ugly red puckered scars on his right knee, then rose to his thighs and the sheet that wound round his hips. If only that sheet were three inches higher. . . .
She was shocked by the force of her desire to see that most private part of him. All the nude male bodies she had seen in her lifetime were old. Would Bobby Tom look like those men in the movie last night? She shivered.
He rolled over, taking the sheet with him. His hair was thick and rumpled, with a trace of curl at the temples. The skin on his cheek held a crease from the pillow.
“Bobby Tom,” she said softly.
One eye opened a fraction of an inch, and his voice was gravelly from sleep. “Get naked or get out.”
She walked determinedly over to the windows and pulled the cord on the draperies. “Someone certainly is grouchy this morning.”
He groaned as light flooded the room. “Gracie, your life is in serious jeopardy.”
“You gonna scrub my back, too?”
“I hardly think that’s necessary.”
“I’m trying to be polite about this, but you don’t seem to be catching on.” He sat up, fumbled for his wallet on the bedside table, and withdrew several bills. “Cab fare to the airport is on me,” he said as he held them out.
“Shower first, and then we’ll talk about it.” She hastily backed out of the room.
An hour and a half later, he was still trying to get rid of her. She hurried down the sidewalk to the Memphis health club, a white paper carry-out bag containing a large cup of freshly squeezed orange juice clenched in her hand. First she hadn’t been able to get him out of bed, then he’d told her he couldn’t even think about taking off until he’d had his morning workout. They’d no sooner entered the lobby of the suburban health club than he’d shoved some money in her hand and asked her to go to the restaurant around the corner and pick up some orange juice for him while he changed into his gym clothes.
As he’d disappeared into the locker room, his eyes had been guileless and his smile innocent, which made her certain he planned to ditch her while she was gone. She grew absolutely convinced of it when she saw he’d given her two hundred dollars for orange juice. As a result, she’d been forced to take drastic action.
Not surprisingly, the restaurant was several blocks farther away than he had led her to believe, and she’d hurried through the transaction as fast as she could. As she returned to the health club, she bypassed the entrance, heading instead for the parking lot in the back.
The Thunderbird sat in the shade with the hood up and Bobby Tom peering under it. She was out of breath as she rushed toward him. “Finished with your workout already?”
His head shot up so abruptly he banged it on the hood, knocking his Stetson sideways. He cursed softly and straightened his hat. “My back was a little stiff, so I decided to wait until tonight.”
His back looked perfectly fine to her, but she refrained from pointing that out, just as she withheld comment on the fact that he had obviously planned to drive away while she was gone. “Is there something wrong with the car?”
“It won’t start.”
“Let me look. I know a little bit about engines.”
He stared at her in disbelief. “You?”
Ignoring him, she set the damp sack on the fender, peered under the hood, and lifted up the distributor cap.
“My goodness, you seem to have lost your rotor. Let me see. I just might—” She opened her purse. “Yes. I have one right here.”
She handed over the Thunderbird’s small rotor, along with the two screws that held on the distributor cap and her Swiss Army knife so he could refasten them. All of it had been neatly wrapped in the plastic bag she had taken from the hotel room for just this sort of emergency.
Bobby Tom stared down at it as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
“Make sure it’s firmly seated,” she said helpfully. “Otherwise, it could give you some problems.” Without waiting for a response, she retrieved the orange juice, hurried around to the passenger side of the car, and slid into her seat, where she busied herself studying the map.
Much too soon, the car shuddered as he slammed the hood. She heard his boots make sharp, angry clicks on the asphalt. He rested his hand on the window frame next to her and she saw that his knuckles were white. When he finally spoke, his voice was very soft and very angry.
“Nobody messes with my T-bird.”
She took a small nibble from her bottom lip. “I’m sorry, Bobby Tom. I know you love this car, and I don’t blame you for being angry. It’s a wonderful car. Really. That’s why I have to be honest and tell you that I have the ability to do serious damage to it if you try any more monkey business.”
His eyebrows shot up and he stared at her in disbelief. “Are you threatening my car?”
“I’m afraid I am,” she said apologetically. “Mr. Walter Karne, God rest his sweet soul, was at Shady Acres for almost eight years before he died. Until his retirement, he’d owned an auto repair shop in Columbus, and I learned quite a bit about engines from him, including how to disable them. You see, we had a problem with a particularly officious social worker who visited Shady Acres several times a month. He kept upsetting the residents.”
“So you and Mr. Karne retaliated by sabotaging his car.”
“Unfortunately, Mr. Karne was quite arthritic, which meant that I had to do the actual work.”
“And now you plan to use your special expertise to blackmail me.”
“It goes without saying the idea disturbs me a great deal. On other hand, I have a responsibility to Windmill Studios.”
Bobby Tom was beginning to look wild around the eyes. “Gracie, the only reason I don’t strangle you to death right this minute is because I know, as soon as the jury heard my story, they’d let me off, and then those sharks at the networks would turn the whole thing into a TV movie.”
“I have a job to do,” she said softly. “You really must let me do it.”
“Sorry, sweetheart. The two of us have reached the end of the line.”
Before she could stop him, he’d pulled the door open, scooped her up, and set her down in the parking lot. She gave a hiss of alarm. “Let’s talk about this!”
Ignoring her, he made his way to the rear of the car, where he pulled her suitcase from the trunk.
She rushed to his side. “We’re both reasonable people. I’m sure we can work out a compromise. I’m sure we—”
“I’m sure we can’t. They’ll call a cab for you inside.” He dropped her suitcase on the pavement, climbed back into the Thunderbird, and started the car with a roar.
Without giving herself time to think, she threw herself to the pavement in front of the tires and squeezed her eyes shut.
Long, tension-laden seconds ticked by. The heat of the asphalt penetrated her one-size-fits-all mustard brown wrap dress. The smell of exhaust made her head spin. She felt his shadow fall over her.
“In the interest of saving your life, the two of us are going to make a deal.”
She eased her eyes open. “What sort of deal?”
“I’ll stop trying to ditch you—”
“That’s fair.”
“—if you do what I say for the rest of the trip.”
She thought it over as she rose to her feet. “I don’t believe that’s going to work,” she said carefully. “In case no one has ever pointed it out to you, you’re not always reasonable.”
Beneath the brim of his Stetson, his eyes had narrowed. “Take it or leave it, Gracie. If you want to be a passenger in this car, you’re going to have to set your bossy ways aside and do what you’re told.”
When he put it like that, she didn’t have much choice, and she decided to give in graciously. “Very well.”
He returned her suitcase to the trunk. She resettled in the passenger seat. When he got back in, he gave the ignition key an angry twist.
She glanced at her watch and then the map she had been perusing earlier. “Just one thing before we start. You might not have realized it, but it’s almost ten, and you have to be on the set by eight o’clock tomorrow morning. We have about seven hundred miles to travel, and it looks as if the shortest route—”
Bobby Tom tore the map, from her hand, balled it in his fist, and threw it out of the car. Minutes later they were back on the freeway.
Unfortunately, they were heading east.
By Tuesday night, Gracie had to acknowledge the fact that she was a failure. As she stared at the wipers sweeping half-moons across the Thunderbird’s windshield and listened to the rain spattering on the top above her, she mulled over the past few days. Despite making it as far as Dallas, she hadn’t been able to deliver Bobby Tom to Telarosa on time.
Droplets of water glistened on the hood of the car from the passing headlights. She tried not to dwell on Willow’s angry phone calls and, inst
ead, attempted to look at the positive side of the situation. In the past few days, she’d seen more of the country than she’d ever imagined, and she’d met the most interesting people: country and western singers, aerobics instructors, lots of football players, and a very nice transvestite who’d shown her some clever ways to tie a scarf.
Best of all, Bobby Tom hadn’t tried to shake her off. She still wasn’t entirely certain why he hadn’t ditched her in Memphis, but sometimes she had the eerie sense he didn’t want to be alone. With the exception of that one unfortunate incident when he’d stopped the car on a bridge, dragged her to the side, and threatened to toss her over, they’d gotten along very well. Even so, tonight she found herself feeling decidedly awkward.
“You comfortable over there, Gracie?”
She kept her eyes on the wiper blades. “I’m fine, Bobby Tom. Thank you for asking.”
“You look like you’re sort of squished against the door handle. This isn’t really a three passenger car. You sure you don’t want me to take you back to the hotel?”
“I’m positive.”
“Bobby Tom, sweetie, is she plannin’ to stay with us all night?” Cheryl Lynn Howell, his date for the evening, sounded petulant as she snuggled into his shoulder.
“She’s kind of hard to shake, honey. Why don’t you just pretend she’s not here?”
“That’s hard to do when you keep talking to her. I swear, Bobby Tom, you talked more to her this evening than you did to me.”
“I’m sure that’s not true, honey. She didn’t even sit with us at the restaurant.”
“She sat at the next table and you kept turning around to ask her questions. Besides, I don’t know what you need a bodyguard for.”
“There are a lot of dangerous people in the world.”
“That may be, but you’re stronger than she is.”
“She’s a better shot. Gracie’s pure magic with an Uzi.”
Gracie stifled a smile. He was shameless, but incredibly inventive. She shifted her weight a bit closer to the center of the seat. The lack of interior room in the antique Thunderbird hadn’t been as much of a problem as she’d feared. Although she and Cheryl Lynn were supposed to be sharing the space, the former beauty queen was practically sitting on Bobby Tom’s lap. She had somehow managed to straddle the gearbox and still look graceful.
Heaven, Texas Page 7
