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Walking After Midnight

Page 16

by Karen Robards


  “All right, that was a pretty good run. You’ve earned a rest. Besides, your dog fetched supper.”

  “Is it food?” All thoughts of disliking him forgotten, Summer glanced longingly at the bag.

  “Look for yourself.” He passed it over.

  Summer looked. The sack contained three unopened packages: hot dogs, buns, and marshmallows. A yellow plastic cigarette lighter, price sticker still affixed, slid along the seam at the bottom.

  “It’s a feast,” she said, awed.

  Frankenstein took the sack back. “Come on, let’s go find a place to cook it.”

  Summer groaned. “I’m telling you, I can’t walk any farther. Not another step.”

  “Not far. Just till we find somewhere where we can light a fire without burning the forest down. Don’t quit on me now, Rosencrans. Maybe our luck’s turning.”

  “McAfee,” Summer corrected weakly, but he was already on the move again. Taking a deep breath, relieved to discover that she could, Summer grudgingly followed. Not so much Frankenstein, but the food.

  After about a quarter of an hour they came to a wide, rippling stream that looked shiny black in the darkness. Summer was so tired that she would have walked right into it if Frankenstein hadn’t stopped at the edge. Instead she walked into him. Her nose bumped against his broad back.

  “Over there,” he said, pointing to the other side as, rubbing her nose, she stepped out beside him. “We can build a fire and spend the night.”

  Thank God.

  Across the water lay a rocky area strewn with boulders. It stretched for about forty feet to where a tall cliff crowned with pointy-topped pines cut across the skyline. Flinty pale against the night sky, the cliff looked as if it had been hewn from limestone. Crystals imbedded in the rocky sides gleamed dully in the moonlight.

  Frankenstein waded into the water. Taking a deep breath, pressing her palm against her still bothersome side, Summer followed.

  In contrast to the seventyish temperature of the air, the water was cold. Icy, as a matter of fact. It swirled about her ankles and her calves, and rose toward her knees. Ahead, Frankenstein splashed toward the opposite shore. Reassured, Summer saw that even in the middle of the stream the water barely passed his knees.

  She would not drown. She would not even get the hem of her shorts wet. She took the opportunity to stop and scoop up sand from the pebble-strewn bottom to scrub her hands and face.

  As she rinsed away the sand with more icy water she felt better.

  Frankenstein had reached the bank while she was attending to her ablutions. He took off his cap, set it, Muffy, and the gear down on the bank, and turned back to lend her a hand. At least, she thought that was why he was turning back, and she splashed forward to meet him. Her dislike of him softened still more, blunted by his concern for her.

  He stopped some two feet away, bent double, and thrust his head beneath the surface of the water.

  Summer was so startled by the unexpectedness of his action that she lost her footing. The sole of her too big sneaker slid on a mossy rock, and for a moment she teetered wildly. Then, with a startled cry and an enormous splash, she went down.

  Her mouth was still open when the water closed over her head. The suddenness of it, the shock of finding herself totally submerged in icy water, caused her to panic. She choked, flailing like a chicken on the chopping block.

  A hand caught the front of her T-shirt and dragged her upward. Her head broke the surface of the water, and she coughed and gagged and spat as she tried to fill her waterlogged lungs with air. Soaked to the skin, she was hauled to her feet and steadied with a warm hand on each elbow. Glancing up, she saw Frankenstein’s grinning, dripping face.

  He deliberately held her at arm’s length so that she would not get his clothes wet.

  “If you laugh, I’ll kill you. I swear I will,” she said through gritted teeth and a curtain of sopping hair.

  He laughed.

  Summer thought about kicking him. With her luck her foot would fly out from under her and she would end up taking another dunking.

  She thought about punching him, but she figured he’d dodge. She’d probably end up in the drink again that way, too.

  Either way, he’d laugh even more.

  She turned and stomped toward shore. Her water-filled shoes felt like they weighed about a hundred pounds each.

  Squelching up onto the bank, dripping and shivering, Summer wrapped her arms around herself. She must have been quite a sight, because Muffy took one look at the apparition arising from the stream and started backing away.

  Behind her, she thought she heard a snicker.

  Over her shoulder, she threw Frankenstein a glare that should have toasted his toes.

  Was she ever mad! Mad at him, mad at herself, mad at the world! If Heaven had planned the whole sorry last twenty-four hours as some kind of cosmic entertainment, well, she would like to kick Heaven right in the teeth!

  She was also freezing her buns off.

  “Here,” Frankenstein said, sounding faintly choked as he pried one set of her frozen fingers from her arm and thrust the quilt into it. “Go get out of those wet clothes before you catch pneumonia. I’ll start a fire.”

  Casting him a venomous glance, Summer, clutching the quilt, retired behind a large boulder with what dignity she could muster.

  When she emerged sometime later, swaddled in the quilt like a papoose, her wrung-out clothes held stiffly before her, her wrung-out hair twisted in a soggy coil down her back, she was relieved to discover that he was paying her not the least attention. His back was to her as he worked to blow life into a flickering flame that licked halfheartedly at a pile of twigs. Muffy was stretched out like a small fur rug at his side.

  Summer hung her clothes from branches, careful to snag them securely so that they would not fall during the night. She turned her enormous shoes upside down to dry atop a rock. By the time she had finished, Frankenstein had the fire going and was threading hot dogs onto a stick.

  Food. Nothing less than that would have enticed her to approach the fire—and him.

  She was very conscious of being naked beneath the quilt.

  “Here,” he said as she approached, and handed her another stick that skewered four marshmallows. Regarding him warily, Summer sank cross-legged to the ground. The quilt unexpectedly parted in front, baring an embarrassing expanse of pale inner thigh. Shooting a quick look at Frankenstein—thank God he appeared to be staring into the flames, oblivious—she hitched the soft cotton closer around her body. Modesty restored, she too focused on the fire and concentrated on roasting her share of dinner to a turn.

  He ignored her. She ignored him.

  The wind, still warm from the day, blew softly across the clearing. Flames danced around the small pile of sticks as it passed. Overhead, stars twinkled, ringed in by a fringe of towering pines.

  Frankenstein was about a yard away, and, like her, he sat cross-legged on the hard-packed earth. Try as she would to pretend he was not there, he loomed large in her peripheral vision.

  His wet hair glistened seal-black in the firelight. The right side of his face, the side that was nearer her, was not as badly damaged as the left. There was still some bruising, but most of the swelling seemed to have receded. It was possible to discern that he had high, rather flat cheekbones; a straight, high-bridged nose; thin lips; and an obstinate chin. The natural color of his skin was slightly sallow, she thought. As an adolescent he must have suffered with acne, because his cheek bore faint traces of scars.

  Not a handsome man, she decided smugly. And remembered that disinterested kiss.

  He glanced at her. Ringed by twin shiners, his eyes were as black as his hair. They were guarded eyes, dangerous eyes. The eyes of a man who was not afraid to die—or kill.

  One glance from those eyes should have made her shiver in her shoes. Which, she discovered to her surprise, it did. Only not from fear.

  She glanced away hurriedly, so that he would not think s
he was looking at him. When her gaze stole back to him, he was once again staring into the fire.

  Summer found herself admiring the breadth of his shoulders, bared by the orange Nike shirt and gleaming in the firelight, and the rippling muscles in his arms. Beneath the tight cutoffs, his thighs and calves were well muscled, too, and well furred as well. The deep neck of his shirt revealed that his wide chest was liberally endowed with swirls of silky black hair.

  He wasn’t handsome, but he was masculine. Intensely, powerfully masculine. The sheer force of that masculinity was sexier than mere handsomeness on its own could ever be.

  As she came to that conclusion, Summer found herself meeting his gaze. For a second, no longer, their eyes locked and held. Then, as casually as if nothing momentous had occurred, Frankenstein shifted his attention back to the hot dogs he was roasting over the fire.

  Summer, on the other hand, felt like she had just been struck by lightning.

  How was it possible to be cold, scared, and starving—and yet at the same time wildly attracted to the man who had caused all three?

  When he didn’t even seem to realize that she was a woman?

  By the time the marshmallows were done, Summer felt as grumpy as he had acted all day. She was also so ravenous that she couldn’t even wait for the marshmallows to cool. Instead she pulled one from the stick while it was still bubbling hot, and popped it into her mouth.

  And promptly burned her tongue.

  “Oh! Ah!” she gasped, and gulped desperately at the beer Frankenstein obligingly passed her. With her tongue cooked to a crisp and the cloying sweetness of the marshmallow acting as a barrier, the beer was not half bad.

  “I thought you hated beer,” he observed when at last she lowered the can.

  “I do.” Her tongue still tingled. She waggled it experimentally.

  “No beer parties in college?” He carefully pulled a hot dog from the stick.

  “No.” Summer shrugged. “No college.” With rapt interest she watched as he balanced the stick by the fire, split a bun and tenderly placed a hot dog therein.

  “None at all?” He took a huge bite.

  “Nope. Hey, how about me?” Indignantly she reached for the stick he had put down, which still held three hot dogs. He was obliging enough to trade the package of buns for a marshmallow.

  “How come?” He ate the marshmallow whole.

  “How come what?” Summer took her first bite of hot dog. It tasted wonderful, fantastic, divine. If she’d been writing for a Mobil Travel Guide, she would have awarded it five stars.

  “How come no college?”

  “I went to New York to model instead. As a teenager I took classes at a modeling school in Murfreesboro—they cost an arm and a leg, let me tell you—and modeled part time. After high school graduation, the school set up some interviews for me with some agencies in New York. One took me on, and the rest, as they say, is history. I always thought there’d be plenty of time later for college. I was wrong.” She took another bite out of her hot dog: ambrosia.

  “So how long did you stay in New York?”

  Muffy was approaching him flat on her belly, her tongue lolling, her tail wagging abjectly. She gave a delicate little yap, and Frankenstein scowled at her. Then, to Summer’s surprise, he broke off a third of his hot dog and handed it to her.

  “I modeled till I was two months shy of twenty-five. Not high fashion stuff like I had hoped—lingerie, for catalogues, mostly, and some hand work. Lingerie wasn’t as big then as it is now, and hands weren’t big at all. I made a decent living, went to a lot of really neat parties, and enjoyed myself in general. Then all at once there were other girls, younger girls, who were in demand. Just as suddenly as that”—she snapped her fingers—“it was over. I was too old. So I came home.”

  Snapping her fingers had been a mistake. Muffy did her crawling-rug imitation in Summer’s direction. Summer fed her part of a marshmallow.

  “How long ago was that?”

  “Eleven years.”

  “So you’re thirty-six.”

  “Sounds awful, doesn’t it?” Summer took another bite of hot dog and tried to pretend she didn’t care. She did. Getting older was not something she had been prepared for. No longer being young and reasonably gorgeous had required a lot of adjustment. Getting up in the morning and counting the crow’s feet around her eyes, having to use her mascara wand and then a rinse to color the gray hairs that increasingly appeared among the brown, was not something she had ever expected would happen to her. But of course it had.

  She was glad getting over it was all behind her, which it was.

  Except when a man, especially one who interested her as much as Frankenstein was beginning to, seemed to feel that she possessed not one iota of sex appeal. Then getting older stung all over again.

  22

  “Thirty-six sounds pretty good to me. I’m thirty-nine.”

  “Men are different. Given the chance, I bet you’d date twenty-year-olds.” Disgust laced Summer’s voice.

  “Nope. I like my women old enough to know better, but young enough to do it anyway.”

  Summer snorted. “Ha-ha.”

  He grinned and pulled another marshmallow from the stick.

  “So what happened after you came home? By home you do mean Murfreesboro, I take it.”

  Summer nodded. “I was born in Murfreesboro, and when New York stopped happening I came home to Murfreesboro. Don’t you know that, however far they may wander, Tennesseeans always come home?”

  “I think I may have heard that somewhere.” Frankenstein bit into his second hot dog with as much evident enjoyment as he had attacked the first. “You came home to your family? Parents, brothers, sisters?”

  “Mom, Dad, older sister Sandra, younger sister Shelly. I was the one in the middle. The headstrong one who never would listen. Dad used to say I always had to learn things the hard way. He wanted to send me to college; I took the money and went to New York instead. My sisters, on the other hand, chose college. Sandra’s a medical technologist out in California now, happily married for fifteen years, with four gorgeous children. Shelly lives in Knoxville. She’s a lawyer, happily married for nine years, with three gorgeous children. Then there’s me: a divorced, childless janitor.”

  Summer laughed, but there was no humor in the sound. Her sisters had sensibly chosen to follow the paths their parents had mapped out for them; Summer, on the other hand, had defied all advice to reach for a star—and in the process gotten her fingers badly burned.

  “At least you had the courage to try.” This comment, coming from Frankenstein, from whom she would have expected some kind of joke at her expense, startled Summer. After a moment spent twisting the notion this way and that, she looked at him with real gratitude. Never had she thought of her choice in quite that way, and to do so eased a hard little knot of regret that had been festering for a long time inside her.

  Before she could comment, he continued: “So what did you do, a New York lawn-jer-ee model, back home in Murfreesboro?”

  Summer smiled a little. “I got married, what else? To the police chiefs handsome doctor son. Despite the little hitch of his being Jewish, my parents were thrilled. Despite the little hitch of my being Baptist, his parents were thrilled. I was even thrilled—for a while. It wore off.”

  “What happened?” He sounded surprisingly sympathetic.

  Summer bit into her hot dog. “He married the lingerie model, not me. When he found out that my natural weight was some twenty pounds heavier than it was when he married me and my hair didn’t curl unless I put curlers in it and my lips weren’t naturally red without lipstick, he freaked.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Frankenstein responded to Muffy’s rug routine by tossing her a section of bun. “So you got a divorce, huh?”

  “Not right away. I wish I had. He spent five long years trying to turn me back into the woman he thought he had married. Someone who was feminine, sexy, and glamorous twenty-four hours a day. I spent five long yea
rs letting him. More fool me.” Without meaning to, the bitterness Summer had thought was long behind her crept into her voice. The things she had done for Lem! She had dressed to the teeth, kept a perfect house, cooked meals from scratch, entertained his friends and colleagues with the slavish attention to detail of a frigging Martha Stewart—and spent a lot of time watching movies on the VCR while Lem worked all the hours God sent. She had been slowly going crazy with unhappiness, and all the while, to please him, she had dieted to the point of starvation. Sometimes, when she couldn’t stand it any longer, she would wait until Lem was out of the house and stuff herself with anything she could find—ice cream, bread, candy bars she had hidden just for that purpose. Then she had inevitably been sick. Sick to her stomach, yes, but also sick with shame for not being able to be the girl Lem thought he had married. As Lem had told her time and again—practically every time he’d seen her eat a normal meal, in fact—he hadn’t realized he was marrying a hog.

  With Lem, she had always felt like a hog.

  Frankenstein looked her over thoughtfully. “More fool he, I’d say. For an old bag of thirty-six, you’re not half bad.”

  Summer gave him a sudden, dazzling smile. “I don’t know what you’re after, Frankenstein, but keep on buttering me up like that and you just might get it.”

  He grinned. “It was a compliment. I swear.”

  “That’s what they all say.”

  “Have a marshmallow. Maybe it’ll sweeten you up.”

  “Maybe.”

  They split the last toasted marshmallow. Summer savored the sticky confection as it melted on her tongue, then mourned its passing. Frankenstein must have felt the same way, because he licked the gooey residue from his fingers when his half was gone.

  “So what happened after you finally got a divorce from what’s-his-name?”

  “Lem. Dr. Lemuel C. Rosencrans, urologist. Are you really interested in hearing the rest of my life story?”

  “There’s no TV. Got nothing better to do.”

  Summer made a face at him. “Okay, I got a divorce. With no-fault divorce, and without any children, and since Lem was already a doctor when I married him, and since we had no equity to speak of in our house, I ended up with practically no money. Which was a shock. I’d never known before what it was like to have to worry about what I was going to eat the next day. My parents were living in Santee by that time and my dad was ill. They were sick about the divorce. I didn’t want to burden them any more than they were already burdened, My sisters were married and moved away. It was me, on my own. I was determined that I was going to make it, with no help from anyone. Only, I didn’t have any education, or training for any type of job. I’d been a lingerie model—try finding a job with that kind of reference in Murfreesboro—and a housewife. I’d gotten too old and fat to model underwear and I no longer had a husband or a house. But one thing I did bring out of my marriage: By golly, I knew how to clean. So I started cleaning other people’s houses. And Daisy Fresh was born. It’s supported me ever since, and it’s grown every year.”

 

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