The Dixie Virgin Chronicles: Bea (Book 4)
Page 7
“Hmm?” She slowly turned to face him.
His smile reminded her of baseball games in the summertime, sitting on the bleachers and cheering for the home team, of buttered popcorn in front of the fire with the family dog curled like a pretzel on the hearth, of two people in the kitchen, their hands sticky with dough, their fingers touching in the bowl as they made pizza crust together.
“Why don’t you leave the sleeping bag rolled out?” he said. “I don’t expect we’ll be going anywhere today.”
“Why not?”
“There’s that big rock pile on the road, remember? It will take another day and a half to clear it out of the way.”
“With me helping, the work will go faster.”
She turned away from him so she wouldn’t have to see his face. It reminded her of home.
“Hmm,” he said, neither agreeing nor disagreeing. “Maybe.”
He contemplated her back. Such a prideful, straight back she had. You wouldn’t know to look at her now that she could feel so good cuddled up next to you at night, he thought.
Of course, he was going to leave her as soon as they got to Memphis. It would be better all the way around if he remembered that. No use getting sentimental over one night.
“Listen,” he said. “Do you have anything in that suitcase besides skirts and high-heeled boots?”
“A pair of slacks and some tennis shoes.”
“Wear them. I’ll get out of here and let you get dressed.”
“Where will you go?”
“I’ll scout around, see what this place looks like, gather some firewood so we can have hot coffee…”
His voice trailed off. She looked so good in the morning, so fresh, her black eyes shining the way eyes on a woman ought to shine.
He left the tent quickly, but when he got outside he wished he’d stayed just a minute longer. Just long enough to reach out and touch her.
Turning his back, he stomped off. There was too much temptation inside that tent.
o0o
They spent all day trying to clear the rocks off the mountain road. Before they got started, they discussed going back down the mountain to a dirt side road Russ had spotted about a mile back, but they decided the rains would have made it impassable, and anyhow, they had no idea where it led. It would be best all around to press forward.
After that, neither of them talked much. For one thing, they were too busy working. For another, neither of them wanted the other to get the wrong idea. But they frequently sneaked glances when one of them thought the other wasn’t looking.
Under the guise of wiping sweat off her face, Bea glanced at Russ from behind her hand. The day had turned hot, and he had taken off his T-shirt. The sun was slicking his skin and shining down on his blond hair, giving him a sort of halo.
Come to think of it, a halo wasn’t such an inappropriate headpiece for him. After all, he’d rescued her more than once.
She tried not to need guardian angels. If she could just get to her email, Janet would remind her in no uncertain terms that all the Dixie Virgins were independent women. Bea supposed once in her life she could be scared and pitiful and dependent. Besides, she didn’t have to tell the Dixie Virgins everything. Janet and Belinda and Molly certainly weren’t doing any tell-alls now that they’d landed Mr. Right.
If Bea could just get through two more days with Russ, she’d be in Alabama and everything would fall right back into place. Then she’d be strong and independent and so bossy even her mother would call her down.
Smiling as she thought about seeing Glory Ethel, again, she turned back to clearing the road.
o0o
By the time nightfall came, they were both too tired to do much more than eat some of his canned rations and flop into the canvas chairs.
After supper Russ lifted his face toward the evening sky.
“It looks like it’s going to be a beautiful night,” he said. “Warm, balmy. Even for the mountains.”
“I don’t know. I think the mountains are capricious.”
“Like a woman.”
“Women are not capricious.”
“The ones I know are.”
“I guess you’ve known the wrong women. Up till now.” She figured the devil made her add that last part, but it was too late to take it back.
Russ sat very still, looking at her in that watchful, expectant way of his. And then he smiled.
“Are you the right woman, Bea?”
“I’m the right woman for lots of things—for my ad agency, for my family, for my friends. Any way you look at it, I’m the right woman.”
“Are you the right woman for me, Bea?”
“I didn’t say I was.”
“Yes, you did.”
“Of course, I didn’t.”
“I heard you, plain as day.”
“Then you misunderstood.’’
She stood up, stretching and yawning elaborately so he’d see how sleepy she was and stop talking to her.
“I guess it’s time for us to turn in,” he said.
He made it sound as if they were a team or worse yet, husband and wife, heading toward a four-poster with a feather mattress and a fuzzy blanket. In fact, he made the pair of them sound so inviting it scared her. Imagine. Her paired with a him.. Ridiculous.
She hurried inside the tent, grabbed the sleeping bag and made a dignified exit. Strike dignified. The darned bag got caught in the tent flap and she wrestled with it for two full minutes while her audience sat there laughing his head off.
When she finally got it free, she just stood there and glared at him. Unfortunately, he was not the kind of man to be subdued by a nasty look from a woman.
“What are you doing?” He spoke in such a maddeningly pleasant voice she wanted to shoot him.
“I’m moving my sleeping bag.”
“And where do you plan to move it to?”
“Oh, just someplace nice and breezy. It’s too stuffy to sleep in a tent tonight.”
“It will get colder later on.”
“If I’m not mistaken, this bag is duck down.”
“You don’t want to sleep on the ground,” he said. “Something you don’t want is liable to crawl in there with you.”
Something she hadn’t wanted had crawled in there with her last night, she thought. But she didn’t say it aloud. Actually, he hadn’t crawled in with her; she’d crawled in with him. And she’d liked it more than she cared to admit.
“I’ll sleep in the truck. Nothing is going to crawl in with me in the truck.”
He didn’t say anything, merely tightened his jaw and stalked off to the tent.
Once Bea was headed toward his truck, she didn’t look back. She hadn’t meant to sleep in the truck; she had meant to spread her bag under that huge pine on the other side of their campfire. But she supposed sleeping in the truck wasn’t such a bad idea. At least she wouldn’t find herself curled around Russ Hammond in the morning—curled around him and liking it.
First she spread her bag in the cab and tried sleeping there. But she kept bumping her elbows on the steering wheel, and her feet kept getting tangled in the door handles.
Finally she got out and spread the bag in the truck bed. It was roomier, harder than the tent floor, but roomier, nonetheless.
She raised herself on her elbows and peered through the darkness toward the tent. She couldn’t see a thing. She guessed Russ was inside on his pallet, sleeping like a baby, his big body warm and toasty, his chest rising and falling with reassuring regularity. Maybe he was even snoring a little. He had last night, she vaguely remembered. There was something comforting about a man lying beside you snoring, something appealing, something homey.
Sighing, Bea lay back on her hard bed. Finally she slept.
o0o
Russ lay on his pallet awhile, alone once more, but that was nothing new. The aggravating thing was that he didn’t like it. He kept missing the smell of perfume in her hair and the soft kittenish way she fit against him when she slept.
The most stubborn woman alive. Once, in the middle of chapter four, he started to go out there and get her; then he decided against it. She might get a little cold later on, but she’d be all right. He guessed he would let her have her foolish way just this once.
With that settled, he put the book aside and slid under his covers.
o0o
While Bea and Russ slept, two men crept out of the dark, scrabbling their way over the rocks, passing a jug of moonshine back and forth.
“This ain’t the way to travel, Hank.”
Hank hitched his baggy overalls over his skinny frame and handed the jug to his cousin.
“Don’t look at me, Bobbie Joe. I wasn’t the one tore up the truck in that ditch back yonder.”
Bobbie Joe hugged the jug to his fat stomach awhile, as if it were a woman; then he took a long swig and wiped his lips with the back of his hairless hand.
“Well, I wasn’t the one wanted to set out at pitch-black dark.”
“How else you gonna leave when everybody in the county’s after you?”
They were silent for a while, content to stumble along, fortified by liquor and anesthetized by ignorance. They didn’t try to think of a way out of their situation. Planning ahead wasn’t something they did.
Suddenly they came upon Russ’s camp. Hank plucked Bobbie Joe’s sleeve.
“Do you see what I see?”
“Yep. I ain’t blind.”
“Settin’ there just as purty as a pitcher. Like it was waitin’ for us.”
“Yep. Just like God set it there so we wouldn’t have to walk.”
The two old men crept toward the pickup truck. They didn’t consider what they were about to do was stealing; they considered that they had had a bit of good fortune and they would be foolish not to take advantage of it.
o0o
Bea came halfway awake.
I’m moving, she thought. And then decided she must be dreaming. That was it. She was too tired and she was having a bad dream.
She huddled back into her sleeping bag.
The truck hit a rut in the road, and Bea’s head bounced on the hard floor. Jarred and astonished, she sat up. She really was moving. Russ’s truck was banging along on some kind of side road, hitting ruts and rocks with little impartiality.
She pulled herself upright and leaned against the cab for balance.
“At least he could have had the decency to tell me he changed his mind.” Wind stung her cheeks and chilled her ears. “Wait till I give that Russ Hammond a piece of my mind.”
She tried to turn around and bang on the window, but the truck hit another big hole and she ended up crumpled in a heap, tangled in her sleeping bag.
“That man’s going to hear from me.” She struggled up onto her hands and knees.
Grabbing a handhold on the side of the truck bed, she banged on the window.
Inside the cab, Hank had charge of the wheel and Bobbie Joe had charge of the jug.
“Did you hear something, Bobbie Joe?” Hank asked as Bea smacked her palm against the glass behind their heads.
“Naw. Probably one of them old hoot owls settin’ up a racket. They always carryin’ on ‘bout this time of night.”
“It don’t sound like no hoot owl to me. More like whumpity, whumpity, whumpity.”
They passed the jug between them, and Hank let go of the wheel long enough to take a big swallow. The truck somehow got itself down the road till Hank took over the driving again.
“Listen.” Hank cocked his head as Bea created another racket in the back end, banging and yelling for all she was worth.
“Stop this truck, Russ Hammond! Stop right this minute!”
With Bobbie Joe hunched over to one side, bent over his jug and the night as black as shoe polish and the sleeping bag flapping up in her face from the wind, Bea could barely make out one head and one set of shoulders in the cab.
“I’m going to really scream if you don’t stop, Russ,” she yelled.
The sound came to Hank as a faint moaning, the kind ghosts might make.
“I think somebody’s in this truck with us, Bobbie Joe.”
“That liquor’s done gone to your head. Ain’t nobody settin’ here but the two of us, and you so ugly you don’t count.”
“Listen... Don’t you hear that? Whooo, whooo. Like spooks and such.”
“The Devil’s drawers! Stop this truck and let me drive. I ain’t about to go down this mountain with a crazy man at the wheel.”
Hank pulled the truck off the road, careless of tail pipes and such, dragging over rocks and jouncing through ruts until he had come to a bone-jarring stop.
Bea rolled around, bruising parts of her body she didn’t even know she had, and finally ended up sitting in the middle of the truck bed with the sleeping bag draped over her head.
About the time she was clawing her way out of the bag, Hank and Bobbie Joe rounded separate corners of the truck.
“Oh, Lordee, oh, Lordee, oh, Lordee. It’s the Devil from hell,” Hank screamed. “I confess. I done it. I done it. Just don’t send me to eternal damnation.”
Bea froze. The sleeping bag settled slowly back over her head.
Good God! She’d been kidnapped.
Chapter Six
“Shut up, you old fool,” Bobbie Joe yelled at his companion. “The Devil don’t wear sleeping bags.”
He reached over and plucked at the sleeping bag. “Come out, come out,” he chanted, “whoever you are.”
Shoot,, Bea thought. There were two of them. Two kidnappers reeking of corn liquor. Just wait till she got her hands on that Russ Hammond. She’d kill him.
But first she had to deal with her kidnappers.
She rose up tall and strong under the bag, then flapping her arms for effect, she screeched, “Boo-oo-ooo.”
Hank nearly jumped off the mountain. “I told you it was a ghost, Bobbie Joe,” he whined.
“You gonna make me lose my religion, Hank,” Bobbie Joe said as he clambered over the side of the truck.
Bea could hear him coming. She braced herself for the attack. She was headed home and nothing was going to stand in her way.
Bobbie Joe jerked the bag and Bea swung her fist at the same time. The fist did no damage, but the bag was lethal. Both of them got tangled up and landed in a heap on the truck bed.
“Hell, there’s a she-cat in this darned bag,” Bobbie Joe said.
“Get your hands off me,” Bea yelled. As she scrambled upright, her arms and legs were both going like windmills, but much to her disgust, the bag kept getting between her and her target. “Let go of me, you sawed-off little runt.’’
“Who you callin’ a sawed-off little runt?” Bobbie Joe took time off from battle to give her an offended look.
His pride was his downfall.
One of Bea’s legs was finally free of the bag, and she caught him in the stomach with a whacking roundhouse kick. He wheezed once or twice, and then he folded in the middle like a beanbag that had lost all its stuffing.
Having recovered from his encounter with the so-called Devil,, Hank joined the fray. Before Bea had time to savor her victory, he was over the side of the truck, his bony hands jerking her arms behind her back. With his teeth, he pulled a length of rope out of the tobacco pocket of his overalls and trussed her up like a calf ready for the market.
Hank dusted his hands together, proud of himself, and glared down at his fallen companion.
“Now who you callin’ an old fool?”
“Both of you,” Bea said. They had tied her arms and legs but had forgotten her mouth. “Just who do you think you are, stealing a truck and kidnapping a woman? Don’t you know that’s against the law?”
“Where’s the law?” Hank stood spreadlegged in the center of the truck bed,
looking drunk and lopsided. “I don’t see no law. Do you, Bobbie Joe?”
Bobbie Joe groaned and lifted his head. When he saw the she-cat tied up, he got some of his spirit back.
“You durned tootin’ they ain’t no law around here.”
“Just wait till my friend finishes with you,” Bea said.
She crossed her fingers, which were already behind her back, much to her mortification. A fine pickle she was in. But she was too angry to be scared. And much too busy. Her mind was as busy as Christmas elves trying to think of a way out of her predicament. If she couldn’t outwit two old drunk mountaineers, then she was losing her touch.
“What friend?” Hank twisted his head this way and that, nearly losing his balance in the process. “I don’t see no friend, do you, Bobbie Joe?”
“You will,” Bea said, not giving Bobbie Joe time to gather his wits—if he had any in the first place. “When he gets here, you’ll wish I’d called the law instead.”
She sent a silent prayer winging upward that Russ would wake up, hoping he would come after her and wishing to goodness he’d hurry up. Both Bobbie Joe and Hank were silent, watching her with the curiosity of children over a strange new toy. She seized her advantage and continued talking, inventing as she went.
“He’s bigger than this mountain and meaner than two wildcats put together. When he gets mad, he goes crazy... and he’s really going to be mad when he sees what you’ve done to me. If I were you, I’d cut these ropes and let me go before he gets here.”
Bobbie Joe was tired of listening to her, so he stuffed a handkerchief in her mouth. All he’d meant to do was borrow a truck so he wouldn’t have to walk. He hadn’t counted on ending up with a smart-mouthed woman. And Lord, could she talk. He got a headache just listening to her. Maybe the best thing would be to cut her loose. Of course, he wanted to be out of the way when they did. She had a kick like a jug of moonshine.
“I don’t know about lettin’ you go,” he said, glancing at his companion for guidance. “What do you think, Hank?”
“Well...” Hank cocked his head this way and that, looking at Bea from all angles. There was bound to be some use for her. He didn’t much care about home cooking anymore, preferring the convenience of canned pork and beans, and he didn’t have anyplace of his own to keep clean, and he had lost his appetite for women some years back. Still, she’d been dropped into his lap for some purpose. He just couldn’t think what that purpose was.