I had my phone out and was going to call Max Dhiel when a guy emerged from the barber shop next door. He looked to be the age of retirement, gray haired, a bit of a paunch.
He studied the decorated brick and then said, “Damned hellions. That‘s the third time this week. We had it cleaned off before you came.” Then he turned to me and stuck out his hand. “John Carson. Yeah, I know, an unfortunate name. Please don’t call me Johnny. I have the shop next door. You don’t have any water in there,” he gestured at the theater, “do you?”
“I didn’t want to turn it on until I had the plumbing checked out. Hi. I’m Lynne Cameron.”
“Oh, I know who you are,” he said. “We’ve been waiting a long time for somebody to come along and either tear down this eyesore or fix it up. I’ve got a hose out back. I’ll hook it up to one of my sinks.”
He was good at his word and stepped back to let me do the honors. I put my finger over the hose and directed a pretty good stream at the design closest to his building. The paint began to disintegrate and run in streams down the brick. It was water-based paint, thank God. “I’ll pay you for the extra cost to your water bill,” I told John.
“Of course you won’t,” he said and pulled the door of his establishment open and went inside to escape the water.
Two hours later, my arms aching, I was nearly done when I heard the first clap of thunder. I hadn’t noticed the clouds. In Florida, it seems to be a trick of nature to let the sun shine on one side of you and build up rain clouds on the other side. Suddenly the rain came in a giant whoosh. Soaked, I turned off the hose and ran under the marquee. While I watched in disbelief, the rain, driven by the wind, made quick work of the last whorl. I sank back against the ticket booth and broke into hysterical laughter. If I’d waited a few hours, the rain would have done my work for me.
It was still pouring when that renovated red truck with a license plate claiming it to be an antique pulled across the street and Jake jumped out.
Lovely. Just what I needed. Having Jake see me dressed in ragged cutoffs, a cropped t-shirt and my hair wet and straggly. Wait a minute. I really didn’t care what he thought of me or how I looked. Yeah, right.
“What are you doing here?” I asked him, staying under the marquee because it was still raining like crazy.
“John called me. He thought I should come and help you.” He popped under the marquee with hardly a drop of rain on him, except the few drops that glistened in his hair. He looked so crisp and well-groomed in his dark blue shirt and jeans that I immediately resented his cool good looks.
I was beginning to realize that the Caramel community was something of a small town. “Well, as you can see, you’re not needed. I was almost done when the rain came and finished the job.”
His expression lay somewhere between amusement and concern. “You should have called me.”
Sweetly sarcastic, I said, “I didn’t know how your boss would feel, my calling you away from work.”
“Well, now aren’t you just the considerate one?” His hammy southern accent was just as good as his Shakespeare. His wonderful mouth lifted and his eyes sparkled with humor. “My boss is real considerate. He gives me Sundays off.”
Smiling at me with that wonderful smile, he looked…edible. But I’d just gone on a cowboy-free diet. “John came to my rescue.” Ruefully, I said, “Looks like if I’d waited another hour or two, I could have saved myself a lot of trouble.”
“But you didn’t.” A gust of wind brought rain in under the marquee. Immediately he shifted to put his body between mine and the wind, surrounding me in a protected corner. Being here like this with his warm body shielding me was more dangerous than being out in the windy rain. I would not let him do this to me. I wouldn’t let him be all gentlemanly and sneak his way back into my good graces.
He did that little lift of the lips that told me he was amused.
“Okay. What’s so funny?”
“It’s nothing. Just…the big Broadway star looking like a drowned rat.”
I pummeled my fists on his chest. “And here I thought you were such a gentleman, shielding me from the rain.” I kept pushing him and he kept letting me push him until we were both out in the pouring rain. “Now let’s see what you look like, Mister.”
He caught hold of my arms and pulled me into him. “What do I look like?”
Even with the rain plastering his hair to his head, he looked beautiful. “You look like…heaven.”
“And don’t you forget it,” he said, and lowered his head to kiss me.
Against my better judgment, I stood still and let him, right out in the middle of Breen Avenue. I told myself I would just tease him, give him a brush of my lips and then pull away. His mouth was warm, so warm against the chilliness of the rain beating on my shoulders. I was just ready to pull away from him when, still kissing me, he step walked me under the marquee. Now that we were out of the rain, he got down to business, flicking his tongue against my mouth, asking for entrance. I resisted, refusing to cave so quickly for him, but he didn’t give up. He kept plying me with his warmth and his tongue until at last I opened for him, welcoming him in, playing with him. My heart was beating so fast I felt like it was trying to jump out of my throat. He was so warm, so real, so masculine, and I realized I was starved for masculine, hadn’t had my arms wrapped around a real man in forever, a man who was unafraid to kiss me in broad daylight on a city street.
I wanted to break the spell he wove around me. Instead, I found my hands cupping his buttocks, pulling him close so that he fit into the v of my legs. He was hard and ready and all I could think of was: Yikes. And then, wonderful. And then, oh, this is pretty public.
A couple carrying an umbrella walked by and the man growled, “Get a room.”
Jake eased away from me. “Not a bad idea.”
I shook my head. Instantly, Jake caught my chin with his hand. “I was joking.”
“Were you?” I asked, turning my wet face up to his, struggling to read his expression. “Well, not entirely. Come on. We need to get dry.” He guided me around to the passenger side of his truck and opened the door. When I hesitated, he said, “Get in. I’ll drive you back to your hotel.”
“My car is here.”
“I’ll have somebody come and get it. Will you just get in?”
At my hotel, he followed me up to my room. I couldn’t very well say, go home, now, I’m all right. Inside, he went to stand and look out the window. “I’m too wet to sit down anywhere thanks to a certain young lady dragging me out into the rain. Hurry up and change. I’m taking you home to meet my mother.”
I just stood there staring at him.
He made an impatient gesture with his hand I was beginning to recognize. “I’m not taking you home to meet my mother as in, we’re getting married next Tuesday, I’m taking you home because my mother wants to meet you. And what my mother wants, she gets.”
I still didn’t move. He said, “All right. I have an ulterior motive. Maybe if you see me as a dutiful son, you’ll forgive me a little.”
His still wet shirt clung to his broad shoulders. He‘d slicked his black hair back with his hand. He looked like an ancient warrior who‘d walked out of the sea. “Why would your mother want to meet me?”
“Come on, Lynne.” He sounded a tad bit annoyed, as if I were being obtuse. “Big Broadway star comes to Florida backwater? She wants to meet you before you’re too wrapped up in the theater to take the time off.”
“I’m afraid she’s going to be disappointed. Big Broadway stars look pretty much like everybody else when they’re out of makeup.”
“Not you,” he said, his tone a shade too husky.
I decided the best thing for me to do was make a quick exit before I gave in to that magnetic pull he had on me. “I’ll try to be quick.”
I emerged from the bathroom, reasonably dry in jeans and a blue shirt with a draped front, my hair tied back in a ponytail. My moccasins lay next to the chair and I slipped my bare fe
et into them. When I stood up, I felt him looking at me, his eyes moving over me almost like a caress. He liked the way I looked. “I’d sure as hell like to haul you in my arms and kiss you, but I’m too wet.” Then he broke the spell by taking my arm and shepherding me out to the elevator.
Acres of green scrub grass dotted by palm trees lay under the hazy blue Florida sky. It seemed incongruous to see cattle and palm trees in the same field. “Are those the cattle you give a stern talking to,” I asked.
He cast me a look like he was happy to see me make a joke. “Naw. These are the good guys who stay close to home. It’s the ones who try to hide in the hummocks that get the back side of my tongue.”
“What’s a hummock?”
“It’s a collection of scrub palms that gather together and create a little rise.” There’s one over there. Sometimes they’re called hammocks.”
The road curved and a gate made of stone and wrought iron rose above us with the cross bar supporting a portrait of a Brahman bull and a sign announcing The Rutledge Ranch. We drove through, rattling over the cattle guard.
Jake followed the round path circling a two-tiered water fountain and pulled up to the front door of a sprawling Spanish red-roof tiled mansion.
“Hum. The ranch hand has a fine bunkhouse.”
The mansion was sheltered on one side by live oaks with gray strands of hanging Spanish moss. The other side opened out to outbuildings. Beyond them, sweet Bahia grass spread a green carpet for what looked like a thousand cattle grazing. I knew that Jake had led me astray about his situation, but I hadn’t imagined this. There was such solidity here. This kind of stability came down through generations of raising cattle.
My feeling of being a bit overwhelmed by such beauty escalated when Jake opened the door and I stepped inside. I faced a wall of glass intercut with white Florida pine beams. Both sides of the sloping pine walls soared to the ceiling. The kitchen, looking modern and high tech was to my left, to my right was a hall that I supposed went back to the bedrooms. Comfy leather furniture sat around a rug woven in exquisite shades of reds, yellows, blue and browns. In the center a huge black falcon with wings spread was done in black with traces of gold thread. I’d been to most of the museums in New York and I’d never seen a handwoven rug like this. From the bevel cut glass in the wall acting as prisms, tiny rainbows of color played over the rug.
Jake’s mother sat rocking in a chair by the fireplace, her hands busy with weaving strips that looked like the same work that was in the rug. In an odd way, she reminded me of my mother, even though they looked nothing alike. My mother Amelia was very fair-skinned with dark hair that was turning white. Jake’s mother was dark-skinned, with hair as black as the raven in that rug pattern, with only a few gray strands here and there. I guess it was her calm stillness that reminded me of my mother.
I really didn’t want to walk on that rug.
Jake’s mother smiled at me. “It’s all right, child. It was made to feel the bottom of people’s feet. Come and sit next to me. Let me have a look at you.” She patted an ottoman beside her. Then, quite unexpectedly, she reached out that veined hand and put her fingers under my chin to tilt my face up to hers. “Yes,” she said simply, and I felt as if she’d given me an Emmy.
“May I know your name?”
“Son, you are remiss. Introduce us.”
“Lynne, this is my mother, Elizabeth Rutledge. Had she not married my father, she would have been a princess in her tribe.”
“I am most honored,” I said, truly feeling as if I were in the presence of royalty. I saw clearly now where Jake got his air of charisma.
“Jake, go and change out of those wet clothes before you catch your death.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Jake disappeared into a doorway that I assumed led to a wing of bedrooms on the other side of the house.
“You’ve trained your son well,” I said.
“Only when he allows it. Tell me about yourself, Lynne Cameron.” She settled back and her hands began working with the fabric strips again weaving them over and around each other, yellow, red, and a soft aquamarine blue.
What was there about the movement of her hands? I felt mesmerized. Most of all, I felt charmed into telling the absolute truth. “I don’t quite know where to begin.”
“You could start with your family.”
“My family? My brothers are very wealthy now, but we’ve been through some hard times. My father was a professor of English and philosophy. My mother was from a titled family in Britain. They met while he was doing a teaching sabbatical at Oxford and she was his student. To hear Mother tell it, it was love at first sight for both of them. My father had no money, no status, other than his degrees. Mother’s family forbade her to marry him and disowned her when she did. They came to America almost immediately. Father secured a teaching position in a college in Rochester in New York State. He passed away of a heart attack when I was seven. My brother Hunter went to work in construction and eventually put together his own company with my brothers, Alex and Justin. They saved the family financially. Now they have the contract for renovating the theater in Caramel. As for me, I worked on Broadway for the last ten years. Now I’m going to be working here.”
“And you’re not married?”
Here it was again. My pat answer. “Relationships are difficult when you’re working in the theater. When other people are out enjoying themselves, you’re on stage. Not many men are willing to put up with that.”
“I would imagine not. How will you be proceeding with getting the theater open for shows?”
I realized that no one had really asked me that, not even the committee that interviewed me. “The first order of business is to clear out the current tenants.” When she raised her eyebrows, I said with a smile, “The cockroaches. They’ve taken up residence in every part of that building. The second order of business is to get enough of the renovation done so that I can launch a show in February. If we can pull that off, it will be a miracle. I’m thinking my brothers will simply have to start with the bare bones of things that will make the place livable.”
“I remember going to that theater as a girl. I’d sit in the balcony and throw popcorn over the railing at the patrons below.”
“Mother. You didn’t.” Jake came back into the room, looking dry and neat in a fresh gray shirt and jeans.
“I thought about trying some spit, but I didn’t have the courage for it.”
“And here I thought you were always about dignity,” Jake chided.
“I was a child. A rather defiant child in fact. If I hadn’t been, I would never have married your father.”
I’d been curious about Jake’s dad and how he didn’t seem to be around. This was my opportunity. “Your husband. He’s…”
“He was thrown by a horse. He thought he had a way with animals. But that horse was a treacherous beast. One minute he was docile. The next he would turn mean. He caught my husband unawares. Jake was sixteen at the time. Our family was so fortunate that Jake shouldered the burden of running this ranch. If he hadn’t, we’d have had to sell to our greedy neighbor who thought he was going to pick up our land at a bargain price.”
I looked at Jake. He stood very still, watching me. Here it was, our sticking point. I wanted to be angry at him for deliberately deceiving me. But had he really? He might be a wealthy cattleman now, but his family had once been in as much trouble as mine. I felt empathy and I didn’t like it. I rose from the ottoman. “I really should be getting back to my hotel. I’ve got a lot of work to do in the next few days. It was wonderful to meet you, Mrs. Rutledge. I hope you’ll come and see our shows. But I’d rather you didn’t throw popcorn over the balcony railing.”
“I’ll try to restrain myself,” she said with a smile that was utterly captivating.
Outside, seated in Jake’s truck, I said, “It was nice to see your humble home.”
“Could you just give it up? I‘ve worked damn hard for what my family has. You of all people should
know what that‘s like.” He kept his eyes on the road.
“I do know what it’s like. I remembered the time shortly after my father died and I wanted skates. Hunter told me in no uncertain terms that I wasn’t getting skates and that was that.”
He’d scored a point and I really had nothing more to say to him. When we drove up to the hotel, he reached across me to open the door on my side, careful not to brush my breasts. The worst of it was, I wanted him to do more than brush them. I wanted him to do anything he could think of to them.
I climbed out without looking back. He called after me, “Goodbye, Lynne.”
He hadn’t told me goodbye before. I guess this was final. That’s what I wanted. Wasn’t it? “Goodbye, Mr. Rutledge,’ I said formally.
I drove away and give a couple of good hits with my fist to the steering wheel. I knew taking Lynne to see my mother would only confirm her opinion that I’d misled her about being a lowly ranch hand. Truth was, I wasn’t quite sure how to handle Miss Lynne Cameron. There were so many facets to her, sterling performer, beautiful lady, vulnerable woman. My gut ached with wanting her. My gut also told me that she wasn’t exactly immune to me.
No matter how much my body urged me to take that woman to bed NOW, I had to wait. I sure didn’t want to.
Chapter 7
After Jake dropped me off, I paced my hotel room, occasionally stopping to look out at the rain. It had abated quite a bit, was more of a shower now. I’d never look at rain the same again. I would look at it as a place where false romantic dreams were easily made.
Yeah, I suppose I shouldn‘t take my ire out on an innocent act of nature. But now, rain and Jake were entwined together in my mind. I’d thought Jake was perfect. It wasn’t as if I wanted to marry him tomorrow, but it seemed like, even though we came from such disparate backgrounds, we had a lot in common. We’d both been around the block a few times when it came to relationships. He had a hidden depth he’d revealed on that stage, a knowledge of Shakespeare and an appreciation for the theater. But when I remembered about how he’d enjoyed playing his little game with me, I realized I was more hurt than angry. I had imagined we’d had an instant rapport with each other, that mysterious “click.” Now I knew that click was only in my mind, not his. I had to make a decision about him, and really there was only one decision to make. I knew that as president of the theater board, I would have to interact with him. I would have to speak to him but only in the company of other people and in a formal manner as befitted our situation. I would have to act as if he meant nothing to me.
A Cowboy for Lynne: Cameron Family Saga Page 7
