by Peggy Webb
“This is all speculative.”
“I don’t think so. Everybody was talking about how well you did in the preliminary interviews.”
“I heard the same thing about you.” It was true. Alice in Wonderland had been green with envy. So had Senator Crumb’s daughter, who was the only other woman in the pageant as plain as C.J.
“Oh, well…” Gabby waved the encouragement away. “I have lots more years to enter, and this is your last chance. I really hope you win, C.J.”
C.J. flung the newspaper onto the bedside table and grabbed her jeans and T-shirt. “Don’t count yourself out, Gabby. It’s not over till it’s over.”
“You’re not leaving?”
“Yes.”
“But it’s after curfew. If they catch you, you’ll be disqualified.”
Wouldn’t that be a good thing? It would solve at least half of C.J.’s problems.
“I’ll take my chances.”
“Be careful, C.J.”
“If I see Leroy Levant, I promise I’ll run the other way.”
“Who wouldn’t?”
C.J. opened the door a crack to reconnoiter the hall, then slipped out and down the stairs. Five flights. Echoing with emptiness.
Outside she hailed a cab. “The Marriott, please.” She hadn’t called ahead. Maybe the element of surprise would be in her favor.
Slipping through the lobby she kept an eye out for Leroy Levant or one of the judges. Not that she minded getting thrown out of the pageant. But not yet. Not until she talked with Ellie.
She knocked on the door of the Magnolia Suite, and Ellie’s old college chum, Dolly Wilder, opened the door. C.J. hadn’t counted on this.
“Miss Wilder, when did you get in?”
“I breezed in this afternoon…on my broom, that witch with the Hollywood Tattler would say.” She opened the door wide. “Come in. Ellie’s in the bathroom. C.J.? Right?”
“Yes, Miss Wilder.”
“Good heavens. I taught you your first dirty word. You were two years old and mad as a hornet, and I said, ‘Just stomp your feet and say dammit, C.J. It’ll make you feel better,’ and you did. Lord, Phoebe wanted to strangle me.”
The fiftyish star of film and stage, who could have passed for thirty-five even in strong sunlight, gave a full-throated laugh and the just-between-us wink that was her trademark onstage and off.
“Call me Dolly.” She pulled C.J. inside. “Let me look at you. You have Phoebe’s eyes. She had the most incredible eyes. All she had to do was look at a man, and he was smitten.”
Dolly Wilder had some amazing eyes herself. C.J. had never seen eyes that color. Amber. Her hair was loose and long, a pale blond color that probably came from a bottle but looked natural. Even in a pair of black sweats faded almost gray she was one of the most beautiful women C.J. had ever seen.
She vaguely remembered Dolly flitting in and out of their house during her childhood, but then she’d become a superstar and C.J. didn’t see her again until Phoebe’s funeral.
“I’m having a glass of wine. Can I pour you a drink?”
“No, you may not.” Ellie came out of the bathroom in her chenille robe. “You taught her enough bad habits.”
“How do you know?”
“I was there when you taught her to swear. Remember?”
“Damn. I don’t have any secrets from you.”
“No, you don’t.” Ellie nabbed a glass of wine and made herself comfortable on the sofa. “You’re breaking curfew, C.J. This must be important.”
“It is.”
Now that she was here, C.J. couldn’t bring herself to tell Ellie why she’d come.
“You must be feeling pretty good,” Ellie told her. “I hear you’re the front-runner.”
“I think that’s mostly in Clint Garrett’s imagination.”
“No,” Dolly said. “It’s true. The judges call you a ‘breath of fresh air.’ I think they appreciate your honesty.”
“I don’t feel honest. I feel like a fraud. I am a fraud.”
Ellie patted the sofa. “Come over here and sit down and tell me all about it.”
It felt good to have the comfort of a warm and motherly embrace. C.J. basked in the warmth while she gathered her courage.
“I don’t want to disappoint you, Ellie, or to cause you or Dad or my hometown any embarrassment, but I’d like to withdraw from the pageant.”
Ellie nodded as if that was what she’d expected to hear all along. “You won’t disappoint or embarrass anybody, so put that out of your mind and do what is best for you. What made you change your mind?”
“A lot of things. My roommate, for one. This pageant and the scholarship money mean everything to her. If I pull out I think she has a shot at the title.”
“The scholarship money would mean a lot to you.”
“You know, I’ve always said I couldn’t go to vet school because of Dad and finances, but that was a crutch. Dad’s more than capable of taking care of himself, and I’ve always had the power to leave here and do what I please. I’ve just never had the courage.”
“Sometimes it takes us a while to see the truth, especially if it’s about ourselves. Some people never do.”
“Now that Dad has you…”
“Not yet, but I’m working on it.”
“With a little help from me,” Dolly chimed in. “Lord, how I love fixing other people’s problems.”
A look passed between them, then Ellie and her old college chum lifted their glasses and said, “To the Foxes. Long may we howl.”
“And prowl,” Dolly added.
“Hear, hear.”
“If I had a glass I could toast, too,” C.J. said.
“Oh, hell. Why not?”
Ellie poured C.J. a glass, but it was only half full, which was probably a very good thing considering she had no head for spirits of any kind.
She lifted her glass to theirs and took a long swig. Shoot, at the rate she was going—breaking curfews and no-drinking bans both—she wouldn’t have to withdraw from the pageant: she’d be kicked out.
Wouldn’t that make headlines?
“So, what are you going to do about your schooling?” Ellie asked.
“I’ll get a student loan.”
“Or apply for a scholarship,” Dolly said.
“Yes, if I qualify for any.”
“I’ve established scholarships all over the country. I’m thinking about setting one up for veterinary students.” Seeing that C.J. was fixing to refuse, Dolly added, “Call it payback for a favor your mother did me a long time ago. Now tell me, where would you like to go?”
“Mississippi State.”
“Done.”
C.J. finished her wine, and Ellie offered to take her back to the dorm, but she said, “No, thanks.”
She was twenty-five years old. It was high time for her to stand on her hind legs, as the old saying goes, and take care of herself.
When she left she heard Dolly telling Ellie, “I used this with the Count. All I have to do is crook my little finger, and he comes running.”
For a heady moment, C.J. imagined herself using a mysterious something that would have Clint Garrett at her beck and call, then she decided any attempt to enchant him would be perfectly useless. He was not the kind of man who would be any woman’s slave. Ever.
The problem with having too much time on your hands is that you’re likely to get into trouble. Big trouble.
That’s exactly what had happened to Clint. There he’d been this afternoon, standing around backstage not bothering a soul, just thinking his own thoughts and trying not to be bored to death, when he’d overheard a conversation that could change the course of his life.
In the span of one afternoon he’d transformed from a man with nothing on his mind except doing the least amount of work possible to a man with a mission. He was onto a story, a very big story if his source and his instincts were right. He didn’t yet know about the reliability of his source, but his instincts were seldom wrong.
The only problem was, he’d squelched them for so long, he was having to feel his way back to trust.
“Is that all?” His source was hidden in the shadows of the tall camellias. Nothing was visible except a small pale face.
Senator Tobias’s daughter was terrified. Clint reached for her cold hands. “That’s all for now. I’ll let you know if I need anything else.”
“I…you won’t use my name?”
“No. Trust me. Reporters have gone to jail rather than reveal the identity of a source.”
“I probably shouldn’t have told you.” She gave a nervous giggle. “But revenge is so sweet.” She’d told Clint how her daddy forced her to end an affair with the only man she’d ever love.
The lights of a taxi illuminated the street, barely missing her hiding place.
“I’d better go.”
“Yes. Be careful.”
She scuttled out of the bushes and through the side door just as the taxi spit out its passenger, a tall woman listing dangerously to the left, a slender woman with a cap of feathery curls and an all-too-familiar laugh.
“No, thanks,” she was saying. “I can see my way to the door.”
Clint wanted to go out and smack the cab driver. He’d just bet the man wanted to accompany Miss C.J. Maxey to her door. He’d just bet the man wanted to play the gallant hero in return for a kiss or two. Or maybe more.
Roaring toward the cab like a bull turned loose on a matador, Clint grabbed C.J.’s arm—in the nick of time, he noted, for she leaned against him in a manner that had him wanting to steal a kiss or eight. Shoot. Eight wouldn’t begin to be enough. Try a million.
“You’ve been drinking,” he said, and when she turned a radiant smile on him he forgot everything except the feel of her slender arm beneath his fingers and the scent of jasmine that wafted off her hair.
“Just a little.” A hiccup exploded and she covered her mouth. “That wasn’t me.”
“I know.” He half dragged, half carried her to the camellia bushes, only this time he vanished into the shadows, too. “What are you trying to do? Get yourself thrown out of the pageant?”
She giggled. “Old Leroy would make me a legend. I’d be that wild, wanton woman caught drinking and consorting.”
“Well, hell.”
“Hell, hell, hell.” She giggled. “The legend grows. Caught cussing, too. I think I’ll yell it.”
He clapped his hand over her mouth. C.J. was worse off than he’d first thought. She might as well just walk through the front door and give herself up as try to sneak. In her condition, C.J. sneaking was as ludicrous as a herd of elephants tiptoeing.
“I’m going to help you get back to your room.”
She shook her head. “Mft nnnt gaaaa.”
“If I take my hand off your mouth, will you behave?” She nodded her head, which probably didn’t mean a thing. A woman like C.J. usually did exactly as she pleased. Damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead.
“Promise, now. Quiet.” Clint removed his hand, and she shook her head like a puppy drunk on his first scent of clover. “I’ll help you get back to your room, and if you’re very quiet and do exactly as I say, I think we can make it without being discovered.”
“I don’t care. I don’t want to be princess.”
“You’re serious, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“So you went out and had…how much wine? Two sips?” He remembered how drunk she’d become on one green monkey. C.J. Maxey was going to give him ulcers and premature baldness, besides. Not to mention the worst insomnia in the history of sleep disorders.
“Good lord, women like you shouldn’t be allowed out of the house after dark without a chaperone.”
His mind, already crowded with plots and subplots whirling around the dairy industry, tried to wrap itself around the latest problem with C.J. She was intent on getting kicked out of the pageant on grounds of drinking and carousing. Her daddy would be humiliated. Ellie would be mortified. The whole town would turn against her.
Clint had to do something.
A plan leaped into his mind, so beautiful in its simplicity that he wondered why he hadn’t thought of it earlier.
“Here’s what we’re going to do. I’m taking you with me.”
“Okeydokey.” She plastered herself around him, and what could a man do but try to think pure thoughts? They didn’t do him any good, but he tried anyway.
“We still have enough time to get the license.”
“License? Are we going fishing?”
“No, we’re going to get married.”
Chapter Nineteen
C.J. couldn’t make sense of anything after Clint said he was taking her with him except the wild beating of her heart and the wing-rustling of her lost hopes taking flight. And when he picked her up and carried her off into the night, she thought he looked exactly like Clark Cable carrying Vivian Leigh up the red-carpeted staircase to the bedroom that had been locked against him for so long.
And we all know where that leads.
Oh, she was a happy woman. A great song was in order. Something along the lines of “Wonderful Tonight.” She opened her mouth to belt out Eric Clapton’s hit, but Clint stopped her with a kiss that lasted a long, delicious time.
“I couldn’t use my hands. They’re full,” he said after he broke it off.
“Goody. I love being your handful.”
She wiggled her bottom to show how much she loved it, and he growled.
“You sound like a marauding lion.”
“Close.” He picked up his pace as if he were trying to outrun someone. “We’re almost there.”
“Okeydokey.”
She wished she could think of something clever to say, something sexy, but she was wrapped in a warm, fuzzy blanket of wine, barely-hold-her-eyes-open fatigue and best-in-the-world arms.
“I’m going to have to put you down so I can get my key.” He propped her against the wall so that she had a view of the full moon reflected in the swimming pool.
“Let’s skinny-dip.” She stripped off her T-shirt, and he said a word that curled her ears, then hustled her into his motel room.
“Damn it, C.J. Behave.”
He jerked the bedspread off then picked her up and tossed her into the middle of the bed. “Sleep. We’ll talk in the morning.”
“Which side?”
“What do you mean, which side?”
Why was he acting so dense? Bringing her to his motel room had been his idea. If he kept this up, she was going to get good and mad at him.
“I sleep on the right side of the bed, but if that’s the side you prefer I’m perfectly willing to concede.”
He muttered a word she’d never heard except in movies, which just showed what an overprotected, naive person she was. She let loose a volley of hellfire-and-damnations just for the heady sense of release.
Clint stomped off toward the bathroom, and C.J. stripped off her clothes and waited under the sheets, breathless with nerves and desire.
Oh, she couldn’t wait to lose her accursed virginity.
Thank God she was asleep. Or she could be faking it. With C.J. you never could tell.
Employing stealth and cunning to undress, Clint rolled into the discarded bedspread on the floor that was much more uncomfortable than he’d imagined. Didn’t they put padding under the carpets in these cheap motel rooms? Didn’t they ever vacuum?
Musty scents of ground-in dirt and long-ago exhaled cigarette smoke wafted up from the carpet. He was going to smother. He needed air.
Dragging the bedspread behind him, he tiptoed toward the door and banged his shin on a chair that leaped at him out of the dark. Clint bit back an oath, then glanced at the bed. C.J. hadn’t moved.
Good. She was out cold.
He eased open the door then stuck his nose to the crack.
“Ahh,” he said, then nearly choked on somebody else’s cigarette smoke.
Clint felt beleaguered, insulted and put-upon
. A suffering man is in no condition to sleep on the floor. He made his decision quickly, then climbed into bed beside C.J. before he could talk himself out of it.
He’d sleep on top of the covers. He’d stay way over on his side of the bed. He wouldn’t move. He’d get up early and she’d never know.
It was a very good plan that might have worked if she hadn’t inched across the great divide in the middle of the night and plastered herself all over him. It still could have worked if she hadn’t been naked and he hadn’t been aroused beyond the point of no return. Even then it could have worked if she hadn’t started nibbling his neck and fondling his body and making soft, sexy sounds that drove him berserk.
“C.J.”
“Hmm?”
“Are you awake?”
“Uh-huh.”
She continued her erotic explorations while he lay there rigid, rigid being the operative word. He still had a number of options. He could leap off the bed and spend the rest of the night tortured by the floor and regret. He could say, “Wait a minute. You’re a virgin, and I’m not a spoiler.”
“Clint?” She tickled his ear with her whisper, and then with her tongue.
“What?”
“I’m naked.”
“I know.”
How well he knew. Every nerve in his body twanged. He was C.J. Maxey’s musical instrument. If she wanted to, she could sing country and western songs to his ragged rhythm.
Still, if he bolted right now he might save them.
Then he made two fatal mistakes: he rolled over and reached for her.
His intentions were good. He was going to hold her shoulders, move her back to her side of the bed and say, Go back to sleep. Instead he found himself in full frontal contact with a determined, amorous woman. Not just any amorous woman, mind you, but the one woman in the world he couldn’t do without.
“I want you,” she said, and although he knew he should say, No, he was in no condition to force the issue. Furthermore, he’d proposed and she’d said, Yes, so why not go ahead and have the honeymoon before the wedding? What was so bad about that?
Nothing that he could think of. But then, at the moment thinking was not his strong suit.
