by Peggy Webb
“They look great,” she said.
“So do you.”
“Thanks.”
She headed back to her chair but he patted the sofa and said, “Please. Sit beside me.”
“Okay. But I’m warning you. I’m not sure I can control myself.”
She’d meant her statement to be light, her laughter to be bright and happy and carefree. But then he looked into her soul and she looked into his and they were in each other’s arms kissing as if they were warriors returned from the battlefront, kissing as if they could never get enough of each other, kissing as if there was forever and it belonged exclusively to them.
Logic vanished until they pulled apart for air, then C.J. knew a million things she wanted to tell him: I’ve missed you, I need you, I want you, I’m sorry. But most of all I love you.
And, oh, he had to love her back. His kisses told her so.
She opened her mouth to speak, but he pressed his fingertip to her lips.
“C.J., I think we should get married.”
“You think we should get married.”
“Yes. That’s what I said.”
“Yes, that’s exactly what you said.”
She was so mad she couldn’t sit still. And she certainly didn’t want to sit by him with his leg touching hers making her crazy and his body heat zapping her like electrical currents and his big, big… Oh, she was furious. Jumping up, she stomped to the other side of the room and sat in her chair ramrod straight.
“What did I say?”
He was a good actor. She’d grant him that. He looked as befuddled as a baby bird taking its maiden flight. But she wasn’t about to waste sympathy on him. The Clint Garretts of the world always landed on their feet.
“You know exactly what you said.”
Her conscience didn’t even hurt when she snarled this time, not one little twinge. Here she was, a foolish, fanciful woman who had built her hopes up because of a few bedraggled roses. Here she’d been thinking he’d had a chance to search his heart and soul and come up with the logical conclusion that he loved her.
“What did I do wrong this time?” When he got up he bumped his knee on the corner of the coffee table. “Dammit. Whoever built this froufrou furniture ought to be shot.”
“My great-grandfather Maxey built it. That table’s an antique, handed down by generations of Maxeys.”
He looked as if he wanted to strangle her venerable ancestor with his bare hands. Instead he stalked to the window and stood there with his back to her.
When he whirled back around his eyes were blazing. “You want me to get down on my knees? Is that it?”
Before she could answer he was kneeling in front of her, stealing every bit of the air in the room. With her knees crushed against his chest and her hands buried in his, she thought she would faint.
“Look, I know I’m bullheaded and contrary and not very successful, but dammit, C.J., I took your innocence! There’s no reason in the world for you to tell me no.”
“Is that what this proposal is all about? My stupid virginity?”
“It wasn’t stupid. It was kind of sweet.”
“Don’t try to con me.” She jerked her hands out of his and shoved him backward. “Get up off your feet and march right out of my house.”
“Hell, C.J., I just asked you to marry me.”
“No, you didn’t. You asked me to salve your conscience. You broke your code and slept with a virgin and now you’re feeling guilty.”
He didn’t deny it. Darned his wretched hide, if only he would deny it.
“You’re turning me down twice?”
“You’ve got it, hotshot.”
“What did I do wrong?”
“Haven’t you ever heard of romance?”
“I bought a dozen red roses. Long-stemmed.”
“Flowers usually come with sentiments.”
“I told you my sentiments. We’re both starting a new life and we could have a good time together. Besides, there’s not as many good women out there as there used to be and neither one of us is getting any younger.”
“Are you calling me an old maid?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You are the most…” She threw up her hands. “I can’t even talk to you. I don’t want to talk to you. Leave.”
He didn’t budge. As a matter of fact, he looked as if he might be going to do something drastic. Such as kiss her.
If he kissed her again, all was lost. Passion would drown out the finer sentiments, and she’d enter into a union with a stubborn but devilishly charming man who didn’t know the first thing about love and would probably never learn. She’d be doomed.
C.J. jerked up the peanut butter jar and shoved it at him.
“And take your flowers with you.”
He did.
She rushed to the window so she could watch until he was out of sight, but the tea olive bush saved her. Instead of watching Clint Garrett disappear from her life, C.J. went to her ironing board, attacked her laundry and burned a hole in her favorite pink blouse.
Clint pulled over to the side of the road and tossed the roses into the first cow pasture he saw.
“Good riddance,” he said.
He was through with roses, through with romance, through with C.J. Maxey. A man who had been turned down twice by the same woman knew when to fold his cards and quit the game. Clint Garrett was quitting. Yessirree, he’d be happy if he never laid eyes on another woman. They were nothing but trouble.
It began to get dark and his stomach began to rumble, so he pulled over at a truck stop and ordered a logger’s meal—ham and peas and fried okra with plenty of cornbread and all the coffee he could drink.
He needed caffeine. He needed to stay awake. Where he was going, he didn’t know. All he knew was that he meant to travel far and travel fast.
He might even go back to Reform, Alabama. See if he liked it. If he did, he’d move all his stuff from Jackson and stay in Alabama a spell. Forget about a new job. Forget about making something of himself.
And definitely forget about marriage.
The waitress—Irma Doris her name tag read—set his food on the table, and while she was pouring tea she said, “I like your shirt, hon.”
“Thank you.”
“It makes them big ole blue peepers of yours just stand out like headlights.”
He’d worn the shirt especially for C.J., not that it had done a bit of good. “I’m glad somebody likes it,” he said, and then Irma Doris pursed her mouth in sympathy and said, “Had a bad day, hon?”
“The best thing about this day is, it’s over.”
Hot food and a sympathetic listener put him in a better mood, but as soon as he hit the open road again he fell back into a blue funk.
“It had to be the shirt,” he said. C.J. didn’t like plaid. That was it. If he’d worn his blue shirt or even a striped one, she might have said yes.
Shoot, plaid wasn’t natural. Nature was full of stripes, and even polka dots, but he couldn’t think of a single animal that was plaid. If God had meant for a man to wear plaid, he’d have given him checkered skin.
Clint pulled off the road onto a dirt lane leading nowhere he could see, then stripped off the unlucky plaid shirt and pulled on a T-shirt. He’d show C.J. Maxey.
Why, women would be crawling all over him. Not that he planned to notice. From now on he was wearing blinders.
He roared down the dirt road a while to see what he could discover, and when he’d gone twenty miles without seeing a single house, he turned around and went back to the highway.
Pretty soon he’d be to the state line. He could cross over or veer north or even go south again if he wanted. Avoiding Starkville altogether. He was never setting foot in that town again.
A moon as big as a galleon rose over Alabama and rode the night sky, and Venus was so big and bright she looked like you could take a flying leap and be sitting right on top of her.
Clint decided to pull off the road into
the welcome station that straddled the Mississippi/Alabama line. He’d pop the cork on the not-so-celebratory champagne and drink every bit of it himself. Then he’d bed down beside his motorcycle and sleep under the stars.
It was only after he’d parked under a spreading oak tree that he discovered he’d left the champagne in Starkville. With C.J.
That one little thought opened the floodgates and she roared through his blood like a river. With the lover’s moon overhead and Venus winking a wicked, knowing eye, Clint came unhinged by love.
Until that very moment he’d called love nonsense, the dreams of deluded men and foolish women, the stuff of nightmares and divorces. He’d denied its very existence.
But he was wrong. Every bone in his body ached with it. Every breath he drew sang with it. Every beat of his heart affirmed it.
When he wasn’t looking he’d fallen in love. When he’d let down his guard, C.J. Maxey had stolen his heart.
Now he understood her anger. No wonder she’d turned him down. He was lucky she hadn’t whopped him upside the head with the champagne bottle.
It wasn’t the plaid shirt that had done him in; it was his own foolish pride, his arrogance, his hubris. When he thought about his ridiculous posturing, his yammering about a marriage built on a mild regard and the possibility of a few laughs, he started laughing and couldn’t stop.
He laughed so hard a couple who’d obviously been necking in the back seat of their Honda Civic rose up in disgust and drove away. On the heels of his laughter came a need that drove him to his knees.
He had to have roses, he had to have chilled champagne, he had to have relief.
Clint climbed back on his Harley and started south once more, straining his eyes through the darkness for any sign of a florist’s shop, even an all-night grocery story that might sell fresh flowers.
He was out of luck. Small towns in Mississippi shut down after dark, especially on a Monday night when the owners could be home watching Monday night football.
By the time he reached the outskirts of Starkville it was after midnight and he still didn’t have roses. On his left a cow pasture was coming up, one he recognized as the dumping ground for his roses.
Clint coasted to a stop. Well, why not? If the cows hadn’t had a high-priced feast the flowers might still be there. Probably a little worse for wear, but the stems were in those dinky plastic holders, so how bad could they be?
They might still be fresh-looking. Especially in the dark.
Clint found his flashlight, climbed over the barbed wire fence and stepped right into a bed of fire ants. Hollering and carrying on, he stripped off his pants, dropped to the ground and rolled right into a haystack.
The bull on the other side had been minding his own business till a madman plowed into his hay. He took umbrage and gave chase. Clint leaped over the fence and tore his arm and still didn’t have his roses.
They faced off, a determined man in his blue plaid boxer shorts and a mad bull wearing a perfectly good pair of Levis on his horns.
“If you think I’m leaving without my roses, you don’t know me.”
While the bull pawed the pasture, Clint pawed through his gear looking for another pair of pants. Alas! All he found was a pair of blue striped pajama bottoms. He put them on. For he was going courting and nothing was going to stop him!
Chapter Twenty-Three
C.J. found the lukewarm champagne about nine o’clock. Though she knew Clint had left it behind she figured her guardian angel had a hand in the oversight because how else was she going to get through the rest of the evening without dying of love?
She didn’t even own a corkscrew, so she found a paring knife and set to work. After much to-do she uncorked the bottle and got only a little bit of cork down in the champagne. Then she poured herself a glass and made a toast.
“To every woman over twenty-five and looking. Don’t look Clint Garrett’s way. He doesn’t believe in love.”
She took a big swig and choked. “Slow down, old girl, you’ve got all evening.”
Kicking off her shoes, she piled all the pillows on one end of the sofa and stretched out. She might as well get prone right away. With her head for alcohol she’d be that way after half a glass, anyhow.
She took another drink, a small sip this time, then started giggling and couldn’t stop.
Figuring that laughter was much better for her soul than tears, she refilled her glass while she still could, then set about drinking and giggling.
The next thing she knew she was jarred out of sleep by a commotion outside. She bolted off the bed and crashed into the coffee table.
She wasn’t in bed at all but on her sofa in a wrinkled wad with her head sweating from being buried in pillows and her feet cold from having no cover.
Now that she was awake the ruckus outside took on definition. Somebody was dying out there with a great deal of suffering, and they’d set out to make her suffer, too. Every moan and wail went straight to C.J.’s throbbing head.
She put a finger to her lips. “Shh,” she said as she stumbled toward the door. Leaving the chain on she opened it just a crack. “Pipe down out there.”
“C.J.?”
There was a shadow on her porch that looked like a man, but in her condition she couldn’t be sure. It could have been an elephant. Pink.
“Clint?”
“Open up and let me in. I’ve been out here banging and hollering for thirty minutes.”
“What gall!” C.J. barreled out, fists and feet flying.
“Quit that, C.J., ouch! Now stop that!”
The small stoop wasn’t designed to accommodate a wrestling match. They lurched off the porch, airborne. The tussling lovers landed in a tangled heap in the tea olive bush.
Clint cushioned her fall but C.J. was in no mood to thank him. Spinsters offered mercy marriages tend to be surly if not downright pugilistic.
She doubled up her fist and took aim at his eye, but he caught her wrist.
“Now, be still. I’ve got something to tell you.”
“Ha!”
He’d already said enough to consign him to purgatory for the next two hundred years. Her knee was just right so she took aim, planning to ram it where it hurt the most.
Clint rolled to the side, then rolled back and pinned her underneath him. She started squirming, then suddenly stopped. Awed.
“Where are your pants?” she asked.
“Somewhere in Starkville there’s a very well-dressed bull.” Sensing the fight had gone out of her, he said, “Are you ready to listen to me now?”
“What else can I do? I’m on the bottom and you’re on top.”
“Don’t remind me.” He spoke through gritted teeth.
Good. It was no fun to be the only one in a precarious situation. Let him twist in the winds of desire. She wanted him, but he didn’t love her and she wasn’t about to settle for less.
“Well? What’s so all-fired important that you had to interrupt my sleep and the whole neighborhood at this god-awful hour?”
“You sleep in your clothes?”
“Sometimes.”
He leaned down and sniffed. “You’ve been drinking.”
“I have not.”
“Yes, you have.”
“Maybe. Just a teensy weensy bit.”
He roared with laughter, then did the craziest thing. He plastered himself all over her and gave her a kiss that made every sane thought she had fly right out of her head.
“I love you, C.J.”
Naturally he didn’t say that. Her mind was playing tricks. It was the champagne talking. And her wishful thinking.
“Did you hear me? I said, I love you.”
“You’re confessing to a romantic sentiment?”
“Yes.”
“You just said you love me.”
“Yes, I did.” He kissed her again in a way that proved it. Nearly.
When she came up for air she said, “Better try that again. I’m not sure you mean it.”
<
br /> His hearty boom of laughter startled two cats on the fence that surrounded the apartment and they set up a yowling that had neighbors slamming windows and yelling, “Quiet out there.”
“I can’t kiss you again,” he said.
“Why not?”
“Once I start I don’t plan to stop.”
“Don’t stop.”
She tried to pull him back down but he wouldn’t budge.
“C.J., if we don’t get out of these bushes I’m going to ruin your reputation.”
“Ruin it.”
Instead he picked her up and struggled out of the tea olive. The minute they got inside they fell upon each other like starving travelers who’d stumbled into a field of ripe corn.
Swaying and kissing and moaning, she reached for his shirt and he reached for her shorts. Clothes trailed behind them as they moved in lock-step in the direction of the bedroom.
They made it as far as the sofa. When he was finally buried deep inside her, she exhaled with pleasure and relief. At long last she could believe this was really happening to her. Finally she knew the truth: his love was true and real and lasting.
She could give herself completely now, for he would still be there in the morning. And the morning after that and on into eternity. Clint Garrett would still be at her side loving her.
“I love you,” she whispered. “I love you.”
“I love you, too,” he said, and then he took her on a journey to the moon that left them both sated and sweating.
“Does this place have a bedroom?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“To be continued.”
“I don’t want to move.”
“You don’t have to.” He picked her up and said, “Which way?”
“Second star to the right,” she said.
“Peter Pan.”
“You know him?”
“I am him.” Holding her hard against his chest he kissed her. “Or was.” He kissed her again. “Until today.”
“Don’t stop now.”
“I don’t know if I can kiss and walk at the same time. But I’m sure going to try.”
