Sleeping Beauty

by Dallas Schulze

  The old-fashioned courtesy made Anne flush with pleasure, even as she wished he'd stayed seated and less noticeable. When she'd agreed to have lunch with him, she hadn't thought about the fact that there was nowhere, short of going to another town, that they could go where someone wasn't likely to recognize her and wonder who she was with. Not that there was any chance of a man who looked like he did going unnoticed unless he put a bag over his head, she admitted.

  *'So, is there really a Luanne?" he asked as he slid into the seat opposite hers.

  **What?" The unexpected question startled her. In the ten minutes since they'd parted company at the grocery store, she'd nearly made herself sick wondering what she would say to him, what he would say to her, trying to think of witty bits of conversation. None of those fragmented scenarios had begun quite like this.

  *'Luanne." He tapped a finger against the name emblazoned in black script across a dog-eared red

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  menu. **Is there such a person or did they just invent the name to give the place an air of exotic mystery?'*

  '*Exotic mystery?'' Anne's brows went up, and, catching the laughter in his eyes, she forgot to be nervous. '*Y-yes, I can see how the name Luanne would conjure up images of exotic lands and sultry women. I'm sorry to disappoint you, but Luanne was the first cook here, back in the forties, and, according to what I'm told, she was a black woman, about six foot tall, skinny as a rail, chewed tobacco and had six husbands."

  **A11 at once?" Neill's brows shot up in a look of exaggerated shock, and Anne had to struggle to hold oft to her serious expression.

  **0f course not. This is Indiana, and we don't permit such things. She was divorced once and widowed five times." She paused and cleared her throat, prinmiing her mouth in a disapproving line. *'There were, I believe, rumors that not all of her husbands departed the mortal coil willingly, but nothing was ever proved, and both the sheriff and the mayor were extremely fond of her chicken pot pie, so they were not, perhaps, as diligent in their investigations as they might have been."

  **I knew there had to be a story behind a name like that." Neill opened his menu, then tilted it so

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  he could look at her over the top. "What happened to her?'*

  **Nothing exotic, I'm afraid. She bought the place sometime in the late fifties, then sold it in the seventies and retired to Arizona where, for all I know, she's working on husband number ten."

  *1 hope so. I'd hate to think of a woman like that reduced to playing bingo and watching the soaps. It's important to have hobbies."

  'It does sound as if her hobby might have been a little hard on her husbands," Anne pointed out.

  **Yes but a really exceptional pot pie is worth a few risks," he said thoughtfully and was pleased with himself when she laughed.

  She'd looked nervous edging toward frightened when she first walked in, her eyes skittering away from his. But, despite her uneasiness, she'd come to meet him, and he found that interesting. He wanted to believe it was his irresistible charm that had brought her, but he had a feeling she was proving something, whether to herself or someone else, he couldn't be sure. And why he should care one way or aripther was beyond him. She...intrigued him. For the moment, that was answer enough.

  Neill glanced up as a waitress in a pink uniform stopped ne^t to the table. Somewhere in her mid-twenties, with brassy blond hair and a thin, angular

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  frame, she wore a small diamond solitaire and plain gold wedding ring on her ring finger, but, judging from the blatant invitation in her heavily made-up eyes, she didn't believe in letting marriage restrict her. Their eyes met, and she gave him a sultry smile.

  ''See anything you like, sugar?"

  As passes went, he'd heard worse, Neill decided dispassionately. Fifteen years ago, he'd probably delivered worse lines himself. Hell, fifteen years ago, he might have been flattered, might even have been tempted, though he liked to think that, even at twenty, his taste had been a little more discriminating. As it was, he couldn't help but find such a blatant come-on just a little pathetic and, considering the woman sitting across from him, certainly lacking in manners.

  **I think we need another minute or two." He flicked an impassive look over what she was offering and then glanced across the table. "Anne?"

  Out the comer of his eye, Neill saw the waitress slant a look of studied indifference across the table. Her head was akeady turning back in his direction when she registered who he was with. She nearly gave herself whiplash when she jerked around to gape at his companion.

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  **Amie?** The husky purr vanished in a disbelieving squeak. **Anne Moore?''

  **Hello, DeDe/' It was only sheer willpower that kept the color from flooding Anne's cheeks. Aware of Neill's interested look, she forced what she hoped was an easy smile. *'How are you?"

  *Tine." DeDe continued to stare, her eyes wide with disbelief. *'You're here with him?" she asked, as if she needed verbal reassurance before she could believe what she was seeing.

  **Yes.'* Seeing that the simple affirmative wasn't going to be enough, she nodded in Neill*s direction. **This is Neill Devlin. Neill, this is DeDe Carmichael. We went to school together."

  Neill acknowledged the introduction with a polite smile, but he might as well not have bothered. A moment ago she'd been looking at him like a cat looking at a particularly plump canary. Now she was staring at him with the same expression she might previously have reserved for a two-headed alien. Neill wondered if he should be offended but decided he was more interested in knowing just why the fact that he and Anne were together should strike her as so extraordinary.

  **We went to school together," DeDe parroted, her head bobbing up and down as her eyes shifted from Neill to Anne, then back again. The silence

  stretched. DeDe's pink sneakers appeared to be glued to the linoleum. Neill was just about to remind her that they needed more time to order when the annoyed jangle of a bell cut into her stupefied silence.

  **You gone deaf, DeDe?" an irascible voice demanded from behind the counter. "Order up!''

  DeDe jolted and frowned. "Fm coming/' she called over her shoulder. She gave Neill and Anne another speculative look and flashed a quick smile. **ril be back to get your order," she promised, and Anne told herself it was just imagination that made the words sound like a threat.

  She caught the question in Neill's eyes and knew he had to be wondering at DeDe's astonishment over the fact that they were together. She briefly considered telling him that she never dated, which was more or less tnae. But it wasn't the whole truth, or even the most unportant part of it, and it didn't exactly paint her in a flattering light, so she settled for what she hoped was a casual smile and opened her menu.

  **The hamburgers are excellent here."

  She waited for him to ask a question she didn't want to answer, but he simply raised his brows in surprise and asked, "What? No chicken pot pie?"

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  Neill would have given a great deal to know what was behind DeDe's reaction, but he couldn't ignore the look in Anne's eyes, the plea she probably hadn't been aware of making. So he tamped down the curiosity— a, writer's curse—^pretended that DeDe'& slack-jawed disbelief had been nothing out of the ordinary and set out to coax a genuine smile out of his companion.

  **So, what's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?"

  Her eyes widened a little, surprise and something that might have been gratitude flickering through the clear gray depths. Neill thought he'd never known anyone whose emotions were so transparent. Everything was reflected in those eyes.

  **I was bom and raised here." She folded her menu and set it on top of his, carefully aligning their edges, keeping her eyes on the task because it was safer than looking at her companion. **How about yourself?"

  **I wasn't bom and raised here," he said, shaking his head.

  His seriou
s tone starded her into looking at hinL Catching the laughter in those impossibly blue eyes, she found herself smiling easily. Despite the nerves jangling in the pit of her stomach, Anne made up her mind that she was going to enjoy the

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  next hour without giving so much as a thought to the fact that DeDe Caraiichael was a world-class gossip, which meant that, by the end of the day, everybody who was interested—and quite a few who weren't—^would know that Anne Moore had been seen having lunch with a total stranger.

  *'And here I was, thinking you were a native."

  '*I think it's important to try to blend in with the native culture whenever possible," he said pedantically.

  **You're doing a fine job," she assured him. "Where are you from?"

  *'Most recently? Seattle, for the last couple of years."

  *ls the Pacific Northwest as beautiful as it looks in pictures?"

  "There's lots of green stuff," Neill said, without enthusiasm. "I haven't figured out how it manages to grow when there's never any sunlight. If it ever got warm, it would be like living in a sauna. As it is, it's just chilly and damp and...green."

  "So why did you live there for two years?" Anne asked, smiling at his bleak description.

  "Work," he said, glancing around for DeDe and her pink uniform, hoping she would provide a distraction before Anne asked what he did. But DeDe was on the other side of the counter, arguing with

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  the cook over an order. And Anne was already asking the obvious.

  **What kind of work do you do?"

  **Fm a writer/* he said, tossing the word out with a verbal shrug. He didn't want to talk about his work.

  **Really?'' Startled, Anne looked at him. **You don't look like a writer."

  The comment surprised him. *'What does a writer look like?"

  ''More...writerly." The smile in those impossibly blue eyes deepened and she shrugged, smiling self-consciously. ''Glasses, maybe. Stooped shoulders. A little vague."

  "I think you've got writers confused with absent-minded professors," Neill said, grinning.

  '*Could be." Certainly the man sitting across from her was about as far from that image as it was possible to get, Anne thought, letting her eyes skim over those broad shoulders. She wondered what he looked like without a shirt. Was his chest smooth or covered in dark, curling hair? She could see the ripple of muscles under the thin cotton of his T-shirt, and she wondered what those muscles would feel like under her hands. Catching his questioning look, Anne felt her cheeks warm and cursed her fair complexion that made it impossible to hide

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  a blush. To distract him—and her own wayward thoughts—she rashed into speech.

  **So, what do you write?"

  Neill hesitated a moment over the answer. If he told her what he wrote, there was a chance she would connect N. C. Devlin, the bestselUng writer, with Neill Devlin, stranded motorcycle rider. Then things would change. She didn't strike him as the sort to start scrabbUng for a pen so she could get his autograph, but fame always changed things. And, although he couldn't have said why it mattered, he didn't want to see the look in her eyes shift from interest to curiosity.

  "I write nonfiction," he said, shrugging lightly. 'I've done articles on a lot of different things, how to plant a rosebush, ten tips for buying a ladder— that sort of thing."

  It was true enough, as far as it went. He'd spent a couple of years scrabbUng as a freelance writer, working at odd jobs while he used his spare time to write The Stranger Next Door, his first book and, as luck and the vagaries of the publishing world would have it, his first bestseller. He hadn't lied, he reminded himself in answer to a twinge of conscience, but he was grateful for the distraction provided by DeDe's sudden arrival, pink uniform, blue eyeshadow and all.

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  **What can I get for you two?** she asked, pencil poised over her order pad, eyes avid with curiosity.

  Anne ordered a salad and then listened wistfully as Neill ordered a hamburger, fries and a shake. It was one of the great injustices of the world that men could so often stuff their face full of zillions of calories and never gain an ounce, while most women had only to walk past a Danish to gain weight

  He didn't want to talk about his writing, she thought, lifting her water glass to sip. It wasn't hard to understand. She'd never known any writers, but she knew most of them were lucky if they made a bare living wage. It was pretty clear that he was just scraping by. The faded jeans could have been just a matter of style, but he'd mentioned that his bike was old, old enough that he was going to have to wait for parts to be found. Her mother would have said he was a failure, but Anne admired anyone who had a dream they were willing to work for.

  *l've heard that pubUshing is a very competitive field," she said when DeDe had reluctantly departed with their order.

  *ltcanbe."

  **But it's worth it, if you're doing what you love."

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  Her tone was encouraging, the look in her eyes sympathetic, and Neill felt a vicious little pinch from his conscience. Obviously she'd jumped to the conclusion that he was a struggling freelance writer—a conclusion he'd nudged her toward. He nearly told her the truth right then but caught himself at the last minute. What difference did it make what she beUeved? He was going to be gone in a couple of days anyway, and if he told her now she would probably end up feeling foolish for having tried to encourage him.

  *'So, where did you live before Seattle?" Anne asked, thinking a change of topic was in order, since he was so obviously self-conscious about his lack of material success in his chosen field. The vulnerability that revealed made him seem just a litde less overwhelming. She settled back against the booth and smiled, suddenly almost comfortable with him.

  Anne had eaten at Luanne's more times than she could count. She could remember her father bringing her here when she was a little girl, in the days before he'd withdrawn so completely into himself. They would sit at a booth, and the meal was always punctuated by people stopping to say hello to Doc Moore. On rare occasions her mother would join

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  them, though never without mentioning some restaurant she'd known in Atlanta and how much better the food and atmosphere had been there. Fewer people stopped to say hello when Olivia was there.

  When she was a Uttle older, Jack had sometimes condescended to take his baby sister out for a hamburger or a piece of pie. He'd preferred to sit at the counter, the better to flirt with any girls who happened to be there. He never scolded her for spinning round and round on her stool, and he always let her order whatever she wanted, without telling her that her eyes were bigger than her stomach.

  The few dates she'd had in high school had, often as not, ended up at Luanne's. Lacking a mall or a McDonald's restaurant, it was the hangout of choice for local teenagers. The first time Frank Miller asked her out, a Uttle less than a year ago, he'd brought her to Luaime's. Since then, with the precision of a metronome, their weekly dates had al-temated between Luanne's and Barney's Bar and Grill.

  In all the times she'd been here, Anne couldn't ever remember really talking to whoever she was with. Her father had always been a man of few words, her brother had been more interested in flirt-

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  ing with the girls, and Frank... Well, Frank just wasn't much of a conversationalist

  In one forty-five minute lunch, she talked more to Neill Devlin than she had in the last six months' worth of dinners with Frank. He made her laugh with his stories about the horrors of a cross-country road trip, like the motel in Wyoming where he'd awakened in the middle of the night when one of his neighbors put a fist through the wall next to Neill's bed. And the one in Nebraska where the pipes had been so rusty that the shower water had made him feel like he was an extra in a horror movie.

  Laughing, Anne shook her head. **Yo
u won't have to worry about that while you're here."

  **The fights or the rust?" Neill asked as he poured ketchup over his French fries.

  *'Either one." Anne pushed a fork into her salad and tried not to think about how good his fries and burger looked. ''Dorothy runs a tight ship. No rust or fist fights allowed."

  "When I checked in, I felt like I was on Jeopardy. What's with the movie trivia?"

  "Oh." Laughter sparkled in her eyes. "The shoes should give you a clue."

  "Shoes?" Neill cocked one brow. "Red sneakers with or without glitter?"

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  '*A11 her shoes are red. And of course there's her name. Dorothy Gale." He gave her a blank look and she shook her head disapprovingly. ''Obviously you don't know your Wizard ofOz.''

  ''Wizard of...'' Neill started to grin. ''You're kidding, right?"

  "Absolutely not. The movie opened on Dorothy's eighth birthday. They had the same name, and Dorothy even had an Aunt Em. The similarities had a powerful influence. As far as I know, she's wom red shoes ever since."

  "Tell me she has a dog named Toto," Neill begged,

  "A cat, actually." Anne grinned when he laughed. "She doesn't like dogs, but, over the years, she's had a whole series of cats, all of them named Toto."

  "I love it." He saw her eyeing his plate and, picking up a French fry, offered it across the table. "Have a bite."

  She leaned forward without thinking, only becoming aware of the casual intimacy of the moment when the crisp fry brushed her Ups. Idiot, she thought. He expected you to take it from him, not to feed it to you. Now he's going to think you're a total moron. But it was too late to pull back grace-

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  fully, so she opened her mouth and took the fiy with as much grace as she could manage.

  Despite her detemiination not to, she looked at him as she drew back, and the heat in his eyes made it clear that his thoughts were not on her LQ. or lack thereof. No one had ever looked at her like that, as if they were contemplating the possibility of nibbling on any part of her that might be within reach. Her pulse skittering, she lowered her eyes, staring blindly down at her salad while she tried to think of something casual to say.