Never Let Go

by Deborah Smith

  “Can’t tell you.”

  Frustration made his voice a hoarse whisper. “Then you can get the hell off my porch.”

  He stood up. Dinah tilted her head back. A wave of dizziness swept over her and she gripped the window ledge harder, shutting her eyes.

  “Are you sick?” he asked, and she nearly cried at his undertone of concern. All the love was still there. She hadn’t lost him entirely.

  “N-no. Just cold.” She opened her eyes and found him gazing at the sable coat with disgust.

  “You can’t be cold inside that thing. A present from Valdivia?”

  She didn’t give an answer because the look on his face showed that he knew the answer. Rucker pivoted on one heel and walked to the front door, his back rigid. “You can have twenty-five bucks. I’ll call a cab and you can go back to the bus station. I suggest you head for Birmingham and pawn that coat. Get your butt up and come inside.”

  How could she pawn the coat when she was wearing only a sheer robe underneath? Besides, if she tried to, she’d raise suspicion. A pawnbroker might call the police.

  Dinah stared after him wretchedly. And she couldn’t bear to go inside their house. The memories would wreck her. They had made love the first time in this house. “I’ll wait out here,” she told him.

  Rucker kicked the front door open, then turned and stared at her. “Can’t take the guilt?”

  “Well both be happier if I just stay here.” Her throat tightened. “Rucker, I know you don’t have any reason to help m-me, but please. It’s urgent. Just a few hundred dollars.”

  “I wasted a lot of money lookin’ for you in the past months. I haven’t written a column or worked on a book since you sashayed out the door of that damned beach house in Florida. If you think that I’m gonna toss good money after bad now, you’ve spent too many days in the hot jungle sun.”

  “It’s a matter of life and death!”

  “Whose? Yours?”

  “N-no.”

  “Then I don’t give a damn.”

  His brutality didn’t wound her; it was an appropriate reaction, considering the situation. The man she remembered could be stubborn and macho and domineering, but never cruel. He believed in simple values but he was an intellectual in his own way, and a philosopher. No heart was more generous or kind.

  She couldn’t stand to hurt him anymore. She’d do whatever she had to do to get the money elsewhere. Her shoulders slumped. “All right,” Dinah murmured. “Just call a cab for me.”

  She twisted around so that her back was to him, then reached inside the coat with one hand and rubbed her cold, stinging feet. The ballet slippers had lasted for less than a mile, then became more of a hindrance than a help. Pain spiraled up her legs. The muscles contracted in her back. She could feel him assessing her.

  “You can either keep secrets from me or you can tell me the truth and maybe I’ll help you,” he said abruptly.

  “All I can tell you is that I have a job to do, and there’s going to be trouble if I don’t do it.”

  “What kind of job?”

  What you don’t know can’t hurt you, my darling, she thought desperately. The cliché had never been more true. If she told him everything he’d undoubtedly interfere—and Valdivia would undoubtedly have him killed.

  Dinah struggled to keep her voice steady. “Just call a c-cab before I freeze. There are only two cabs in all of Twittle County, as I recall. It’ll take an hour for one to get here.” Suddenly she couldn’t be strong any longer. Her voice began to break. “Call. Please call. S-stop looking at me and hating me.”

  He went inside and slammed the door. Dinah hugged her head to her knees for a second, then turned fiercely and grabbed the window ledge with both hands. Enough self-pity!

  She staggered to her feet and leaned against the wall by the window, wincing at the way her feet ached. She clutched both arms over her stomach and wished she’d eaten the fast-food egg sandwich Valdivia had brought to her that morning.

  The front door banged open and Rucker strode onto the porch again, carrying a heavy quilt. She recognized it as one his mother had made by hand. “Here.” He thrust it at her, his eyes trailing down to her newly uncovered feet.

  “What the hell?” He threw the blanket onto a chair. “Why are you barefoot in weather like this?”

  She swayed a little as fatigue washed over her. “I’m practicing to be an Eskimo.”

  Rucker studied her bare legs. “What are you wearin’ under that coat?”

  “Not much. Eskimo training is very strict.”

  The grimace around his mouth told her that he was imagining how she lost Valdivia and ended up wearing only a sable coat.

  “It wasn’t that way,” she muttered, her eyes burning with despair.

  Rucker watched a tiny trickle of blood run down the side of one calf. With a muffled curse, he stepped over to her and jerked the hem of the coat up. The color left his face. “What did he do to you?”

  “Nothing. I fell in some bushes. Training for life on the tundra …”

  “Put a lid on the back talk.” Rucker looked at her shrewdly from under thick, expressive brows. “Who was chasin’ you?”

  She swallowed hard and obstinately shook her head. “Call the cab.”

  “I think I’ll call the police.”

  Dinah stared at him in horror. The world became fuzzy and unbalanced; her legs collapsed and she realized that she was falling.

  Rucker grabbed her, bent forward, and draped her over his shoulder. Dinah gratefully pressed her face against the cool, damp leather of his jacket. When he straightened up blood rushed to her head, clearing it. She chuckled painfully.

  “Glad you’re enjoyin’ yourself,” he muttered.

  “You’re the only man in the world who would toss a fainting woman over his shoulder as if she were a sack of horse feed.”

  “Yeah, I know my ways don’t suit you.”

  Dinah winced. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “You explained how you felt about me already. At the airport.”

  “I didn’t mean it.”

  He started inside the house. “Then why the hell did you say it?”

  Dinah gripped his jacket suddenly. “No! I don’t want to go inside!” He clasped the backs of her legs with both big hands. She felt his hold tighten harshly.

  “I hope you hate being here. I hope it hurts you the way it hurts me. Now shut up.”

  Dinah closed her eyes and clung to his jacket as he carried her into the living room. He knelt, let go of her legs, anchored a hand in the back of her coat, and pulled. Abruptly she found herself plopped on a couch.

  She opened her eyes reluctantly and looked at the plush, white-on-white furniture and abstract art, the overflowing bookcases, the stone fireplace, and finally, her baby grand piano. A floor lamp cast muted shadows, making the room even cozier than she remembered.

  Rucker stood over her, his hands on his hips. She whispered brokenly, “You took good care of everything.”

  Suddenly she gazed at him with fear. “Where are Jethro and Nureyev?” She had missed the pet possum and talking crow more than she’d ever thought possible.

  Rucker’s eyes glittered with revenge. “Gone.”

  “What did you do with them?”

  He smiled thinly. With all the traveling he’d done in the past months, there’d been no way to take care of either pet. He’d loaned them to a petting zoo run by the state wildlife commission. Despite the best care, only Jethro had flourished. “Nureyev died. And what I did with Jethro is none of your business.”

  “Nureyev died?” she asked in a small, hurt voice.

  “Yeah. His last words were a quote from your ol’ favorite, Sartre. You would have loved it.”

  Rucker watched grief wash across her eyes. It jumbled his anger and he turned away, his hands clenched. He’d never tell her that he’d taken her cantakerous pet crow to one of the best veterinary specialists in the country, or that he’d sat beside the ailing bird for
hours, stroking his head and asking him not to die.

  “Will you call the cab now?” she asked, her tone weary.

  Rucker swiveled toward her again. “Hell, yes.”

  He removed his jacket, slung it across a recliner, then strode to a phone on a sleek walnut end table. Dinah curled her toes into the cream-colored carpet and remembered a cold winter afternoon when they’d lain there in front of the fireplace.

  Rucker had wrestled her new engagement ring away from her and given it to Nureyev. The crow had swooped around the living room with a four-carat diamond in his beak, perversely happy to be chased by a naked woman. Finally he dropped the ring into Rucker’s glass of chocolate milk.

  Roaring with laughter, Rucker had invited her to “go fish.” She’d emptied the glass on his stomach, then used her tongue to clean him up and retrieve her ring. He hadn’t minded the milk bath at all. And Nureyev had talked nonstop from satisfaction over his role in the antics.

  “Can’t get anybody,” Rucker told her, and slammed the phone down.

  Dinah wiped her eyes and cleared her throat roughly. She couldn’t expect Rucker to believe her sorrow. “Could I have something to eat? Anything—a glass of milk, crackers?”

  “Doesn’t the banana king feed you?” He studied her face. “No, I reckon he doesn’t. You look like you’ve lost about twenty pounds.”

  “You’re thinner, too.”

  “I spent lots of time eatin’ at bars. A diet of nothin’ but booze and pretzels works like a charm.” He went to the kitchen, angrily jerking the cuffs open on his plaid sport shirt. Dinah watched through the open door as he rolled up his sleeves. She got to her feet and shuffled after him, stopping in the doorway.

  “Why don’t you just drive me to the bus station?”

  “I like holdin’ you prisoner. It gives me a sense of revenge.” He opened a can of soup and dumped it into a small pot on the stove. His knuckles were white from the force of his grip on the pot handle. “So tell me. Is it true what folks say about Latin lovers? Just how big are the bananas in Surador?”

  Dinah’s heart twisted with sorrow for him. “I work for Valdivia. I don’t sleep with him.”

  He made a disbelieving sound and kept his gaze on the pot of soup. But she saw his chest contract as if he were holding his breath. “I know you used to have all sorts of notions about changin’ the world. I thought you planned to start in your own country, not some jungle dictatorship.”

  “I’m never going back into politics.”

  He chuckled harshly. “Not in this country, at least. But you don’t want to waste your nice little summa cum laude master’s degree in political science.” His voice dropped to a fierce rumble. “Hey, this’ll be funny to you. The folks here in town just finished settin’ up a memorial to their long-lost mayor. A big granite stone. It’s in the square right next to the Civil War cannon. The garden club is gonna plant flowers around it. They think you’re dead.”

  Dinah went to a kitchen chair and sank down. She propped her chin on one fist and stared out a bay window into the stark, forbidding night, tears slipping down her cheeks. She had loved being mayor of Mount Pleasant.

  She’d planned to run for state representative. Rucker had always declared that she’d be governor one day. That had been her dream until Valdivia stepped into her life.

  “You don’t believe what I said about Valdivia,” she murmured. “That I don’t sleep with him.”

  “Nope. Don’t believe anything you tell me.”

  She stood, wiped her face with the back of one hand, and said calmly, “I love you. I never stopped loving you. I want you to know that, whether you believe it or not.”

  He froze in place, his jaw working angrily. “You killed our baby.”

  Dinah shut her eyes and wished she’d had time to make up a less devastating reason for leaving him. He was strangling on the lies she’d told to protect him from Valdivia, and there was nothing she could do about it. She pivoted stiffly and left the room.

  “What are you doin’ in there?”

  “Taking a bubble bath.”

  Rucker kicked the bathroom door open and she instinctively cringed, covering her chest with crossed arms. The memory of something Valdivia had done was still too clear and she started trembling.

  Rucker walked in carrying a bowl of soup and a glass of milk, his face so tense that he could barely talk. “Don’t shake like a scared rabbit,” he ordered. “I won’t touch you.”

  He set the bowl and glass on the edge of the tub. His eyes scanned her huddled form, nonetheless. Suddenly he reached into the tub and grabbed the ankle nearest to him. Frothy water sloshed over the tub’s rim as he jerked her leg up and examined the red scratches that started above her knee.

  “That’s a helluva tundra you’ve been runnin’ through, Eskimo. I’ll see if I’ve got some antiseptic.”

  Tenderness welled up inside her. She made a yearning sound in her throat and began to lower her arms. His mouth thinned with control. He released her ankle immediately, and stood up.

  “We’re not gonna trade sex for the money you need.”

  Dinah cried out sadly. “That wasn’t what I—”

  But he was already out the door, slamming it behind him.

  When she finished drying off she put the fur coat back on and twisted her slinky black robe into a small bundle of silk which she hid in the back of the bathroom linen closet.

  Dinah opened the bathroom door and gazed down in astonishment at the neatly folded white jogging suit laying on the floor outside. The sight of the familiar old outfit brought a poignant ache to her chest. Rucker had always loved this outfit on her.

  She dropped to her knees and clasped the soft material to her face, inhaling its fresh soap scent, the scent of Sunday afternoon washing.

  “Change into that and put the damned coat where I can’t see it,” Rucker told her.

  She looked down the hallway toward the living room. He stood there, legs braced apart, defensive as always. He pointed at the sable. “I don’t want to see that ugly pelt again until you leave.”

  “Okay.”

  She smiled at him and he frowned. Dinah retreated back into the bathroom, holding the jogging suit to her chest as if it were a good luck charm.

  When she walked into the living room a few minutes later, he was sitting on the hearth reading the directions on a tube of ointment. A fire crackled on the grate behind him. He glanced up briefly then commented, “At least your hair looks better.”

  “Thank you.” She curled up on the couch and wondered how she’d ever be able to maintain her casual expression. She couldn’t stop watching the sensual play of firelight on him. Red and gold streaks shone in his rumpled hair; flickering shadows highlighted his rough-cut features and thick mustache.

  Her lips parted in a sigh while a sweet feeling of desire melted inside her. She felt her body flush as warmth spread up her abdomen and across her breasts. How many nights had she lain alone in the dark, imagining every detail of him, almost feeling his touch?

  “Your hair got long,” he said brusquely, without looking up.

  Dinah hid a smile. He couldn’t pretend to read the antiseptic’s instructions much longer. “Do you approve?”

  “Do you care whether I do or not?”

  “Yes.” She had vowed not to cut her hair until she returned to him for good. It was a talisman of hope.

  “Hmmph. Now that it’s all braided, you look more like yourself. Seein’ you with messy hair is like seein’ the Mona Lisa with a frown.”

  Dinah patted the fat French braid that extended down the middle of her back. “I turned thirty-one last fall. I have a few gray hairs now.”

  “I have plenty. They’re all in my beard, though.”

  She looked at him sadly. “I’ve never seen you with a beard.”

  “I grew one for a while last fall.”

  Dinah’s chest tightened. He had grown the beard soon after she left. “Why? You always disliked beards.”

&
nbsp; “Shavin’ was just too much trouble.”

  She nodded, understanding the hidden meaning. He hadn’t cared how he looked. She had gone through the same phase. “I bet you did a fair imitation of a grizzly bear.”

  “That’s what Millie said. She made me shave it off for her wedding.”

  Dinah blinked back tears. Millie Surprise had been Rucker’s secretary and a good friend to both of them. They had played matchmaker between her and a rowdy country and western singer named Brig McKay. “When did Millie and Brig get married?”

  “About six months ago. They’re livin’ in Nashville.”

  He didn’t mention that just before the wedding Millie and Brig made an unannounced visit to Mount Pleasant, where they found him asleep in the middle of his living room floor, surrounded by beer cans, with Jethro perched on his stomach gnawing a slice of cold pizza. For a few minutes Millie had cried with heartfelt sympathy. Then she went on a rehabilitation rampage.

  Dinah hesitated, gauging her words carefully. “I suppose they think I’m dead.”

  Rucker tossed the tube of ointment to her and stood up tensely. “That’s what everybody decided. When there wasn’t any ransom note we knew you hadn’t been kidnapped. Since your pocketbook was still in the car when the police found it, we knew you hadn’t been robbed.”

  He paused, and she saw tendons flex in his neck. His next words were very low and controlled. “So, the chief theory was that somebody had seen you in town, liked what he saw, so he followed you and ran your car off the road. And then …” Rucker stopped and studied her grimly. “You get the drift.”

  “But you never stopped looking for me.” Dinah hugged herself and looked at him in mute agony. “You went through hell,” she whispered.

  His body stiffened and his chin rose. Dinah realized wretchedly that she’d just reminded him of all his reasons for despising her.

  “I called for a cab again, while you were takin’ a bath,” he said in a lethal voice. “You can’t get one until mornin’.” He jerked a hand toward the hall that led to the master bedroom. “Go back there and stay. If I see you before mornin’ I’ll turn you out of my house.”

  The bed sheets smelled like Rucker. She slept fitfully, and everytime she woke up she took a moment to burrow her face into the pillow that carried the much-loved scent. Depression weighed on her like a dark mantle and thoughts whirled in her mind. If he’d really wanted her out of the house tonight, he’d have driven her to the bus station.