by Anna Jeffrey
“Well, there you go. Joanna’s the best dancer here.”
Dalton came toward her. Before she could figure out how to escape the awkward situation, he had taken charge. His hand was at the small of her back, warm and controlling, and he was guiding her to the dance floor. A part of her that rarely had a chance to surface thrilled at the possessiveness of it.
On the way to claim a space on the dimly lit floor, they passed Owen Luck, who stopped and stared at her, holding two bottles of beer.
“That your date?” Dalton asked, his strong left hand taking her right wrist in a firm grip and pulling her around to face him.
She slanted a look up at him. “I don’t have a date.”
When she didn’t assume the dance position by placing her left arm around his shoulder, he picked up her hand and placed it for her. Then his right arm encircled her waist and they stepped into an old George Jones “broken heart” two-step.
“Hard to believe,” he said.
“What is?”
“That the best dancer here came to a dance hall without a date.”
Under his firm lead, they made a turn and Dalton’s knee slid between hers, but her skirt, which struck her midcalf, allowed his knee to go only so far. Thank you, God. “No one goes on dates anymore.”
“They just hook up, right?” he said. “That’s what we used to say about dogs in heat.”
He expertly steered her into the crowd, his chin against her temple. Even through the scent of his clean and ironed shirt, the masculine smell from Monday night filled her nostrils, traveled to a primal part of her brain and made her even giddier. In perfect time to the beat, he moved with an easy rhythm that she picked up immediately. Big deal. Anyone could two-step.
“Times have changed,” she managed to reply.
He two-stepped them to a quieter corner of the dance floor. “You’ve been busy, huh?”
“I’m always busy.”
“Have I missed you when you’ve been out or have you not been out?”
She leaned back against his arm and looked into his face. “Out where? To get the eggs?” He didn’t answer, just kept looking at her and turning them through the steps. “I needed some time off,” she felt compelled to say and mentally censured herself for giving him an explanation. “Alicia likes extra money. She and her boyfriend have been taking care of it.”
“I know. I helped them. I didn’t know if you had told them about the rattlesnake, so I—”
“What?” Was he accusing her of endangering those kids? She tilted her head and cut him a malevolent look. “Pablo says he isn’t afraid of snakes.”
Dalton chuckled and drew her closer to him. “Calm down. I’m teasing you.”
She made a mental harrumph.
He could dance, she now realized. Not in a showy way, but like a man who knew what to do and how to do it. No surprise there, really. She had already figured out he could do anything he wanted to. She let herself loosen up and began to enjoy herself. Dancing with a good partner was fun, and there weren’t that many men around who fell into that category.
“I forgot all about this place,” he said, “’til Jay talked me into driving over here.”
They were silent for a minute or two as their joined bodies moved smoothly in unison, a warm and heady reminder of just how well they fit together. All she could think of was every one of their intimate parts touching in the Monday night madness.
“Who is that guy?” he asked finally, cocking his head toward the direction where they had passed Owen Luck.
Why would he ask? she wondered. Even if she told him, he wouldn’t know him. “He’s an accountant in Hatlow. But he isn’t a native.”
He tilted his head back and laughed. “You mean a stranger moved to Hatlow thinking he could make a living?”
“He married one of the Johnson girls years ago and went to work for her daddy. Mr. Johnson died and now Owen owns the firm. Now he’s a Hatlow fixture.”
“Ah,” Dalton said, leaning back and looking down at her. “So he’s married, then.”
A statement rather than a question, and it carried a tone that continued to arouse her curiosity. She believed he had no true interest in the state of the Lucks’ marriage. Surely he didn’t feel the threat of competition.
She disliked gossiping about people who were her customers, but something drove her to explain. “Him and Billie just got a divorce. It’s a sticky situation, with Owen owning the firm her daddy started.”
“The Hatlow saga continues,” Dalton said as George Jones died away.
Vince Gill came on again singing a romantic waltz. Dalton might be able to cowboy dance, but she was sure he wouldn’t know how to waltz. “We should sit down,” she said, but to her surprise, he picked up the waltz step as aptly as a well-practiced dancer. “You’re a good dancer,” she told him as they glided and turned in the one-two-three step. “You must go out often.”
“Nope. I couldn’t find a shit-kicking joint in LA if I was gonna be shot.”
“Then where did you learn?”
“Mom used to love to dance. Not that Earl ever took her. But sometimes when the asshole was off on one of his week-long toots, Mom and I would dance.”
Joanna couldn’t imagine the woman over whom a cloud of unhappiness seemed to constantly hang doing something as lighthearted as dancing. Not once had Clova ever mentioned it. Besides that, she doubted if he had learned to dance so well in the Parker ranch house’s living room, and she was reminded of the great difference between his world and hers.
Dalton executed a graceful turn and Joanna could feel her skirt swing out behind her. Waltzing with someone who knew how gave her a sense of being in a fantasy.
The music changed pace. Brooks and Dunn sang out a swinging beat and Dalton segued them into it. He had so much natural rhythm, he didn’t miss a step.
“I’m a little rusty at this,” he said, reeling her out, then drawing her back and spinning her around his body.
To Joanna, he seemed anything and everything but rusty.
And he belonged to some woman in California who had a voice like Betty Boop’s.
At the end of Brooks and Dunn, they were hot and sweaty and a little breathless. The outside temperature might be cool, but that wasn’t true of the Rusty Spur’s interior. The air-conditioning system was a swamp cooler the size of a boxcar on top of the building. It labored along but did a poor job.
“Want to take a breather outside?” he asked.
The custom at the Rusty Spur was for revelers to walk outside to the front of the building or the parking lot to hang out and cool off or smoke. “Don’t tell me you’re going to smoke,” she said.
“You know I don’t smoke. Let’s go outside. I want to talk to you about something.”
She looked up at him. “Like what? Can’t we talk here?”
He nailed her with another one of those uncompromising looks. “Outside,” he said. “I’ll get us a beer.”
She looked away and shrugged. “Okay, I guess. I’ll meet you at the door…. I guess.”
He clasped her chin between his thumb and finger and planted a hard, quick kiss on her lips. “Don’t guess. Be there,” he said firmly.
Chapter 23
Joanna’s cheeks flamed. How dare he kiss her in front of everyone! Then a tiny rebellion flared within her. Who did he think he was, ordering her to wait for him?
He started toward the bar, making his way through the throng of sweaty dancers and drinkers, and she made a furtive scan of the people around her to see if anyone she knew had seen him kiss her. She saw only strangers. Thank God.
She debated whether to wait for him at the door as commanded or return to the table with the birthday crowd. She was still in the throes of making the decision when he returned carrying two Coors longnecks.
She didn’t want a beer, but she took the bottle he offered her. He opened the plate-glass door for her and they walked out into the cool evening. He caught her upper arm and guided her away from the building, into th
e parking lot. They strolled along the backside of a long row of vehicles, their boots crunching on the caliche gravel that covered the parking lot.
She crossed her arms against the chilly evening, hanging on to the cold beer bottle with one hand. He tilted his head back and swallowed a swig of beer, then picked up her hand and linked her arm with his, affixing her tightly to his side. “You look pretty in a dress.”
Feeling a little burst of pride at the compliment and one of those silly girly emotions, she picked up a swatch of the chamois skirt and let it drop. “Thanks. I rarely wear one.”
“Too bad. I like women to look like women. I’m old-fashioned that way.” He tilted up his bottle and drank again.
Joanna had learned enough of him to know he was old-fashioned in many ways, a contradiction to what she had assumed on first meeting him. “What did you want to talk to me about?”
“I want to clear the air, Joanna. About Monday night. It was—”
“A mistake,” she said, keeping her eyes straight ahead. Hashing the whole thing to death could only bring her more pain, and she was trying to move on. He might have said he liked her appearance, but she would be foolish to read something other than surface emotion into that. She freed her arm from his. “Don’t worry. I’m a big girl. I don’t expect anything from you. And you don’t have to worry over…over what happened.” She swallowed a swig from the beer bottle, the cold liquid causing her to shiver.
“Cold?” He looped an arm around her shoulders and drew her closer to his side. “And what is it you think did or didn’t happen?”
“We got drunk and we…we did something dumb.”
“Hot sex we both liked is dumb?”
“That isn’t what I mean.” Damn him. He had to know what she meant. “I’m talking about an…an accident.”
“Spell that out for me.”
She made a little noise, indignant. “You know what I’m talking about. But if you want to hear me say it, I will. Not that you’d worry, but in case you might, I expect my period in a day or two.”
“Ah. You don’t take the pill.”
Not a question. “No, I don’t.”
He gripped her shoulder and stopped their progress. She looked up at him, though in the poorly lit parking lot, she couldn’t clearly see his eyes. “What?”
He turned her to face him. “That wasn’t what I came out here to talk about. But since we’re on the subject, let’s just get it out in the open. You know I’m a catch-cold kid. A bastard.”
The statement sounded too harsh, and she winced. “You shouldn’t say that about yourself.”
“Why not? It’s the truth and everybody around here has known it since before I was born.”
“No one ever cared about it. You were a local hero. And everyone talks about how much smarter you were, er, are, than everyone else.”
“Hell, I had to be smarter. And better than everybody at everything.” He tilted up his beer bottle and drained it, then gripped her arm again and urged them forward. “I’ll tell you something else. To this day, I don’t know who my old man is.”
Knowing Clova as well as she did, Joanna believed that.
“I don’t give a damn anymore,” he said, “but when I was a kid, I felt different. I thought back then that if I could just be smart enough and good enough, he, whoever he is, might want to claim me. But that still isn’t what I’m getting at.”
He stopped again and this time she turned herself to listen to him.
“Bottom line,” he said, “and the point I’m making with all this chatter, is I’m the last guy who’d put some little kid on that kind of a downer. I wouldn’t do it to a woman, either.”
She heard the resolve in his words. Dammit, she believed him. “Dalton. It was wrong for both of us. I know you’ve got someone waiting for you in California. I knew it Monday night. If I hadn’t drunk too much and…” A sigh escaped her chest. “I flew off the handle when she called because I was mad and hurt. It reminded me of…”
She couldn’t finish, couldn’t demean herself by putting into words the self-loathing that had been going on inside her head. “I’m mostly mad at myself. I’d like to forget it ever happened, okay? I still have to come out to the ranch and take care of my hens and my eggs, and you haven’t left town yet. We both think a lot of your mom, so maybe—”
“You don’t know so much. Maybe I don’t look at it as a mistake. Or as wrong, either. And that brings me to what I wanted to say when we came out here. I don’t usually discuss my private business, Joanna, but I want you to understand that Candace is not my girlfriend.”
She grunted. “Don’t insult my intelligence. I’ve heard you take phone calls from her. Are you saying you don’t sleep with her?”
“I did. She lived with me a little less than a year. Twice during that time, I was overseas. Two months once and three months this last time.”
Joanna forced herself not to try to calculate just how many months out of a year he had been at home and sharing a bed with Candace. Every cell in her body wanted to continue to believe him, but why bother? Taking men at their word hadn’t worked out that well for her. And if she did let herself trust him, she might be an even bigger fool than she already had been. He still hadn’t explained the darlin’s, the babes, and the sweeties. “I’ve heard you call her endearing names.”
“Darlin’, I call all women names. It’s a habit. A way to smooth over the rough spots. Sometimes my words come out sounding more abrupt than I mean them to be.”
“So what are you telling me? That underneath your crusty self you’re a softie?”
“Well…yeah.”
That, she wouldn’t buy.
She forced herself to chuckle. “This is crazy, Dalton. You just want someone to fill your time and your bed while you’re here. I’m not that person. Hatlow’s full of single women. They might like being called babe and sweetie and darlin’.”
“You must think I’m a real shit-heel.” He grasped her elbow and they resumed walking along the parking lot.
“I didn’t say that.”
They had reached the dark green pickup Joanna recognized as Clova’s. He propped a boot on the bumper and braced his elbow on his knee, placing his eyes level with hers. “I’m gonna tell you about Candace. Her name’s Candace Carlisle. She’s a wannabe actress. That and how she looks is all, and I mean all, she cares about.
“She continues to stay at my house in LA because if she didn’t, she’d be homeless. I couldn’t come to Texas for an unknown length of time and leave the house empty. Hell, in LA, somebody might steal it off its foundation. She called me yesterday morning because there’s a problem with my swimming pool and she didn’t know what to do.”
Joanna’s skepticism still rode high. She crossed her arms over her chest. “If that’s all it was, why was it necessary to go outside so I couldn’t hear you talk to her?”
“I don’t know why. I don’t think about shit like that. It was just a thoughtless reaction. She’s broke. She doesn’t have a job that amounts to shit. She doesn’t have a damned thing. I didn’t think it would be right to get into her private problems in front of somebody else. If she meant anything to me in the way you’re thinking…if I felt any kind of special loyalty to her or to any woman, do you think I would’ve let Monday night take place? I’m not sixteen, you know. I do have a little self-control.”
Unable to come up with a quick rebuttal, she glared at him, though there wasn’t enough light for him to see her skeptical expression.
“The whole damn thing in LA—it’s got nothing to do with you and me, Joanna.” He sliced the air with a flattened hand. “Nothing.”
Joanna heard a plea in his raspy voice, but the “whole damn thing in LA” wasn’t that simple. Too many unanswered questions loomed in her mind. “No matter what you say, you’re soon going back to California. And to her.”
Now he laughed and straightened. “You’re a hard woman, Joanna Walsh. This is Mom’s truck and I’m freezing my ass off.
Let’s sit down inside.”
She drew in a great breath and let out a sigh. Why not? She, too, was cold. “Okay.”
He took her beer bottle from her, poured the remaining contents on the ground, then placed it along with his in the dually’s bed. She thought of the West Coast influence in his life. Most of the guys she knew in Texas would have thrown the empty bottle into the brush without thought. Another blatant reminder of the difference between his experience and her own.
They walked to the pickup’s passenger-side door. He bleeped the door latch and opened the door for her. She started to climb in but missed the step and lurched against him. He caught her and she found herself in his arms, looking into his face only inches away. She ducked her chin.
“Joanna,” he said softly, “look at me.”
She didn’t dare raise her head. She shook her head.
Seconds passed.
“Coward,” he said.
She shook her head again. “You’re right. I’m really bad at games. Things mean things to me. I can’t just…just have a fling and forget about it. I think I should go back inside.”
His knuckle came under her chin and raised it until her face, her mouth, were inches from his. “I told you, you think too much.”
His lips brushed hers, then hovered there. She breathed in the scent of his breath. How could she not kiss him back after the intimacy they had shared? She might be afraid of him, she might not trust him entirely, but she loved his kisses. Fool that she was, she touched his lips with hers tentatively, opened her mouth cautiously, but he responded as if she had said Take me, I’m yours. His tongue slid into her mouth and his arms came around her. Pressing her tightly against him, he kissed her in a way that felt even more savage than before. Or maybe it seemed so because tonight she was sober.
They broke for air, their breathing audible. “I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you,” he said. “I can’t even get any work done.”
Her heart warred with her head. Her body fought for its own needs. They stood without speaking for a few beats until her good sense won the upper hand. “Dalton, see how bad this is for both of us? We need to stop it. Let me go back inside.”
