Down Home Dixie

by Pamela Browning

  “Like I said. To talk to you.” The way Andrea was so critically studying Dixie revealed the real truth, which was that she was eager to find out what kind of woman had won his heart.

  “Where are you staying?”

  Andrea tossed her hair back. “You can recommend a good motel, right?”

  “You won’t find a room at the Magnolia, that’s the only local place,” Kyle told her. He was more than familiar with how fast the Magnolia’s available rooms were usually taken on weekends.

  “I saw another possibility on the way into town. The sign advertised rooms for six dollars an hour.”

  “Not a good idea,” Kyle said hastily. “On the other hand, you could try Florence. It’s a thirty-five-mile drive.”

  Andrea stared uncomprehendingly. “That’s way too far.”

  “I, um,” Dixie began, ignoring his warning glance.

  “Dixie,” he cautioned, but she avoided his eyes.

  “I suppose you could sleep here,” Dixie finished against his will. So much for communion of the spirit. She’d switched off on her end, obviously.

  “Dixie, are you out of your mind?” he bellowed.

  Andrea spared Dixie a look of gratitude or maybe it was some other emotion, he wasn’t sure. The only clear thing was that the two of them were now a closed circuit and he wasn’t in their loop.

  “You could bunk in the playhouse,” Dixie said to Andrea.

  A faint smile touched Andrea’s lips. “Oh, that little doll house? I peeked in the window when I first arrived. It’s surely too small.”

  “Well, back to the spare bedrooms,” Dixie said, valiantly trying again. “I haven’t set up the extra bed yet, it’s just a mattress and box springs on the floor, but you’re welcome to it. Isn’t she, Kyle?”

  He was not under any circumstances going to sleep with Dixie in her room with his ex listening on the other side of the thin walls. He tried to come up with alternate arrangements that wouldn’t require him to move to another bed, but there weren’t any.

  “I’ll sleep in the playhouse,” he said.

  Dixie tilted her head as if perplexed, and Kyle supposed it was too much for her to understand. She regarded sex between two consenting adults as only natural and right, so chances were that if it occurred to her that Andrea might hear or see something, she wouldn’t care. And there was always the possibility that Dixie was the sort who would like to show off how sexually compatible they were with a stellar performance, complete with bed knockings and intensified moans in hopes of running Andrea off ASAP. Women were like that sometimes.

  He stood to leave. “See you in the morning.” By mistake he bumped against Andrea’s purse on the way out the back door, dislodging Twinkle. The dog growled menacingly and chased him, but Kyle managed to slam the screen door between them in the nick of time. He hoped the dog got a snoutful of plastic mesh.

  Kyle glumly stuffed his hands down in his pockets and headed for the playhouse. By the time he was lying on the cot, the only lights lit in the big house were upstairs.

  He’d much rather be resting beside Dixie, the TV on in the background as he stroked her hair back from her forehead with one hand and explored her sweet curves with the other. He dreamed about never having to sleep apart from her again, if that were actually possible.

  It was an hour or so before he was surprised by the application of two cold feet to his warm ones. He woke with a start.

  “Dixie?”

  “Well, who else would it be? I wish I’d worn my warm nightgown, though, seeing as how it’s a little chilly in here.”

  “We could warm this place up real fast.”

  “That’s what I’m banking on. I brought a half bottle of merlot to help us out.”

  He hitched himself up onto one elbow and made room for her and the cold bottle between them. By now something else was between them, as well, rendering Dixie most appreciative.

  “Maybe we could leave the wine for later,” she said, closing her cold hands around him.

  “Damn right,” he said. “Have you ever made love on a balance beam?”

  “Very funny,” Dixie murmured as she slid her leg over his.

  He didn’t remember the wine until much later, but by then, they were out of the mood for it.

  ON MONDAY MORNING, Dixie was enjoying her second cup of coffee in the break room at the Yewville Real Estate office, and Mayzelle was listening to her recap of Saturday night’s Andrea appearance.

  “She brought her nasty little dog?” Mayzelle asked, all ears. “It tried to bite Kyle?”

  “Yes, and at first, Kyle seemed primed to kick that animal clear out of the house,” Dixie said.

  “Kyle wouldn’t harm anything if his life depended on it,” Mayzelle said, bending down to stroke one of Fluffy’s silky ears.

  “Well, he must have hurt Andrea pretty seriously,” Dixie retorted. “Otherwise why would she travel more than five hundred miles to have a word with him?”

  Mayzelle pursed her lips, considering. “Just in case he’s made an awful mistake and feels like correcting it?”

  “She’s bound to be sadly disappointed. He’s fixing to move down here. Or at least he’s making noises about it.”

  “He’s wanting to be near you,” Mayzelle pointed out approvingly.

  “That, too.” This knowledge was a source of comfort.

  “What does Andrea look like?”

  “They say people start to resemble their dogs. Andrea doesn’t. Just the opposite, in fact—she’s all sleek dark hair and a long skinny face.” Despite Dixie’s prior imaginings, Kyle’s ex wasn’t at all voluptuous, and she didn’t wear dangly earrings. Dixie wasn’t sure about the see-through underwear, but she’d been relieved to discover that Andrea’s voice wasn’t sexy but pitched in a register slightly higher than a fire alarm.

  Mayzelle sat up straight and frowned. “Do I look like Fluffy?” she asked anxiously with a doubtful glance at her overweight poodle.

  “Not at all, Mayzelle,” Dixie said, being generous. “Your hairdo is way more trendy. Plus, the color is back to Desert Dream, and it’s very becoming.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “I’m surprised you didn’t throw Andrea out right away,” Mayzelle said. “I would have.”

  “My mama raised me to help people out when I can. Andrea’s a woman in a strange town with no decent motel rooms likely to be available. I mean, I’ve had boyfriends that did me wrong. I went to some lengths to express my unhappiness about it, and that’s apparently what she’s doing. I wouldn’t care to be tossed out into the night if I were Andrea.”

  “Dixie—”

  “Now, never you mind, Mayzelle. I think what I think, and in my opinion, I’m better off to let Andrea have her say with Kyle. Then we’ll be rid of her for good.”

  “You do seem sure of yourself,” Mayzelle told her.

  “I’d say I’m over those self-esteem problems,” Dixie said, though in her mind she’d never had any.

  “You go, girl!”

  They exchanged grins.

  “What did everyone do at your house yesterday? I’m trying to imagine what it must have been like around there.”

  “Kyle went to Camden, an easy out. I attended church as usual, then Sunday dinner at Memaw’s, and I threw in a couple of loads of laundry when I got home. Andrea kept bugging me about when Kyle was coming back, and when he didn’t show up by dark, she asked me if I wanted to go out for a drink.”

  “Did you?”

  “No, I pointed her in the direction of the cream cake in the fridge and left to visit Voncille, Skeeter and the kids.”

  “What about Kyle?”

  “He was asleep in the playhouse when I got back from Vonnie’s. I joined him.”

  Mayzelle laughed. “And stayed all night.”

  “You got it.” The bed was hardly big enough for one person, much less a couple, and now she’d slept in it with Kyle for two nights in a row. But they’d managed. Oh,
how they had managed. Her neck was still stiff from the effort of making love with her head hanging off the end of the mattress last night. Kyle had snickered and said that they would have been better off to do it standing up, but Dixie pointed out that since he was so tall and the ceiling so low, he would have been the one with the stiff neck in that case.

  “So what’s happening now?”

  “Kyle is going to talk to her.”

  Mayzelle tossed her foam cup in the trash can. “When you get home today, I bet Andrea is gone.”

  “When I get home, she’d better be.”

  Dixie and Mayzelle were both laughing as Dixie gathered up her papers for her appointment with the Maine coon man.

  THAT MORNING, shortly after Dixie left for work, Kyle began scrubbing their breakfast eggs off the forks, framing his upcoming discussion with Andrea in his head. While he was cleaning up, Andrea floated downstairs, trailing several yards of pale blue chiffon and cradling Twinkle under one arm.

  “Coffee?” Kyle offered, trying not to see through her negligee, though that was clearly the whole point.

  Andrea accepted a mug, which was good. He’d never been able to have a meaningful conversation with her before her morning caffeine fix.

  “What’s to eat?” she asked with a yawn.

  “Eggs in the refrigerator, bagels in the freezer.”

  “We could eat breakfast together.”

  “Think again.”

  “And then I need to get online and send some e-mails.”

  “There’s a Wi-Fi connection in Dixie’s home office. Feel free.” He’d postpone their discussion until after she’d sent her e-mails because then Andrea would have no excuse to stay. She’d pack and leave.

  Kyle tossed a sponge into the dish drainer and flicked on the garbage disposal. Andrea bent down to peer into the refrigerator, thereby revealing a rounded expanse of breast. Despite his best intentions to get their discussion over with, he shut off the disposal and beat a hurried retreat for the door, unwilling to be coaxed into betraying Dixie by Andrea’s intentional exposure of body parts. That wasn’t his only concern by this time. Twinkle had started to yip, never a good sign. Once Andrea put him on the floor, it was one second to lunging mode.

  “Andrea, I have to go out. There’s a truck stop on the bypass called Dolly’s, and I’ll meet you there for lunch.” Strictly speaking, Kyle didn’t have to go anywhere right now, but it seemed advisable to vacate the premises. Dolly’s was a public place, and Andrea would be less likely to cause a ruckus with other people around.

  “Kyle?”

  Ignoring Andrea’s plaintive voice, Kyle kept walking to his truck and subsequently scratched out of the driveway. Dolly’s wasn’t the best choice for a heart-to-heart with Andrea, since the place was frequented by easy women, but as he’d discovered one day recently, the cook there made a great burger. Besides, he didn’t care to risk parading his ex-girlfriend past Kathy Lou and the regulars at the Eat Right Café. There was enough gossip about his romance with Dixie without adding Andrea to the mix.

  “WHAT DO I HAVE TO DO to get you back?” Andrea asked, her hands curved around the bun of a giant butter burger, the house specialty.

  Kyle thought this over, which took approximately half a nanosecond. “Why would you want me when you’ve seen fit to break up with me four—no, make that five—times?”

  “We’re so good together, Kyle,” Andrea said matter-of-factly. He had the idea that she, in her CPA fashion, had toted up a row of figures and come up with the answer: KYLE. She didn’t seem to attach much, if any, emotion to her claim to him. Nor had she ever, he realized belatedly.

  “We’re not good together at all,” he objected, nudging a fallen French fry away from the edge of the table. “We fight, we make up. We trot along at a steady pace for a while and then we slam up against a stone wall. The reality is that we have almost nothing in common.”

  “Sex,” Andrea said, offering the word up like a prayer, though it was almost lost in the blast of loud twangy music wailing from speakers directly over their heads.

  The truth was that Kyle hadn’t liked what went on between the sheets with Andrea nearly as much as he enjoyed his rollicking sex life with Dixie. Andrea wasn’t inventive or imaginative. She approached the sex act as something that people had to do, like homework, or—or paying taxes. Fill out this form, sign that one, and lo, someone has a climax, which should hold both of them until the next payment is due.

  “WE LIKE SEX,” Andrea repeated loudly just as the music ended, and several patrons turned to stare curiously.

  For the first time, Kyle noticed that Andrea’s smile, which come to think of it, only appeared briefly now and then, was bracketed by frown lines that remained when her face was in repose. He forced himself back to the issue at hand.

  Somehow it didn’t seem proper to tell Andrea that he’d found someone who was a whole lot better at lovemaking. “Sex isn’t all there is to a relationship,” he said. He forcibly pulled his gaze away from Andrea’s low neckline, which featured a narrow red ruffle coasting down into her cleavage.

  “We have mutual friends,” she said, as if that should give him pause. He recognized the mulish expression that always accompanied such arguments.

  Before Kyle had a chance to respond, Andrea ticked a bunch of names off on her buttery fingers. “Rod and Allison, and Steve. I introduced him to you, remember. Elliott and Margo. Jan Cahoun, when she isn’t at her place in Colorado.”

  “Agreed, but there’s also something called commonality of interest. For instance, I’m bored with that theater group you’re so fond of.” Most of their mutual friends were in it.

  “But—”

  He waved away her objection. “Boring. Boring. It’s always the same actors in a different play. I don’t like getting gussied up in a tux, yet you love attending formal opening night of the season and parading me around like I’m Twinkle on a leash. We disagree about politics, food, music and my work. Frankly, Andrea, I’m amazed that we lasted as long as we did.”

  “You know the last play of the season is coming up, and I’m counting on you as my escort.”

  “I don’t care to watch the same person who starred as Annie in Annie Get Your Gun playing a slightly long-in-the-tooth Nellie Forbush in South Pacific.”

  “Shawna is one of my best friends.”

  Kyle said nothing.

  Andrea took another bite of her burger and chewed, meanwhile overtly checking out the big-haired woman in a sequined tube top who was moving among customers in the back room where the pool table stood.

  “Is that what Southern belles wear around here?” Andrea asked after she’d swallowed. Her gaze followed the woman, who laughed uproariously and pinched a guy’s cheek as they watched.

  The woman was likely one of the floozies imported from across some state line or other for temporary work. “Uh, I don’t know,” Kyle said. “You shouldn’t have come here, Andrea.”

  Andrea, returning her attention to matters at hand, poked at the slab of tomato resting on her lettuce. “I had to make sure you’re all right,” she said self-righteously.

  “I’m as all right as I’ve ever been.”

  “Maybe we need couples counseling. Shawna knows this woman—”

  “As I have already told you more than once, it’s over. You like the idea of counseling, you go right ahead.” He again cautioned himself to hold his temper.

  “Tell me about Dixie,” Andrea said. “What is she to you?”

  There were all sorts of ways that Kyle could have replied to that. Dixie was a sweet fragrance borne upon a gentle southern wind, a balm to his soul. She was sunshine, she was rain, she was earth, water and sky. She was, in fact, everything.

  “We’re a couple,” he said, a simple declaration. “I don’t know what I’d do without her.” This was, he realized as he spoke, the truth.

  Andrea appeared more than a bit flustered. “And you met how?”

  “It’s really none of your business
, Andrea.”

  “I’m only looking out for you.”

  “Well, go look out for someone else. Falling in love is something that a person generally can handle on his own.” He wasn’t quite sure he’d said that until a light went out in Andrea’s eyes and her face turned ashen.

  “You—you’re in love with Dixie?”

  He waited a long moment, turning the idea over in his mind. In love with Dixie? Could it be true?

  “Yeah,” he said. “I guess I am.”

  “I see,” Andrea said quietly.

  “You’ve met her. You can see why I care about her.” He took pity on Andrea, though he was certain by this time that they would have broken up for good whether he’d found Dixie or not.

  “You wouldn’t have to love her.”

  But I want to. “Leave it, Andrea. Nothing can come of pursuing this. Of pursuing me,” he corrected. “Take on the next plane home and have a nice life.” He spoke as kindly as he could.

  Her eyes suddenly filled with tears. “Oh, Kyle,” she said brokenly, his cue to leave, but before he could escape, she jumped up and bolted toward the door, her short skirt flouncing above her knees. This momentary glimpse of a long expanse of leg—he was only human—meant that he didn’t realize she’d left her purse on the floor until she was backing her rental car out of the parking lot.

  Twinkle poked his nose out, sniffed, and eyed Kyle’s pants leg. Kyle responded by shoving what was left of Andrea’s butter burger in on top of the dog and snapping the flap of the purse down tight.

  He grabbed the purse and headed for the door. There was something about carrying a woman’s handbag that made a man want to mince along, but he fought it. It helped that he was wearing his work boots. A pert bespangled woman eyed the purse he was carrying. “You out for some fun this afternoon? Both ways?”

  He kept walking.

  Kyle figured that the half patty of hamburger meat might keep Twinkle’s teeth occupied until they arrived back at the house. If not, he could probably bid a fond goodbye to this brand-new pair of Dockers.

  Chapter Nine

  Wouldn’t you know that Leland Porter would insist that Dixie take possession of the cat on the very day that the worst spring thunderstorm in years decided to roll through the South Carolina Piedmont. And that the cat, a long-haired, white-bibbed gray tabby called Muffin, was smart enough to work her way out of the cardboard box that they’d pressed into service as a cat carrier. And would hop up next to the back window of Dixie’s car and meow piteously the whole way back to her house.