by Meg Benjamin
She lay still beside him, watching the pale lemon sunlight seep through the curtains. She wondered if Cal was a morning person. She always had been, partly because of Nico and his need for constant breakfast delivered on demand. She’d seen more than one relationship crash and burn because of clashing circadian rhythms.
Relationship? No, this wasn’t—absolutely was not—a relationship. It was, well, really good sex. Really, really good. But that didn’t mean there was anything else going on, or that there ever would be. A slight pang ached somewhere around her heart, but she tamped it down ruthlessly.
Maybe she should get up and make coffee. But if she did, would that rule out a morning rematch? On the other hand, she needed to pee. Cal snuffled in his sleep and turned over, moving his hand.
She missed it. Her breast suddenly felt cold.
Docia slid out of bed carefully, trying to make as little noise as possible as she headed for the bathroom. When she came back, Cal was sitting up, the sheet tangled around his waist.
“Hi.” He rubbed a hand through his hair, yawning.
“Hi yourself.” She sat on the edge of the bed next to him.
If she actually got back into bed beside him, would that be too obvious? Probably.
“Okay?” He raised an eyebrow.
Docia grinned. The sun shone, a mockingbird warmed up in the backyard, and she had a gorgeous hunk of man in her bed. Okay didn’t begin to do the situation justice.
“Okay.”
Cal reached out to run his fingers through the hair curling onto her shoulder. His gaze held hers. “Got any pressing business this morning?”
“It’s Saturday. Eventually I’ll have to go down to the shop, but Janie can hold things together for a while. How about you?” Docia edged closer, sliding down beside him on the bed.
“I’m on duty at ten. What time is it now?” His hand moved along her side, slowly, his fingertips feathering across the skin.
“Eight.”
“Good.” His hands slid down to her hips, pulling her toward him. “That gives us approximately one hour and fifty-five minutes. And I want it all.” He leaned forward, nibbling at the side of her breast.
Docia’s breath hitched in her throat as she moved to straddle his hips. The man was clearly a mind reader along with all of his other manifest talents. “Whatever you say, Doc,” she murmured. “Whatever you say.”
Chapter Ten
After she went downstairs to the bookstore, Docia spent what was left of the morning bouncing from one extreme to another. First there was the ridiculous smile that sneaked out whenever she let her guard down. Then that weird tendency to dance around the bookcases in back when Janie put Joe Ely’s “Cool Rockin’ Loretta” on the sound system.
Then the really chilling moment when a voice in the back of her mind whispered Mine, mine, mine.
That was when she caught her breath and stood very still.
He wasn’t hers, not really. She wasn’t his, either. They’d have a good time together, and then at some point it would be over. That was the way things worked, or anyway the way they were supposed to work. She knew that. Just a…fling. That’s all it was. Nothing serious. She wasn’t going to get serious about anybody again. Ever.
The voice ignored her. Mine, mine, mine, it sang.
It scared her to death.
A little after noon, her cell rang. Docia glanced at the number and grimaced. Mama. Either Daddy had called her and complained, or Daddy hadn’t called her and she wanted to know what had happened at dinner. Either way, Docia figured she was in for a fun twenty minutes.
“Hi, Mama, what’s up?” She listened for five minutes and then groaned. “Oh, for Pete’s sake.”
—
One of the nice things about wearing scrubs at the clinic, Cal reflected as noon rolled around, was the fact that no one could tell he was still wearing the same clothes he’d had on the day before. Not that anyone at the clinic would have paid attention.
At least he’d always thought they wouldn’t. Lately, he’d begun to believe people paid more attention to him than he’d imagined up to now.
Bethany took one look at his tangled hair that Docia’s comb couldn’t penetrate and grinned. “You might want to do something about that ’do, Doc. Just because you’ve got a beard doesn’t mean people will take kindly to the whole hippie thing.”
Cal closed his office door and tried using a brush designed for grooming sheep dogs. It worked tolerably well.
At two, after he’d dealt with one of Mrs. Grimsby’s Persians and its hairball problems, he walked into the waiting room and saw Docia sitting there. It was hard not to since all the other women in the room were staring at her from behind their copies of Reader’s Digest and Good Housekeeping. He might have imagined it, but the room felt decidedly cooler.
She got to her feet quickly as soon as she saw him. “Hi. Bad news.”
Cal beckoned her into his office, watched by at least eighteen pairs of eyes. Twenty if you counted Bethany and Horace. “What’s up?”
“My mother broke her foot.” Docia let out a snort of irritation. “She was on the freakin’ treadmill trying to lose weight.”
“That’s too bad,” Cal said carefully. Docia looked like she was ready to punch somebody, and he’d rather it wasn’t him. “Probably not too serious, though. She may not even have a cast. Don’t worry about it.”
“I’m not.” Docia sighed. “But I have to go down there and hold her hand. Or her foot. I’m not sure which. Anyway, she wants me to come down and take care of her.”
Cal felt a quick sting of disappointment. There went tonight. “How long will you be gone?”
“Over the weekend at least. I’ll need to make sure she’s set up with someone to look after her. But I’ll be back in time for Liddy.”
“Liddy?” He searched his memory quickly but nothing popped up.
Docia’s lips thinned. “The Liddy Brenner Festival street dance. To which you asked me last week.”
“Oh.” Cal nodded. “Right. The mysterious costume.”
Oh yes, Docia in something secret and salacious. Like seven veils. Or one veil. Preferably with strategic holes. “I don’t suppose you’d like to give me any hints? Just so I can know exactly what to fantasize about over the next few days.”
“Nope.” Docia grinned at him. “Just keep it general. I’ll fill in the details Friday night.”
—
Cal soon discovered he didn’t need any details about the costume to help him fantasize. That night he tossed and turned, visions of Docia dancing in his head. At two in the morning he got up and read several articles in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association. Even that didn’t do it. Docia skipped through descriptions of canine vaccination guidelines and rodent virus.
On Sunday he chopped brush and moved rocks out of the front yard. He fixed a broken window in the tool shed and weeded the vegetable patch he’d planted in back.
That night, thoroughly exhausted, he lay awake until one-thirty, throbbing. Not just from hard labor, either.
The days after that were no better. He worked extra hours so that he could take Saturday off, trading with Horace, who had no intention of setting foot in the Liddy Brenner Festival street dance. He delivered a foal that had managed to get itself into an impossible position. Not that he got any gratitude from the thoroughly disgruntled prize mare who was the mother. He even spent an hour or so with the goats, who were no more appreciative and smelled even worse.
Nothing helped. Docia was everywhere. He only hoped she was having an equally rotten time in San Antonio.
On Wednesday he showed up at the Dew Drop, feeling exhausted, peeved and thoroughly horny. Wonder sat at a table with Allie, smiling in a way Cal found particularly annoying.
He was not, he knew, fit company for anybody.
“Come on, Idaho,” Wonder called. “Sit down. Wipe that snarl off your face.”
Cal studied Wonder. The man was transformed. For one th
ing he’d put on at least ten pounds, and he was smiling. Cal wasn’t sure he’d ever seen Wonder smile before. Smirk, maybe, but not smile.
Cal slumped into a chair. Life sucked.
Wonder shook his head. “Boy, you are disgusting. You are making me lose my faith in your chick magnet status. Right now, it would take a desperate woman to want you.”
“Hush.” Allie pushed Wonder’s Spaten closer to his hand. “He misses Docia. I think it’s terrific.”
Wonder sipped. “My friend, the Casanova of the canine set, is in a blue funk, and you think it’s wonderful. Women.”
“It is wonderful.” Allie smiled at Cal. “Docia’s a fantastic person, and for some reason every man in town has treated her like she was plutonium. I’m glad to see somebody finally take the plunge. Besides, now you can back her up at that wine and cheese thing on Saturday.”
“Wine and cheese thing?” Cal raised an eyebrow.
“Poetry reading. Singalong. Something like that.” Allie half stood, waving at someone near the bar. “Janie. Come over here.”
Janie Dupree stalked to their table, scowling. “Anyone want to go in on a bottle of wine with me? Ingstrom still won’t sell local wine by the glass, the rat.”
“I’ll do it,” Allie said. “Get some from Morgan Barrett’s winery. Give us all glasses.”
Wonder looked longingly at his Spaten, then pushed it aside as Janie headed back to the bar.
A moment later, Janie slid into the seat across from Cal, placing a bottle of sangiovese on the table in front of her. “Okay, what’s up?”
“Explain the wine and cheese thing.” Allie poured wine into four glasses.
Cal stared at his glass. He enjoyed being obnoxious and hard to get along with. It happened so seldom, and he had the perfect excuse. On the other hand, the wine looked really good.
He took a sip. Ah. He was lousy at being moody—after all, he could be had so easily for a glass of sangiovese.
Janie set her glass down and folded her hands. “The wine and cheese thing is actually a poetry reading and dance to benefit the Konigsburg library. We’ve got a cowboy poet plus Junior Bonner’s band. Plus Texas wine, along with some Texas goat cheese and other food-type stuff.”
Wonder groaned. “Poetry.” He turned mournful eyes to Allie. “You’re going to want to go, aren’t you?”
“Of course.” Allie grinned. “And you’re going to escort me and applaud politely when Claude Standish reads something about the last roundup. And then we’ll dance the two-step to Junior’s violin.”
“Dance? In the bookstore?” Cal frowned, picturing people do-si-doing around Docia’s demolished CD rack.
Janie shook her head. “Not inside—out in back. There’s really a lot of room in the backyard. Junior’s going to set up next to the shop with dancing in the middle. We’re going to have tables around the edge for people to sit and watch.”
“And this is all part of the Liddy Brenner Festival?” Cal took another sip of sangiovese, savoring the flavor on his tongue. Not bad for a hick from Iowa.
“Right. We just introduced it this year, but we’d like to make it an annual event.” Janie frowned slightly. “Assuming, of course, that people come. Not just the tourists, but the locals. We could use some more community support. I wish everybody would just get over the Docia-and-Margaret thing. If they’re going to choose sides, why go with the most annoying person in town?”
“Margaret may be annoying, but she’s also powerful.” Wonder took a suspicious sip of sangiovese, then set the glass down a slight distance from his Spaten. “She considers Liddy Brenner her personal festival, you know. And she doesn’t really want Docia Kent horning in on her action.”
Allie frowned. “Margaret should get a life.”
Even Janie looked grim. “I wish she’d leave Docia alone. Docia just wants the people here to accept her. Why should Margaret try to stop that?”
“Why does Margaret Hastings have any say in this at all?” Cal fought the impulse to check over his shoulder. The Dew Drop was safe from Margaret incursions. Everybody knew that.
“Margaret’s a big honcho in the Konigsburg Merchants Association. She’s been throwing up every roadblock to this wine and cheese dealie you can think of, and a few that would probably never occur to you.” Allie sighed. “Some of it’s the wine, but a lot of it is Docia.”
Cal settled back in his chair. “So what’s the problem with Docia and Margaret?”
Allie shook her head. “It’s part of a larger problem, I’d say. People move here all the time. They open up businesses and join the association and then they start trying to tell everybody else how to do things based on their experience someplace else. Then six months later it turns out Konigsburg wasn’t dying for another T-shirt shop on Main and they leave town, grumbling about how unfriendly everybody is. I guess the citizens have just gotten a little wary about embracing outsiders. It took me a couple of years to fit in.”
“Plausible and accurate, but wrong.” Wonder took another experimental sip of sangiovese. “The problem is that Margaret Hastings lost the election for vice president of the student body in her junior year of high school.”
Everyone at the table stared at him.
Cal shrugged. “Okay, since someone has to ask, why is that the problem between Margaret and Docia, who wasn’t even living here then?”
Wonder folded his hands behind his head. “Margaret Hastings ran everything in high school. Yearbook. Latin club. Dance team. You name it, Margaret was in charge of it. Like I said before, she’s got a real talent for organizing. Then she ran for vice president of the student body, which was a smart move on her part. Girls didn’t get elected president, but they had a good chance at vice president.”
“Troglodytes.” Allie sniffed.
Wonder shrugged. “Anyway, she ran. And she should have won. But she didn’t. Many of the students—not including me, by the way, since I didn’t vote for her—thought there’d been some monkey business somewhere.”
“And was there?” Cal tried to picture Margaret as a member of the dance team. Something about it made him feel like shuddering.
“Maybe. Who knows? The principal declined to do a recount for the very good reason that he and everybody else in the school had better uses for their time, and that was that.”
Cal frowned. “So we’re talking about something that happened, what, twenty years ago?”
Wonder gave him a level look. “No, we are talking about something that happened approximately twelve years ago. And since you ostensibly come from a small town, albeit one in Idaho, you should know that nobody in town ever forgets something like that, least of all Margaret Hastings.”
Cal was still frowning. “Okay, but why take it out on Docia? I repeat—she didn’t live here then.”
Janie picked up her own glass of sangiovese. “I was in high school after y’all graduated, but I remember Margaret. When she came back from college, she sort of took over the town just like she took over the school. Nobody wanted to cross her and nobody ever disagreed with her. Whatever she wanted in Konigsburg, she got. She’s even been president of the Merchants Association.”
Wonder raised an eyebrow. “Believe me, I remember that particular era. Margaret was the bossiest boss ever. Sort of a combination of Scarlett O’Hara and the drill sergeant in Full Metal Jacket. She had everybody doing her bidding. That’s when the Liddy Brenner Festival really got going. Nobody had the guts to tell her no.”
“Until Docia.” Cal remembered the malice in Margaret’s voice when she’d talked about Docia at Allie’s restaurant. “I imagine nobody tells Docia what to do.”
Janie smiled. “Nobody except her mama, anyway. She and Margaret don’t exactly clash—I’ll bet Docia doesn’t even realize how mad Margaret is. But every time Docia offers a suggestion or wants to do something different at the association, Margaret just sizzles. Margaret and Docia are like chalk and cheese.”
“I could think of a few less poetic compariso
ns, but that’ll do.” Wonder took another swig of his wine. “Every time Margaret sees Docia, I’ll bet she’s seeing that principal who wouldn’t do the recount. Somebody else who doesn’t realize the importance of Margaret’s vision. Docia’s just another bump on her road of life.”
“Well, at least we’re good to go for now on the wine and cheese thing, and it should finally get the town to come around.” Jane rapped her knuckles on the table. “Knock wood.”
Allie grinned. “That’s plastic, honey, but the thought’s good.”
“It’ll be a smash.” Wonder shrugged. “First of all, everybody in Konigsburg likes to drink wine and dance. Second of all, everybody will show up so they can watch Idaho, here, kick up his heels with Ms. Delectable.”
“Dance?” Cal gave him a stricken look. “I don’t dance.”
—
After three days of being a dutiful daughter, Docia was desperate for Konigsburg. She missed the shop. She missed Janie. She missed Brenner’s and the Dew Drop. She missed Nico.
She missed Cal. Rather a lot, actually.
In fact, when she thought about how much she missed him, it made her nervous. And that, in turn, made her grumpy. She felt grumpy now, sitting in what her mama called her breakfast room even though it was dinner time, trying not to eat another helping of chili.
Mama sat in state. Her foot, wrapped in an Ace bandage, was elevated on a rattan stool. She wore a hot pink yoga outfit, although to Docia’s knowledge, her mother had never set foot in a yoga class. In fact, the mental image of Mama attempting Downward Facing Dog was enough to make Docia choke on her iced tea.
Lourdes winked at her and put another basket of cornbread on the table, while Mama picked at a bowl of lettuce salad. “Your father said he took you to dinner last week.”
“Yes ma’am.” Docia tried to tell herself that one more piece of cornbread really wouldn’t do much harm. Not that much sugar was involved.
“And you brought a friend?”
Docia glanced up to see her mother watching her carefully. “Yes. The vet who took care of Nico.”
“Oh.” Mama smiled brilliantly. “The one you took to dinner before.”
