That was an offer he couldn’t refuse. And it worked right into what he’d intended to do this morning. Now, maybe he could ease that invitation to go to town with him right into casual conversation.
Funny. He felt anything but casual.
“You look like you have something on your mind,” Darcy observed as she set the cereal box on the table. She sat down and looked at him expectantly. “Penny for your thoughts?”
A perfect opening if he ever had one. Why, then, did he suddenly feel so shy? Surely, Darcy wouldn’t turn him down. “Just wondering if you wanted to go to town with me,” he said. There, he’d done it.
“No!”
The speed of her answer and the force of it shocked him. “Why the hell not?”
Darcy jerked back and narrowed her eyes at him. “You don’t have to snap at me. I thought somebody should be here so your mother wouldn’t be alone. Isn’t that why you wanted me to stay here with her?”
Relief washed over him. At least, it wasn’t a rejection of him, Bill thought. Or was it? He shrugged. “Momma won’t be alone. My brother Ray’s coming over.”
“Was he at the party the other night?”
Bill shook his head. “Ray lives out in Alexander City, and he drives a truck, to boot, so he doesn’t get over as much as he’d like. He’s got a couple days off, so he’ll be here any time now.” He glanced at Darcy and tried not to look too hopeful.
Darcy gnawed at her lip as if he were a criminal and she had to decide his innocence or guilt. It wasn’t that big a decision was it? He’d just asked her to go to town. He hadn’t proposed.
Wishing he could kiss her to keep her from marring those lips he’d so much enjoyed kissing, he raised the stakes. “I’ll buy you lunch.”
What woman could resist a line like that?
Chapter Seven
What girl in her right mind could refuse an invitation from Bill Hays, Darcy thought as she tried not to drown in his earnest green eyes. At least, this morning he was fully dressed. If he had been sitting there shirtless, as she’d seen him so often this week, she might have been tempted to fall into his arms right then and there. As it was, he was still pretty darned attractive in a kelly-green polo shirt and khaki slacks.
She was still a woman on the rebound, she reminded herself. She didn’t want to get involved with another man. After all, she’d demonstrated that she wasn’t a good judge of husband material. Though she was certain Bill must have some flaws that would eventually turn her off, she hadn’t seen any yet. He seemed too perfect, as had Dick right up to the day of the wedding. But instead of Dick’s polished perfection, Bill’s seemed raw, and so much more potent. Maybe, if she spent a little more time with him, she’d find his flaws.
No. She didn’t need the complication no matter what the reasons while she was trying to figure out what to do with herself. Darcy glanced at Bill as if getting another look at him would make him less attractive. No, he still made her breath catch in her throat.
But Bill would be returning to Hurlburt tomorrow afternoon after church, another part of her mind countered. Nothing could possibly happen in a place as public, and as quaint, as the Dinner Belle Diner. Darcy had eaten there a couple of times this week, and she knew there was nothing romantic about the place. She had to smile as she poured cereal into a bowl.
“Your only reason for going to town isn’t just to wine and dine me—without the wine—is it?” There was no way that she was going to let this feel like a date. “And I won’t leave until your brother Ray gets here. I won’t leave your mother alone if I don’t have to.”
“No, I’m not trying to wine and dine you,” Billy said. Was that a hint of defeat in his tone? Had he really wanted it to be a date? “I have to get a haircut before I show up for duty first thing Monday morning.” He raked his hand through thick, light-brown hair that seemed shades lighter from so much time working in the sun this week.
To Darcy, the slightly out-of-bounds look was quite attractive. She’d secretly hated Dick’s impeccable haircut, but she never would have said a word about it. It was regulation, after all. She wished Billy didn’t have to cut the thatch of hair she wanted to run her fingers through. Just once before…
She shook her head.
Bill’s hopeful expression fell. “Is that a no?”
Darcy shook her head again. “Huh? What? Did you say something?”
“You shook your head. Have you changed your mind?”
“Oh, no.” Darcy flushed with acute embarrassment. It was one thing to think about him, but another to let him see what she was thinking. “I’m sorry. My mind was wandering.” Right over to him. She looked down at the dry cereal in her bowl. If she put milk on it, she’d have an excuse to eat and not talk.
“Let me eat my cereal before it gets soggy. Then I have to get ready before your brother gets here.” She poured milk into the bowl. “I need to do some shopping,” she said as if to prove it to herself—or to him?—that she was only going with him because she had planned to go anyway.
Bill didn’t seem to mind. He just pushed out of his chair, took his breakfast plate to the sink, then left her alone in the kitchen.
HE HAD NEVER BEEN so glad to see his brother in all his life. Bill had shaken hands and introduced Darcy. Ray had already heard about the engagement. Was there anyone in Alabama who hadn’t? They’d exchanged a few pleasantries about the weather and Momma’s condition, and then he and Darcy had skedaddled out of there. His rapid defection was as much because he was eager to get to town as it was that he’d always felt awkward around his older brother.
Ray was the oldest and Billy the youngest, with fifteen long years between them. They hardly knew each other. Ray had gone off for three years in the army when Bill was three. His brother had come home with a German wife and a kid on the way, and grown-up responsibilities eight-year-old Billy couldn’t begin to understand. Ray had been busy building his life and had been away most of Bill’s growing-up years. Bill felt as though they were a couple of strangers who just happened to be related.
Bill breathed a long, deep sigh as he pulled out onto the Mattison-Elm City Road.
“Something wrong?” Darcy asked from her spot far across the front seat, all but mashed against the door.
“No. I just never have anything to say to Ray.” Bill paused to think. “And sometimes I feel bad about it.”
“I understand,” Darcy said without missing a beat. “I feel like that about most of my relatives. We moved around a lot, so I didn’t get to grow up with them like most people do.” She looked out the window, a wistful expression in her eyes. “I always envied those kids who knew their cousins as well as their brothers and sisters. I envied their roots.”
“Hell, I got roots, all right. And plenty of dirt to put them in,” Bill said. “Too much dirt, sometimes. We’ve been trying to talk Momma into selling and moving into one of those Assisted Living Centers in town where she’d be taken care of and be closer to the hospital.”
“Don’t you dare!” Darcy said sharply. “How could you? I’d give anything for roots as old and as deep as yours.”
Bill couldn’t look at her, couldn’t gauge her expression because he’d come to the turn-off onto the state road to town. “You know she won’t have anything to do with the idea.” He shook his head as he waited for a pickup truck to go by. “Sometimes we wonder if she cares more for that place than she does for her own good.”
“She just knows how important it is to link the past with the future, that’s all.”
“I don’t know why,” Bill muttered. “That place has been nothing but heartbreak for her. Daddy died trying to run it single-handedly and work another job to feed all us kids. Died of heatstroke trying to get a week’s worth of chores done on a Saturday.”
Darcy turned toward him and laid her hand gently on his shoulder. Even through the fabric of his shirt he could feel the way she seemed to care. “I’m sorry, Bill. It must have hurt to grow up without a father, but if he hadn’t
wanted to work so hard, he wouldn’t have.” Darcy smiled. “It’s clear to anyone who looks how much your mother loves her home. Even after so many years, she doesn’t seem to regret a moment of her life there.” Darcy lifted her hand, depriving him of its slight weight and tremendous warmth. “Maybe you can’t understand what they were working for, but I can. They wanted to give you what I never had. Roots. Tradition. A feeling of connectedness to a place.
“I know why that was so important to them. Your parents were from a generation that had very little. I think it was important to build something of their own, to have something to leave to their children.” Darcy shrugged. “My family never lacked in a financial sense, but we never had that feeling of connection I see with you and your family. You may have regretted having to struggle for everything when you were growing up, but you were so much richer than I was in many ways.”
Darcy had it nailed, Bill couldn’t help thinking, but he didn’t want to talk about it. Maybe, she hadn’t grown up poor, maybe she thought it was romantic to wear hand-me-downs and scrape just to have the money to take a girl to a drive-in movie, but he didn’t. “I’d just as soon not talk about this anymore,” he finally said.
“Fine,” Darcy replied and abruptly drew back into her spot, scrunched up against the passenger door.
Bill didn’t like the way they’d left it, but it was something he wasn’t ready to deal with. She hadn’t had to do without. She hadn’t had to leave home to earn for herself the things most other people took for granted.
He blew out a long, exaggerated breath. The rest of the drive to Pittsville was going to take forever with this stony silence between them.
THEY PASSED the big shopping center at the crossroads of the state road and Main Street and headed downtown to the uniform shop. Darcy liked the quiet, old-fashioned look of the small downtown area with its home-owned businesses and friendly people. Bill parked at the curb in front of the Dinner Belle Diner, then they split up, much to Darcy’s relief. Bill went to get his hair cut at a place that looked like something right out of Mayberry, and Darcy headed for the uniform shop that the receptionist in Doctor Williamson’s office had told her about.
Darcy breathed in the warm, summer air. Now that Bill was out of sight, she felt as if she could relax again. Even when they weren’t speaking, the confines of that Jeep had seemed way too small. And not because they were upset with each other.
The car had been too small because she was too close to Billy Hays to think clearly. She still wasn’t certain why. Had her feelings for Dick been normal, or was this the way you ought to feel about the man you were supposed to marry? Now she knew how women got themselves into trouble if that was the way their men made them feel. She could finally see how a woman could throw all caution aside and not really regret finding herself alone with a child when the passion finally burned itself out and the man had left.
That stopped her. She paused outside the uniform shop, her hand on the doorknob. She couldn’t believe what she had just been thinking.
She had to be more careful around Bill. It was bad enough that just looking at him made her weak in the knees. There was no sense in getting into a mess that she’d never get out of. After all, she’d just gotten herself out of one engagement, and that had not been pretty.
She and Bill weren’t really engaged, she told herself sternly as she stepped inside the store. Just half the people in the county believed they were.
“I hoped you’d be coming in,” a smiling young woman said from behind the counter as the bell above the door announced Darcy’s arrival.
“Excuse me?” Was this one of the many people she’d met at Bill’s birthday party the other night? At church? One of the doctor’s patients? She didn’t look familiar. “Have we met? I’m sorry I don’t remember your name.”
The woman, a ripe strawberry blonde with a figure Darcy would have killed for, was wearing too much makeup in a vain attempt to cover some of the freckles that peppered her from head to toe. “I’m Margaret Jean Smithfield,” she said hurrying around the counter to take Darcy by the arm as if they were best friends, and leading her to a display of pastel-colored smocks.
“So, you’ve known Bill for a long time?” Darcy said cautiously a few minutes later, as she examined her reflection in the showroom mirror. A finger of jealousy stabbed at her as she wondered just how well.
“Since I was knee-high to a weed. Billy and my brother Jamey were like this.” Margaret Jean held up two fingers pressed closely together. “I had such a crush on him, but of course, he never saw me as nothing more than Jamey’s ornery little sister.” Margaret Jean let out a huge sigh. “And now you’ve got him.”
Darcy didn’t quite know how to respond to that, so she didn’t.
“Just because you have to wear a uniform don’t mean you have to wear the same thing day after day,” the woman went on without stopping to listen. “And I think the yellow and the pink will both look good on you.”
The woman ought to be working at some expensive boutique the way she was dictating clothing choices, Darcy thought. “All right,” Darcy said. “You’ve got yourself a sale. And I’ll need three pairs of white slacks to go with.” She told her the size.
The woman grinned and went to find the slacks.
“You might have to hem these up,” Margaret Jean said when she returned. “They might be a tad long.”
“I think I can deal with it,” Darcy said, accepting the package and turning toward the door. She wasn’t sure she liked being the constant topic of conversation. And it didn’t seem that Pittsville was small enough that every newcomer would be instantly identifiable, but here she was, recognized wherever she went. It gave her the willies.
She shuddered as she left the store, the bell on the door tolling her departure. Considering her experience at the uniform shop, she wondered if she should risk trying the dollar store two doors down, or wait till Bill could take her to the giant discount store that dominated the shopping center on the main road. She decided to try this one. She needed her respite from Bill, even though she missed him, too. And she didn’t need him hovering while she bought the nightgowns and other personal items she’d come for.
Looping the handholds of the sack over her wrist, she pushed her way through the heavy doors.
BILL DRUMMED his fingers restlessly on the scarred tabletop in the corner booth in the Dinner Belle Diner. He hadn’t thought to suggest a time to meet Darcy here. After all, how long could it take to pick up a couple of uniforms? They all looked alike. He’d been waiting for what seemed like hours.
The waitress came up and offered him a refill on his iced tea. “You don’t reckon she stood you up, hon?” the woman said, the sympathy in her tone lost among the pops and crackles of her gum as she filled his glass—again.
He felt as though he’d drunk enough tea to float a battleship, or at least an inflatable rubber boat, but he had to do something while he waited. Bill forced a smile in the direction of the waitress. “Thanks. She’ll be here. She just had more errands to run than I did.”
“Well, if she stands you up, I get off at one,” the woman said over her shoulder as she sashayed away, swinging her hips in a way Bill figured was meant to be seductive but missed the mark by a mile.
He grinned to himself. Had that been a come-on?
Bill looked around. The place hadn’t changed much in the years since he’d started coming here in high school. This place had been the hangout until a couple of fast-food places had come to the shopping center on the highway. Still, he preferred this place. At least, here, he could linger over a glass of iced tea—or two or three—without feeling like he was taking up a spot a paying customer might need.
Not that the place was empty, by any means. On weekdays this little restaurant probably hummed when the workers from the courthouse, county offices and the bank next door came in for lunch. He glanced at a logo on the back of the uniform of one of the customers and grinned to himself. The feed store must still
be open on Saturdays.
The jangling bell over the door announced the arrival of another customer. Darcy.
“I’m sorry I’m late,” she announced breathlessly as she juggled shopping bags. “It took me a while to find what I was looking for. I had to go to several stores.” Darcy piled her bags into the booth across from Bill and slid in after them. “It’s good that I had a list or I would have forgotten half of what I wanted. As it was, I had to look and look until I found everything.” She picked up the menu and made a big show of looking it over. “I must have walked a mile.”
Bill took the menu out of her hands. “You know what’s on the menu, Darcy. You’ve eaten here all week. Why are you avoiding me?”
With Billy touching her she found it hard to think…to breathe.
Darcy didn’t think she’d been avoiding him. Not exactly. When she’d been wandering through all the stores in the tiny downtown section of Pittsville, that’s when she’d been avoiding him. Now that she was here across the table from him, how could she avoid him?
He was there in front of her: as big as life and just as real. No, she couldn’t avoid him or ignore him—even if she wanted to—no matter how hard she tried.
“What do you mean?” she finally managed. “I’m here.” She reached for the menu, but Bill placed his hand firmly on top of it, anchoring it to the tabletop.
“You slid into this booth and ducked behind that menu so fast, I couldn’t be sure it was really you.”
If that hadn’t been so close to true, Darcy would have laughed. She didn’t know why she thought she had to have a wall between her and Bill, but she felt she needed some sort of protection. She’d come to like him too much in the past few days to clutter all that up with caring for him, too. Wasn’t it enough that she cared for his mother?
She didn’t know how to respond, so she didn’t. She just looked down at his strong, square hand on top of the ugly, plastic-covered menu. She could think of better places for his hand to be.
How could she keep thinking these things? She wanted to sink down into the seat and die! And she’d thought sitting across from him in this diner would be safe…
Sgt. Billy's Bride Page 9
