by Mary McBride
He snapped the ignition off and slapped the palms of both hands against the wheel before he leaned his head back on the seat and closed his eyes with a sigh that seemed to come up from the soles of his feet.
“We're stuck, huh?” Holly offered not so helpfully.
“Yep.”
Chapter Thirteen
By the time Ruth realized it was the actual telephone that was ringing on her side of the bed, and not some dream phone in the dream kitchen where she was supervising a Jamaican sous-chef with a ten-inch blade and the world's longest dreadlocks, Dooley had already reached across her to fumble with the receiver.
He had dropped back down on his own side of the bed then, responding to the caller with muted yeps and nopes, while the black coil of phone cord that stretched across Ruth's neck was threatening to strangle her.
God bless it. She lifted up the cord and slid out from beneath it. Theirs was probably the only black rotary phone left in the whole state of Texas, but Dooley wouldn't have anything else beside their bed, where he demanded “a real phone,” to use his expression. “Not one of those flimsy plastic toys.”
As long as she was up, Ruth padded into the bathroom across the hall. What was it she'd been dreaming? Oh, yeah. The Jamaican sous-chef. He had the prettiest caramel skin, hazel eyes with long, long lashes, and the most lovely, melodic voice. She must've seen him on TV, she thought. In a commercial or something. To her knowledge, she'd never seen or heard a real live Jamaican. Not in Texas, certainly. Never in Honeycomb.
How such an exotic young man had gotten into her dream, Ruth didn't have the least notion, but she could only conclude that his unlikely presence was a measure of her frustration over her restaurant. Was her dream ever going to come true?
She studied her reflection in the mirror over the sink, adjusting her mouth slightly to diminish the downward pull at the corners. So this was what forty-two looked like. It wasn't so bad really. Dooley didn't seem to mind the silver that was creeping into her hair or the inevitable sagging fore and aft. Just as she didn't mind that his hairline was sneaking up under his Resistol and the dentist was lobbying hard for extracting a slew of upper teeth.
She'd been Ruth Reese now more years than she'd been Ruth Griffin. A life with Dooley was all she'd wanted at the age of eighteen, when she didn't know how to dream. She'd been a good wife, and together they'd raised a fine boy in Colby. They'd kept the family ranch, no mean feat. Only now…Well, it just wasn't enough. Not nearly enough.
By the time she walked back into the bedroom, Dooley had hung up the phone and turned on the lamp on his side of the bed.
“Trouble?” she asked, sliding back under the covers. “What time is it?”
“A little after one,” he said. “That was Cal.”
Ruth sat straight up, her heart surging, her stomach tightening. “What's wrong?”
“Nothing,” he grumbled. “He got his car stuck in the mud off the Springtown Road. I'm gonna pick him up at Ellie Young's and then we'll go pull the car out.”
“At Ellie's? At this time of night? Well, what was he doing…?” Ruth answered her own question. “He's with that TV woman from New York again. What do you want to bet?”
“Good for him.” Dooley stood and snagged his jeans from the arm of the chair. “Where's my damned shirt?”
She pointed to the spot on the floor where he'd flung it only a few hours before.
“Why can't it wait till morning?” she asked.
Dooley shrugged into his shirt. “He said there are weapons locked in the trunk he doesn't want anybody fooling with.”
“Well, I still don't see…”
“Go back to sleep, honey.” He came around to her side of the bed and kissed the top of her head. “I'll be back in an hour. Probably less.”
Ruth didn't reply, but lay back down and pulled the covers up to her chin, wondering why everything made her angry these days. Why everyone pissed her off, even by being nice to her. Especially then. And Dooley most of all.
Cal broke the connection and handed the cell phone back to Holly.
“Thanks. My brother-in-law's going to pick me up in a little bit. I'll wait outside so you can get some sleep.”
“That's okay. I'm wide awake.”
“Yeah,” he murmured a little sheepishly.
Who wouldn't be wide awake after spending twenty minutes behind the wheel of a stuck Thunderbird, hitting the gas and shifting gears to no avail, while Cal pushed from behind, further wrenching his bad knee and getting splattered with mud all the while.
They'd finally given up, trudged a quarter mile toward town before Bobby Brueckner gave them a ride back to Ellie's in the bed of his pickup. Some ride. Some hero.
And not only was Miss Holly Hicks wide awake, but for the past hour or so she'd seemed exceptionally cheerful. Happy as hell, as far as Cal could tell, even while her strawberry blonde hair looked wind-tossed and wild.
“I guess the evening didn't turn out exactly the way we planned, huh?” Holly was perched on the edge of the bed, talking as much to herself as to him while she gingerly eased off her mud-crusted shoes. “But you know what, Cal?”
Cal shook his head. He wasn't sure he wanted to know what. In fact, he was pretty sure he didn't. This was one of those evenings better left to bury without a eulogy.
“I'm glad it turned out the way it did,” she said. “I really am.”
“Really.”
“Uh-huh. I'm sorry about your car, but if it hadn't been for that asshole Tucker and the car getting stuck and all, I think we probably would have made love.” She tilted her head, which put her sudden little grin on an adorable slant. “What do you think?”
He shrugged, preferring not to think about it. Where would they have gone, anyway, since they couldn't go to Ruth and Dooley's, or back here? He couldn't see making love to Holly in the back seat of his car or in some sleazy motel. And then there was the whole matter of protection, or in his case, the sad lack of it.
“Anyway,” she continued, “I'm glad we didn't. It's just that…oh, I don't know. I'm just grateful for the reprieve.”
“Reprieve,” he echoed mournfully. He'd admired her openness and honesty from the very first moment he met her, but sometimes he almost wished she'd lie a little bit. “Sounds like something you get when you're on death row.”
“I don't think you truly appreciate the situation,” she said, sounding miffed and misunderstood all of a sudden, her green eyes wide and her oh-so-kissable mouth not grinning anymore, but starting to look unpleasantly prim and self-righteous. “We aren't just any old couple, you know. We're not just any two people who can hit the sack without blinking an eye or thinking twice. This is different. There are certain ethical questions involved here.”
“Such as?”
“Well, I'm the producer of your biography, which means I'm the person who needs to be level-headed and clearsighted and totally unbiased about you. And that's just for starters.” She lofted her gaze toward the ceiling. “What was I thinking?”
“Maybe that you found me irresistible,” he offered along with a little grin of his own, “in a semi-heroic way.”
“That's just the thing.” She shook her head and sighed softly. “I do. I find you completely irresistible in a semi-heroic way.”
“You do?”
Cal wasn't so mentally deficient or sexually stunted that he didn't know when it was time to move closer to the object of his desire. He strode forward, kicked her muddy shoes aside, and pulled Holly up into his arms. But he didn't kiss her. As much as he wanted to, he refrained. This was too important. All of a sudden, it was incredibly important. She was important. Crucial. He wanted to get this right. He had to get it right.
“Holly, darlin',” he whispered at her ear. “This is going to happen, you know. With us. Sooner or later. Sooner, if it's up to me. I promise you. We just need the right place, the right time. Do you hear what I'm saying?”
She nodded her head against his shoulder. Her arms lifted
to circle his waist. She held him tight.
“That would be nice,” she whispered. “Oh, God. That would be heaven.”
“Yeah. Close as I'll ever get to it,” he said. Cal widened his stance, drawing Holly's hips closer, pressing into her warmth. As far as his body knew, there was no more right time or place than now. He couldn't remember ever wanting a woman so much. He couldn't remember ever wanting a woman at all and not taking her on the spot.
Maybe they'd removed some crucial portion of his brain when they'd repaired his skull. Maybe they'd crossed some wires. Or maybe what he was feeling for this strawberry blonde was so much more than mere physical desire that his baser instincts had given way to a higher purpose. Like love?
Or maybe he was just afraid.
“Holly, Holly,” he sighed, pressing his forehead against hers. “I wish…aw, hell. When do you have to go back to New York?”
“Wednesday.”
“Wednesday!” No. That was too damn soon. It was already Sunday night. He needed more time. “This Wednesday?” His desperation probably sounded in his voice.
“Uh-huh. I have an early flight from Houston Thursday morning.” She leaned back and looked up at him, her eyes a deep green and her pretty face all fretted with worry. “I'll be back over the Fourth of July. You'll be here then, won't you?”
“I'm not going anywhere,” he said, his voice barely more than a whisper.
She pressed against him once more, curling her arms more tightly around his waist. “Maybe then…when the filming's done…maybe then we…”
Cal smoothed back her hair, let his lips drift over its warm, wild strands. “Yeah. Then. Definitely then.”
They stood there for a moment like two people saying goodbye forever instead of agreeing to say hello in a month's time. It made him so damn sad that Cal was almost grateful when he heard Dooley's truck rattle into Ellie's driveway out front.
He tipped Holly's face up and kissed her a kiss that felt so much like good-bye he couldn't even say good night.
After Cal left, Holly lay in bed wide awake, staring at the moonlit flowers on the wall, wishing for the sound of footsteps on the rickety fire escape, waiting—praying actually—for Cal to come back.
They should have made love tonight. No. They shouldn't. They'd done the right thing by postponing it. Hadn't they?
Holly flopped on her side and rammed a fist into the pillow, determined to stop aching for what she really didn't want. Not now, anyway. The right time, Cal had said. When was that? When the biography package was in the can? When his divorce was final? When Holly finally allowed herself to be distracted from her dream?
The perfect place, he'd said. Where was that? Not Texas, that was for sure. Not here. Her perfect place was New York, and she couldn't wait to get back to its narrow skies and gritty streets, its sidewalks with steaming grates, sharp elbows in subways, blissful anonymity, unidentifiable smells and inappropriate shrieks, its thrills and chills, its leers and fears and cheers.
Home.
All of a sudden Holly was miserable. She wanted to go home, back to New York where her life moved in a straight line along a narrow path called ambition, where she never had to choose between her clear-cut plans and a man, where she was happy all on her own.
She squeezed her eyes closed and called on Rufus to take her there. To whisk her home if only in her imagination.
Tonight her ever-reliable cameraman seemed taller than usual, and she noticed he was wearing hand-tooled boots instead of his normal chewed-looking sneakers. His hair was longer, too, falling in two grizzled braids beneath the bandanna around his head, and he needed a shave. Jeez. Rufus had morphed into Willie Nelson all of a sudden—a clear sign that she'd already been in Texas far too long.
Still, on the sidewalks of New York where anything goes, he didn't look amiss. With his mini-cam high on his shoulder, Rufus widened his stance, rather like a Colossus, in the middle of the sidewalk. Oncoming pedestrians just naturally flowed around him, like a river around a rock, without a backward glance. In slow motion, his lens panned down 42nd Street toward the bright, elegant heights of the Chrysler Building. In the foreground, out of focus, yellow taxis blurred while their horns mingled like clarinets and oboes.
For her part, Holly stood there, imaginary mike in hand, mute. What could she possibly say about the place that hadn't been said before, and better?
It was Gershwin. It was Gotham. It was garlic, lox and bagels, Breakfast at Tiffany's, good wines, great newspapers. It was the new in news, and where she had to be to get what she wanted.
It wasn't Texas.
She told herself she didn't want Cal Griffin. She didn't. Honest to God. All she wanted was to go home and get on with her life.
Cal unhooked the chain from the tow bar on his brother-in-law's pickup and tossed it into the truck's open bed. “I owe you one, Dooley,” he said.
“Glad I could help.” Dooley rubbed the axle grease from his hands, then pulled a Marlboro Red from his shirt pocket, flicked a match with his thumbnail, and blew a thin stream of smoke into the still night air. He hardly ever indulged anymore now that Ruth had declared the house off limits.
“I'll follow you home,” Cal told him, then only half in jest added, “Guess I'd better put on my flak jacket just in case Ruthie's still up.”
“I figured you'd be going back to Ellie's for the night.”
“Yeah?” Cal's laugh had a brittle edge, a bitter twist. “Then you must figure I'm at least half the man I used to be, bro. Or that I'm willing to have my sister riding my ass from dawn to dusk for the next couple of weeks.”
Dooley took a deep drag from his smoke and gave Cal a long, hard look as he exhaled. “You worry too much about what your sister thinks,” he said quietly. “You're better, Cal. Especially in the last few days. I can see that. Can't you?”
The question took him completely by surprise, so much so that Cal found himself taking a few steps back to lean his hip against the front fender of the T-bird. Better? Was he? He crossed his arms, looked up at the starlit sky a moment, then fixed his gaze on the tall, lanky man he'd known so long.
What was Dooley trying to tell him? Just like names and parking-lot colors, Cal feared the subtleties of language still eluded him. “What are you trying to say, Dooley?” he asked.
“Hell, Cal, what I'm saying is you don't need Ruthie and me the way you did when you first came home. You were in pretty bad shape then, and not thinking all that clearly. After that, you started drowning your troubles in booze the same way your old man did. Can't say as I blame you much, either. You were scaring the bejesus out of your sister, I can tell you that. But you've come around. You're better. More like your old self. At least that's how I see it.”
“Maybe you're right, Dooley. I don't know. The thing is…” Cal's throat constricted. He had to force his words past his closed throat, past his ingrained reluctance to discuss such things, especially with another man. “The thing is I'll probably never be the same as I was.”
“Yeah, well…” After a last pull on the filter, Dooley dropped the cigarette and ground it under his boot heel. “There are probably some benefits along with the drawbacks of not being your former self. It's not like you didn't make any mistakes, Cal. I'm talking about your personal life now. About Diana.”
“Diana.” The name sounded more like a curse when Cal said it.
“Well, anyway,” Dooley squinted at his watch. “It's getting late. I told Ruthie I'd be home in an hour. You do what you want. For better or worse, you gotta start trusting your own judgment again.”
“Dooley,” Cal said as his brother-in-law angled into the pickup's driver's seat. “Thanks. For the tow. For everything.”
“You bet.” His sandy mustache curved up in a grin. “G'night.”
Starting up the fire escape, balancing two cold, wet bottles of Perrier from Ramon's and with a pocket full of condoms, Cal's confidence suffered a brief but not fatal setback. He wasn't so sure about his judgment anymore.
But after Dooley had driven away, he'd thought long and hard about everything his brother-in-law had said, and had decided that maybe he was right. He was better.
He'd spent so long feeling sorry for himself that he'd completely overlooked the fact that he'd improved spectacularly in the past nine months. He'd spent so much time mourning his losses that he forgot to focus on what he'd accomplished since being shot. The worst part hadn't been the physical pain, or even the shame of finding himself abandoned by his wife. It had been the loss of control. In the blink of an eye, with the speed of a bullet, he'd gone from a man in total control of people and events to one who couldn't control anything, including his bowels.
He remembered wanting to die those first few weeks, but not even having enough control to accomplish that. The best he could manage was to pull out IVs, and then they'd restrained him and he couldn't even do that.
But he was better, dammit. Dooley had said so, and Doo-ley Reese wouldn't bullshit him about something so important.
Still, he wasn't perfect. Well, he never had been, except maybe the split second he lunged in front of the president. But he was better. A lot better than he was even a month ago. And, by God, tomorrow he'd be better than today. Next week he'd be better than that. Come September, when his medical leave was up, maybe he'd even be back one hundred percent. Well, perfection was probably a stretch. He'd settle for ninety percent.
In the meantime, there was Miss Holly Hicks, whose reprieve was over.
Starting now.
When had he ever run away from a woman he wanted? When had he ever wanted a woman more?
At the top of the fire escape, blissfully free of dizziness, almost free of doubt, he tapped a bottle softly against the door.
Holly had leapt out of bed at the first footfall on the fire escape. For want of a .357 Magnum or a machete, she'd grabbed the heaviest thing she could find—Mel's laptop—and positioned herself just behind the little unlocked door. When she recognized Cal's voice, she didn't know whether to be relieved or furious.
