"That's what you always say. But there isn't any saving it till later 'cause you won't ever talk about it.
You go on-"
"Stop it!" Francesca jumped up from the bed and rounded on Skeet. "You leave him alone, do you hear? Can't you see how tired he is? You act as if he lost the bloody tournament today instead of winning it. He was magnificent."
"Magnificent my sweet aunt," Skeet drawled. "That boy didn't play with three-quarters of what he's got, and he knows it better than anybody. How about you take care of your makeup, Miss Fran-chess-ka, and you let me take care of Dallie?" He stalked to the door and slammed it as he went out.
Francesca confronted Dallie. "Why don't you fire him? He's impossible, Dallie. He makes everything so difficult for you."
He sighed and stripped his shirt over his head. "Leave it alone, Francie."
"That man is your employee, and yet he acts as though you're working for him. You need to put a stop
to it." She watched as he walked over to the brown paper sack he'd brought back to the room with him and pulled out a six-pack of beer. He drank too much, she realized, even though he never seemed to show any signs of it. She had also seen him take a few pills that she doubted were vitamins. As soon as the time was right, she would persuade him to stop both practices.
He peeled a can from its plastic ring and popped the top. "Trying to come between Skeet and me isn't a good idea, Francie."
"I'm not trying to come between you. I just want to make things easier for you."
"Yeah? Well, forget it." He drained his beer and stood up. "I'm going to take a shower."
She didn't want him to be angry with her, so she curved her mouth into an irresistibly sexy smile. "Need any help with those hard-to-reach places?"
"I'm tired," he said irritably. "Just leave me alone." He walked into the bathroom and shut the door, but not before he'd seen the hurt in her eyes.
Stripping off his clothes, he turned the shower on full blast. The water sluiced over his sore shoulder. Closing his eyes, he ducked under the shower head, thinking about that lovesick look he'd spotted on her face. He should have figured she would start imagining she was in love with him. Everything was packaging to her. She was exactly the sort of woman who couldn't see any further than his pretty face. Dammit, he should have left things like they were between them, but they'd been sleeping in the same room for nearly a week and her accessibility had been driving him crazy. How much could he expect from himself? Besides, something about her had gotten to him last night when she'd told that stupid warthog story.
Even so, he should have kept his jeans zipped. Now she was going to cling to him like a string of bad luck, expecting hearts and flowers and all that other horseshit, none of which he had the slightest intention of giving to her. There was no way, not when he had Wynette looming up in front of him and Halloween beating at his door, and not when he could think of a dozen women he liked a whole lot better. Still-although he had no intention of telling her about it-she was one of the best-looking women he'd ever met. Even though he realized it was a mistake, he suspected he would be back in bed with her
before too much more time had passed.
You're a real bastard, aren't you, Beaudine?
The Bear loomed up from the back recesses of Dallie's brain with a corona of Jesus-light shining around his head. The goddamn Bear.
You're a loser, chum, the Bear whispered in that flat midwestern drawl of his. A two-bit loser. Your father knew it and I know it. And Halloween's coming up, just in case you forgot____________________
Dallie hit the cold water faucet with his fist and drowned out the rest.
But things with Francesca didn't get any easier, and the next day their relationship wasn't improved when, just the other side of the Louisiana-Texas border, Dallie began complaining about hearing a strange noise coming from the car.
"What do you think that is?" he asked Skeet. "I had the engine tuned not three weeks ago. Besides, it seems to be coming from the back. Do you hear that?"
Skeet was engrossed in an article about Ann-Margret in the newest issue of People and he shook his head.
"Maybe it's the exhaust." Dallie looked over his shoulder at Francesca. "Do you hear anything back there, Francie? Funny grating kind of noise?"
"I don't hear a thing," Francesca replied quickly.
Just then a loud rasp filled the interior of the Riviera. Skeet's head shot up. "What's that?"
Dallie swore. "I know that sound. Dammit, Francie. You've got that ugly walleyed cat back there with you, don't you?"
"Now, Dallie, don't get upset," she pleaded. "I didn't mean to bring him along. He just followed me into the car and I couldn't get him out."
"Of course he followed you!" Dallie yelled into the rearview mirror. "You've been feeding him, haven't you? Even though I told you not to, you've been feeding that damned walleyed cat."
She tried to make him understand. "It's just- He's got such bony ribs and it's hard for me to eat when I know he's hungry."
Skeet chuckled from the passenger seat and Dallie rounded on him. "What do you think is so goddamn funny, you mind telling me that?"
"Not a thing," Skeet replied, grinning. "Not a thing."
Dallie pulled off onto the shoulder of the interstate and threw open his door. He twisted to the right and leaned over the back of the seat to see the cat huddled on the floor next to the Styrofoam cooler. "Get him out of here right now, Francie."
"He'll get hit by a car," she protested, not entirely certain why this cat, who hadn't given her even the smallest sign of affection, had earned her protection. "We can't let him out on the highway. He'll be killed."
"The world'll be a better place," Dallie retorted. She glared at him. He leaned over the seat and made a swipe at the cat. The animal arched his back, hissed, and sank his teeth into Francesca's ankle.
She let out a yelp of pain and screeched at Dallie. "Now see what you've done!" Pulling her foot into her lap, she inspected her injured ankle and then shrieked down at the cat, "You bloody ingrate! I hope he throws you in front of a bloody Greyhound bus."
Dallie's scowl changed to a grin. After a moment's thought, he shut the door of the Riviera and glanced over at Skeet. "I guess maybe we should let Francie keep her cat after all. It'd be a shame to break up a matched set."
For people who liked small towns, Wynette, Texas, was a good place to live. San Antonio, with its big-city lights, lay only a little more than two hours southeast, as long as the person behind the wheel didn't pay too much attention to the chicken-shit double-nickel speed limit the bureaucrats in Washington had pushed down the throats of the citizens of Texas. The streets of Wynette were shaded with sumac trees, and the park had a marble fountain with four drinking spouts. The people were sturdy. They were ranchers and farmers, about as honest as Texans got, and they made sure the town council was controlled by enough conservative Democrats and Baptists to keep away most of the ethnics looking for government handouts. All in all, once people settled in Wynette, they tended to stay.
Before Miss Sybil Chandler had taken it in hand, the house on Cherry Street had been just another Victorian nightmare. Over the course of her first year there, she had painted the dull gray gingerbread trim Easter egg shades of pink and lavender and hung ferns across the front porch in plant hangers she had macramed herself. Still not satisfied, she had pursed her thin schoolteacher's lips and stenciled a chain of leaping jackrabbits in palest tangerine around the front window frames. When she was finished, she had signed her work in small neat letters next to the mail slot in the door. This effect had pleased her so much she had added a condensed curriculum vitae in the door panel beneath the mail slot: