coffee stain that marred the front of her shapeless yellow cotton maternity dress.
As they rode silently toward Sulphur City, the pit of her stomach filled with dread. Now that she knew about Francesca's baby, Holly Grace would surely go to Dallie. What if he tried to make some claim on her baby? What was she going to do? She stared straight ahead and forced herself to think.
On the outskirts of Sulphur City, Holly Grace slowed down at two separate roadhouses, inspected them, and then drove on. Only when she reached the third and most disreputable-looking did she seem satisfied. "This place looks like it serves good Tex-Mex. I count six pickups and three Harleys. What do you say?"
Even the idea of food made Francesca feel nauseated; she just wanted to get their encounter over with. "Any place is fine with me. I'm not very hungry."
Holly Grace tapped her fingernails on the steering wheel. "The pickups are a real good sign, but you can't always tell with the Harleys. Some of those bikers keep themselves so stoned they wouldn't know the difference between good Tex-Mex and shoe leather." Another pickup pulled into the lot in front of them, and Holly Grace made up her mind. She nosed into a parking place and shut off the engine.
A few minutes later, the two women slid into a booth at the back of the restaurant-Francesca clumsily bumping her stomach against the edge of the table, Holly Grace settling in with a model's elegance. Above them, a set of steer horns and a rattlesnake skin had been nailed to the wall along with several old Texas license plates. Holly Grace pushed her sunglasses on top of her head and nodded toward the Tabasco bottle in the center of the table. "This place is gonna be real good."
A waitress appeared. Holly Grace ordered a tamale-enchilada-taco combination and Francesca ordered iced tea. Holly Grace made no comment about her lack of appetite. She leaned back in the booth, ran her fingers through her hair, and hummed along with the jukebox. Francesca had a vague sense of familiarity, as if she and Holly Grace had done this before. There was something about the tilt of her head, the lazy drape of her arm over the seat back, and the play of light on her hair. Then Francesca realized that Holly Grace reminded her of Dallie.
The silence between them lengthened until Francesca couldn't stand it any longer. A strong offense, she decided, was her only defense. "This isn't Dallie's baby."
Holly Grace regarded her skeptically. "I'm real good at counting."
"It isn't." She stared coldly across the table. "Don't try to make trouble for me. My life is none of your business."
Holly Grace toyed with her Peretti cuffbracelet. "I picked up your radio show when I was driving along Ninety on my way over to Hondo to see an old boyfriend, and I was so surprised to hear you that I almost ran off the road. You do a real good show." She looked up from the bracelet with clear blue eyes. "Dallie was pretty upset when you disappeared like that. Even though I can't blame you for being mad when you found out about me, you really shouldn't have left without talking to him first. He's sensitive."
Francesca thought of any number of responses to that and discarded them all. The baby kicked her hard beneath her ribs.
"You know, Francie, Dallie and I had a little baby boy once, but he died." No emotion was visible in Holly Grace's face. She was merely stating a fact.
"I know. I'm sorry." The words sounded stiff and inadequate.
"If you're having Dallie's baby and you don't let him know, you'd be pretty much of a low-life in my opinion."
"I'm not having his baby," Francesca said. "I had an affair in England, right before I came over. It's his baby, but he married a female mathematician before he knew I was pregnant." It was the story she'd invented in the car, the best she could come up with on short notice, and the only one Dallie might accept when word of this got back to him. She managed to give Holly Grace one of her old haughty looks. "Good gracious, you don't think I would have Dallie's baby without demanding some sort of financial support from him, do you? I'm not stupid."
She saw that she had struck a responsive chord and that Holly Grace was no longer so certain of herself. Francesca's iced tea arrived and she took a sip, then stirred it with her straw, trying to buy time. Should she give more details about Nicky to support her lie or should she keep quiet? Somehow she had to make her story stick.
"Dallie's funny about babies," Holly Grace said. "He doesn't believe in abortion, no matter what the circumstances, which is exactly the sort of hypocrisy I hate in a man. Still, if he knew you were having
his baby, he'd probably get a divorce and marry you."
Francesca felt a stir of anger. "I'm not a charity case. I don't need to have Dallie marry me." She forced herself to speak more calmly. "Besides, whatever you may think of me, I'm not the kind of woman
who'd make one man responsible for another's child."
Holly Grace played with the straw wrapper abandoned on the table. "Why didn't you get an abortion?
I would have if I were you."
Francesca was surprised at how easily she could slip back behind her rich-girl facade. She gave a bored shrug. "Who remembers to look at a calendar from one month to the next? By the time I realized what had happened, it was too late."
They didn't say much else until Holly Grace's meal arrived on a platter the size of west Texas. "Are you sure you wouldn't like some of this? I'm supposed to lose four pounds before I go back to New York."
If Francesca hadn't been so much on edge, she would have laughed as she watched food ooze over the sides of the plate and puddle onto the table. She tried to shift the course of the discussion by asking Holly Grace about her career.
Holly Grace dug into the exact center of her first enchilada. "Have you ever heard any of those talk shows where they interview famous models and all of them say that the job's glamorous, but it's a lot of hard work, too? As far as I can tell, every one of them is lying through her teeth, because I never made so much easy money in my life. In September, I'm even auditioning for a TV show." She set down her fork so she could heap green chili salsa over everything except her Ferragamo sandals. Shrugging her hair away from her face, she picked up her taco, but she didn't lift it to her mouth. Instead, she studied Francesca. "It's too bad you're so short. I know about a dozen photographers who'd think they'd died and gone to homo heaven if you were six inches taller… and not pregnant, of course."
Francesca didn't say anything, and Holly Grace fell silent, too. She set down her taco untasted and pierced the center of a mound of refried beans with her fork, twisting it back and forth until she'd made an indentation that looked like an angel's wing. "Dallie and I pretty much stay out of each other's love lives, but it doesn't seem to me I can do that in this case. I'm not absolutely sure you're telling the truth, but I can't exactly come up with a good reason why you'd lie."
Francesca felt a surge of hope, but she kept her expression carefully blank. "I don't really care whether you believe me or not."
Holly Grace continued to twist her fork back and forth in the beans, turning the angel's wing into a full circle. "He's sensitive on the subject of kids. If you're lying to me…"
Her stomach in a knot, Francesca took a calculated risk. "I suppose I'd be better off if I told you this was his baby. I could certainly use some cash."