Kathleen Creighton - One More Knight

He was trying his best to be reasonable. All right, so her father had just had a heart attack. So they obviously had some unresolved issues, which he could see might make it that much harder. So she had plenty of reasons to be upset, and maybe he was being selfish to expect her to share her personal problems with him, a stranger. But last night she hadn’t treated him like a stranger. And she’d had reasons enough then to be upset, surely-lady gets off a plane from L.A., drives to Alabama, loses her purse, crashes her car, gets arrested and thrown in jail-who wouldn’t be at the end of her rope? And she’d turned to him for comfort the only way she’d known how, instinct driving her to seek the nearest warm body. Even now, in the cold light of day, it was something he understood.

But he’d had the feeling then that there was more to it than the obvious stuff, the accident and getting arrested and all. That there were things going on with her she wasn’t letting him in on. He felt that more than ever now. This wasn’t about her father having a heart attack. This was about whatever it was that had happened all those years ago to drive a young girl out of this town and away from her home and family, something she was ashamed of to this day. Something it still gave her nightmares and chills to think about.

Dammit, why couldn’t she see that he was there to help? And he didn’t mean just driving her around and picking up her meal tab. He understood things like nightmares and cold sweats all too well. Why wouldn’t she trust him?

And why did it bother him so much that she didn’t?

“Hey,” he said, disappointment filling his throat like gravel, “how ‘bout gettin’ something to eat?”

“I’m not hungry,” she muttered, shaking her head, behaving, in his opinion, like an obstinate child.

“You sure?” he asked, cajoling her like one. “It’s been a long time since breakfast.”

She aimed a frown past him, edgy and restless. “No. You go ahead.”

The need to touch her was a greater hunger than the one gnawing at his belly. To contain it, he tucked his hands against his ribs and clamped down hard on them with his biceps. “Hey,” he said, forcing a lightness he was a long way from feeling, “you need to eat. Trust me-I know.”

Her eyes flicked at him, full of controlled fury. “What are you, my mother?”

Patience, he thought. And he found that, in spite of all his efforts, his hand had found its way to her elbow. Her skin felt like cream on his fingers. “Come on, I’m buyin’.”

“Damn right you are,” she snapped, “since in case you hadn’t noticed, I still haven’t got a purse.”

“Don’t worry, I’m runnin’ a tab. Hospital’s got a cafeteria, I noticed. That okay with you?”

She looked at him as if he’d lost his mind. “God, no. Look, if you’re going to make me eat, it’s going to have to be worth it. A burger and fries, or no deal.”

He shook his head and muttered about her father lying in ICU with a coronary and her stuffing herself with french fries, but the truth was, the idea sounded damn good to him, too. “Okay,” he said, “it’s a deal. Do you need to tell anybody where you’re going? What was her name, your dad’s housekeeper-?”

“Dobrina.” She gave her head a quick, hard shake that was almost like a shudder. “No. Let’s just go.”

He dug in his pocket for his keys, and they started down the hill, Troy automatically shortening his stride to accommodate those high-heeled shoes she was wearing. Though she seemed to get around in the infernal things pretty well, he had to admit. Which probably had to do with her being a big-city lawyer, he reminded himself, and on her feet in shoes like that all day. For some reason it was hard to think of her that way, even dressed for it like she was now. His mind kept wanting to put her back in his boxers, or better yet, in nothing but those spangly drops of water, fresh from the shower…

Bubba was bouncing around at the end of his leash like a paddle ball, tickled to death to see them back so soon.

“How come he’s not howling?” Charly asked, giving the dog a wide berth and a wary look.

“I don’t know,” said Troy, “I think maybe he’s gettin’ used to it.”

He had to leave poor old Bubba squirming and whining, though, scared he was going to get left again, while he went to start up the car and get the air-conditioning going. And the next thing he knew, there was Charly untying the dog’s leash herself, and bringing him around to the back of the Cherokee. And cussing up a storm while she was doing it, too, trying her best, in her elegant suit and high-heeled shoes, to keep from being trampled on by a great big clumsy and overly enthusiastic pup. It was a sight guaranteed to melt the heart of any red-blooded Southern man.

The look on her face was a clear warning to him not to give voice to what he was feeling just then, so he hid his grin and limited himself to a brisk “Where to?” as he climbed in behind the wheel. “Your friend Kelly’s okay?”

She gave another one of those funny little shudders. “God, no, anyplace but there.”

He threw her a look of curiosity. “Why not? She doesn’t serve hamburgers?”

“Oh, I’m sure she does.” She put her head back against the headrest and closed her eyes, laughing softly. And the warm feeling inside him congealed. Once again he felt shut out, excluded, barred.

After a moment she sat up and began pulling pins out of her hair, combing through it with her fingers. She gave it a final shake that seemed to magically put all the pieces back in their original places and dropped the pins into the console cup holder.

“It’s just that I’d rather not run into anybody I know right now,” she said tightly, “if you don’t mind.” She let out a breath and looked away, out the window. “Hell, when this news gets out-about the judge’s heart attack-I imagine the people in this town are gonna be lookin’ to lynch me.”

“Oh, come on.”

“You think I’m kidding.” She gave him a brief, hard look, then turned away again. “They will blame me. Trust me, I know.”

“Come on, how could they? You just got here.”

She gave her patented snort of laughter. “Oh, please. Judge’s wayward, runaway daughter shows up in town, judge has a coronary-who are they gonna blame? Besides-” she snatched a breath and finished sardonically “-it wouldn’t be the first time I killed off one of this town’s leading citizens.”

He waited a minute to be sure he’d heard her right. Then he whooshed out air in a startled laugh. “Whoa, I think you’re gonna have to explain that one.”

She waved a dismissive hand. “It’s a long story.”

Like his brother Jimmy Joe, Troy had a long fuse, but even he had his limits. He clamped down hard on his temper, but he could feel his heartbeat accelerating and the heat starting to pump through his veins. He drawled with deceptive softness, “Like I said before, I’m not goin’ anywhere. Why don’t you just try givin’ me the short version?”

“The short version?” Her voice was brittle with her own suppressed anger, which Troy had enough sense to know he wasn’t the true cause of. “You want the short version. Okay, how’s this? Rebellious young girl living in small Southern town gets pregnant out of wedlock, refuses to do the decent thing and go off to an aunt’s house out of town for the duration to save the families embarrassment and shame, et cetera. Baby’s sensitive teenage father commits suicide, girl gives birth to a son, girl puts baby up for adoption, girl hops the next bus out of town. End of story.” She stopped it there on a choking sound.

Troy didn’t say anything. He drove in narrow-eyed silence while his brain processed all that and his heart pounded like a demon against the wall of his chest. He kept thinking, Wow. And, Okay, you asked for it. And Wow again.