Fancy Pants

Chapter 12

The Cajun Bar and Grill was a decided improvement over the Blue Choctaw, although it still wasn't the sort of place Francesca would have chosen as the site for a coming-out ball. Located about ten miles south of Lake Charles, it rested beside a two-lane highway in the middle of nowhere. It had a screen door that banged every time someone came through and a squeaky paddle-wheel fan with one bent blade. Behind the table where they were sitting, an iridescent blue swordfish had been nailed to the wall along with an assortment of calendars and an advertisement for Evangeline Maid bread. The placemats were exactly as Dallie had described them, although he had neglected to mention the scalloped edges and the legend printed in red beneath the map of Louisiana: "God's Country."

A pretty brown-eyed waitress in jeans and a tank top came to the table. She inspected Francesca with a combination of curiosity and ill-concealed envy, then turned to Dallie. "Hey, Dallie. I hear you're only one stroke off the lead. Congratulations."

"Thanks, honey. The course has been real good to me this week."

"Where's Skeet?" she asked.

Francesca gazed innocently at the chrome and glass sugar dispenser in the middle of the table.

"Something wasn't sitting right in his stomach, so he decided to stay back at the motel." Dallie gave Francesca a stony look and then asked her if she wanted something to eat.

A litany of wonderful foods flicked through her head- lobster consomme, duckling pate with pistachios, glazed oysters-but she was a lot smarter than she had been five days before. "What do you recommend?" she asked him.

"The chili dog's good, but the crawfish are better."

What in God's name were crawfish? "Crawfish would be fine," she told him, praying they wouldn't be deep-fried. "And could you recommend something green to go along with it? I'm beginning to worry

about scurvy."

"Do you like key lime pie?"

She looked at him. "That's a joke, isn't it?"

He grinned at her and then turned to the waitress. "Get Francie here a big salad, will you, Mary Ann,

and a side dish of beefsteak tomatoes all sliced up. I'll have the pan-fried catfish myself and some of

those dill pickles like I had yesterday."

As soon as the waitress had moved away, two well-groomed men in slacks and polo shirts came over to the table from the bar. It was quickly evident from their conversation that they were touring golf pros playing in the tournament with Dallie and that they had come over to meet Francesca. They positioned themselves on either side of her and before long were giving her lavish compliments and teaching her how to extract the sweet meat from the boiled crawfish that soon arrived on a heavy white platter. She laughed at all their stories, flattered them outrageously, and, in general, had them both eating out of her hand before either had finished his first beer. She felt wonderful.

Dallie, in the meantime, was occupied with a couple of female fans at the next table, both of whom said they worked as secretaries at one of Lake Charles's petrochemical plants. Francesca watched surreptitiously as he talked to them, his chair tilted back on two legs, navy blue cap tipped back on his blond head, beer bottle propped on his chest, and that lazy grin spreading over his face when one of

them told him an off-color joke. Before long, they had launched into a series of nauseating double entendres about his "putter."

Even though she and Dallie were involved in separate conversations, Francesca began to have the feeling that there was some connection between them, that he was as conscious of her as she was of him. Or maybe it was just wishful thinking. Her encounter with him at the motel had left her shaken. When she curled into his arms, she had sent them flying across some invisible barrier, and now it was too late to turn back, even if she was absolutely certain she wanted to.

Three brawny rice farmers whom Dallie introduced as Louis, Pat, and Stoney pulled up their chairs to join them. Stoney couldn't tear himself away from Francesca and kept refilling her glass from a bottle of bad Chablis that one of the golfers had bought her. She flirted with him shamelessly, gazing into his eyes with an intensity that had brought far more sophisticated men to their knees. He shifted in his chair, tugging unconsciously at the collar of his plaid cotton shirt while he tried to act as if beautiful women flirted with him every day.

Eventually the individual pockets of conversation disappeared and the members of the group joined together and began telling funny stories. Francesca laughed at all their anecdotes and drank another glass of Chablis. A warm haze induced by alcohol and a general sense of well-being enveloped her. She felt as if the golfers, the petrochemical secretaries, and the rice farmers were the best friends she had ever had. The men's admiration warmed her, the women's envy renewed her sagging self-confidence, and Dallie's presence at her side energized her. He made them laugh with a story about an unexpected encounter he'd had with an alligator on a Florida golf course, and she suddenly wanted to give something back to all of them, some small part of herself.

"I have an animal story," she said, beaming at her new friends. They all looked at her expectantly.

"Oh, boy," Dallie murmured at her side.

She paid no attention. She folded one arm on the edge of the table and gave them her dazzling wait-until-you-hear-this smile. "A friend of my mother's opened this lovely new lodge near Nairobi," she began. When she saw a vague blankness on several faces, she amended, "Nairobi… in Kenya. Africa. A group of us flew down to spend a week or so there. It was a super place. A lovely long veranda looked out on this beautiful swimming pool, and they served the best rum punches you can imagine." She sketched out a pool and a platter of rum punches with a graceful gesture of her hand.

"The second day there, some of us piled into one of the Land-Rovers with our cameras and drove outside the city to take photographs. We'd been gone for about an hour when the driver rounded a bend-not going all that fast, actually -and this ridiculous wart hog leaped out in front of us." She paused for effect. "Well, there was this awful thump as the Land-Rover hit the poor creature and it dropped to the road. We all jumped out, of course, and one of the men, a really odious French cellist named Raoul"-she rolled her eyes so they would all understand exactly the sort of person Raoul had been-"brought his camera with him and took a photograph of that poor, ugly warthog lying in the road. Then, I don't know what made her do it, but my mother said to Raoul, 'Wouldn't it be funny if we took a picture of the warthog wearing your Gucci jacket!'" Francesca laughed at the memory. "Naturally, everyone thought this was amusing, and since there was no blood on the warthog to ruin the jacket, Raoul agreed. Anyway, he and two of the other men put the jacket on the animal. It was dreadfully insensitive, of course, but everyone laughed at the sight of this poor dead warthog in this marvelous jacket."

She grew vaguely aware that the area around them had fallen completely silent and that the slight blankness in the expressions of the people around the table hadn't altered. Their lack of response made her more determined to force them to love her story, to love her. Her voice grew more animated, her hands more descriptive. "So there we were, standing on the road looking down at this poor creature. Except-" She paused for a moment, caught her bottom lip between her teeth to build the suspense, and then went on, "Just as Raoul lifted his camera to take the picture, the warthog leaped to his feet, shook himself, and ran off into the trees." She laughed triumphantly at the punch line, tilted her head to the side, and waited for them to join her.

They smiled politely.

Her own laughter faded as she realized they had missed the point. "Don't you see?" she exclaimed with

a touch of desperation. "Somewhere in Kenya today there's this poor warthog running around a game preserve, and he's wearing Gucci!"

Dallie's voice finally floated above the dead silence that had irreparably fallen. "Yep, that sure is some story, Francie. What do you say you and me dance?" Before she could protest, he'd grabbed her none

too gently by the arm and pulled her toward a small square of linoleum in front of the jukebox. As he began to move to the music, he said softly, "A general rule of living life with real people, Francie, is not

to end any sentences with the word 'Gucci.'"

Her chest seemed to fill up with a terrible heaviness. She had wanted to make them like her, and she'd only made a fool of herself. She had told a story that they hadn't found funny, a story that she suddenly saw through their eyes and realized she should never have told in the first place.

Her composure had been held together by only the lightest thread and now it broke. "Excuse me," she said, her voice sounding thick even to her own ears. Before Dallie could try to stop her, she pushed her way through the maze of tables and out the screen door. The fresh air invaded her nostrils, its moist nighttime scent mingling with the smell of diesel fuel, creosote, and fried food from the kitchen at the back. She stumbled, still light-headed from the wine, and steadied herself by leaning against the side of a pickup truck with mud-encrusted tires and a gun rack on the back. The sounds of "Behind Closed Doors" drifted out from the jukebox.

What was happening to her? She remembered how hard Nicky had laughed when she'd told him the warthog story, how Cissy Kavendish had wiped the tears from her eyes with Nigel MacAllister's handkerchief. A wave of homesickness swept over her. She'd attempted to get through to Nicky again today on the telephone, but no one had answered, not even the houseboy. She tried to imagine Nicky sitting in the Cajun Bar and Grill, and failed miserably. Then she tried to imagine herself sitting at the foot of the Hepplewhite table in Nicky's dining room wearing the Gwynwyck family emeralds, and succeeded admirably. But when she imagined the other end of the table-the place where Nicky should have been sitting-she saw Dallie Beaudine instead. Dallie, with his faded blue jeans, too-tight T-shirts, and movie star face, lording it over Nicky Gwynwyck's eighteenth-century dinner table.

The screen door banged, and Dallie came out. He walked to her side and held out her purse. "Hey, Francie," he said quietly.

"Hey, Dallie." She took the purse and looked up at the night sky spangled with floating stars.

"You did real fine in there."

She gave a soft, bitter laugh.

He inserted a toothpick in the corner of his mouth. "No, I mean it. Once you realized you'd made a jackass of yourself, you behaved with a little dignity for a change. No scenes on the dance floor, just a quiet exit. Everybody was real impressed. They want you to come back in."

She deliberately mocked him. "Not hardly."

He chuckled just as the screen door banged and two men appeared. "Hey, Dallie," they called out.

"Hey, K.C., Charlie."

The men climbed into a battered Jeep Cherokee and Dallie turned back to her. "I think, Francie, that I don't not like you as much as I used to. I mean, you're still pretty much a pain in the ass most of the time and not, strictly speaking, my kind of woman, but you do have your moments. You really went after that warthog story in there. I liked the way you gave it everything you had, even after it was pretty obvious that you were digging a real deep grave for yourself."

A clatter of dishes sounded from inside as the jukebox launched into the final chorus of "Behind Closed Doors." She dug the heel of her sandal into the hard-packed gravel. "I want to go home," she said abruptly. "I despise it here. I want to go back to England where I understand things. I want my clothes and my house and my Aston Martin. I want to have money again and friends who like me." She wanted her mother, too, but she didn't say that.

"Feeling real sorry for yourself, aren't you?"

"Wouldn't you if you were in my position?"

"Hard to say. I guess I can't imagine being real happy living that kind of sybaritic life."

She didn't precisely know what "sybaritic" meant, but she got the general idea, and it irritated her that someone whose spoken grammar could most charitably be described as substandard was using a word

she didn't entirely understand.

He propped his elbow on the side of the pickup. "Tell me something, Francie. Do you have anything remotely resembling a life plan stored away in that head of yours?"

"I intend to marry Nicky, of course. I've already told you that." Why did the prospect depress her so?

He pulled out the toothpick and tossed it away. "Aw, come off it, Francie. You don't any more want to marry Nicky than you want to get your hair mussed up."

She rounded on him. "I don't have much choice in the matter, do I, since I don't have two shillings left to rub together! I have to marry him." She saw him opening his mouth, getting ready to spew out another one of his odious lower-class platitudes, and she cut him off. "Don't say it, Dallie! Some people were brought into this world to earn money and others were meant to spend it, and I'm one of the latter. To be brutally honest, I wouldn't have the slightest idea how to support myself. You've already heard what happened when I tried acting, and I'm too short to make any money at fashion modeling. If it comes down to a choice between working in a factory and marrying Nicky Gwynwyck, you can bloody well be certain which one I'm going to choose."

He thought about that for a moment and then said, "If I can make two or three birdies in the final round tomorrow, it looks like I'll pick up a little spare change. You want me to buy you that plane ticket home?"

She looked at him standing so close to her, arms crossed over his chest, only that fabulous mouth visible beneath the shadowing bill of his cap. "You'd do that for me?"

"I told you, Francie. As long as I can buy gas and pick up the bar tab, money doesn't mean anything to me. I don't even like money. To tell you the truth, even though I consider myself a true American patriot, I'm pretty much a Marxist."

She laughed at that, a reaction which told her more clearly than anything that she'd been spending too much time in his company. "I'm grateful for the offer, Dallie, but as much as I'd love to take you up on it, I need to stay around a bit longer. I can't go back to London like this. You don't know my friends. They'd dine out for weeks on the story of my transformation into a pauper."

He leaned back against the truck. "Nice batch of friends you've got there, Francie."

She felt as if he'd rapped his knuckles on a hollowness inside her, a hollowness she had never permitted herself to dwell on. "Go back inside," she said. "I'm going to stay out here for a while."

"I don't think so." He turned his body toward her, so that his T-shirt brushed against her arm. A yellow bug light by the screen door cast a slanted ochre shadow across his face, subtly changing his features, making him look older but no less splendid. "I think you and I have something more interesting to do tonight, don't we?"

His words produced an uncomfortable fluttering in the pit of her stomach, but being coy was as much a part of her as the Serritella cheekbones. Even though one part of her wanted to run back to hide in the Cajun Bar and Grill rest room, she gave him her most innocently inquisitive smile. "Oh? What's that?"

"A little tag team wrestling maybe?" His mouth curled in a slow, sexy smile. "Why don't you just climb into the front seat of the Riviera so we can be on our way."

She didn't want to climb into the front seat of the Riviera. Or maybe she did. Dallie stirred unfamiliar feelings in her body, feelings she would have been all too happy to act upon if only she were one of those women who was really good at sex, one of those women who didn't mind all the mess and the thought of having someone else's perspiration drip on her body. Still, even if she wanted to, she could hardly back out now without looking a total fool. As she walked over to the car and opened the door, she tried to convince herself that, since she didn't perspire, a man as gorgeous as Dallie just might not either.

She watched as he walked around the front of the Riviera, whistling tunelessly and digging the keys out of his back pocket. He seemed in no particular hurry. There wasn't any macho swagger to his stride, none of the cock-of-the-walk strut she'd noticed in the sculptor in Marrakech before he'd taken her to bed. Dallie acted casual, ordinary, as if going to bed with her were an everyday occurrence, as if it didn't matter all that much to him, as if he'd been there a thousand times before and she was just one more female body.

He got into the Riviera, turned on the ignition, and began fiddling with the radio dial. "Do you like country music, Francie, or is easy listening more your speed? Damn. I forgot to give Stoney that pass for tomorrow like I promised him." He opened the door. "I'll be back in a minute."

She watched him walk across the parking lot and noticed that he still wasn't moving with any urgency. The screen door opened and the golfers came out. He stopped and talked to them, sticking a thumb in the rear pocket of his jeans and propping his boot up on the concrete step. One of the golfers drew an imaginary arc through the air, and then a second one right below it. Dallie shook his head, pantomimed a golf swing, and then drew two imaginary arcs of his own.

She slumped dejectedly down in the seat. Dallie Beaudine certainly didn't look like a man swept away by unbridled passion.

When he finally got back to the Riviera, she was so rattled she couldn't even look at him. Were the women in his life so gorgeous that she was merely one of the crowd? A bath would fix everything, she told herself as he started the car. She would run the water as hot as she could stand it so that the bathroom would fill with steam and the humidity would make her hair form those soft little tendrils around her face. She would put on a touch of lipstick and some blusher, spray the sheets with perfume, and cover one of the lamps with a towel so the light would fall softly, and-

"Something wrong, Francie?"

"What makes you ask?" she replied stiffly.

"You've pretty much laminated yourself to that door handle over there."

"I like it here."

He fiddled with the radio dial. "Suit yourself. So what's it going to be? Country or easy listening?"

"Neither. I like rock." She had a sudden inspiration, and she immediately acted upon it. "I've loved rock for as long as I can remember. The Rolling Stones are my very favorite group. Most people don't know it, but Mick wrote three songs for me after we spent some time together in Rome."

Dallie didn't look particularly impressed, so she decided to embellish. After all, it wasn't too much of a lie, since Mick Jagger certainly knew her well enough to say hello. She lowered her voice into a breathless, confiding whisper. "We stayed in this wonderful apartment that overlooked the Villa Borghese. Everything was absolutely super. We had complete privacy, so we could even make love outside on the terrace. It didn't last, of course. He has this terrible ego- not to mention Bianca-and I met the prince." She paused. "No, that's not right. I met Ryan O'Neal, and then I met the prince."

Dallie looked over at her, gave his head a slow shake as if he were clearing water from his ears, and then returned his attention to the road. "You like making love outside, do you, Francie?"

"Of course, don't most women?" Actually, she couldn't imagine anything worse.

They drove for several miles in silence. Suddenly he swung the wheel to the right and turned off the highway onto a narrow dirt road that headed directly into a stand of bald cypresses hung with beards of Spanish moss. "What are you doing? Where are you going!" she exclaimed. "Turn the car around this minute! I want to go back to the motel."

"I think you might like this spot, being such a sexual adventuress and all." He pulled in among the cypresses and turned off the ignition. Strange insect sounds drifted through the open window on his side.

"That looks like a swamp out there," she cried desperately.

He peered through the windshield. "I believe you're right. We'd better not get too far from the car; most 'gators seem to feed at night." He pulled off his cap, set it on the dashboard, and turned to her. He waited expectantly.

She pushed herself a little more closely against the door handle.

"Do you want to go first, or do you want me to?" he finally asked.

She kept her reply cautious. "Go first doing what?"

"Warming up. You know-foreplay. Since you've had all those big-time lovers, you've got me a little intimidated here. Maybe you'd better set the pace."

"Let's-let's forget this. I-I think maybe I made a mistake. Let's go back to the motel."

"Not a good idea, Francie. Once you make that crossover into the Promised Land, you can't really turn back without making things awkward."

"Oh, I don't think so. I don't think it'll be awkward at all. It wasn't actually the Promised Land, just a small flirtation. I mean, it certainly won't be awkward for me, and I'm positive it won't be awkward for-"

"Yes, it will. It'll be so awkward I probably won't even be able to play half-decent golf tomorrow. I'm a professional athlete, Francie. Professional athletes have fine-tuned bodies, like well-oiled engines. One little speck of awkwardness'll throw everything off stride. Like dirt. You could cost me a good five strokes tomorrow, darlin'."

His accent had gotten unbelievably thick, and she suddenly realized she was being conned. "Damn it, Dallie! Don't do this to me. I'm nervous enough as it is without your making fun of me."

He laughed, put his arm around her shoulder, and pulled her close in a friendly sort of hug. "Why don't you just say you're nervous instead of going through all that fancy stuff of yours? You make everything so hard on yourself."

It felt nice being in his arms, but she couldn't quite forgive him for teasing. "That's easy for you to say. You're obviously comfortable in every conceivable sort of bed, but I'm not." She took a breath and spit out exactly what was on her mind. "Actually… I don't even like sex." There. She'd said it. Now he could really laugh at her.

"Now, why's that? Something that feels as good as sex and doesn't cost any money should be right up your alley."

"I'm just not an athletic person."

"Uh-huh. Well, that explains it, all right."

She couldn't entirely forget the swamp. "Could we go back to the motel, Dallie?"

"I don't think so, Francie. You'll be closing yourself up in the bathroom and worrying about your makeup and reaching for that perfume bottle of yours." He lifted the hair on the side of her neck and, leaning over, nuzzled his lips against her skin. "You ever necked in the back seat of a car before?"

She closed her eyes against the delicious sensation he was arousing. "Does one of the royal family's limousines count?"

He caught her earlobe gently between his teeth. "Not unless the windows fogged up."

She wasn't sure who moved first, but somehow Dallie's mouth was on hers. His hands moved up along the back of her neck and plowed through her hair from beneath, spreading it out over his bare forearms. He imprisoned her head in the palms of his hands and tilted it farther back so that her mouth opened involuntarily. She waited for the invasion of his tongue, but it didn't come. Instead, he played with her bottom lip. Her own hands crept around his ribs to his back and unconsciously slipped beneath his T-shirt so she could feel his strong bare skin. Their mouths played together and Francesca lost all desire to try to maintain the upper hand. Before long, she found herself receiving his tongue with pleasure-his beautiful tongue, his beautiful mouth, his beautiful taut skin beneath her hands. She devoted herself to the kiss, concentrating only on the feelings he was arousing without giving a thought to what would happen next. His mouth slid away from hers and traveled to her neck. She giggled softly.

"Do you have something you want to share with the rest of the class," he murmured into her skin, "or is this a private joke?"

"No, I'm just having fun." She smiled as he kissed her neck and tugged on the rosette of material at her waist securing the long tail of the T-shirt. "What's an Aggies?" she asked.

"An Aggie? Somebody like me who went to college at Texas A &M is an Aggie."

She pulled back abruptly, her amazement etching itself in the perfect arch of her eyebrows. "You went

to a university? I don't believe it!"

He looked at her with a mildly aggravated expression. "I've got a bachelor of arts degree in English literature. Do you want to see my diploma or can we get back to work here?"

"English literature?" She burst out in laughter. "Oh, Dallie, that's incredible! You barely speak the language."

He was clearly offended. "Well, now, that's real nice. That's a real nice thing to say to somebody."

Still laughing, she tossed herself into his arms, moving so suddenly that she knocked him off balance and bumped him back into the steering wheel. Then she said the most astonishing thing.

"I could eat you up, Dallie Beaudine."

It was his turn to laugh, but he didn't get very far with it because her mouth was all over his. She forgot about being scared and about not being any good at sex as she lifted herself to her knees and leaned on him.

"I'm running out of maneuvering room here, honey," he finally said against her mouth. Pulling away, he opened the door of the Riviera and got out. Then he extended his hand for her.

She let him help her out, but instead of opening the back door so they could resettle in roomier quarters, he pinned her hips with his thighs against the side of the Riviera and drew her into another kiss. The dome light left on by the open door produced a dim area of illumination around the car that made the darkness beyond seem even more impenetrable. The vague image of her open-toed sandals and alligators lurking beneath a car flickered through her mind. Without losing one moment of the kiss, she draped her arms over his shoulders and pulled herself up so that one of her legs was wrapped tightly around the back of one of his and her other foot was planted firmly on top of his cowboy boot.

"I do like the way you kiss," he murmured. His left hand slid up along her bare spine and unfastened her bra while his right reached between their bodies to tug at the snap on her jeans.

She could feel herself getting nervous again, and it didn't have anything to do with alligators. "Let's go

buy some champagne, Dallie. I-I think some champagne will help me relax."

"I'll relax you." He pulled the snap open and began working on the zipper.

"Dallie!" she exclaimed. "We're outside."

"Uh-huh. Just you, me, and the swamp." The zipper gave.

"I-I don't think I'm ready for this." Reaching under her loose T-shirt, he cupped her breast in his hand and let his lips trail over her cheek to her mouth. Panic began beating inside her. He rubbed her nipple with his thumb and she moaned softly. She wanted him to think she was wonderful-a spectacular lover-and how could she do that in the middle of a swamp? "I-I need champagne. And soft lights. I need sheets, Dallie."

He withdrew his hand from her breast and settled it gently around the side of her neck. Gazing down into her eyes, he said, "No, you don't, honey. You don't need anything but yourself. You've got to start understanding that, Francie. You've got to start relying on yourself instead of all these props you think you need to set up around you."

"I-I'm afraid." She tried to make her words sound defiant, but didn't quite succeed. Unwrapping herself from his legs and stepping down off his cowboy boot, she confessed everything. "It might seem silly to you, but Evan Varian said I was frigid, and there was this Swedish sculptor in Marra-kech-"

"You want to hold on to that part of the story for a while?"

She felt some of her fight coming back, and she glared at him. "You brought me here on purpose, didn't you? You brought me here because you knew I'd hate it." She took several steps back and pointed a shaky finger toward the Riviera. "I'm not the sort of woman you make love to in the back seat of a car."

"Who said anything about a back seat?"

She stared at him for a moment and then exclaimed, "Oh, no! I'm not lying down on that creature-infested ground. I mean it, Dallie."

"I don't much like the ground myself."

"Then how? Where?"

"Come on, Francie. Stop plotting and planning and trying to make sure you always have your best side turned to the camera. Let's just kiss a little bit so things can take their natural course."

"I want to know where, Dallie."

"I know you do, honey, but I'm not going to tell you because you'll start worrying about whether it's color-coordinated or not. For once in your life, take a chance at doing something where you may not come out looking your best."

She felt as if he had held a mirror up in front of her-not a very large mirror and one with clouded glass, but a mirror nonetheless. Was she as vain as Dallie seemed to believe? As calculating? She didn't want to think so, and yet… She stuck out her chin and began defiantly peeling down her jeans. "All right, we'll do it your way. But just don't expect anything spectacular from me." The slim denim pantlegs caught on her sandals. She bent over to struggle with them, but the heels stuck in the folds. She gave the jeans another tug and tightened the snare. "Is this turning you on, Dallie?" she fumed. "Do you like watching me? Are you getting excited? Dammit! Dammit to bloody hell!"

He started to move toward her, but she looked up at him through the veil of her hair and bared her teeth. "Don't you dare touch me. I mean it. I'll do it myself."

"We're not getting off to a real promising start here, Francie."

"You go to hell!" Jeans hobbling her ankles, she hopped the three steps back to the car, sat down hard on the front seat, and finally extricated herself from the pants. Then she stood up in T-shirt, underpants, and sandals. "There! And I'm not taking another thing off until I feel like it."

"Sounds fair to me." He opened his arms to her. "You want to cuddle up here for a minute and catch your breath."

She did. She really did. "I suppose."

She curled into his chest. He held her for a moment, and then he tilted back her head and began kissing her again. She'd sunk so low in her own estimation that she didn't even try to impress him; she just let him do the work. After a while, she realized that it felt nice. His tongue touched hers and his splayed hand pressed against the bare skin of her back. She lifted her arms and wrapped them around his neck. He reached under her shirt again and his thumbs began to toy with the sides of her breasts and then slid over onto the nipples. It felt so good-shivery and warm at the same time. Had the sculptor played with her breasts? He must have, but she didn't remember. And then Dallie pushed her T-shirt above her breasts and began teasing her with his mouth-his beautiful, wonderful mouth. She sighed as he sucked gently on one nipple and then the other. Somewhat to her surprise, she realized her own hands were once again beneath his shirt, kneading his bare chest. He picked her up in his arms, walked forward with her curled into his chest, and then laid her down.

Over the trunk of his Riviera.

"Absolutely not!" she exclaimed.

"Give it a chance," he replied.

She opened her mouth to tell him that nothing in the world would convince her to be mauled while she was stretched out on the trunk of a car, but he seemed to take her open mouth as some sort of invitation. Before she could frame her words he started kissing her again. Without quite knowing how it happened, she heard herself moan as his kisses grew deeper, hotter. She arched her neck to him, opened her mouth, thrust her tongue, and forgot about her demeaning position. He reached down and encircled her ankle with his fingers, then pulled her leg up. "Right here," he crooned softly. "Put your foot right up here next to the license plate, honey."

She did just as he asked.

"Move your hips forward a little bit. That's good." His voice sounded thick, not as calm as usual, and his breathing was faster than normal as he rearranged her. She pulled at his T-shirt, wanting to feel his bare skin against her breasts.

He peeled it over his head and then began tugging at her underpants.

"Dallie…"

"It's all right, darlin'. It's all right." Her underpants disappeared and her bottom settled on cold metal dusted with road grit. "Francie, that package of birth control pills I spotted in your case wasn't just there for decoration, now, was it?"

She shook her head, unwilling to break the mood by offering any lengthy explanations. When her periods had unaccountably stopped a few months ago, her physician had told her to quit taking her birth control pills until they resumed. He had assured her that she couldn't get pregnant until then, and at the moment that was all that mattered.

Dallie's hand closed over the inside of one of her thighs. He moved it slightly away from the other and began stroking her skin lightly, each time coming closer to the one part of her that she didn't find all that beautiful, the one part of her that she would just as soon have kept hidden away, except that it felt so warm and quivery and strange. "What if somebody comes?" she cried as he brushed against her.

"I'm hoping somebody will," he replied huskily. And then he stopped brushing, stopped teasing, and touched her… really touched her. Inside.

"Dallie…" Her voice was half moan, half cry.

"Feel good?" he muttered, his fingers sliding gently in and out.

"Yes. Yes."

While he played with her, she closed her eyes against the slice of Louisiana moon above her head so that nothing would distract her from the wonderful feelings that were rushing through her body. She turned her cheek and didn't even feel the dirt from the trunk rub against her skin. His hands grew less patient. They spread her legs farther apart and pulled her hips closer to the edge. Her feet were balanced precariously on the bumper, separated by a Texas license plate and some dusty chrome. He fumbled with the front of his jeans and she heard the zipper give. He lifted her hips.

When she felt him push inside her, she gave a small gasp. He bent over her, his feet still on the ground, but drew back slightly. "Am I hurting you?"

"Oh, no. It-it feels so good."

"It's supposed to, honey."

She wanted him to believe she was a wonderful lover-to do everything right-but the whole world seemed to be sliding away from her, making everything dizzy, wavery, and mushy with warmth. How could she concentrate when he was touching her that way, moving like that? She suddenly wanted to feel more of him. Lifting her foot from the bumper, she wrapped one knee around his hips, the other around his leg, pushing against him until she had absorbed as much of him as she could.

"Easy, honey," he said. "Take your time." He began moving inside her slowly, kissing her, and making her feel as good as she'd ever felt in her life. "You with me, darlin'?" he murmured softly in her ear, the sound slightly hoarse.

"Oh, yes… yes. Dallie… my wonderful Dallie… my lovely Dallie…" A cacophony of sound seemed to explode in her head as she came and came and came.

He heaved hard, and something halfway between a moan and groan escaped him. The sound gave her a feeling of power, touched fire to her excitement, and she came again. He quivered over her for a wonderfully interminable length of time and then grew heavy.

She turned her cheek so that it pressed against his hair, felt him dear and beautiful and real against her, inside her. She noticed that their skin was stuck together and that his back felt moist beneath her hands. She felt a small drop of perspiration fall from him onto her bare arm and realized she didn't care. Was this what it meant to be in love? she wondered dreamily. Her eyelids drifted open. She was in love. Of course. Why hadn't she realized it long before this? That was what was wrong with her. That was why she'd been feeling so unhappy. She was in love.

"Francie?" he murmured.

"Yes?"

"You all right?"

"Oh, yes."

He eased himself up on one arm and smiled down at her. "Then how 'bout we head for the motel and try it again on top of those sheets you were so set on?"

On the drive back, she sat in the middle of the front seat and leaned her cheek against his shoulder while she chewed a piece of Double Bubble and daydreamed about their future.