One More Knight

Chapter 13

January 5, 1978

Dear Diary,

Well, it is official. Yesterday the school principal called and told the judge that I will not be allowed to come back to school tomorrow when it starts up after Christmas vacation. So I guess I am now officially the Town Slut. Nobody is speaking to me-and I do mean nobody. Not even Kelly Grace. She acts all nervous around me, like maybe she thinks what I have is catching or something. Well, I could tell her it is, and if she doesn’t watch herself she might catch it too, but not from me!

Colin’s parents won’t let him come over anymore. He’s not even supposed to call me, which I think is totally unfair. We write each other notes, though, and hide them in this place we know of in the woods. Colin thinks he should tell that he’s the father, but I don’t want him to. If he does, our parents will probably try to make us get married, and I for sure don’t want to, not to Colin or anybody else, either. I don’t know about you, but I think sixteen is way too young to get married, pregnant or not!

The judge wants me to go to stay with his sister, Aunt Irene, in Birmingham until after the baby is born. What a horrible thought! I can’t stand Aunt Irene, and Uncle Wesley is worse. Besides, this is my home. My friends-if I have any left-are here. The judge is really mad at me because I told him if he tried to make me go I would run away and never come back. Also because I won’t tell him who the father is. He says I’m the stubbornest and most selfish and immature person he ever saw. Maybe he’s right, I don’t know. I get to feeling so scared, sometimes. Like, I get this sick, hurty feeling inside when I think about…things. About Colin, and getting married, and going away, and having a baby. So I just try not to think about it at all, which is getting harder all the time, now that the baby is moving around inside me. It’s kind of neat, but…weird, too. Spooky.

One thing I didn’t tell you. I don’t know why, I guess I was in a State of Shock at the time. Anyway, back when I first told Aunt Dobie about the baby, she asked me if I wanted to get an abortion. I didn’t know what to say-I didn’t even know you could do that-legally, I mean-but I guess they passed a law or something so now you can get one anytime you need one. So I didn’t say anything, and Aunt Dobie never said any more about it, either. I’m glad she didn’t. I don’t know what I would have done. I was pretty mixed up, and besides, it kind of wasn’t real to me then. It’s getting real now, though-boy, is it ever! I saw the pictures in these books the doctor gave me, so I even know what he looks like. Oh by the way-did I tell you? I think it’s a boy.

(Almost forgot) Thought for the Day: I guess that was it. Isn’t that enough to think about?

Troy was pacing the floor in the ICU waiting area, taking breaks now and then to glare at his watch or to minutely examine the carpet mosaics with a Blue Ridge Mountain theme that adorned the walls. Those mosaics served two purposes, it looked like to him, being both decorative and a convenient cushion for fidgety family members driven to beating their heads against stationary objects.

It was a compulsion he could well understand and sympathize with, at the moment. He might have been considering those extreme measures as a way of releasing his own tensions, if it hadn’t been for the fact that the young man sharing the waiting room with him looked as if he might be needing to blow off some steam himself, and Troy thought he ought to do his best to set the boy a good example of manly patience and fortitude.

But damn if he didn’t feel just like an expectant father. Or anyway, like he thought an expectant father might feel, which was, first of all, worried about the well-being of someone he cared about, knowing she was in a lot of pain right about now. And most of all, helpless and frustrated because there didn’t seem to be anything he could do to help her.

He thought about calling his brother again to see if he had any more good advice to offer, since Jimmy Joe had actually been in this situation a time or two, the last time pretty recently, as a matter of fact. Then he remembered how, on that occasion, while Mirabella was giving birth to little Amy Jo in his truck, his little brother hadn’t had a whole lot of time to spend on pacing and hand-wringing, since his role in the delivery had been a good bit more active than that.

Which, Troy thought, was his whole problem in a nutshell. He was used to being in an active role himself. He’d been in tense situations a good many times before, sometimes when lives-a lot of lives-had hung in the balance. But he’d been prepared for those situations, well armed and well trained to handle anything that might arise. He’d known what he was supposed to do, and how to do it, no ifs, ands, or buts.

Right now he didn’t have a clue.

The boy, for example. Cutter. Lord, it was hard for Troy to believe that tall, good-lookin’ young man could be Charly’s son-he couldn’t even imagine how it must be for her, seeing him like this, and for the first time since the day she’d given birth to him. He thought it must be hard for a parent to see their kids all grown-up, even when they’d gone through all the stages with ’em-from cute, drooling babies like Amy Jo, to bony ten-year-olds with chipped front teeth and bandages on their knees like Jimmy Joe’s boy, JJ., and all the ones between. But this scowling, hostile twenty-year-old who already thought he knew all the answers? How would you even know where to begin?

It’s not too late, he’d told Charly, with all the confidence of somebody who doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about. Now, looking at the kid, he wasn’t so sure of himself. He kept thinking he ought to do something to help things along, say something to the boy, maybe strike up a conversation, find out what made him tick. But he didn’t, partly because Troy remembered what he’d been like at that age, bullheaded and sure he knew everything there was to know about the world and everybody in it, including himself. And partly because he was…well, galling as it was for a former U.S. Navy SEAL to have to admit, the fact was, the kid had him just about scared to death.

Lord help Charly, he thought grimly.

Then inspiration struck. “Hey,” he said, digging in his pockets for change, “I’m goin’ down to the Coke machine. Can I bring you somethin’ back?”

The kid flicked him a glance, then went back to studying the piece of carpeting between his feet. “No…thanks.”

At least, Troy thought, somebody’d taught him manners. “You sure? How ‘bout a soda, or somethin’? I’m buyin’.” Ah, hell-that’s tryin’ too hard.

“Naw,” the boy muttered, “I’m fine.”

“Well, okay,” said Troy.

So then, of course, since he’d said he was going to, he had to take a walk on down to the damn vending machines and get himself a can of iced tea he didn’t really want. While he was there, he got a Coke for Cutter, just in case the kid could be persuaded to change his mind about accepting it. He was on his way back to the sitting area with a cold can sweating in each hand when he saw Charly coming from the direction of the ICU, wiping her eyes with a wad of tissues. His heart started to pound.

They came together just outside the waiting-room doorway. “Hey,” he managed to say in an undertone, fear thickening in his throat, “how’d it go? Everything okay?” Damn, but he wished he could put his arms around her, touch her, at least, but he couldn’t because his hands were full of cans.

“Yeah,” she said, dabbing at her nose with the tissue, “it went fine.” But she wasn’t meeting his eyes.

She took the Coke he’d brought for Cutter, absently mumbling “Thanks” as she popped it open, then drank from it deeply, like someone parched. As she lowered the can with a long exhalation and a soft, unabashed burp, her gaze slid past him, aimed like a searchlight’s beam through the doorway and into the waiting room. She had kind of a shiny wet newborn look about her that for some reason brought a lump to Troy’s throat.

“You sure you’re okay?” he whispered, touching her arm now that he had a hand free.

She finally jerked her eyes to him, and to Troy it was like having the sunlight hit him full in the face after a long time in darkness. “I’m fine,” she said softly. “Really. It went…very well. I’ll tell you about it later. Right now I have to talk…” She gave a slight nod, looking once more toward the sitting area, where Cutter had risen to his feet and was waiting for her, primed and tense as a fighter waiting for the bell to ring.

So then what could he do, when every instinct in him wanted to be ridin’ to her rescue, swords drawn and guns blazin’, and the damn dragons were nowhere in sight? Nothing. That was the only answer he could come up with, and the only one he’d been coming up with, and it was about to drive him crazy. Charly was on her own. And all the help he could give her was to nod his head, swallow nails, step aside and let her go and get her heart broken.

Because he knew damn well that was what was going to happen; he could see it in the kid’s face. Twenty years of hurt and anger were written there, plain as day. No way that boy was going to let it go, not yet and not without a fight. Maybe not ever.

Lord…help Charly…please.

As she walked toward her son with the Coke can clutched against her stomach like a bride’s bouquet, Troy wondered if it was to keep her hands from shaking.

Cutter watched her come, standing his ground with his arms folded across his chest, stiff necked and bristling, until she got to within hand-shaking distance. Then he shifted abruptly, turned a shoulder to her and said stiffly, “Okay, you did what you came to do. You saw him, you talked to him-now you can leave.”

“Cutter,” Charly said in a voice so low Troy had to strain to hear, “I’d really like to talk to you. Do you think we could-”

“I’ve got nothin’ to say to you.” The boy flung the words like knives, and Troy felt each and every one of ’em right in his own heart.

Charly didn’t flinch, though. “That wasn’t what I asked,” she said in a stronger voice. “I said I’d like to talk to you. Maybe you could just listen to what I have to say?”

While she was saying that, Cutter’s chin pushed up and then jutted out, and Troy, watching, felt a shiver of recognition that almost-almost-made him laugh. It reminded him so much of Charly, the first time he’d ever laid eyes on her, coming down the hallway that night he’d bailed her out of jail. Lord, he thought, if the kid had very much of his mother in him, then Charly was in for the fight of her life.

“There’s nothin’ you have to say that I want to hear.”

“Maybe you should hear me out before you decide that,” Charly countered. She cleared her throat. “Look, my father and I just talked. We both said some things that needed to be said. And…it was a good thing. Maybe a new start. Don’t you think you could…give us the same chance?”

She hadn’t touched him, but he shook himself away from her as if she had, taking a step backward and holding up his hands. “Look,” he said, “I’m glad you and Pop talked-I really am. That’s between you and him, all right? And if that’s what makes him happy, then…fine. But you and me? That’s somethin’ else again.” He turned from her, enough so Troy could see his face plainly, and the struggle that was going on inside him-the struggle between the little boy he’d been and the man he wanted to be.

“I’m not tryin’ to be mean,” he said in a man’s voice…a boy’s mumble. “All right? I just want to make sure you understand, I don’t want you in my life. I don’t need you, okay?”

“Cutter-”

The hand came up again, demanding silence as he fought his inner battle for control. Finally he pulled in a sustaining breath. “There was a time I did. I used to say my prayers every night-‘God bless my mama and keep her safe and bring her back.’” In spite of all his efforts, his voice cracked. He drew another breath. “But that was when I was little, okay? I’m not a kid anymore. I don’t need a mother, and if I did, it wouldn’t be you. Dobie and Pop, they’re my mama and daddy. You had your chance, and you blew it when you walked out on us. You’ve got no place here. So you can just…finish up your business and go, okay? Go back to…where you came from-I don’t care. Just…leave us alone.”

Troy watched as the smooth young face seemed to crack like old china, finally letting loose the tears the kid had been trying so hard to contain. And he thought, That’s one more thing he’s gonna have a hard time forgiving her for.

As for himself, Troy was discovering that there was nothing in this world quite like the pain of watching somebody you care about-somebody you love-get hurt. He’d had things happen to him before-like his dad dying, buddies getting killed-but at those times, it seemed like there’d been a kind of a buffer, a sense of unreality, of shock, that he guessed must be nature’s way of protecting people from things that might otherwise be more than they could handle. Here, there was nothing between him and the pain, nothing at all. He could see it like a crushing burden pressing down on Charly’s head and shoulders, and feel the weight of it in his own chest. And added to it, the sharp, cutting agony of helplessness, of wanting so badly to help her, and knowing there wasn’t a damn thing he could do.

He was barely aware of it when Cutter brushed past him, heading for the exit. His eyes were on Charly, and he was moving toward her like a man wading through a swamp.

“Hey,” he’d just managed to say through the muck in his throat, and was reaching for her, had just touched her shoulder when they both heard a sound.

They turned at the same moment to see Dobrina standing in the doorway. She hesitated a moment when she saw Troy, then gave him a polite nod and came on in. She had a big handbag over one arm and another, smaller one, clutched to her chest.

“You been in t’ see your father?” the housekeeper asked, zeroing in on Charly with her fierce, deep-socketed glare. “He’s been askin’ for you.”

Charly whispered, “Yes, ma’am,” and brushed at her cheeks as if she had no right to tears. Then she cleared her throat and said in a stronger voice, “Yes, I did, Aunt Dobie. We had a good talk. Um, Cutter just-”

“I saw him leavin’.” The woman’s voice had the hard-edged, angry sound of too much emotion. “Best to leave ’im be, for a while. Just leave ’im be. He’s young, you know-he don’t understand…” She paused, her head moving from side to side, as if she’d lost her way. Then she looked down at the pocketbook she was holding and thrust it at Charly. “Here, honey, I brought you your purse.” She lifted her head up. To Troy it looked as if she was bracing herself.

Charly reached for the purse, murmuring thanks and sniffling a little, but instead of handing it over, Dobrina shook her head and clutched her arm with one strong, brown hand. “The Good Lord forgive me for takin’ it-and for puttin’ that bottle a’ whiskey in your car, too. I know I shouldn’t have done what I did.” Then she drew herself up, proud and fierce once more. “Maybe it wasn’t my place to interfere, but I wasn’t about to let you leave again. No, sir-not after the way you and your father were talkin’ to each other, just yellin’ and hurtin’ each other, and nobody speakin’ the truth. There’s been enough a’ that in this family. And enough, I say, is enough.”

With that, she let go of Charly’s arm and reached into the big handbag she had slung over hers and pulled something out. It was a book-Troy could see that much-about the size of a prayer book, green leather, embossed in gold, letters he couldn’t quite make out. But he heard Charly give a little gasp of recognition as Dobrina placed the book in her hands.

“I found this,” the housekeeper said in a cracking voice, “after you went away. Maybe I shouldn’t have read it-I expect that’s somethin’ else the Lord’s gonna have to forgive me for, and you, too-but I thought…well, I thought maybe there’d be somethin’ in there to tell us where you’d gone.” She laughed soundlessly through the tears that had begun to stream down her smooth, nut brown cheeks. “Well, there was, I guess. Yes, there was somethin’, all right. But honey, California’s a mighty big place.

“I never told your father, nor Cutter, either. It wasn’t my place. That’s yours, Charlene, honey-yours to keep or to share. That’s up to you. But that boy a’ yours-he needs to know the truth. Time he knew the whole truth, child-about his daddy-” Charly gave a small, involuntary gasp “-and how it was with you all. You give that book to Cutter to read, honey. You give it to him, now. It’s time.”

She patted Charly on the arm and turned away, nodding, while Charly stared at her, her face bone white and glistening, like a marble statue in the rain.

“Miz Phelps?” The young ICU duty nurse was standing in the doorway, looking like a little girl in her lavender cotton scrubs. “Ma’am, the cardiologist would like to talk to you. Long as you’re here…”

Both women started forward at the same time. The nurse flicked a glance at Charly as she beckoned the housekeeper past her. “I meant Mrs. Phelps-sorry about that.” And to Dobrina, she said, “Ma’am, if you want to, you can just go right on in.” She gave Charly an apologetic smile and went back to her station.

She left behind her a stunned and vibrating silence. And then the air exploded from Charly’s lungs.

“Aunt Dobie? When? How long have you-?”

“Nineteen years last April,” Dobrina said with quiet dignity, standing straight as a pillar with her hands clasped loosely at her waist. She lacked only one of those tall, pointed crowns, Troy thought, and she could have been a golden statue guarding the entrance to an Egyptian pharaoh’s tomb. “One year to the day after you left home.” Her chin rose a fraction of an inch higher. “It was his idea. I nevah asked for it.”

He heard a peculiar creaking sound and realized it must be Charly, trying to swallow, trying to speak. And then she was moving toward the other woman, slowly and wobbling a bit, like someone just getting on her feet after being sick for a while. “I’m…glad…Aunt Dobie. I really am. I’m just…surprised. I never-I didn’t know my father…”

“No, you didn’t,” said Dobrina softly. “Nor your son, either. It’s time you did, child. Time you did.” She patted Charly’s hand once more, hesitated for just a moment, then continued on to the ICU and the husband that needed her.

“Oh, boy. Wow. I can’t believe it. Married. Oh…boy.” Charly kept it up, a breathless, whispered monologue as she and Troy hurried through the hospital corridors. “My father and Aunt Dobie. Wow.”

“Why is that so hard to believe?” Troy asked when they were outside on the concrete apron, blinking in the unexpected light of a brilliant Sunday afternoon.

She threw him a look, letting go of a little gust of laughter. “You don’t seem very surprised.”

He shrugged. “Figured she had to have a better reason for stayin’ with the man all those years than just bein’ his housekeeper. She loves him. It was right there in her face, plain to see-guess you’ve just been too preoccupied with everything else that’s been goin’ on to notice.”

“Wow,” she said in a wondering tone, staring at her feet. After a moment she shook her head, and they started across the heat-shimmery parking lot, Charly still agitated and wanting to move a lot faster than Southerners generally like to in the summertime, those with any sense. Troy took hold of her elbow to slow her down a little, and she looked up at him with confusion darkening her eyes. There was some anger there, too, sparking and flashing like bomb bursts in a night sky.

“You don’t understand,” she finally burst out. “You’d have to know my father. All he cared about was appearances-what people thought, fitting in, being accepted. That’s why he was so upset when I got pregnant. That’s why he wanted so much for me to many Colin.”

“I don’t follow you.”

She heaved an impatient little sigh and rolled her eyes. “Colin was a Stewart. In this town that was like royalty-poor as church mice, but old blood. You’re a Southerner, you should know how it is-was…can be still, some places. The Stewarts go back two hundred years, at least. They were the original founders of this town, owned most of it until the war. My father’s people, on the other hand, were carpetbaggers-founded a fortune on the misfortunes of people like the Stewarts.”

“Lord,” said Troy, “that was over a hundred years ago.”

“Yeah, but that’s the old Southern question, isn’t it? How many generations does it take before you belong?” She gave a soft, ironic laugh. “My father is a fourth-generation Alabamian, and still felt like an outsider all his life. My marrying Colin would have given the acceptance he always longed for to the next generation, at least.” She paused. “I didn’t have all this insight back then, you realize. I was just a kid, and mad at my father because it seemed to me all he cared about was how we looked to other people. I can’t imagine that he’d ever have married-”

“A black woman?”

“Well, yeah, no matter how much he may have loved her.”

“Things change,” said Troy softly. “Times change. People change.”

She gave a suspiciously moist laugh. Looking down, he discovered that there were tears dripping off the end of her nose. Something inside him did a slow and painful flip-flop, and he finally did what he’d been wanting to do, unable to do for so long. He stopped and turned her toward him and folded her into his arms. “Be happy for them,” he said huskily into her hair.

“I am. I am…I was just thinking, you know…about Cutter. I wonder if he calls her Mom.”

“You heard him-he calls her Dobie.” His voice was rusty as old nails. “That boy knows who his mama is.”

Suddenly becoming aware of something wedged between his body and hers, he raised his head and held her a little ways from him. “That book,” he said, tipping his head toward the leather-bound volume she still held, cradled with her purse against her breasts. “Dobrina said she wanted you to give it to Cutter. What is it, a Bible? Some kind of family thing?”

She looked down with a faint air of surprise, as if she’d forgotten the book was there. He heard a sharp catch in her breathing.

“It’s my diary,” she said softly.

Charly said, “I can’t imagine I was ever this young.”

She was sitting cross-legged in the middle of the bed, in a motel room that reeked of fried chicken and biscuits and mashed potatoes with gravy, Troy having decided it wasn’t the best time to be nagging somebody about their eating habits.

“Listen to this.

‘Dear Diary.

I’m not going to write very much tonight, because Welcome Back, Kotter is on, and I have to finish my homework. I just think John Travolta is so-o bitchin’, don’t you? I wonder if he’s married, and if he’s not, if he’d ever consider being interested in a skinny girl from Mourning Spring Alabama with no boobs and a great personality.’

‘Thought for the Day-’

“I was supposed to think up something profound, you understand-

‘I’m thinking of getting a padded bra.’

“Can you believe it?”

“Hard to,” said Troy, eyeing what he could see of her breasts underneath the portrait of Sylvester the cat that adorned the T-shirt she was wearing. He’d just come out of the bathroom, where he’d indulged himself in a longer than usual shower, complete with shampoo and shave, and all the other miscellaneous activities men do in private, seldom admit to, and would never, ever call primping. He’d done all that mainly to give Charly some time alone to look over that old diary of hers, in case she needed the privacy. But as a result he was feeling fresh, clean and sexy as hell, and maybe it was just the frame of mind he was in, but as far as he was concerned, neither her breasts nor any other part of her looked like it was in any need of improvement whatsoever.

“Here’s another one.

‘Today I wore my new platform shoes to school. So did Kelly Grace. I had to sneak mine past the judge and Aunt Dobie in my backpack, but it was worth it. I think they look bitchin’, especially with my new jeans. Brooke Shields, eat your heart out!”’

She rocked back and looked up at him. “God-remember that?

Platform shoes. Bell bottoms…designer jeans.”

“Sideburns,” muttered Troy, rubbing his clean-shaved jaw.

“Leisure suits,” Charly sang, laughing.

“With bell bottoms…”

“…in bulletproof polyester!”

“Afros!”

“Pooka beads! Mood rings!”

“Saturday Night Fever!”

Charly put her hand over her heart in a mock swoon. “I must have seen that movie six times, at least. John Travolta was bitchin’! Did you guys say that, too-bitchin’? The equivalent of ‘Way cool, man…totally awesome.’ you know? Like… outasight?”

“Not within earshot of my mama, I didn’t,” said Troy dryly, going to sit on the edge of the bed, close enough to touch her, but not doing so. He felt off balance and unsure of himself, like a dinner guest finding himself witness to a family crisis. How close should he come? How close would she allow him? How much right did he have to share such intimate revelations?

She chuckled and went back to the diary, reading aloud under her breath now and then, slowly turning pages, smiling at first. But gradually her face changed, losing all traces of laughter and finally acquiring that tight, fragile look that be knew the wrong word, the slightest touch could shatter.

“Here.” Her voice sounded breathless and unsteady. “July 4-this is where it starts. No, wait-” she flipped pages “-a little before that. Here we are-July 1. ‘Dear Diary, Guess what! I think Richie Wilcox likes me.’” Her head came up and her eyes sought his, bright with fear and hope, like a kid about to take her first jump off a diving board and wondering if there was gonna be anyone there to catch her when she did.

“Go ahead,” he said, but something had tightened around his chest so that his voice was as airless as hers. He scooted his hand across the bedspread toward hers.

She took it and clasped it tightly, twining her fingers with his as trustingly as a child. And he felt something burst inside him, spreading liquid warmth all through him…warmth, and strength and certainty. When once again she bowed her head over the diary in her lap and began to read aloud the words, thoughts and feelings she’d transferred there from her heart so long ago, any doubts he’d had about his right to share them with her had gone. Right then and there he knew his place was here, right here beside her, holding her, comforting her, protecting her, in any way he could, as far as he was able, for as long as he had breath left in his body.

So he held her hand while she retraced the rocky and painful pathway of her seventeenth year. When her voice trembled and broke, he moved unhesitatingly closer, sat beside her and wrapped her in his arms and held her. And when her tears finally came, he soaked them up in the front of his shirt.

The last entry he read for her: “‘Today I am leaving this God Forsaken place forever…’”

Troy finished in a cracking voice, then closed the diary and put it aside on the nightstand while he and Charly held on to each other, laughing and trembling. Part of that, he hoped, he wanted to believe, was a kind of giddy joy in each other, in comradeship discovered, in the newness of having someone to cling to in a time of trouble. And part, he knew, was sheer relief-on her part, that the past had been faced at last, and on his, that she’d finally allowed him to share it all with her.

All, at least, except for one small part. There was still the promise she’d never broken, the one secret she hadn’t dared to share with another soul, nor even commit to the pages of her diary. Troy was pretty sure he knew what the secret was, and he had an idea Dobrina must have guessed it, too. He wondered if Charly even realized how clear the answers were, to anyone who knew the whole story-to anyone who’d read her diary.

And whether, even now, she’d be willing to risk letting her son in on the secret she’d promised his father she would keep for him forever.

A silence had fallen over them, filled with the trip-hammering of heartbeats and little slowing-down sighs. To Charly it seemed almost like the aftermath of lovemaking, except that she felt in no way satiated, or even drowsily content. The sultry intimacy of Troy’s body heat energized her like a cold shower, frosting her body with goose bumps; the fresh-soap smell of his sweat filled her head with a low-level buzz, like the first drink of champagne.

She stirred and turned toward him, her hand finding a nest in the hard-muscled hollow of his belly, just below the V of his ribs. She let it ride there for a moment, rising and falling like a leaf on a wake. wondering if she dared let it drift toward more-interesting places, wondering whether he’d deny her again, and how she would cope if he did.

She was a long way from understanding what it was that made Troy Starr tick-though to be honest, until now she’d been too preoccupied with her own pain to even try. Certainly she’d never met anyone in her life quite like him, had never even imagined they still made guys like him-and they probably didn’t, at least not in L.A. He was…definitely one of a kind. Well, okay, maybe one of a pair, the other being his brother Jimmy Joe, and she could definitely understand a little better now what it was that had made a bright, sophisticated lady like Mirabella fall in love with the redneck truck driver from Georgia.

Mirabella, Charly remembered, had once told her she’d thought of Jimmy Joe as a knight. Her very own knight, come thundering to her rescue that Christmas Eve in his big blue Kenworth charger. Crazy, Charly had thought at the time. Romantic lunacy. Her best friend had simply lost her mind.

And even if it were true, and even if Charly did happen to need rescuing-which she most certainly did not-there were no more knights. Surely Jimmy Joe had to be the last one left in the world. They just didn’t make them anymore. Or did they?

Boy Scouts, now…that was another story. And as far as she was concerned, there was one too many of them in this room.

“Ma‘am, you mind tellin’ me what you’re up to?” Troy’s voice was groggy, the words slurred.

Charly’s hand had left the soft-firm flesh of his belly to skim across the front of his boxers like a kingfisher over the surface of a pond, sending shivers rippling through his body. Her laugh was soft and dangerous. “I warned you about that ‘ma’am’ stuff.”

“Let me rephrase the question, Your Honor.” His breath caught; her hand settled…became an excruciating warmth. “Woman, what in the hell are you doing?”

“That’s better,” she purred with the deceptive laziness of a lioness watching a herd of gazelles. “I’m trying to seduce you, of course.”

He laughed weakly. “Now, there’s a challenge.”

Her hand moved on, riding downward along the hard ridge of his thigh, then slowly up again on the softer inside. He felt his bones melt. Heaven…no, torture. Her thigh came between his; her body weight shifted and slid lower, caressing his side. Her warm breath poured over his stomach…her tongue made darting forays into his navel.

A groan, composed of equal parts pleasure and agony, rose from deep in his belly. “Didn’t you ever hear of overkill?”

She chuckled, modestly pleased. “I wasn’t sure what it would take. I’ve never seduced a Boy Scout before.”

She was unprepared when his body suddenly hardened to iron beneath her and his legs came around her like steel coils. The next thing she knew, she was on her back with her arms imprisoned above her head, pressed deep into the pillows, with her heart pounding, heat thundering through her body and Troy’s body hard and hot on top of her.

“Where do you get this ‘Boy Scout’ stuff?” he growled as his mouth came swooping down, taking quick, possessive nips from her throat, from her lips, startled and open. Her lips grew swollen and tingled like fire; her breaths came sharp and hurting. “You have a damn short memory.” His grip on her arms became a caress, sliding upward toward her wrists; his fingers wove themselves through hers. His mouth sank into hers, and his tongue trapped her whimper of need deep in her own throat,

His kisses took possession of her, sensation became a deluge, a monsoon, wiping out thought. Her body arched mindlessly, seeking him, while her legs shifted, making a place for him between. Her breath came in soft, tiny cries.

“After last night,” she gasped, when his mouth finally released hers to explore the pulsing cords along the side of her neck, her lips moist and throbbing, slurring the words, “I thought-”

“I know what you thought.” He pulled back suddenly, bringing her with him, and kneeling between her legs, with one swift motion tore her T-shirt up and over her head and threw it impatiently aside.

His fingers dipped beneath the elastic waistband of her Tweety Bird boxers, yanked them down over her hips. She drew her legs up one at a time, watching him, wide-eyed and trembling, as he pulled them off and hurled them away and then lifted and settled her, naked, astride his thighs.

“Lady, for somebody as smart as you are-” his voice was thick and guttural, his hands gentle on her arms, a feather’s touch with the power of a lightning strike “-you don’t know very much about what makes a man tick. Not a damn thing, as a matter of fact…”

His hands left her arms to travel down her sides, over her hips and back up again, where they found her breasts aching for his touch. And gently nested them. And then, not at all gently, squeezed and rolled and tugged the hardened, nerve-rich nipples, an exquisite agony she felt in the deepest parts of her, felt in the soles of her feet, in the nape of her neck…so sweet an agony she cried out and arched her back, pushing her breasts deeper into his hands, pressing her soft, vulnerable body against the unyielding hardness of his.

Bewilderment filled her, mixed with a need so sharp and bright it felt like despair. Together they made a pressure inside her that was not unlike tears.

“I don’t understand,” she whispered, her head thrown back, eyes tightly shut, frightened without knowing why. “What…is it you want from me?”

His chuckle was a liquid, tickling warmth at the base of her throat. “More than you can give me right now, darlin’…I know that.”

“I want you,” she cried, dizzy, cold with wanting. Trembling… trembling. “Isn’t that enough?”

“Not even close.” His hands were a moving, liquid warmth, flowing over her body, her sides, her belly, her thighs. She felt his fingers come between her thighs…an intimate intrusion that made her gasp…and yearn.

“Okay…” Her throat, her whole body tightened. She lifted her hands to his shoulders, then curled them around his neck and hung on with a kind of desperation as, trembling, she choked out the words she’d never said to a living soul before. “I.…need you.”

“Getting warmer,” Troy murmured, intimately cradling her. Helplessly she began to rock against his hand. “What I want,” he whispered as his fingers stroked her, and her breathing became whimpers, “I want you to look at me.” His fingers slipped into her body…slowly, gently…a lightning bolt, tearing her apart.

“Open your eyes…look at me.”

Somehow she did, and found his eyes like beacons in the darkness. Beautiful eyes… She clung to them desperately, while his fingers pushed deeper, probed for her body’s center, searched, it seemed to her, for her very soul. Clung to them while her world, her reality, her heart was shattering into a million pieces, and her body dissolving into shuddering, throbbing chaos in his hands.

“Now…say my name. Say my name.”

“Troy! Troy…”