Rumor Has It

by Tami Hoag

  “No, I can't, Nick. I'm sorry,” she said, disappointment forming a knot in her throat. “I don't dance.”

  He teased her with a smile. “Everybody can dance. All you need is a fabulous instructor like myself.”

  She glanced away from his eyes, forcing the corners of her mouth up in a phony grin. “That's probably true, but I'm tied up on Saturday.”

  “Oh.” He stepped down to her level and wound a finger into her long hair. “Are you mad at me?”

  Katie looked up. His eyes were so brown and so sincere. He was so sweet, it made her heart ache. “Why would I be mad at you?”

  His broad shoulders lifted in a shrug as he dismissed the notion. He bent his head and pressed a kiss to her lips. “You're so pretty,” he murmured against her mouth.

  A magnetic pull was urging her toward him again. Before it could overrule her good judgment, Katie put a half step of distance between them. “There's a concert Sunday in the park. We have a pretty good chamber orchestra… if you like that kind of thing.”

  “I do.” He smiled, relaxing. “It's a date.”

  Maggie was ready to go out the back door as Katie came in the front, which suited Katie fine. She needed a little time to herself. She hung the Gone to Lunch sign on the front door, took the phone off the hook, and went to sit on a box in the stock room where she could stare out the screen door at the beautiful spring morning.

  Decision time, Katie, she told herself. The kind of desire she'd felt in Nick's arms didn't come along every day. In fact, she'd never experienced it before. But what was she supposed to do about it? Did she do the safe thing and break it off with Nick now, or did she let him become the first man to get close to her since her accident? She knew what her heart wanted, but her heart wanted a lot of things it could never have.

  Nick seemed so special. Everything clicked when they were together. Just like in the movies— she heard bells, she saw fireworks. Those were things she had always been too practical to believe in before. She wanted to go on seeing him. She wanted more. She wanted to go dancing with him. She wanted to be whole. Instead she was scarred and incomplete. He would have seen that, if she hadn't backed away from his lovemaking in the kitchen. He would have seen that the pretty package that attracted him was a battered, empty box under the feminine wrapping.

  Lifting her heavy mane off her neck Katie sighed up into her bangs. Life had seemed a lot simpler before Nick Leone had come along with his mysterious past and velvet brown eyes. But she realized it would seem a lot lonelier without him.

  Maybe it was time she took a chance. She'd been so careful for so long. She couldn't read Nick's mind. She couldn't know if he was interested in her on a long-term basis. She couldn't know if he would be able to overlook her scars, or if children were important to him. But she didn't have to read his mind to know he was a nice man. She didn't have to read his mind to know he wanted a deeper relationship. She wanted one too.

  Maybe it was time to stray a little from the path she'd so carefully mapped out for herself five years ago. To pass up the chance would be the coward's way out, and if there was one thing Katie had tried hard not to be in her life, it was a coward.

  Nick sat on the steps and let his gaze roam around what would one day be the main dining room of his restaurant. He needed to install new light fixtures. The floor had to be sanded and re-finished. He didn't even want to think what needed to be done to make the back room into a functional kitchen. Upstairs there were dropped ceilings to be removed, walls to be knocked out.

  Forty- five hundred bucks. He groaned. He'd already borrowed all he could. He would have to fork over the money for the curb and gutter now so he could get the permit, and then make the money back some way so he could afford to do the necessary remodeling.

  There was one sure way he could make enough money in a relatively short amount of time. All he had to do was pick up the phone and say yes to Jack Clark's standing offer. They would have to haggle a little over scheduling, and Nick would have to negotiate for a percentage of the gate, but it was the best solution. It was the only solution.

  “Looks as if I'll be doing some dancing after all, Katie,” he said, wondering what proper Katie would have to say when he told her he was going to solve his financial problems by going back to his old job as the Highwayman—the hottest male erotic dancer on the East Coast.

  FOUR

  KATIE HAD COMMITTED her Saturday morning and afternoon to working on the town project. Saturday night was going to be devoted to recuperating from working on the town project. She decided the best thing she could do was work so hard, she would have little energy left over to devote to wondering if Nick had found someone else to go dancing with him.

  The town project was known as the Drewes mansion. Myra Mason- Drewes had willed the estate to the city. It had been badly in need of repair and, even though Myra's wish had been that the estate be restored, the town council nearly had decided to tear it down. Katie and a group of other citizens concerned about historic preservation had talked them out of it.

  Professionals had been called in for the nuts and bolts restoration work, but costs had been kept low by having townspeople devote their time and talents to the simpler tasks. By late summer the Drewes mansion would be added to the walking tour of Briarwood that included a number of other historic buildings. The tourism committee was planning a gala party to celebrate the opening and raise funds to help cover some of the costs.

  The sounds of hammers pounding and power saws whining above the country music coming from a portable radio in the kitchen brought a smile to Katie's lips as she dipped her paintbrush into the bucket again. By the end of the day all the noise would probably give her a headache, but she wouldn't think about that now. She was going to enjoy the feeling of camaraderie that came from working beside people she had known all her life. It was one of the joys of living in a small community. She also thoroughly enjoyed the actual work of fixing up the house. Preserving a piece of the past was a labor of love, as far as Katie was concerned. She threw a happy smile at Maggie, working nearby on painting window trim.

  “Katie, the walls in the dining room are ready to paint. Should we go on ahead and start?”

  “Sure, John. Just make certain all the drop cloths are in place,” she called back without taking her eyes off the window frame she was painting. The woodwork in the parlor had been stripped of nineteen coats of paint, including layers of hot pink and lime green. Her brush spread a layer of rich cream over the wood. Eventually all the rooms in the colonial home would be returned to their original color schemes.

  “I hope y'all appreciate just how much I hate painting trim,” Maggie said to no one in particular. She stuck her tongue between her teeth as she ran a narrow brush along the wood between two panes in the twelve- over- twelve- pane window. She glanced over her shoulder to the next wall where Katie was working. “However, I don't mind being the lookout. Guess who's coming up the front walk, Kathryn.”

  “Tom Selleck.”

  “Close, but no mustache. It's none other than the mysterious Mr. Leone, heartthrob of Fairfax Street.”

  Heartthrob. What an inadequate word, Katie thought. Beneath her baggy pink T-shirt her heart was throbbing all right, but that was the least of what Nick could do to her with nothing more than a glance.

  She dropped her paintbrush and tried to straighten her hair, only succeeding in streaking ivory paint through the strands that had escaped her braid. Now that she had made a decision about an ongoing relationship with him, she felt skittish, as if Nick would somehow know by looking at her that she had decided to take the monumental step.

  “Morning, Nick!” Maggie said, beaming a big smile at him as he came in. “What is that delicious aroma?”

  “Hiya, Maggie.” He grinned, lifting an enormous roasting pan. “I brought lunch. Lasagna. Are you people hungry or what?”

  “Starved. Ravenous. Famished,” Maggie answered. She abandoned her post to lift the lid on lunch. Nick chuckled at he
r heartfelt groan as she stared longingly at the dish he'd prepared.

  “Nick, you didn't have to cook for all these people!” Katie exclaimed. There were easily a dozen people working in the house and several more outside.

  “All these people? This would have been a slow day in my mother's kitchen.”

  “You're from a large family, Nick?” Maggie asked.

  “Huge. You practically had to have reservations for a place at the table. It was great.”

  Katie ignored the little twinge of warning she felt. So he had enjoyed growing up in a large family. What did that have to do with the two of them? Nothing, she firmly told herself.

  “John Harris said everyone was devoting their best talents to this job,” Nick said, setting his roaster down on a table that was a sheet of plywood over two sawhorses. He lifted the lid off the pan. Immediately three people poked their heads into the room through various doors, their noses twitching. Nick gave what Katie thought was an adorable shrug and said, “Me, I can cook a little bit.”

  His was an understatement Katie realized a few minutes later after sampling his cooking. Nick's lasagna was far removed from what Katie was used to buying frozen. Everything in it was absolutely fresh and perfectly prepared. The tomato sauce was bursting with sweet flavor. The variety of herbs and spices were a delight to the taste buds. The cheese had that special bite that told Katie it was freshly grated. The combination of ingredients had resulted in a masterpiece.

  “This is heaven,” Katie said with a sigh. She and Nick sat side by side under a magnolia tree in the front yard, eating their lunch from paper plates. In addition to the lasagna he'd brought loaves of warm garlic bread. Everyone had chipped in for soda and beer, and Mavis Davies had provided two pans of her special chocolate- chip brownies for dessert. “I'm going to write to the people who package those diet dinners and tell them they've got a nerve calling the stuff they make lasagna,” Katie said.

  Nick frowned at her. “You buy frozen stuff? To eat?”

  “I'm no cook. If it doesn't come with microwave instructions on the box, I can't make it.”

  He shuddered and muttered something in Italian that sounded like a prayer. His warm brown eyes found Katie's and he said earnestly, “Cooking should be a joy, just as eating should be a joy.”

  “Well,” she said, scooping up another forkful of lasagna. “I can promise you, if I cook it, it won't be a joy to eat.”

  “Didn't your mother teach you to cook?”

  “My mother left when I was ten,” she said almost matter- of- factly. “My father cooked, my brother cooked. I was too busy with other things.”

  “I'm sorry,” he said quietly. “I didn't know.”

  “Of course you didn't,” she said as she attacked her dessert.

  There was a finality in her tone that suggested the topic was closed. Nick wouldn't let go quite that easily. He wanted to know who Katie was. Bitting into his own rich square of chocolate dessert, he made a mental note to get the recipe from Mavis. “That must have been rough on you, growing up without a mother.”

  Katie's shoulders lifted in a stiff shrug. “She wasn't a very good mother. The thing I remember most about her was that she hated the farm and did everything she could to make her feelings known to everyone.”

  She didn't say anything about the feelings of confusion that had haunted her after her mother's desertion. She had vowed then that someday she would have children of her own, and she would be the best mother in the world. But she didn't mention it to Nick. She didn't tell him it was just one of her dreams as a young girl that had been shattered and left in pieces on a jump course in upstate New York.

  “You should have told me about this project, Katie,” he said, reproaching her gently to bring her thoughts back to the present. He hadn't enjoyed the haunted look that had crept into her pewter- colored eyes or the sensation that she had pulled away from him for a moment, drawn into herself.

  “I thought you had your hands full working on your own place,” she said. “I didn't want you to feel obligated to work here too.”

  “It's a community project. I want to be part of the community.”

  She could see how eager Nick was to be a part of the small town, to get involved and make friends. He would have felt hurt if no one had asked him to join in. She reached up with her napkin to wipe a speck of chocolate off his chin. “I'm sorry. I guess I wasn't thinking.”

  “Yeah, well, just don't let it happen again.” He gave her a warning look that had her giggling, then he grinned his endearingly crooked grin and winked at her.

  Katie said, “You're here now, and we'll work you till you drop, but I can guarantee you a dozen devoted customers when you finally open the restaurant. This lunch was great. Thanks for bringing it.”

  “My pleasure. I'll do what I can to help this afternoon, but I have to knock off around four. I have to go to D.C. tonight.”

  Katie tried to look casual while she wondered if she'd missed the boat. “Oh? Got a hot date?”

  “No,” Nick said with a chuckle. She was so cute when she tried to act casual about something she was dying to know, like a cat trying to appear aloof when someone was trailing a string of yarn in front of it. “It's business. I'm gonna help out this friend a couple nights a week to make the money I need for my remodeling.”

  He set his plate aside and slipped his arm around Katie. She looked so young in her paint-spattered jeans and T-shirt, with no makeup and her hair mussed, he half expected her father to come out on the front step and chase him away. He leaned down and pressed a quick kiss on the tip of her nose, murmuring in a husky voice, “I'm not interested in going dancing with anyone but you, kitten.”

  If that was true, it was going to be a while before Nick got to go dancing again, Katie thought ruefully. She pushed her own disabilities from her mind to concentrate on getting to know Nick better. “You've been trained as a dancer, worked as a dancer, and you still want to go out dancing. You must really love it.”

  “I do. Dance is the ultimate combination of art and athleticism. It's beautiful, powerful, entertaining,” he said, trying to concentrate on Katie instead of the butterflies in his stomach. This seemed like the ideal time to tell her. He was going to leave in a few hours to meet with Jack Clark to finalize the details of the return of the Highwayman. He took a deep breath and plunged in. “I love it. I've danced on Broadway, off Broadway, as a lead, in the chorus line, as a stripper.”

  Katie shot him an amused look and burst out laughing.

  “Really,” Nick said, trying to laugh along. “For two years.”

  “ Uh- huh, right.” Katie shook her head and pushed herself to her feet. Nick was self- conscious about putting his reading glasses on in front of people. Dancing around in his birthday suit was simply out of the question. A stripper. How absurd. One thing she really liked about Nick was his ability to make her laugh.

  Mavis Davies stuck her head out the door of the house. “Katie, Richard is out back with that countertop. Are we ready for it?”

  “Yes. I'll be right in, Mavis.” She started for the house, then glanced back at Nick. “Are you ready to get to work, Gypsy Rose Leone?”

  She clearly didn't believe him. Nick cast his gaze heavenward as Katie walked away. “I tried,” he whispered, scolding himself inwardly for being too much of a coward to try harder. Katie was busy, he rationalized. This really wasn't the best time to tell her.

  It wasn't that he was ashamed of being an erotic dancer. He was proud of putting together a tasteful, artistic, entertaining routine. He saw nothing objectionable about the performance he gave as the Highwayman. The problem was explaining it and making Katie understand. He didn't look at it as taking his clothes off for a living. Nick thought of it as providing fun, escapist entertainment, but knew there were a lot of people who wouldn't agree with his point of view. He had known his share of proper ladies who had considered him some sort of second- class citizen once they'd found out what he did for a living. He had to h
ope Katie wasn't one of them, he thought as he picked up their plates and followed her to the house.

  Not only did Nick gain prospective customers by showing up, he gained friends as well. After what Katie had told him about the rumors going around, he was a little nervous at first that he might not be accepted, but everyone was friendly and glad to have an extra hand. While they enjoyed speculating about the new guy in town, they didn't seem to take the rumors seriously. The general mood was one of fun. And they were happy to be contributing to something that was for the good of the community.

  There were at least ten other people working around the house. Nick learned one thing about all of them—they liked and respected Katie and clearly thought of her as their leader even though she was younger than most of them. He felt proud when he looked at the lady who had become so important to him in such a short amount of time.

  With her hands on her hips Katie looked at the dining- room wall, which was much taller than she was, and said, “We need more ladders.”

  “I know,” John Harris said. “Bob Hughes had to take his two ladders home. His wife told him he had to paint the garage this weekend or she was going to burn the thing down.”

  Nick put his paint roller down and wiped his hands on his worn jeans. “You don't need another ladder, Katie,” he said with teasing lights in his dark brown eyes. “What you need is longer legs.”

  “Very amusing, Nick.” She made a face at him as he dropped down to his knees in front of her. “What is this? Your Toulouse- Lautrec impersonation?”

  “Sit on my shoulders.”

  “You've got to be kidding.” The mere thought of sitting on those broad shoulders had her tingling in places she'd forgotten she had. Her heart rate picked up a beat.

  “No. Climb on. Weren't you a cheerleader in high school?”

  “No.”

  “Well, I was. Climb on.” He motioned impatiently for her to follow his instructions. “What are you? Chicken?”

  “You said the magic words, Nick,” Darrell Baylor said, laughing at Katie's suddenly determined expression. “Nobody ever dared Katie Quaid and got away with it.”