“Stop worrying. Go to sleep. I’ll take care of everything.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.” She yawned, weary from her long day.
Jack moved closer, circled her narrow waist with his arm, and drew a deep breath, filling his head and lungs with the sweet, delicate scent of her. And like a kitten drawn to the warmth, she snuggled back against him and fell sound asleep.
Later, near dawn, she woke and heard him prowling around outside. With a slap of bare feet on linoleum, she was up and out the door.
A small, wavering greenish light swung back and forth across the path behind the neat row of trailers.
“Jack?”
The flashlight halted mid-swing. “Abby? Hey, I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“It’s okay. Oh, it’s beautiful out, isn’t it?”
“Hot,” came his answer as he stepped into sight, barefoot and bare-chested, wearing only his jeans. He gave her a small, rueful smile. “Guess this wasn’t as easy as I thought.”
“Nothing is!” Abby laughed. She sank down on the trailer step and wrapped her arms around her knees. “But look at that sky—and that moon—and just listen to those frogs. Brrr-up, brrr-up,” she called softly toward the lake.
Jack dropped onto the step next to her. “So, do you often sit in the dark making funny noises?” he asked softly, teasingly, tracing the outline of her cheek with his strong, blunt fingers.
“Never,” she answered, catching his hand between her cheek and her bare shoulder. Her eyes shone like stars. “No one’s ever tempted me out into the night before.”
“Oh, you do know the right thing to say,” he whispered, kissing the curve of her neck.
“Never have before,” she admitted innocently, and then she took his dark, thick hair in her hands and pulled his face up to hers.
Their mouths met and clung. She filled her soul with his breath and felt suddenly lighter than air. She was floating, flying, dreaming. “I must be dreaming,” she said against his lips, but he nipped the words away with sharp, stinging love bites. His mouth moved down to her throat and then down to the edge of her nightgown, his tongue rasping hot and wet across the rise of her breast.
Helpless, burning, Abby let her head fall back. Throaty giggles escaped her lips. And then a light flicked on in the trailer next door.
Smothering her laughter behind one hand, she scooted away to the edge of the step. “Whew! That was a close call. The neighbors would have had plenty to talk about.”
“So what?” Jack asked with a growl, his eyes narrowed, his chest heaving. Desire had him by the throat. “Why do you worry about that?”
“Because—because …” She shrugged, unable to explain something that seemed so obvious. “Because they are my neighbors. They know my family: My father and mother, my sister. They know where I come from, and how far I’ve gotten. And they admire me for that.”
“What does that have to do with anything, Abby?”
How do I answer that? she wondered. Why, she’d never even really thought about it before. It was just part of her life, part of who she was. All those years of work, all the struggle and the hard climb up from nothing had earned her their respect, their admiration. That was not something to be treated lightly. That was not something to be risked. But how could she explain it to someone as self-confident as Jack?
The silence stretched between them, still and heavy as the humid southern night.
Jack reached out and tipped her chin up. “Sorry, Abby. I didn’t mean to push.”
“You weren’t.” She wished for the first time in her life that she were the kind of person who could open up, speak her heart. But she wasn’t. Instead she said softly, “You just take some getting used to.” Then she laughed out loud. “And boy, oh, boy, are you going to take some explaining in Hooper!”
Daylight sneaked up on them, painting the boxlike shapes of the trailers a crisp, clean white. There were round little hedges at each door, mowed lawns, striped awnings, and beach chairs. Bicycles rested against porches, baseball bats lay on the grass. The lake looked like a blue circle of silk, and cabbage palms waved their tall, spiky heads around the shore. A great blue heron lifted its hinged legs in a slow, stately dance that made circles appear on the surface of the lake, then thrust its beak into the water and came up with a fish.
“Hungry?” Abby asked, tilting her face up to look at Jack.
“Getting there,” he agreed.
“Good, because at my folks’, breakfast hits the table at sunup. Ready?”
“This is home,” Abby said, waving a hand out the driver’s window as they neared town an hour later. “Small, quiet. When I was growing up there were twelve houses in town. Dirt roads. And those dead orange trees were all so green, you would have thought someone had polished each leaf by hand. And heavy with fruit. Oh, it was pretty! There were groves all around us, as far as I could see. My father managed a grove for a wealthy owner who lived up near Jacksonville, and though we didn’t own a stick, it gave us a certain amount of prestige.” Her eyes twinkled with mischief. “In fact, our house was the first one in town with a flush toilet! I charged every neighborhood kid a penny to come flush it!”
“An entrepreneur even then!” He laughed, unreasonably happy at the sight of her smile.
“You bet! I knew money was the key.”
There was a small silence. “To what?”
“To everything I didn’t have. Everything my parents didn’t have. To security, and knowing you had your house and a meal on the table, and braces for your kid sister—”
“What about you?” Jack asked, burying his hand up to the wrist in her blond hair.
Abby smiled. “Someone up there must have known we couldn’t afford it yet, and blessed me with good, straight white teeth.”
“And that cute nose, and those heavenly blue eyes, and a ripe, luscious mouth—”
“Gallagher”—Abby groaned—“don’t you be giving me a bad time now at my folks’.”
“That’s your trouble, darlin’! You don’t know a good time from a bad time.” He dipped his fingers beneath the collar of her blouse.
Abby swatted his hand away. “I was telling you about Hooper. There’s the church. The drive-in bank. Our one and only grocery store. The drugstore used to have a real soda fountain, and you could get lemon Cokes that burned your throat and brought you back to life on a hot summer afternoon. And there’s Mr. Lucas—Hi, Ernie!” she yelled, waving. “How’s Phoebe?” Then, to Jack: “That’s his collie. She needed surgery last week.”
Assured that all was well, she turned the corner at the gas station and called to a woman pumping gas into an old Mercury. “Hi, Ruthie! We open Friday. Y’all come by!” Still waving, she slowed, put on her blinker, and pulled into a narrow driveway lined with palmettos and a few drooping petunias. “Poor things need rain,” she muttered, and jumped from the car. “Coming?”
“Whither thou goest, I will go …” he quoted, catching her so by surprise, she tripped over her own feet. Jack threw back his head and laughed. “Haven’t spent all my life on the river, darlin’. Lead on.”
Abby’s blood was percolating like coffee on high. Flushed, weak-kneed, her palms clammy, she led the way around to the kitchen door.
They were almost there when a girl tumbled out, wearing a bikini top and shorts so short, they gave new meaning to the word. “Fi-nally!” she shouted, then froze, staring wide-eyed at Jack. “Hoo-eee. Who are you?”
Abby groaned, shutting her eyes. “Jeanette …”
“What is the commotion?” her mother’s call interrupted from inside.
“Oh, this is going to be fun!” Jeanette giggled and held the door open. “Mom, Dad. Abby’s here. And she has brought us some company.”
Taking Jack into that tiny, crowded kitchen was like introducing a lion to a herd of deer grazing at a water hole. Her folks were small people, lean and burned dark by the sun. She could see their surprise, dismay, nervousness. She talked quickly, hoping to cal
m them, telling them that she’d met Jack in Colorado, but not how. With a lift of her brows, she asked for his help.
Jack followed her lead, shaking hands all around, talking soft and easy about his life out west, his mountains, the High Pines Lodge. Her folks began to relax.
Seated at the breakfast table, Jeanette kept the conversation going a hundred miles an hour. “Do you ski out there? I water-ski. My friend Tige, he’s just a friend-boy, and not a boyfriend, he’s got a ski boat on Lake Griffin, and I’m learning to jump slalom. Did Abby tell you she can ski barefoot? Honest! And she can surf. And—”
“Jeanette, hush! Jack doesn’t want to hear all this.”
“Sure, I do,” Jack said with a wink.
“Good. We don’t want him to think all you can do is cook! Well, she was voted most likely to succeed by her high-school class. Me, I was voted prom queen.”
“I would have preferred a scholarship to FSU.” Abby sighed.
“Amen to that.” Her mother nodded, but gave her younger daughter a loving look.
“We each march to a different drummer,” Jeanette chirped on happily.
“My day for surprise quotes!” Abby laughed, amazed, then waved away their questioning looks. “More grits, Jack? Ham?”
Jack pushed himself away from the table. “Couldn’t eat another bite, but it was great. Thank you.”
Abby’s father rose from his seat. “How about if we take our coffee out on the porch? I’ve got a red-cockaded woodpecker I’ve been keeping an eye out for in those pines.”
Her father led the way, settling in an old wooden rocker and pointing Jack into another. He picked up his binoculars, scanned the trees, and then dropped his hands in his lap. He sat in silence as the moments ticked by. When Abby and her mother brought the coffee out in heavy pottery mugs, he blew across the surface of his, watching the steam lift and waiting for everyone to settle down. Then he looked off into the trees again.
“So, you like my girl, do ya?” her father asked in a tone that indicated he was unused to such conversation.
“Dad!” Abby gasped, open-mouthed with shock.
But her father was determined to have his say. He met Jack’s calm look with a nod, stretched out his stiff legs, and nodded again. “Yup, thought so. Well, has she told you much about herself? Nope, thought not. That’s the way she is. But I’ll tell you, that’s some special girl there. Without her, we’d be living in a one-room shack in the middle of scrub oaks, and not this purty place. Me, I put my trust in the groves and the weather, and both failed me. Nothin’ to show for a life’s work, and nowhere to turn. But Abby, she stepped in. She done things I never could do.”
“Dad, don’t—” Abby said, laying a hand on his arm and desperately avoiding Jack’s gaze.
“I’m not sayin’ anything out of place, daughter. Just want this fella to know what kind of girl you are. See, she doesn’t bring many fellas around, so I thought this was worth sayin’. Now, how about some more coffee?”
“Thank you,” Jack answered evenly, just the hint of a smile tugging at his mouth.
“I’ll get it!” Abby jumped up. Her cheeks were blazing.
“I think you just got it!” Jeanette burst out laughing. “Oh, it’s great to have someone else in the hot seat, for a change. Especially my big sister!”
Abby fled into the kitchen.
Jack tracked her inside. He stopped in the doorway and leaned one shoulder against the wall, letting his eyes play lovingly over her slender frame. “Abby, please don’t be embarrassed.”
She spun around, looking wide-eyed and flushed. “Oh, but I am! That was awful! How could they? How could my father? He’s usually so quiet, so reserved.” Squeezing her eyes shut, she gave a little shudder at the memory.
“Then it must be my fault,” Jack said, grinning. “He must have seen the wild look I get in my eyes when you’re near me.”
There was a second of silence, and then Abby laughed. “Okay, Jack, yes, I’ll blame it on you. Just please, don’t you pay attention to everything everyone says. Oh, family! And Jeanette! Sometimes I think she’s going to be the death of me.”
“I think she’s cute. And stop worrying, she’ll grow up. Don’t you remember raising hell when you were a kid?”
“No,” Abby said honestly, and turned to get the coffee pot.
Jack crossed the kitchen and reached around her waist, holding the counter edge with both hands, trapping her in the circle of his arms. “Then it’s a good thing I showed up when I did.”
Abby felt the floor give way again. Yes. Yes, how nice to stop being the responsible, serious adult for a moment. To flirt with this beautiful man, laugh with him, touch him. How nice to relax and be silly with him, sexy with him. Her blue eyes shone. “Maybe it is, Mr. Gallagher.”
Six
But Abby forgot all about having fun in the days that followed.
With less than a week until her grand opening, she was frantic. She ran from one place to another, and at first she thought someone had dropped a ponderosa pine smack dab in the middle of her path.
“Jack, why don’t you go canoeing or sailing—or something?” she’d ask.
“Then I’d be too far away to do this—” He would laugh and trap her in his arms, rubbing her soft cheek with the first shadow of his beard.
“Stop! Let go! I have got to order the catfish. And hire another busboy. And check that the ads are running—”
And Jack would lower his dark head and stop her protests with the firm, demanding pressure of his mouth. He’d nip the words right off her lips, making her head spin, her heart flutter.
“Jack,” she’d whisper then, “please go paddle a river, or tickle an alligator. My tomatoes are spoiling, my ice is melting, my tablecloths are getting permanent creases!”
“All right.” He would give that irresistible grin of his, the grin that melted her from the inside out and left her trembling and breathless. “All right, but I’ll be back by dark. And then I’m taking you to dinner. No argument, lady.”
Tuesday morning Jeanette came by, a sweat shirt flapping against her bare thighs, her bikini invisible beneath its voluminous folds. “Come on, Jack, I’m going to teach you to water-ski!”
He left laughing and came back laughing, but bruised and sore and stiff. “Whew! That was one helluva workout! Makes me think I’m gettin’ old, baby.” He smiled at Abby.
“No one told you to try to jump first time out!” Jeanette scolded, but her eyes shone with adoration. “No one jumps the first time out, Jack! And, Abby,” she said, giggling, “you should have just seen Tige. He thinks Jack’s the greatest. Followed him around like a puppy, trying to walk like him, talk like him, he even—oops, here he comes, don’t let him know I was tellin’ on him.”
“Can I come in, Ms. Clarke?” the boy called nervously through the screen.
“Great! You’re Superman and I’m the Wicked Witch of the South,” she whispered with mock ferocity to Jack. “Yes, Tige. Come right in. I don’t bite, you know.”
The boy entered, blushing. “I just didn’t want to be in the way.”
“In the way? Of what? No one’s letting me get a lick of work done, anyway,” she said, scowling.
Jeanette gave her a quick hug. “Oh, sis, are you jealous ’cause you had to work while we had such a great time?”
“Great time! Two of you look like you’ve caught a terminal case of hero worship, and one of you looks like he got run over by a Mack truck. No. I’m glad I stayed here and accomplished something.”
“Uh-oh, she’s jealous, all right. That’s the same tone she used the night she laid the new carpet in Mom’s living room and I shimmied down the drainpipe and went off to the Pizza Palace—”
“Enough.” Jack smiled and placed his bulk between the two sisters. “You two kids go on. And thanks for the lesson.”
When they had vanished, he turned and slipped his hands into the pockets of Abby’s apron. “So, darlin’, you want to go to the Pizza Palace with this
old wreck?”
Abby reached up and put her hands on his broad, muscular shoulders. His skin was bronzed dark by the sun, and through her fingertips she could almost feel the glow of his health and great strength. “You’re not so bad,” she said, looking into his eyes.
That bold, heart-stopping smile curved his mouth. He wrapped his arms around her waist and rested his hands lightly on her small, rounded ass. “You’re not so bad yourself. So, how about that pizza?”
“I should finish up,” she said hesitantly.
“Tomorrow.”
“I could cook.…” she offered.
“Nope, pizza’s fine. And then we’ll do some cookin’ together back at your place.”
She widened her eyes. “Wha-wha—?” she sputtered.
Jack laughed and kissed her on the nose. “Sometimes I want to go out and punch a tree, you make me so crazy with wanting you and waiting for you to admit how much you want me! But then you do something like that, Abby, and I know why I followed you halfway across the country.”
Abby pressed her forehead against his shoulder, feeling love rise in her. Was it true? Could this be true? Nothing in her whole life had come this easy, and it scared her.
Then she didn’t see him for three days.
He took her at her word and stayed away, giving her time to concentrate on last-minute details. Over the phone she insisted how grateful she was, but her heart was sick with missing him, her concentration wasn’t worth spit, and her hands trembled so badly, she dropped two glasses and an enormous glass fish platter that she had to replace by Friday.
The Paradise Café opened on Friday night amidst hoopla and celebration. Simon, in a white tux and white shoes he had brought from Miami, opened twenty bottles of champagne. Abby served Snapper Paradise and could hardly believe how delicious it was! The guests oohed and aahed, and made reservations for weekends to come. They were going to bring their law partners, their golf partners, their bridge partners, their mothers-in-law, and one woman said she was going to bring her aunt Bess from Chicago when she came down for her annual visit.
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