One for the Road

by Lynne Marshall

She kept herself from saying words she’d regret, and stopped short of longing to hear promises he couldn’t keep. Rising onto his hands and knees, he studied her face, long and thoughtfully. He smiled the way she’d come to love and she forgot every worry.

  Tyler removed her panties, tossed them on a chair, and grinned at what he’d exposed.

  “So lovely,” he said.

  She arched and reached for Tyler, drawing him toward her. “Tyler. Please…”

  Light, teasing kisses along her stomach sent a shockwave and radiated across her breasts. She hadn’t resisted anything Tyler wanted to do since their first time together. She’d grown used to his attention and longed to make love with him every chance she got, which scared the living hell out of her…but never enough to make her want to back out.

  He settled between her legs and kissed deeply. She knotted the sheets in fisted hands and said his name again and again until she imploded with a gasp, seizing with pleasure.

  Moments later, when he’d nestled beside her, she kissed him with gratitude, pressed her tongue against his and toyed with his lower lip. On a whim she broke away, gave an impish look of determination, then made a quick move and rolled on top of him, sliding down his torso.

  Chuckling, he held up his hands in surrender. “Don’t expect me to put up a fight.”

  She memorized him, indelible, like a tattoo on her tongue. Never did she want to forget this sensation. Never did she want to forget him.

  Tyler moaned. His iron grasp on her shoulders drew her out of her thoughts and pulled her up to his chest with almost inhuman strength. “I want you up here, where I can look at you.”

  She straddled him. “You like what you see, cowboy?”

  He groaned an answer, grasped her hips, and filled her with one smooth shift of hard flesh. “I like what I feel, too.”

  Fire, earth and heaven rocked her. His eyes saw only her and she dared not look away except to lightly close her own and savor the sweetest of pleasures. They’d learned each other’s favorite spots and little pleasing tricks. From his guttural groan, she knew she pleased him. They’d learned well how to make love to each other. Moments later, undone, she collapsed onto his chest, where he gave her another lingering kiss. “My Dee,” he said, pressing her gently to his heart.

  She forced back the words I love you, knowing their time together was nearly over with Las Vegas so near. D’Anne swallowed the lump in her throat, her eyes stung and welled up. She tried not to squeeze them, but a drop escaped and fell onto Tyler’s chest where she snuggled.

  He lifted her chin. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” she said. “I’m just happy.” She wiped at her eyes and hoped he believed her.

  From the pained look on his face, she knew he didn’t buy the lie.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Tyler sat at the RV dinette with a cup of coffee steaming nearby while he strummed a chord and sang some words.

  “I was down and out in Nashville, lookin’ for a ride.

  “Feelin’ and dealin’ with ornery cowboy pride.”

  Dee had gotten up early and left before he woke up. Today was her big spa day and he knew how much she looked forward to it.

  Singing in a whisper, he searched for the tune in his head and corrected himself a time or two before moving on.

  “I asked a little lady…how it came to be.

  “She was lookin’ for roommates, for her new deluxe RV.”

  So soon after becoming a widow, she’d been compelled to take extreme measures. Tyler figured Dee had sacrificed a lot being on the road with his band, though after the beginning of the trip she never complained. She’d been forced into intimacy with four complete strangers, all of them far from gentlemen. The list of rules didn’t help reel them in any, either. But after throwing a few fits, she’d acted like a lady throughout, and they’d all had a lot of fun, sometimes at her expense. She’d kept Ricky-Bob from being unfaithful, and helped enhance Bear’s hygiene, maybe she’d even taught J.T. a bit about being a man instead of just another young buck.

  “She seemed a little frightened, yet still, so filled with hope,

  “Said she needed the cash, was at the end of her rope.”

  He stopped to tune the D string, while his eyes glanced to the Dalmatian backpack she had entrusted to him for the day. Don’t leave home without it, her note had read.

  His voice grew stronger when the next line fed into his brain just like the song he’d heard in his sleep the night before.

  “Thought I’d do her a favor by rentin’ out some space,

  “I was taken by her smile, when I saw a look of grace.”

  He tapped his foot to brighten up the waltz rhythm and quicken up the tune. The words flowed as if they’d been in his brain from the first moment he’d met her.

  Tyler stopped strumming long enough to scratch his nose and fight off a wave of sorrow. He picked the melody on the strings, cursed when he didn’t get it right. He thought about Dee dancing nude like a free spirit in a cowboy hat and smiled. A complete turnaround from the cautious woman he’d met four weeks ago. Remembering how he’d taught her the cowboy cha-cha in Lubbock, he flinched. She’d cut him to the core, but my, she’d made up for it ever since and he wanted her to stick around.

  He searched for a pad to scribble the words down while they were fresh in his head. He spent the next several minutes ignoring a subtle gnawing pain in his heart, drinking coffee and scratching out chords and notes on music paper to distract himself.

  “What would it take?” he mumbled.

  ****

  D’Anne let out a little yelp when the esthetician yanked the muslin cloth and wax from her brows. Pain for beauty, the equation seemed unfair. Normally she’d enjoy getting pampered, plucked and primped. Not today. Melancholy forced its way into her heart. Instead of feeling more like her old self, she felt sadly distant and a bit anxious.

  In a few more days they’d be in Las Vegas, the end of the road. From there she’d travel home to Los Angeles accompanied by her best friend, Theresa. A remote sense of dread threatened to bloom into apprehension and fear.

  What would the rest of her life be like? What exactly was it she’d been rushing home to? She’d felt a sense of duty to bring Reese’s ashes back to her boys so they could grieve and move on. But beyond that obligation, her sons were grown, her friends few, her home sold, and there were no pressing commitments awaiting her in L.A. And she’d grown to love being on the road, drifting from town to town, no strings or responsibilities except for making dinner and driving. She’d finally discovered freedom and independence and wasn’t quite ready to give it up.

  D’Anne had come to trust Tyler with her money, her friendship…and her heart. He was a good man, an unpolished gemstone. A keeper. And she thought she might be in…

  “You like this color?”

  “Sorry?”

  The Hispanic pedicurist waved a small bottle of burnt umber polish in front of D’Anne. “This color. You like?”

  “Hmm…different,” she mumbled.

  ****

  Tyler’s interview wasn’t scheduled until four in the afternoon, but D’Anne ran late at the spa. At three fifty-five she rushed through the entrance of The Tucson Southwestern Café and Grill and bumped into a wall of muscle.

  “Oh, excuse me,” she said, breathless.

  The vise-like grip on her arms felt strangely familiar when he caught her before she fell.

  “You okay, lady?” the burly bartender asked. His voice sent a stark chill up her spine. “Oh! Thank you. Yes, I’m fine.”

  He smiled and nodded, and let go. After she’d passed, she looked back over her shoulder, unsettled. Maybe it was just the heat.

  D’Anne moved into the banquet room of the restaurant where Tyler said he’d be for the interview. She rushed through yet another door, hoping not to be too late. She’d promised Tyler the night before she’d sit through the interview with him and kick him if he made a fool of himself. He’d said he’d
hold her to it. D’Anne had no intention of letting him down.

  Tyler glanced up at her like he’d spotted an off-course alien-tracker from Roswell, New Mexico. She tensed under his scrutiny. A thin shaggy-haired boy-man sat across the table from him with a notepad and pen in hand.

  “Sorry,” she whispered. “I didn’t mean to interrupt any…”

  “Not at all.” Tyler stood, cocked his head, and continued to look at her in an odd way. He pulled a chair out for her to sit next to him.

  “Won’t I be in the way? I can sit over…”

  “No. I said I wanted you here and I meant it. What’d you do to your hair?”

  “I had it weaved.” She self-consciously patted her severely short cut. The look always worked in California. She stopped herself from saying, This is me, this is who I was before I met you. Truth be told, she wasn’t quite sure who that lady was anymore, either. She sat next to him, feeling oddly like an imposter.

  A sudden insecure feeling of being out of place caused her to scoot the chair away from Tyler and the backpack on the floor. He glanced at her one last time, looking bemused with eyes partially squinted, before continuing with the interview.

  “Dee, this is Jerome from the Tucson Bee.”

  The young man rose a few inches from his seat to shake her hand without actually standing. D’Anne proffered a foreign—even to herself—looking hand, and wished she hadn’t gone for the shiny Sedona Sunset-colored polish for her fingernails. Jerome briefly nodded at her and sat back down to continue his line of questioning.

  D’Anne crossed and uncrossed her palms and noticed Tyler wore his white western shirt with turquoise trim, the one she especially liked. It fit better than ever now that his weight had dropped several pounds. He smelled fresh, like he’d just gotten out of the shower. She fiddled with her laced fingers on the table, nervously felt for hair that no longer existed on her neck, and cleared her dry throat.

  Tyler seemed to ignore her while the interview progressed. He put his hat on when the interviewer/newspaper photographer wanted a picture.

  She sighed quietly at Tyler’s broad smile while he showed a hint of embarrassment at being photographed. As always, he came off humble and handsome as hell, and if she had a bell, he’d be ringing it.

  A sudden urge to come to bat for Tyler overtook D’Anne.

  “Don’t forget to tell Jerome about your latest patriotic song.” She kicked his boot under the table, hurt her sandaled toe and worried about her pedicure.

  Tyler cast her a strange quick glance and played dumb.

  “You know, the one you wrote for the servicemen?”

  Now he looked downright suspicious and tilted his head. D’Anne ignored him and turned to Jerome. “He wrote this wonderful song, while thinking about our country and the men and women that fight our battles. He dreams about traveling to the Middle East to perform for our troops.” She felt Tyler’s large hand grab her knee and squeeze her quiet. She bit her lip rather than yelp.

  Tyler looked flustered and a tad angry. Color rose on his cheeks. “I don’t think he wants to hear about that, Dee.”

  “Sure I do,” Jerome said, as though on cue.

  ****

  “What the hell were you trying to pull?” Tyler growled, taking long strides across the restaurant, forcing Dee to jog to keep up.

  “I was helping get you noticed. That’s all.” She sounded winded. They’d made it halfway out the back door and into the parking lot.

  He turned on her and glared. “By lying? I didn’t write that song for the troops. I wrote it because you said patriotic was in.”

  “Oh, don’t worry about the kid,” she brushed him off with the wave of her hand. “He won’t even remember that part.”

  Tyler gave Dee a once over head-to-toe, took his time about it, and didn’t try to hide his distaste. “What do you call that hair style?”

  Her hand flew up to her nape. “Short? This is how I normally wear my hair.” Her cheeks blushed. “You’ve just never seen me the way I used to be.”

  He gritted his teeth. “Well, I like the way you looked yesterday.”

  Dee made a heavy sigh when he walked away. “Yeah? Well who’s asking you?”

  ****

  The band set up early that evening for their rehearsal in the back of the café. Tyler wanted to turn back the hands of time. Where had Dee gone?

  She’d left in the morning before he woke up—the woman he loved—and returned a stranger. Her layered, soft sable colored hair had been replaced with some high-class two-toned job, cut entirely too short for his taste. Sure her skin looked great, but her perfectly shaped brows and make-up made her look unnatural. She smelled too frilly, too, no doubt from wearing some expensive department store version of what they thought the scent of sexy should be. Tyler liked the fragrance of her bottled dime store skin cream better. He liked the earthy lady he’d come to know, not this California city slicker.

  He fought back a sense of panic while Las Vegas loomed in his future and Dee, the desert dancer, faded from his sight. Grateful for the distraction after the interview had finished, Tyler escaped the Stepford version of Dee by rallying up the band and calling a rehearsal.

  They’d fought and made a lousy attempt at making up. D’Anne promised to walk Dexter to the nearby park and meet up with Tyler later for dinner before the show.

  While the band continued to set up and tune their instruments, Tyler watched her leave with the restaurant owner, Jilly, looking like two of a kind— slick and out of his league.

  “I’ve got a new song I want to run by you guys,” he spoke to his band. “Probably won’t sing it tonight—no words yet, just want to hear how it sounds with back up.”

  Tyler took one last look when D’Anne stopped at the bar to pick up a Perrier with her girlfriend and wondered if she’d changed on the inside, too.

  ****

  Tammy seemed suspiciously quiet that night in the bar at Jilly’s place. Sure she acted her pleasant, breezy self, but D’Anne noticed she wasn’t chattering like usual. D’Anne had enough on her mind what with Tyler and Las Vegas, Reese’s ashes, her boys, and Theresa. She didn’t dare pry, fearing what avalanche of words might fall out of the pretty young woman’s mouth.

  Jilly tapped D’Anne’s arm and drew her out of her thoughts.

  “They’re great! Wow, I wish they could play two nights. I haven’t seen this many people since opening day two years ago.”

  D’Anne nodded in agreement while her foot kept the beat of the raucous cowboy bar song. “Yeah, too bad they’ve got to be in Vegas by Friday.”

  Speaking of Las Vegas made her remember she needed to buy a new urn for Reese’s ashes. She couldn’t very well turn him—that is, what was left of him—over to her sons in the extra large mayo jar they’d swept him into after his urn got shattered.

  Her mind continued to roam. Tyler sang and played hard, seeming only to choose the rowdy bar type songs. She noticed he drank whisky again, too. He sipped from his glass in between songs and had the bartender refill it from time to time. He seemed rough-and-tumble tonight and it made her uncomfortable. This wasn’t the Tyler she’d come to know…and love.

  J.T. kept looking their way, probably because of Tammy. He looked earnest and even a bit worried, like a puppy dog eager to please. It seemed oddly out of character for the handsome, sharp-featured bad boy from Oklahoma. His hair, shiny black and normally wild, had been pulled tight into a knot at the back. He wore a shirt for a change, though kept it open halfway to his navel. His dark, interrogating eyes stood out like bits of coal and they kept possessive watch on his lady.

  Possessive? Or possessed? D’Anne scratched her lip to cover her smirk.

  Tammy made a big effort to ignore J.T. She crossed and uncrossed her arms and legs, sighed, turned her head, swiveled on the barstool to take a drink of her diet soda—anything rather than return his unwavering stare. D’Anne noticed she wasn’t sucking down her usual long neck tonight, either. She started to ask ab
out it, when Tammy saved her the breath.

  “I’m leaving for home tomorrow,” she said.

  D’Anne didn’t think she’d heard right and moved her ear closer to Tammy’s pouting pink mouth. “What?” she said. “Did you guys have a fight?” D’Anne now noticed even more how J.T. watched Tammy’s every move.

  Tammy refused to look at him. “Nah. I’ve decided to go back to school like you said.”

  D’Anne sat straighter. Oh crap, what if J.T. finds out I put the school thought into her head? Yet she wanted to be encouraging about Tammy’s decision, one D’Anne definitely approved of. “That’s wonderful!” Worry hit her like a punch in the stomach. “What about J.T. and Vegas?”

  Both of them swiveled on their stools to face the bar in case J.T. could read lips.

  “I’ve been to Vegas before.” Tammy played with her soda glass. “I haven’t told J.T. I’m not going yet.” D’Anne glanced over her shoulder at the drummer, dodged his glare, and looked back at Tammy trying not to look suspicious. “I think he

  knows something’s up. You gonna tell him soon?” “Yeah,” she said, looking listless. “After one last

  night.”

  Well, D’Anne had planted the seed and it took, a good thing, she reminded herself. “Hey.” She knocked Tammy’s arm lightly with her fist. “I’m proud of you, girl!”

  She saw a sheepish grin turn to pride when Tammy lightly punched D’Anne’s arm in return.

  “Thanks,” she said, looking less than confident.

  D’Anne jumped off the stool. “Now if you’ll excuse me.” She picked up the Dalmatian backpack while the band blasted yet another rowdy cowboy song. “I’m going to check up on Dexter in the RV.” She turned to wave to Tyler, but he wasn’t looking. She made an excuse to Jilly about a headache and said goodnight.

  I’ve got a date with a blond. She walked out the door of the café. A blond upright bass.

  ****

  The next morning, Tyler’s eyes almost popped out of his head when he read the headline in the variety section of the Tucson Bee. The paper ran a hokey picture of him tipping his hat and grinning like a catfish. Ex-Country Star: The Next Bob Hope-ful?