by Cara Colter
Chapter Seven
Well, that was fun. See you tomorrow. Sleep in.
Tally stared at J.D.’s truck leaving the parking lot and snapped her mouth, which had fallen open, shut.
Of all the aggravating men! The night had been so magical. So wondrous. There had been a wonderful tingle in the air that had very little to do with the bits of meteor showering down around them.
And he left just like that?
A light blinked on in the motel office, and then the outside lights came on and bathed the parking lot, chasing away every last remnant of magic.
She felt very eccentric, indeed, sitting alone in the middle of a parking lot in the middle of the night with a sleeping child on her lap. Tally Smith, eccentric! The girl who had worked so hard to appear so normal her whole life.
Still, there was something just a tiny bit fun about someone entertaining the notion she might be eccentric. If it didn’t make it feel like J.D. was winning in some way, she might have enjoyed a little laugh about it.
“Everything okay, Ms. Smith?”
Just fine. Great. Never been better. Out loud she said, “Just watching the meteor shower.”
“Oh.” Pause. “I don’t see nothin’.”
That oh and the pause that followed it were loaded with lots of unspoken thoughts about eccentric people.
“It’s over,” she said patiently.
She swaddled the blankets around Jed, and lugged him back into the cabin. She tucked him into his bed, brushed the hair back from his eyes, and smiled, feeling that familiar tug of love for him.
He opened his eyes, blinked at her, closed them again. “Wonderful,” he said happily. “So pwettee.”
She sighed, leaned over and kissed the round fullness of his cheek. “Yes,” she said, “it was that.”
She tugged off her own sweater and crawled into the other bed. “Sleep,” she ordered herself. She could not remember a time in her life when she had kept such irregular hours. She should be exhausted.
Instead she thought exhaustively about him, J. D. Turner, his face turned up to the stars, his strong arms folded around the little boy she cherished, the low, beautiful rasp of his voice as he sang that song. She thought of the shape of his lips, how the planes of his face looked gilded in moonlight.
Tally sat straight up in bed. “You are engaged to another man,” she told herself sternly. “What are you thinking of J. D. Turner for?”
He was not her fiancé. He was not the man she was going to marry!
She knew drastic measures were called for. She needed to do a reality check. Dogwood Hollow was her reality. Teaching grade five and staying on the main roads was her reality. Herbert Henley, and his hardware store, and his stainless steel appliances were her reality.
Herbert was probably not going to appreciate what an important moment this was in their relationship, a pivotal moment, but she was choosing him as her reality touchstone, and she had never needed one more.
Resolutely she picked up the phone beside her bed and dialed Herbert’s number. She tried very hard not to look at the red digital numbers on the clock. She was pretty sure Herbert was not going to be able to remember the last time he was up at two in the morning, either.
She was about to hang up after the eighth ring, when his sleepy voice answered the phone.
“Hi, Herbert, it’s Tally.”
“Tally?” She could hear him groping around, knew the precise moment he found his glasses and looked at the clock. “Is something wrong?”
“No, I just wanted to hear your voice.”
The silence was long and surprised. “Oh. When the phone rang I thought there must be something wrong at the hardware store.”
“No…I just missed you.” The words tasted like dust in her mouth.
“Oh…my.”
Well, what was she expecting at two in the morning? The truth was that she was expecting, I really miss you, too, Tally.
After a long silence, he ventured, “How was the drive?”
He had to ask that! What was she going to answer? I had a wild moment of freedom and I’m terrified I could become addicted to moments like that?
“The drive was fine,” she said, and then wondered if their conversations were always so wooden, so lacking in enthusiasm.
Of course they weren’t! She’d called at two in the morning. She felt like the whole life she had planned for herself was dissolving in front of her and desperate, she said, “I was thinking, Herbert, we should probably set a date.”
“A date,” he said, baffled. “For what?”
“Our wedding!” She could hear a faintly hysterical note in her voice.
“Oh, that. There’s no rush is there?”
But suddenly it did feel to her like there was a rush. A terrible rush. Because if she didn’t commit to him, totally and irrevocably, she had the uneasy feeling that alarming and unpredictable things were going to happen.
“I just thought maybe we should solidify things between us.” It occurred to her, her wording was not in the least romantic.
“Could we discuss this some other time?” His voice sounded plaintive. Did she hear a little edge of panic in it? As if maybe he didn’t want to set a date? Of course not. She had called him in the middle of the night. He was half-asleep and surprised. This was really a totally unfair thing for her to do to him.
“How about in general terms?” she said. “As in were you thinking, fall?”
“This fall?” he squeaked.
“Or winter, or spring?”
“This isn’t like you,” he said.
“I know,” she said sadly.
“How about we talk about it when you get home?”
“Sure, that would be fine.”
“Bye, love,” and he hung up the phone with unseeming swiftness.
Bye, love was not the same as I love you. Had she ever told Herbert she loved him? She didn’t think so. It wasn’t that kind of relationship. It wasn’t about flowers and stolen kisses and midnight phone calls.
She realized she had not said the words I love you to Herbert, because she did not love him. She liked him. She respected him.
“You’re using him,” she said out loud and felt a terrible wave of shame. But why should she feel ashamed? He knew it was not a grand passion.
But did he know she wanted a stable home for her nephew, the boy she had been charged with raising? Did Herbert know he had been chosen, not because he stirred her heart, but because he was the safest of men? The man least likely to do a crazy thing, or to make her do a crazy thing?
Didn’t that fear live inside her? That she was Elana’s sister. That somewhere in her resided a well of craziness that could blow her world apart?
She could feel the craziness stirring in her now. And with it a deep resentment for J. D. Turner, who had really turned her life inside out without half-trying.
Viewing meteor showers in the middle of the night. Racing down dirt roads. Kissing strangers on his front step.
Oh, she wished she would not have thought of his lips. They were the very thing that could bring out the crazy in her.
And it did.
Because she found herself reaching for the phone again, dialing another number.
“Hello?”
She didn’t say anything for a second, just let the sound of his deep voice caress her spine like a shiver.
“Hi, Tally,” he said, his voice rough with sleep, but not irritated.
“How did you know it was me?” Had she really been going to hang up without identifying herself, before he had guessed it was her? She was not a prank caller!
“Just a guess.” His voice was low and teasing, amused. Sexy. There was no getting around that. His voice was sexy.
“I’m not the type of woman who makes middle-of-the-night phone calls.”
“You know what?” he said softly. “I don’t think either of us knows what kind of woman you are.”
“I do!” she protested, though who she was seemed to
be wavering in her own mind like an oasis in a desert mirage.
He chuckled. “I’m glad you phoned. Life needs some surprises.”
Well, her life was certainly turning out to be surprising. The man who was supposed to enjoy hearing from her in the middle of the night, hadn’t been the least bit pleased by the sound of her voice! And J.D. sounded, well, distinctly happy that it was her.
“So, what’s up?” She heard rustling, pictured him sitting up in bed, plumping the pillow behind his head, settling in to talk to her, not trying to figure out how to get rid of her. He’d be like a cat, relaxed and alert at the very same time.
It occurred to her she had not pictured what Herbert looked like in bed.
She forced herself to contemplate that now. She pictured Herbert, in flannel, button-up pajamas with a monogram over the pocket.
And she bet J.D. wore nothing at all.
“Well, goodbye,” she said, hastily, thankful for the anonymity of the phone. J.D. couldn’t tell what she was thinking, couldn’t feel the heat in her cheeks.
“Hey, wait a sec. Did you phone for a reason?”
If she hadn’t phoned for a reason, what would he think?
“I called to tell you Herbert and I are setting a date,” she said in a rush.
Silence. And then his voice, deep, calm, sensuous as a touch, “I think I probably could have waited until morning to hear that.”
What did that mean? That he didn’t want her to set a date? That he didn’t want her to marry someone else? She could not let her mind go there. All her carefully laid plans for the future would be threatened if she let her mind go there.
“Actually, I didn’t call to say that,” she said, clearly babbling like an idiot, and just as clearly unable to stop herself, “I called to thank you, for the meteor shower. I know it’s something that Jed will remember for the rest of his life.”
“Great. I’m glad.”
“Okay. Good night.”
“Good night, sweetheart.”
“Oh! I have asked you not to call me that.”
He laughed, a deep low rumble that made her tingle all over. “Sorry. I forgot the rules. Perfectly understandable in the middle of the night, wouldn’t you say?”
“I suppose.”
“Have you ever considered the possibility you have too many rules?”
“Never.”
“How’s a man supposed to remember them all?”
This was all wrong. Herbert couldn’t wait to get rid of her, and she couldn’t get J.D. to hang up the phone.
J.D. who called her sweetheart, and was teasing her.
It didn’t mean anything. She knew that. If his dog was a female, he’d call her sweetheart. He’d called the waitress that at the hamburger joint where they had stopped for lunch. The waitress, young and chubby and not at all attractive, had looked like he’d given her the greatest tip of her day.
So, it was just his way. Still, there was something rather delightful about lying burrowed down deep in your covers, the phone cradled against your ear, and a man’s deep voice on the other end, calling you sweetheart.
“I have to go,” she said.
“Hmmm. Well, thanks for calling. What date did you set?”
“I said we are setting a date, not that we have.”
“I see the distinction.”
“I wish you wouldn’t make fun of me.”
“You’re the one who called. It’s kind of like asking for it.”
She considered this for a moment. She had always thought girls who phoned boys were the kind who were asking for it.
Is that what he thought? Was there a double meaning to what he had just said?
“Well, goodbye. See you tomorrow.” Hang up the phone, she ordered herself, but she didn’t. Neither did he.
When the silence had stretched long enough, she said, “What did you have planned for tomorrow? Just so I’ll know what to wear.”
“I have something dirty planned.”
His voice seemed like a low, sensuous growl. She gasped. See, she had phoned him in the middle of the night, and he had assumed she was the kind of girl that asked for it, and now he was planning something dirty.
“Dress appropriately,” he said, and hung up the phone.
She stared at the receiver for a long time before she managed to put the receiver back on the cradle.
Something dirty. Dress appropriately. Good grief, she had a child with her. What was he thinking?
She shivered and tried to work herself into a proper state of indignation about it, but the truth was she felt warm and delicious as she thought dreadfully naughty thoughts, snuggled under her covers and slept.
J.D. hung up the phone, folded his arms behind his head and stared at the ceiling. Tally Smith had phoned him. In the middle of the night.
And he was willing to bet there was nothing about that in Tally Smith’s long and convoluted rule book.
Which meant he could put a little check mark beside item number two on his list. She was learning rules were meant to be broken. There was hope for her after all.
And she had allowed herself to be surprised tonight. So that was two things with check marks beside them on his list.
But he could see something he hadn’t quite expected. He couldn’t just cross those things off the list, as if they’d been accomplished. It would take repetition and practice to truly convert her to a more relaxed way of thinking.
He thought of the meteor shower, the child in his arms, Tally next to him, the song that had bubbled out of him. He thought of glancing over at her and seeing her face tilted toward the stars, her expression so earnest and full of wonder.
Who had really been surprised? Him or her?
He’d been the one who blinked first, who had left on the run. He’d left the Palmtree parking lot like a scared pup. Tally relaxed and happy was quite a bit more dangerous a proposition than Tally uptight and rule-bound. He wondered, not for the first time, if he was playing a game of which he couldn’t control the outcome.
But no, she had phoned.
Amazing progress, really. Now was no time to doubt himself. To give up. Especially since she had sounded a little bit intrigued about getting dirty. Who would have guessed?
He thought he could probably combine lessons three and four; that germs are rarely deadly and that small boys and big ones need to get dirty.
And then it would be a week or two of reinforcement of all the lessons she had learned, and he could send her home, confident in the knowledge that she knew what a woman should know.
But send her home to what?
A man who would take that newfound thing within her and kill it deader than a doornail? J.D. had to contemplate that for a minute.
Tally Smith and Herbert Henley were setting a date? A wedding date?
He hated that. And he didn’t even want to think why he hated it, why there was a burning in his chest, and a restlessness in his soul that made him want to throw something, or break something, or rip something apart.
As if he wasn’t working himself into enough of a lather, another thought chased through his mind.
Of Tally with Herbert. Intimate.
He considered getting up, storming through the house and throwing his engine right off the kitchen counter and out the window—without opening the window first.
“Hold it there, pal,” he said. He studied his ceiling suspiciously, trying to figure out exactly what she had been trying to tell him.
The problem with a woman was that they spoke in codes nearly unbreakable by a man of average intelligence. He looked at the clock, hesitated and then picked up the phone. He dialed information first, and then dialed the number.
“Hi? Is this Herbert? J. D. Turner, here. No, no, Tally’s fine. I just wondered if you could answer a question for me. Well, I know three in the morning is a slightly unusual time to call, but I’m new to this daddy stuff and I tend to keep myself awake worrying about it. So this was my question—when you and Tally get hi
tched, what kind of notice do I need to give Jed? I mean all of us would have to decide exactly what to tell him of course, but—
“You and Tally are not getting married in the foreseeable future? You’re telling me I don’t have to say anything to him right now? Good, good. That’s all I really wanted to know. Thanks, Herbert. You seem like a real good guy.” He almost said he thought he would make a terrific dad for his son, but somehow the words just got caught in his throat.
He hung up the phone, and thought, his worries assuaged, that he could go right to sleep now.
But instead he wondered about a man who wouldn’t show a little more curiosity about another man calling wanting information about his wedding.
Didn’t Herbert feel slightly possessive of Tally? Protective? Didn’t he feel jealous? Now that J.D. thought about it, it seemed strange that Herbert was okay with Tally getting in a truck with a strange man and driving halfway across the country with him.
It seemed very plain to him that Herbert didn’t love Tally.
He found that hard to believe. She was so beautiful and smart and tender. Prickly, but that was just a cover for all that softness underneath.
It was very plain to him that in order for Tally to fully understand number one and six on his list, she was going to have to give up Herbert.
He glanced at his clock and groaned. Ever since the moment he had heard knocking on his door interrupting his rendition of “Annabel the Cow” his life had been on a collision course. With what he hadn’t been certain, until now.
Now he was fairly certain he was on a collision course with destiny.
“Just introduce her to the greatest mud bog in the world, and don’t complicate your life,” J.D. ordered himself. He wondered, grimly, if he was ever going to sleep again.
Of course, she had a talent for complicating things.
The next morning he showed up at the motel with a lunch packed by the diner. As usual Tally hadn’t followed directions.
He’d said to be prepared to get dirty, and he was dressed for the mud bog. His oldest shirt, his jeans with the knee out and the rear worn just about through.
And here she was, all dressed in white!
And not in virginal white, either. No sirree, Tally Smith was dressed in a way he had never quite seen before, and he had trouble keeping his eyes inside his head.