“I’ve read a lot on the subject,” she said. “You see, if we’re friends first, and the lovemaking isn’t perfect, we’ll be able to work through that.”
He couldn’t help laughing. “After that kiss, you doubt whether we’ll be good together? Get real, Dori. Physically, we’re a perfect match. You know it and I know it.”
A pulse beat in her throat, and she swallowed before replying. “Okay, let’s say we are physically compatible, and we make love tonight.”
His heart thudded in his chest. He’d give several years of his life for that chance.
Her voice quivered just a little, betraying her banked passion, but she soldiered on with a determination he found endearing. “If we made love tonight,” she said, “we could be blinded by sexual excitement and miss the signs that we weren’t compatible otherwise.”
He grinned and stuck out his hand. “Meet Tanner Jones, who’s already a blind man.”
She batted his hand away. “That’s ridiculous. One little kiss. Surely you can still be objective about our relationship.”
“Speak for yourself.”
She sighed mightily. “Then apparently I have to do the job for both of us. Momma always said men think with their…male equipment.”
Tanner chuckled and turned around to retrieve his hat. As he dusted it off, he glanced at her. “And what were you thinking with when you dropped my hat in the dirt?”
“I…I was-”
“Dori, we’re no different. Both of us are crazy to make love, but if you want to wait, well wait. It won’t be easy, but I guess when we finally do give in, the whole experience will be better.” He paused and gazed at her. “If that’s even remotely possible.”
Dori clasped her hands in front of her and gave him a long, approving glance.
He pointed a finger at her. “And stop that. I’m only human, and that look is what got us started in the first place.”
“I’m just so pleased with you, Tanner. That’s all.”
“Pleased with me?” He didn’t think any woman had said those words to him before. He kind of liked it, but he wasn’t sure he understood what she meant. “Why?”
“For respecting my wishes.”
He thought about that while he adjusted his hat. It didn’t take much imagination to picture Devaney riding roughshod over any idea she had, so he guessed it would be a big deal to her if a man paid attention to what she said. He shrugged. “I’ve gone out with women who didn’t really mean it when they told me no. Unfortunately for them, I always stop when a woman asks me to. I don’t enjoy playing those guessing games.”
“I don’t play games.”
“I’m counting on that.” He longed to touch her again but didn’t dare. He braced his hands on his hips to keep himself from reaching for her. “Better take me back, Dori.”
“Right.” She started down the road, and he fell into step beside her. “You did make reservations at the Prairie Schooner Motel and RV Park, like I suggested?”
“I did.” And secretly he’d hoped he could cancel that reservation, but it didn’t look as if Dori would invite him home with her tonight. His more noble self argued that she was absolutely right in delaying their lovemaking. But his baser self was frustrated as hell.
AFTER LEAVING TANNER at the Double Nickel, Dori drove home to her two-bedroom tract home. Although most of her neighbors were low-income families struggling to get by, they kept up their yards and applied paint to the wooden trim of the stucco homes when necessary. Cardboard pumpkins and witches were taped to many front windows in anticipation of Halloween two weeks away. It was the sort of street she could feel safe taking little Jim trick-or-treating on—if she’d be allowed to do that this year. Halloween fell on a Thursday, which wasn’t her day. Her jaw clenched at the reminder of all Jimmy Jr. had stolen from her.
She wasn’t surprised to see Jimmy’s big truck backed up into her driveway, blocking her way into her garage. She half expected him to turn on the spotlights mounted on the cab roof in an effort to frighten her into a dazed panic the way he trapped deer when he went hunting at night.
She pulled up at the curb so he’d have a way out when he left. And he was definitely leaving.
As she got out of the car he materialized from the shadows and sauntered toward her. “Where you been, Dori Mae? It’s after eleven, and accordin’ to Travis Neff, you left the Double Nickel at nine-thirty.”
“You should be ashamed of yourself, making Travis spy on me like that.”
“It just came up in conversation when I dropped in there about ten. After all, you and that ol’ boy from Dallas were making quite a spectacle of yourselves. Can’t expect people not to talk.”
“Go home, Jimmy.” She could smell beer on his breath, but he wasn’t drunk. His speech was too precise, his gaze too clear, for him to be impaired by alcohol. She started past him.
He stepped in front of her again. “What do you think you’re doin’, bringing that ol’ boy to town? Trying to make me jealous, Dori Mae?”
“No.” She hated the thought that he’d create a scene in her front yard. Some of the neighbors had been a little suspicious of her moving in. Not only was she the only divorcée on the block, she’d defied the powerful Devaneys to gain that status, which labeled her a troublemaker. But in the two years she’d lived in the neighborhood, she’d proven to everyone that she could live as respectable a life as the traditional families surrounding her. Screaming fights on the front lawn weren’t part of that picture.
“Then maybe you’re getting a little lonely. Is that it, darlin’?”
She had an uneasy feeling where this was headed.
“Because if you want a little action, you know right where to come,” he drawled. “We had us some good times in bed, sugar.”
She remembered that he’d had some good times. At first she’d been happy to make him feel good and figured eventually he’d want the same thing for her. Then she’d begun to realize that he was as selfish in lovemaking as he was in everything else. “That’s over with, Jimmy.”
“I’ll be damned if it is.” He made a grab for her, but she pushed him away. “Don’t be like that, sweetheart,” he whined, but he stayed put. A few months after the divorce he’d tried to force himself on her and she’d kneed him in the crotch. A friend had suggested she might require some self-defense to handle Jimmy, and she’d practiced with a dummy she’d made from an old pair of jeans stuffed with rags. Jimmy hadn’t tried anything similar since.
“Look, I’m only trying to get on with my life,” she said. “And I wish you’d do the same.”
“But that’s the problem. You belong in my life, but you’re too danged stubborn to see it. Little Jim misses you something fierce.”
Dori’s heart twisted at the mention of her son. “Then let him live with me,” she said, although she knew she was wasting her breath.
“Here?” Jimmy swept an arm back toward her little house. “Is that how you want him to grow up? You don’t even have a computer, Dori Mae. In fact, you don’t have a damn thing to offer that boy.”
Except all my love. But she didn’t say it. “Let me by, Jimmy. It’s late, and we both have things to do tomorrow.”
“Don’t think I don’t remember tomorrow’s Monday. That ol’ boy from Dallas better be gone tomorrow. I don’t want him within ten miles of Little Jim. You got that?”
“Good night, Jimmy.” She shoved past him and started toward her front door, opening her purse on the way. She kept pepper spray on her key chain.
He didn’t follow her, but he didn’t leave, either. “You could lose those Mondays, you know,” he said, raising his voice. “If the judge was to hear that you’d been behaving like a common streetwalker in front of the boy, he’d probably want to take those Monday visitations away.”
She winced at how that would sound to any neighbors with their windows open on this warm night. She put the key in the lock with trembling fingers. Jimmy’s threat was ridiculous, of course. But she’d thou
ght his threat about getting custody of Little Jim had been ridiculous, too.
“It’s just your pride making you act this way, Dori Mae. You can’t admit you made a mistake walkin’ out on me. That’s okay. I won’t ask you to apologize, like some guys might. Just come back, and everything will be fine.”
Dori was afraid any response would only escalate the conflict. She opened the door.
“You’ll come back,” Jimmy called out as she stepped inside. “I guarantee you’ll come back!”
Dori closed the door and latched the dead bolt. Shaking, she leaned against the doorjamb. She’d never hated anyone in her life until Jimmy took away her son. But she’d never loved anyone as much as she did Little Jim. If Tanner Jones wouldn’t marry her and give her a chance to get Little Jim back, then she’d do whatever she had to do in order to be with her son every day. Even if that meant crawling on her hands and knees back to Jimmy Devaney, Jr.
DORI WOKE BEFORE the alarm buzzed, as she did every Monday morning these days. And as she did every morning, especially on Mondays, she said hello to Little Jim. Unfortunately, it was a picture of him and not the real thing that grinned back at her when she wished hun a good morning. The picture was her current favorite and sat in a small frame on her bedside table. In the snapshot he stood in her backyard, his right arm cocked as if to throw the football she’d given him for his last birthday.
But he was only pretending, because he would never have risked throwing the ball at her and perhaps hurting her or breaking the camera. The camera was their lifeline. Every Monday she took a roll of Little Jim for herself. Then she let him take a roll of her so he’d have a whole new batch of pictures every week. She didn’t know what he did with his pictures of her, but she’d covered the walls of her bedroom with snapshots of her son. For now, it was all she could think to do.
She threw back the covers and got out of bed as nervous excitement churned in her stomach. She glanced out the bedroom window at a sky that reminded her of a blue pillow slept on by a white cat. The wispy clouds didn’t look as if they held rain. She was glad of that. Plenty of things could go wrong today, and it wasnice to know the weather wouldn’t be one of them.
She lived neatly, but her little house was cleaner than usual this morning. If all went well, Tanner would visit her here before the week was over. Therefore, she’d rearranged her sparse secondhand furniture and vacuumed the corners of every room. She’d washed the bright curtains she’d sewn for the windows and set out vases of yellow and white chrysanthemums from her yard. Padding barefoot from room to room, she studied the effect. Tanner would like it, she decided. He’d stated clearly in his letters that he didn’t care for pretension. With her income and legal debts, she didn’t have to worry about offending him on that score.
She dressed in jeans and a Power Rangers T-shirt that matched the one Little Jim would no doubt wear today. She’d found the T-shirts on sale and they’d become a Monday uniform for mother and son, a subtle show of solidarity. Then she plaited her hair into a long braid down her back in anticipation that Little Jim would want to ride to Abilene with the convertible top down.
Standing at the sink with one eye on the clock, she forced herself to eat a piece of toast and drink a glass of orange juice. She didn’t want to be starving by the time lunch came, considering that Tanner would probably insist on picking up the tab. Judging from his clothes and his truck, he didn’t have a lot of money to spare.
Finally, she grabbed her sunglasses and her purse and headed out the door. Even after months of doing it, she hadn’t become used to driving to the Devaney mansion to pick up her son. She felt more like a hired nanny than a mother as she spoke into the intercom at the iron gate and drove down the winding road toward the house. The curving entrance was pure pretension. When the Devaneys bought the property it had been flat and treeless, like most of the terrain around Los Lobos. They’d laid out the winding road up to the house and planted fast-growing cottonwoods along it, as if the trees had dictated the route and not the other way around. Dori had always figured the long route up to the house was supposed to create anticipation for what lay at the end.
In Dori’s opinion, travelers up the driveway were in for a disappointment. The house squatted at the end of the road like a huge building block. No porches softened the austere lines of its two-story bulk, no bay windows added a graceful curve to the exterior and no balconies hinted at romanticism or whimsy on the part of the owners. The sole nod to architectural interest was a flurry of white shutters framing square windows cut into the redbrick facade. Dori accepted the uninspired lines of her little house because she couldn’t afford better. But these people could.
She parked in the circular driveway near the front door. At least the flowers in their rectangular beds were beautiful, but then again, Dori didn’t think there was such a thing as an ugly flower. If there had been, the Devaneys would have demanded the gardener plant some, she thought with a wicked smile. She gave the doorbell a firm push.
Jimmy Jr.’s mother answered the door. Dori had discovered long ago that Crystal Devaney channeled all her time and energy into keeping her job as James P. Devaney’s wife. To that end she’d endured a face-lift, the rigors of a personal trainer, hunger pangs and boredom.
Then Little Jim had come into her life, and in her first and only grandchild she’d finally found a distraction that met with James P. Devaney’s complete approval. In fact, the child had brought a new spark to their relationship. Dori had always known she was fighting more than Jimmy in trying to regain custody of her son. Little Jim’s grandparents needed him desperately.
“Oh, hello, Dori.” Crystal always sounded astonished to see Dori every Monday morning, although Dori had been appearing at precisely eight-thirty each Monday for six months. “You’re welcome to come in, but I don’t think Little Jim feels up to going with you today.”
5
DORI FOUGHT DOWN the panic that rose within her at Crystal’s statement. Not living with Little Jim when he was healthy was hard enough. Thankfully, he hadn’t been sick in the time they’d been apart, but she’d dreaded the time when he’d catch some flu bug.
Cold sweat trickled down her back as she stepped inside and started for the stairs. “What’s wrong with him? Does he have a fever?”
“He’s not sick.”
Dori turned back toward Crystal. In her casually elegant turquoise jumpsuit she could easily pass for forty instead of her true age of fifty-three. She reminded Dori of a woman posing for a hormone replacement therapy advertisement. “I thought you said he didn’t feel well enough to go out today.”
“I said I didn’t think he’d feel up to it.”
Dori tensed. “And why is that?”
“He’s afraid you’re taking this construction worker from Dallas along today.”
A chill ran through Dori as she gazed into Crystal’s eyes, the same green as Jimmy Jr.’s. “And who told him that?”
Crystal shrugged. “He could have heard it anywhere. The whole town’s talking about you contacting this man through a matchmaking magazine. I kept hoping the whole thing would go away. It’s quite embarrassing, really. I thought you had more class than that, Dori Mae.”
“I doubt a five-year-old spends much time listening to town gossip. Someone in this house has prejudiced him against Tanner before he had a chance to form his own opinion. I suppose I should have expected that, but for some reason I didn’t.”
Crystal crossed her arms and stared at the Oriental hall runner beneath her feet for a moment. When she looked up again her expression had softened. “Dori, honey, I really wish you’d give Jimmy Jr. another chance. I can understand that you’re lonely, but some stranger from Dallas isn’t the answer. Not when you have a fine man like my Jimmy who wants to give you the world. He’s just devastated about this misunderstanding you two have had. Send this construction worker home. James has offered to grant Jimmy Jr. time off so the two of you can take a second honeymoon. How does a trip to the Bahamas
sound?”
Dori closed her eyes. She couldn’t be upset with Crystal for offering bribes—the whole family operated that way. And of course Crystal saw nothing but good in her only son and couldn’t figure out why Dori didn’t want him. Dori understood that fierce mother love more than ever now that she had Little Jim. “I’m sorry, Crystal. I wish Jimmy and I were more compatible, but we’re not. We never will be.”
“Then at least think of the child.” Crystal’s voice was thick with unshed tears. “He doesn’t understand why his momma and daddy don’t live together anymore.”
Dori gazed at her in speechless agony. There was nothing to say to that. Little Jim didn’t deserve to pay the price for his parents’ mistakes, but he would pay them, anyway.
“Momma?” In jeans and his Power Rangers T-shirt, Little Jim stood at the top of the stairs, not running down to her for the first time in his life.
The tears pooling in Dori’s eyes blurred his image. “Hi, sweetheart.”
“Daddy said some ol’ boy from Dallas might come with us today, Momma,” Little Jim said in a fair imitation of his father’s drawl.
Dori grimaced, wondering how much else of Jimmy Jr. was rubbing off on her son. “There’s a very nice man named Tanner Jones I’d like you to meet,” she said. “If you really don’t like him, he doesn’t have to go with us.”
Little Jim grabbed the banister for support and swung his leg back and forth. “Daddy says this ol’ boy doesn’t like kids.”
“Your daddy—” Dori caught herself before she criticized Jimmy Jr. Every book she’d ever read on divorce advised against running down the ex-spouse to the child. “Your daddy might have misunderstood,” she said. “Tanner likes kids a lot.” Actually, Dori didn’t know that for a fact, but if he didn’t, he’d be history, anyway.
Crystal stepped forward. “You don’t have to go today if you don’t want to, L.J.”
Holding Out For A Hero Page 5