“Thanks. I rather liked that part myself. I’m sort of wishing I hadn’t put in that part about it being a joke.”
“She’d never be able to fit six hundred boxes into the Miata, even if there was the ghost of a chance she could bring herself to buy something so nonnutritious.”
“Hmm.” Ellie thought of the mysterious Twinkies wrapper, but kept the discovery to herself. “Looks like you won’t be going home to your fiancée tonight, then. No ransom, no mercy. Now get out of those wet boots and let’s go.”
“Wait a minute. You couldn’t come fishing with me, but you expect me to go camping with you?”
She picked up his tackle box. “You don’t get a choice, Ross. As your best man, it’s my duty to inform you that you are now officially kidnapped.”
“Hot damn. Tonight’s my bachelor party.”
“Bachelor shower,” she corrected.
“What’s the difference?”
“At a shower you get presents.”
He cocked his head, considering. “And at a bachelor party...?”
“You don’t.”
“Big difference,” he said.
“I thought you’d see it my way.”
THIS WAS GOING TO BE great. Ross balanced a tin plate on his knees, picked up the hot dog he’d just roasted—his third—and bit into it with gusto. Next to him, Bobby Joe was eating pork and beans out of a can, and on the other side of him, Travis was twisting the top off a Bud Light. Across the campfire, Ellie was roasting marshmallows on a stick. Shorty Silvers, Brad Elston and Ned Laney had gone down to the stream to do some “night fishing,” they’d said, but in actuality to smoke the cigars Ross had seen Brad slip out of his backpack and into his pocket. There wasn’t a detectable scent of tobacco in the cool spring night, just the pungent smell of burning hickory limbs. Occasionally a murmur of distant voices floated up from the bank below.
This was the life, Ross thought as he savored the slightly charred taste of the hot dog and the camaraderie of his friends. He remembered with clarity the last time he’d spent the night in these woods near the falls. It had been the late August night before he left for Chicago, college and the life he now lived...for better or worse.
“Hey, Ellie,” Travis said. “Roast a marshmallow for me, would ya?”
“Sure.” She swivelled the stick in her hand and a marshmallow slid off the end and into the fire. “There. Yours is roasted.”
Bobby Joe laughed. “Good one, Ellie.”
“Oh, yeah. Real funny,” Travis said dryly. “Toss me that bag of marshmallows, Applegate.”
“You’re not getting the whole bag.” She took a single marshmallow from the bag and tossed it across the fire.
Travis caught it in one hand. “Can I borrow your roasting stick?”
“The Ozarks are full of tree limbs,” came her answer. “Get up and get one.”
“I gave you my hot dog,” he protested. “The least you can do is let me borrow your hickory limb so I can roast one measly marshmallow.”
“You only gave me the hot dog because you let it catch fire and it got a little burned.”
“I don’t eat burned wieners.” Travis popped the whole marshmallow into his mouth and washed it down with a swig of beer. “A man has to have some standards. Ain’t that right, Bobby Joe?”
Bobby Joe answered with a profound belch. “Damn straight. Men like us live by our standards.”
Ross took another bite of his hot dog, in no hurry to be asked his opinion on standards. Ellie smiled as she caught his eye through the shimmer of heat waves above the fire and he smiled back. Yes, he thought. This was the perfect bachelor party. Shower. Bachelor shower. There was a suspicious-looking lump covered by an orange tarp sitting between the two large three-man tents. Ellie’s small, one-man tent was pitched farther left, a discrete distance from the other two—the only deference paid to the fact that she wasn’t one of the guys. Ross supposed the tarp covered his bachelor presents. No telling what embarrassments lay ahead of him tonight, considering his friends and the standards they lived by. He just hoped Ellie’s presence would mute what could otherwise be a raucous and randy gift-giving. Although why he even gave it a thought was a mystery. Ellie had proven through the worst of hormone-laden adolescence that she could handle these males. Hell, she could probably handle these and a dozen more and never even break a sweat. It had been a long time since she’d needed a bodyguard...if she’d ever really needed one at all.
The cigar smokers returned to the campsite, sans the cigars, but bringing the faint odor of tobacco back with them. Shorty squatted down next to the fire, midway between Travis and Ellie. Ned turned a bedroll on end and sat on it, balancing his weight with the balls of his feet, his knees jacked upward in a sharp, roller-coaster angle. Brad circled the group like a hungry wolf and dropped to the ground next to Ellie. Close to Ellie, Ross noticed. Nearly in her lap.
“So what do we do now, Ellie?” Ned asked.
“Yeah,” Travis seconded the question. “This is the first time I’ve been out this late without Tami since I got married. I’m not going to bed down before midnight.”
“Yeah,” Shorty said with a yawn. “What did we do at your bachelor party, Bobby Joe?”
“We got tanked.”
“What about yours, Travis?”
“Drunk as toads in a huddle.”
Ned frowned. “Well, what about Harlen Daniels’s bachelor party? He doesn’t drink.”
“Since when?” Brad asked, sprawling on his side, which, Ross noticed, put his head almost in Ellie’s lap.
“Since he got engaged to Reverend Minks’s daughter Georgia,” Bobby Joe answered. “And at his bachelor party we sat around and told dirty jokes until we passed out from boredom.”
“What are bachelor parties like in Chicago, Ross?” Shorty wanted to know. “You must have been to a few.”
“Drinking and dirty jokes there, too,” he said with a shrug. “A lack of imagination must be pretty universal.”
“I thought every bachelor party had to have a stripper.” Ellie looked expectantly around the group as she licked the marshmallow stickiness off her fingers.
“You volunteering?” Brad grinned up at her and Ross wondered if he really thought that was funny. It was pretty obvious no one was laughing. But with a glance at the faces lit by the fire’s glow, Ross realized no one had taken the idea seriously, either. The other men were all grinning, too, waiting to see how Ellie would put Brad in his place.
She took her time, sucking the last bit of sticky sweetness off the pad of her thumb...and looking sexier than Ross had ever imagined she could. And suddenly he couldn’t stand to sit there a minute longer and watch Brad Elston ogle her as if he wanted to put her fingers in his mouth and suck—
Ross practically jumped to his feet, sending his plate and half-eaten hot dog skittering along the edge of the fire. “Let’s go swimming,” he said. “I think we need to cool off a little.”
Six pair of eyes turned on him with startled precision. Twelve eyebrows lifted in nearly simultaneous question. “Swimming?” Ned repeated. “Now?”
“Yes, now,” Ross said, feeling foolish, but still determined to get Brad away from Ellie and maybe drown him. “Come on, let’s go.”
“Sit down, Ross. It’s too cool to swim.” Ellie’s frown made little lines around her full and sensual mouth. “You’ll catch pneumonia and Tori will never forgive me.”
“We’ve gone swimming in temperature’s half again as low as this,” he stated stubbornly. “And my health really doesn’t fall under the best man’s job description, does it?”
The tension crackled like the green hickory limbs in the fire. Everyone looked uncomfortable as he and Ellie stared at each other across the campsite. Then, with a shrug, he played a strictly male trump card. “You guys aren’t chicken, are you?”
“Damn it, Ross.” Travis pushed reluctantly to his feet. “I didn’t even bring my swimsuit.”
“Since when has that ever stop
ped you?” Bobby Joe laughed as he, too, got to his feet. “Ellie’s the only one of us who doesn’t go skinny-dipping.”
“More’s the pity,” Brad said, and Ross couldn’t wait to get him into the water.
“If it wasn’t your last camp-out as a bachelor, Ross, you could go swimmin’ without me.” Shorty unfolded like a carpenter’s ruler and slapped a streak of dirt off his pant leg. On his way up, Ned picked up the bedroll and tossed it toward the tent.
The grumbling continued, but good-naturedly now, and Ross began to feel better. Until he glanced expectantly at Brad, who hadn’t made any move to get up. “Let’s go, Elston,” he said pointedly.
“You guys go on.” Brad swung his body into an upright position, bringing his shoulder flush against Ellie’s. “I try to stay out of cold water on nights like this.”
“Nights like what?” Travis pulled his shirt up over his head and Ross came very close to asking him why he was doing so in front of Ellie. But they’d all been bare-chested in front of her at one time or another. Ross included. It just had never bothered him before.
“Yeah,” Shorty asked. “What’s so special about this night?”
Brad grinned, his lascivious gaze sliding to Ellie. “I think this is going to be my lucky night and I sure don’t want to be Chicken Little.”
Ross’s jaw clenched, but Ellie just laughed. “As opposed to other nights when you’re just a chicken?” she said.
Bobby Joe, Ned, Shorty and Travis all burst out laughing. “You asked for that, Brad,” Travis finally said. “Now are you coming with us or staying here so Ellie can humiliate you in private?”
Brad shrugged complacently. “I’ll stay. She only abuses me because she loves me. Isn’t that right, sweetcakes?”
Drowning was too good for the son of a—
“Ross?” Bobby Joe grabbed his arm. “You started this, now get the flashlight and lead the way. We’re going swimmin’!”
Ross scowled one last time across the campfire, but Brad didn’t move and Ellie didn’t tell him to and there really wasn’t anything else to be done. Except lead the troops to the swimming hole, leaving Ellie alone with Turkey Lurkey. “Who needs a flashlight,” he said tersely. “Real men navigate by the stars.”
BRAD’S CONVERSATION WAS pretty well limited to three topics: sports, life insurance, which he sold, and sexual innuendo. Ellie had exhausted the subjects of sports, term and whole-life policies, and was just about to switch to a philosophical discussion, which she hoped would put him right to sleep, when Ross and the others returned. Their deep-chested laughs rose up the bank ahead of them and, with a sigh of relief, she got to her feet to greet them. Snow White welcoming home the seven dwarfs. Except there were only five of them and she was a long-distance throw from being Snow White.
Ross was the first one to emerge from the darkness and he strode toward her, solemn and purposeful. The dying fire sent up a shower of sparks that burnished streaks of gold in his wet dark hair. He missed a step when he saw her, but not so anyone would notice. Except she noticed. She didn’t know what was wrong with him all of a sudden, wasn’t sure she wanted to know. Whatever he had on his mind, though, hadn’t been soothed by a swim in the cool waters below the falls. She could see the tension in the set of his shoulders, the tightness along his jaw, the accusing expression in his eyes.
Accusing? Ellie pondered that impression as the other men reclaimed their places around the campfire. “Whew!” Shorty ran a long hand across his crew cut. “That was great! You guys shoulda been there.”
“We were busy,” Brad said as if he had something to brag about. “Ellie didn’t want to look at a bunch of limp...chicks when she could be alone with her hero.”
Shorty looked all around. “You mean, Superman was here?”
“Yes,” Brad said importantly. “You’ve uncovered my mild-mannered secret disguise. I am Superman.”
Ned grinned. “You look more like The Joker to me.”
“The Joker is Batman’s nemesis, you goofball.” Bobby Joe threw his balled-up socks, missing Ned by a yard. “Superman has to pit his wits against Lex Luthor.”
“Well, Brad doesn’t have any wits to pit,” Shorty said. “So he can’t be Lex Luthor.”
“Wasn’t he bald?”
“Who?”
Travis leaned across Shorty to grab the bag of marshmallows. “Gene Hackman. He was Lex Luthor in the movie.”
“I thought we were talking about Superman.”
“I am Superman,” Brad repeated. “Ask Ellie.”
They all looked at her...except Ross. “He is Superman,” she said. “In his own mind.”
Laughter bounced, deep and male, around her.
“Floored you again, Elston.” Travis popped a whole marshmallow into his mouth and talked around it. “Ellie’s never going to give you the time of day.”
“You guys are just jealous because she wanted to stay here with me instead of going skinny-dipping with a bunch of—”
“Limp chicks,” Ned supplied flatly. “Yeah, you said that already. Tell us something we haven’t heard before.”
Brad patted Ellie’s hand. “Don’t worry, sugarbear. I would never tell these hayseeds what we’ve shared together. They have no concept of...paradise.”
“Give it up, Elston.” Bobby Joe handed him a beer and Brad leaned forward to take it, moving his hand away from Ellie’s before she could do it for him. “You wouldn’t know what to do if Ellie ever looked at you any way but cross-eyed. Isn’t that right?”
Ellie shook her head at their nonsense, noting that Ross had not only not joined in the teasing, he hadn’t come anywhere near a smile, either. If anything, he looked even grumpier than before. He couldn’t think there was even a smidgen of truth in all of Brad’s posturing. Ross knew better than anyone that she’d never been impressed with machismo and he had to know that if any man could change her mind, it wouldn’t be Brad Elston. And yet there seemed to be a correlation between Brad’s flirting and Ross’s scowl. Either that or he was wishing Tori had come up with the Twinkie ransom.
Ned covered a yawn. “If you want me to be awake when you open your gifts, Ross, you’d better start now.”
Travis chomped another marshmallow as he nodded agreement. “I don’t know what’s happened to me, but I can’t stay up all night anymore like we used to.”
“You got married and turned into a husband,” Shorty said. “That’s what happened.”
“What did we tell you, Ross?” Bobby Joe said. “Marriage ruins a man’s iron constitution. Why, these days I do good to stay awake past ten.”
A wave of yawns—some real, some. not—passed from one iron man to another. Bobby Joe finally got up and walked barefoot to the orange tarp. He handed the presents, one at a time, to Brad, who passed them to Ellie, who sent them on around the circle to Ross.
“Open mine first,” Brad said.
Ross picked up the paper bag just beside the envelope Brad had brought. “That’s from me,” said Ned. “It’s a new reel for your fishin’ rod.”
“So it is.” Lifting the reel from the sack, Ross held it up in the palm of his hand so everyone could see. “Thanks, Ned. I really appreciate having this. Can’t wait to try it out.”
Travis leaned over to pluck a flat package from the rest and toss it into Ross’s lap. “Open that one. It’s a tool.”
It was a tool, a crescent wrench, wrapped in three pairs of jungle print briefs. Travis’s face got red. “Tami did the wrapping. I told her not to put that underwear in there.”
Ross tossed a pair back. “You keep those, Trav. Surprise Tami when you get home.”
Bobby Joe guffawed. “She’d be surprised all right. Probably start calling him her little jungle kitty.”
Travis threw the briefs, hitting Bobby Joe in the arm. “You wear ‘em,” he challenged. “See what Carla starts callin’ you.”
“I’ll just do that.” Bobby Joe folded the skimpy underwear and made a show of tucking it inside the waistband of hi
s jeans. “I’ll have her purring five minutes after I get home.”
“Five minutes is a long time for you, Bobby Joe.” Shorty and Ned laughed.
Travis reached over and snatched a second pair of jungle briefs from Ross’s wrench. “Well, if Carla’s gonna be purring, Tami will want to, too. Those two women tell each other everything.”
Ellie smiled at their easy banter, still watching for the first signs of a silver lining in Ross’s gloomy mood. Brad’s gift—a fifteen-percent discount on a life insurance purchase—didn’t make any improvement whatsoever. The collapsible pool cue, a joint gift from Shorty and Bobby Joe, brought a genuine smile, but it faded a little too quickly to be a real mood shift. Even the inflatable doll—a gift all the guys claimed to have brought, but that none of them would actually admit bringing—aroused only a couple of reluctant . laughs from Ross. When the doll was put away, still in the packaging, Ellie raised up on her knees and dug deep into one pocket. Pulling out a set of keys, she threw them at Ross, who caught them on a reflex. “I couldn’t wrap my gift in studly underwear and it’s not anything you can blow up, but... congratulations, Ross. Be happy.”
He looked at the keys and the Chevy emblem on the fob, and then his eyes found hers through the faint smoke wisping upward from the embers. “These are the keys to Hot Rod.”
His voice broke slightly and Ellie had to swallow a knot of emotion in her own throat before she could answer. “You’ll have to call her Rodette from now on, I guess.” .
“You can’t give me your car, Ellie. You love it too much.”
“Not that much,” she lied. “And if love counts, she’s always been half yours, anyway. I’m just giving you my half.”
He shook his head, still clutching the keys as if they were a fragile flower he had to protect. “No, I can’t accept this, Ellie.”
“I’ve already signed over the title to you.” She gave him her best and bravest smile. “Please, Ross. I want you to have it. I’ll send Chip and Sarah to Springfield Friday morning to pick her up. It’ll give him a thrill to get to drive a great car for a change.”
A Bachelor Falls Page 11