One More Knight

by Kathleen Creighton

  “Here’s another one.

  ‘Today I wore my new platform shoes to school. So did Kelly Grace. I had to sneak mine past the judge and Aunt Dobie in my backpack, but it was worth it. I think they look bitchin’, especially with my new jeans. Brooke Shields, eat your heart out!”’

  She rocked back and looked up at him. “God-remember that?

  Platform shoes. Bell bottoms…designer jeans.”

  “Sideburns,” muttered Troy, rubbing his clean-shaved jaw.

  “Leisure suits,” Charly sang, laughing.

  “With bell bottoms…”

  “…in bulletproof polyester!”

  “Afros!”

  “Pooka beads! Mood rings!”

  “Saturday Night Fever!”

  Charly put her hand over her heart in a mock swoon. “I must have seen that movie six times, at least. John Travolta was bitchin’! Did you guys say that, too-bitchin’? The equivalent of ‘Way cool, man…totally awesome.’ you know? Like… outasight?”

  “Not within earshot of my mama, I didn’t,” said Troy dryly, going to sit on the edge of the bed, close enough to touch her, but not doing so. He felt off balance and unsure of himself, like a dinner guest finding himself witness to a family crisis. How close should he come? How close would she allow him? How much right did he have to share such intimate revelations?

  She chuckled and went back to the diary, reading aloud under her breath now and then, slowly turning pages, smiling at first. But gradually her face changed, losing all traces of laughter and finally acquiring that tight, fragile look that be knew the wrong word, the slightest touch could shatter.

  “Here.” Her voice sounded breathless and unsteady. “July 4-this is where it starts. No, wait-” she flipped pages “-a little before that. Here we are-July 1. ‘Dear Diary, Guess what! I think Richie Wilcox likes me.’” Her head came up and her eyes sought his, bright with fear and hope, like a kid about to take her first jump off a diving board and wondering if there was gonna be anyone there to catch her when she did.

  “Go ahead,” he said, but something had tightened around his chest so that his voice was as airless as hers. He scooted his hand across the bedspread toward hers.

  She took it and clasped it tightly, twining her fingers with his as trustingly as a child. And he felt something burst inside him, spreading liquid warmth all through him…warmth, and strength and certainty. When once again she bowed her head over the diary in her lap and began to read aloud the words, thoughts and feelings she’d transferred there from her heart so long ago, any doubts he’d had about his right to share them with her had gone. Right then and there he knew his place was here, right here beside her, holding her, comforting her, protecting her, in any way he could, as far as he was able, for as long as he had breath left in his body.

  So he held her hand while she retraced the rocky and painful pathway of her seventeenth year. When her voice trembled and broke, he moved unhesitatingly closer, sat beside her and wrapped her in his arms and held her. And when her tears finally came, he soaked them up in the front of his shirt.

  The last entry he read for her: “‘Today I am leaving this God Forsaken place forever…’”

  Troy finished in a cracking voice, then closed the diary and put it aside on the nightstand while he and Charly held on to each other, laughing and trembling. Part of that, he hoped, he wanted to believe, was a kind of giddy joy in each other, in comradeship discovered, in the newness of having someone to cling to in a time of trouble. And part, he knew, was sheer relief-on her part, that the past had been faced at last, and on his, that she’d finally allowed him to share it all with her.

  All, at least, except for one small part. There was still the promise she’d never broken, the one secret she hadn’t dared to share with another soul, nor even commit to the pages of her diary. Troy was pretty sure he knew what the secret was, and he had an idea Dobrina must have guessed it, too. He wondered if Charly even realized how clear the answers were, to anyone who knew the whole story-to anyone who’d read her diary.

  And whether, even now, she’d be willing to risk letting her son in on the secret she’d promised his father she would keep for him forever.

  A silence had fallen over them, filled with the trip-hammering of heartbeats and little slowing-down sighs. To Charly it seemed almost like the aftermath of lovemaking, except that she felt in no way satiated, or even drowsily content. The sultry intimacy of Troy’s body heat energized her like a cold shower, frosting her body with goose bumps; the fresh-soap smell of his sweat filled her head with a low-level buzz, like the first drink of champagne.

  She stirred and turned toward him, her hand finding a nest in the hard-muscled hollow of his belly, just below the V of his ribs. She let it ride there for a moment, rising and falling like a leaf on a wake. wondering if she dared let it drift toward more-interesting places, wondering whether he’d deny her again, and how she would cope if he did.

  She was a long way from understanding what it was that made Troy Starr tick-though to be honest, until now she’d been too preoccupied with her own pain to even try. Certainly she’d never met anyone in her life quite like him, had never even imagined they still made guys like him-and they probably didn’t, at least not in L.A. He was…definitely one of a kind. Well, okay, maybe one of a pair, the other being his brother Jimmy Joe, and she could definitely understand a little better now what it was that had made a bright, sophisticated lady like Mirabella fall in love with the redneck truck driver from Georgia.

  Mirabella, Charly remembered, had once told her she’d thought of Jimmy Joe as a knight. Her very own knight, come thundering to her rescue that Christmas Eve in his big blue Kenworth charger. Crazy, Charly had thought at the time. Romantic lunacy. Her best friend had simply lost her mind.

  And even if it were true, and even if Charly did happen to need rescuing-which she most certainly did not-there were no more knights. Surely Jimmy Joe had to be the last one left in the world. They just didn’t make them anymore. Or did they?

  Boy Scouts, now…that was another story. And as far as she was concerned, there was one too many of them in this room.

  “Ma‘am, you mind tellin’ me what you’re up to?” Troy’s voice was groggy, the words slurred.

  Charly’s hand had left the soft-firm flesh of his belly to skim across the front of his boxers like a kingfisher over the surface of a pond, sending shivers rippling through his body. Her laugh was soft and dangerous. “I warned you about that ‘ma’am’ stuff.”

  “Let me rephrase the question, Your Honor.” His breath caught; her hand settled…became an excruciating warmth. “Woman, what in the hell are you doing?”

  “That’s better,” she purred with the deceptive laziness of a lioness watching a herd of gazelles. “I’m trying to seduce you, of course.”

  He laughed weakly. “Now, there’s a challenge.”

  Her hand moved on, riding downward along the hard ridge of his thigh, then slowly up again on the softer inside. He felt his bones melt. Heaven…no, torture. Her thigh came between his; her body weight shifted and slid lower, caressing his side. Her warm breath poured over his stomach…her tongue made darting forays into his navel.

  A groan, composed of equal parts pleasure and agony, rose from deep in his belly. “Didn’t you ever hear of overkill?”

  She chuckled, modestly pleased. “I wasn’t sure what it would take. I’ve never seduced a Boy Scout before.”

  She was unprepared when his body suddenly hardened to iron beneath her and his legs came around her like steel coils. The next thing she knew, she was on her back with her arms imprisoned above her head, pressed deep into the pillows, with her heart pounding, heat thundering through her body and Troy’s body hard and hot on top of her.

  “Where do you get this ‘Boy Scout’ stuff?” he growled as his mouth came swooping down, taking quick, possessive nips from her throat, from her lips, startled and open. Her lips grew swollen and tingled like fire; her breaths came sh
arp and hurting. “You have a damn short memory.” His grip on her arms became a caress, sliding upward toward her wrists; his fingers wove themselves through hers. His mouth sank into hers, and his tongue trapped her whimper of need deep in her own throat,

  His kisses took possession of her, sensation became a deluge, a monsoon, wiping out thought. Her body arched mindlessly, seeking him, while her legs shifted, making a place for him between. Her breath came in soft, tiny cries.

  “After last night,” she gasped, when his mouth finally released hers to explore the pulsing cords along the side of her neck, her lips moist and throbbing, slurring the words, “I thought-”

  “I know what you thought.” He pulled back suddenly, bringing her with him, and kneeling between her legs, with one swift motion tore her T-shirt up and over her head and threw it impatiently aside.

  His fingers dipped beneath the elastic waistband of her Tweety Bird boxers, yanked them down over her hips. She drew her legs up one at a time, watching him, wide-eyed and trembling, as he pulled them off and hurled them away and then lifted and settled her, naked, astride his thighs.

  “Lady, for somebody as smart as you are-” his voice was thick and guttural, his hands gentle on her arms, a feather’s touch with the power of a lightning strike “-you don’t know very much about what makes a man tick. Not a damn thing, as a matter of fact…”

  His hands left her arms to travel down her sides, over her hips and back up again, where they found her breasts aching for his touch. And gently nested them. And then, not at all gently, squeezed and rolled and tugged the hardened, nerve-rich nipples, an exquisite agony she felt in the deepest parts of her, felt in the soles of her feet, in the nape of her neck…so sweet an agony she cried out and arched her back, pushing her breasts deeper into his hands, pressing her soft, vulnerable body against the unyielding hardness of his.

  Bewilderment filled her, mixed with a need so sharp and bright it felt like despair. Together they made a pressure inside her that was not unlike tears.

  “I don’t understand,” she whispered, her head thrown back, eyes tightly shut, frightened without knowing why. “What…is it you want from me?”

  His chuckle was a liquid, tickling warmth at the base of her throat. “More than you can give me right now, darlin’…I know that.”

  “I want you,” she cried, dizzy, cold with wanting. Trembling… trembling. “Isn’t that enough?”

  “Not even close.” His hands were a moving, liquid warmth, flowing over her body, her sides, her belly, her thighs. She felt his fingers come between her thighs…an intimate intrusion that made her gasp…and yearn.

  “Okay…” Her throat, her whole body tightened. She lifted her hands to his shoulders, then curled them around his neck and hung on with a kind of desperation as, trembling, she choked out the words she’d never said to a living soul before. “I.…need you.”

  “Getting warmer,” Troy murmured, intimately cradling her. Helplessly she began to rock against his hand. “What I want,” he whispered as his fingers stroked her, and her breathing became whimpers, “I want you to look at me.” His fingers slipped into her body…slowly, gently…a lightning bolt, tearing her apart.

  “Open your eyes…look at me.”

  Somehow she did, and found his eyes like beacons in the darkness. Beautiful eyes… She clung to them desperately, while his fingers pushed deeper, probed for her body’s center, searched, it seemed to her, for her very soul. Clung to them while her world, her reality, her heart was shattering into a million pieces, and her body dissolving into shuddering, throbbing chaos in his hands.

  “Now…say my name. Say my name.”

  “Troy! Troy…”

  Chapter 14

  February 4, 1978

  Dear Diary,

  Well, it’s out now. Colin confessed. He says he didn’t mean to, but I guess yesterday he got in a big fight with his parents-about me, of course-and he didn’t like what they were saying about me, and the baby, and all, and anyway, he just blurted it out that it’s his baby, too.

  I’m not as sorry as I thought I would be. It was getting pretty lonely there for a while. It’s pretty neat, actually, having somebody to share things with. Like, today Colin came over and I let him put his hand on my stomach so he could feel the baby move. I told him I think it’s a boy. He says he thinks so, too.

  I’ve been thinking that maybe it won’t be so bad after all, marrying Colin. He is my best friend. At least he understands me, and I know him better than anybody else. And we can still go to college, at least Colin can. The judge says he will help us until he finishes school-I don’t know if that includes medical school or not, though. It seems like that takes an awfully long time. Our baby will be ten years old by then. And I will be twenty-seven-almost thirty.

  Thought for the Day: I guess I am probably not going to make it to California after all.

  On Monday morning Troy left Charly making local calls on the phone in the motel office while he and Bubba went across the highway to use the pay phone at B.B.’s Barn. Half an hour or so later they met back in number 10 to compare notes.

  “My father is better,” Charly said, getting the most important question out of the way first. “I talked to him for a few minutes. He sounded pretty groggy, but he says they might start running tests tomorrow, and that they should know about the surgery by the end of the week. Then I called Aunt-oh, boy, it seems funny calling her that now, you know it? Aunt Dobie? I mean, she’s my stepmother! Wow.” She gave a low, bemused laugh and shook her head. “That’s gonna take some getting used to. Anyway, I talked to her-she’s at the house. First thing she asked me was if I’d showed the diary to Cutter. You know how she is-tact isn’t her strong suit.”

  She took a breath and turned away from him, pushing her hair back with both hands, leaving her face unguarded for a moment, and vulnerable as a child’s.

  “You going to?” Troy asked softly. All morning he’d been watching, wary and uncertain, for some sign, some indication of where she meant to go with this thing, whether she meant to fight for her son or give up the battle. Knowing it wasn’t just her life, her future on the line now, but his, too.

  Charly let the breath out in an audible hiss and, instead of answering him, said, “She wants us to stay at the house.” She made a small sound that might have been a laugh. “I asked her how Cutter felt about that.”

  “What did she say?”

  One corner of her mouth lifted in a sardonic little half smile. “You know Dobrina. She just went, ‘Humph! It’s not up to Cutter, it’s up to me.’ Anyway, I told her there wasn’t much point, since we were probably going to be leaving town soon.”

  Troy raised his eyebrows. “That so? Thought you had a court date.”

  Her gaze shifted past him to a far upper corner of the room, and she let out another of those testy-sounding breaths. “Yeah, well…that’s another thing Dobrina had to tell me. Apparently the charges have been dropped-surprise, surprise. Oh, except for the reckless driving.” She shrugged, her lips tilted wryly again. “They’re issuing me a traffic citation. There go my insurance rates.”

  “You get a hold of the car-rental outfit?”

  “I did-called their 800 number. The good news is, they’re going to bring me another car. The bad news is, the soonest they can get one here is late this evening or first thing tomorrow morning.”

  “That doesn’t sound too bad,” said Troy. “You in so much of a hurry to leave? Thought you had some unfinished business to take care of.”

  He said it in that overly careful and even tone people use when they know they’re walking a fine line with somebody and don’t want to push too hard. Because Troy thought he knew where Charly was right now-on the edge, and scared to death she was gonna slip and fall.

  Last night she’d come close to taking that flying leap she’d been avoiding all her life, the one into the black abyss-the terrifying uncertainty of “I love you.” He’d thought he had her, brought her right to the edge, hel
d out his hand and asked her to trust him enough to take the leap with him, but at the last second she’d stepped back onto firmer ground, the safer and more familiar ground of “I want…I need.”

  Troy knew what it was like to jump into blackness without any idea what might be waiting for him below. He knew what it was like to freeze up in the doorway, too. He knew that pushing somebody under those circumstances was the worst thing you could do, and that for most people the paralysis was temporary, and sooner or later they’d work their courage up in their own way.

  The thing that scared him was, he’d also known some people who never did get up the nerve to make that first jump.

  “What about you?” she asked him, once again avoiding the question. “Did you talk to your brother? Are he and Bella-?”

  Troy was nodding. “I guess there’s good news and bad news there, too. The good news is, they’re home safe and sound from Atlanta, which is by no means a given, in case you’ve never driven in Atlanta traffic. The bad news is, Mirabella’s all in a tizzy.”

  “Which is not an unusual state for Bella to be in,” said Charly, dryly. “What is it this time? Aside from prewedding nerves.”

  “Well…seems her sister Summer pulled in late last night.”

  “Summer…yeah, I know her. She’s the younger one-the one with the kids. But she was expected, wasn’t she? I mean, she was coming for the wedding-”