Читать книгу The Last Breath - Kimberly Belle - Страница 14

8

Ella Mae Andrews, October 1993

ELLA MAE CURLED her legs underneath her on the porch chair and began reading the Kingsport Times News article for a third time. Something about Representative Quillen and East Tennessee State University’s medical school, but she couldn’t seem to concentrate on the words. She was too focused on watching the house next door, watching for signs of Dean.

As new neighbors, Dean and her husband tolerated each other, but just barely. The men waved from behind lawn mowers and swapped small talk in the driveway, but their civil smiles deteriorated into scowls as soon as the other’s head was turned, and their attempts to hide their mutual dislike from the rest of the neighborhood were halfhearted at best.

Dean and Ella Mae, however... They tolerated each other just fine.

From the moment the moving truck backed out of the driveway, Dean had been circling Ella Mae with the single-minded determination of a mountain cat. The more he pursued her, the more she welcomed the attention, and lately even encouraged it, sending smoldering looks across flower beds and timing trips to the mailbox to coincide with his.

There was definitely something wrong with her. Something that made her brain-dead where Dean was concerned. Something that allowed her to consider casting aside everything she thought she believed about marriage and loyalty.

But Dean made Ella Mae’s heart beat a little faster and her head feel a little lighter when he gave her so much as a casual wave, and when he smiled at her, a crooked close-lipped grin that promised all sorts of naughtiness, she had to remember to breathe.

Like now, for example.

Now she forced air into her lungs, a swift series of whispered gasps, and pretended to concentrate on the stupid article. The letters do-si-doed on the page in time to her heart, because on the other side of her Times News, Dean was coming up the porch steps.

And he was smiling that smile again.

“Pretty enough to be an ad,” he said.

Ella Mae looked up with feigned surprise, and the newspaper fluttered to the porch floor. In his tight gray T-shirt, white linen pants and suede slip-ons, Dean was sexy and citified in a way folks around these parts found uppity. Ella Mae found him positively delectable.

“Oh, hi, Dean. I didn’t hear you come up. What did you just say?”

“That you looked so pretty just now.” He pointed to the rumpled paper on the ground. “I wish I’d taken a picture. The Kingsport Times News could plaster it on every billboard within a hundred miles. Would make themselves a fortune.”

Ella Mae’s blood fizzed in her veins.

He leaned a hip against the porch railing, his eyes intent on hers. “Allison and the kids are in Knoxville, shopping. They won’t be back until tonight after dinner.”

“Oh.” One word, said on an exhaled breath, was about all she could handle. His family was ninety miles away, Gia at cheer practice, Ray at the pharmacy. Ella Mae and Dean were alone.

Alone. The thought flipped and kicked in her belly.

A corner of Dean’s mouth rode upward. “It seemed like perfect timing.”

“Perfect timing for what?” Ella Mae fought to keep her voice level around her heart pounding in her throat.

“To ask your thoughts.” He moved closer, stepping over the crumpled paper and pointing to the wicker chair next to hers. “May I?”

She nodded and he sank into it, his knee brushing against hers.

“I was thinking of getting the girls a dog. They really miss their friends back home, and well, I was hoping a puppy would help, or at the very least distract them enough to make new friends. What do you think?”

Ella Mae pictured it, a tiny tornado of fur and floppy feet, barking and bounding around the yard, digging up flowers and turning the lawn into a virtual minefield. Ray would detest both the noise and the mess. But Ella Mae was thrilled. She’d always wanted a dog.

“I think a puppy is a marvelous idea.”

“Really?” His face lit like the rising sun, a smile so unselfconscious she couldn’t help but return it. “You don’t have pets so I was worried...well, I’m glad you like my idea.”

“I do.”

“Excellent.” He leaned forward, propping his elbows on his knees, and the chair creaked under his weight. “I was also hoping you could give me some advice on where to get one.”

Ella Mae thought for a moment. “You could go to a pet store, but it’ll be expensive. Otherwise, I have a friend over in Mount Carmel who breeds Maltipoos.”

“What the heck’s a Maltipoo?”

“A mix between a Maltese and a poodle. They’re precious. Your girls will adore them.” Ella Mae tried not to think of Dean’s wife when she said the word girls, but Allison popped into her mind anyway. She quickly returned the conversation to the puppies. “So what do you think?”

Dean cocked his head and gave her a look that tingled all the way down to her toes, a look so suggestive it might as well have been adulterous. “Are we still talking about puppies?”

Puppies?

Dean laughed at whatever he saw on Ella Mae’s expression. “I think a Maltipoo sounds perfect.”

Ella Mae stood and motioned for Dean to follow her into the house. She didn’t speak, but she held her back a little straighter, her shoulders a little squarer, her head a little higher, all the way through the living room and down the wallpapered hallway into the kitchen. Only her hips swayed loose and free, putting on a show, she knew, underneath the ruffles of her white tennis skirt.

A show she knew he was watching. His gaze was as good as leaving a trail of blisters down her entire backside, as if she was being chased through the house by a bonfire.

In the kitchen, Ella Mae reached for the phone on the wall and dialed Shelley’s number, leaning against the counter and twisting the cord around a finger while Dean watched from the doorway. It was an all-consuming, toe-curling scrutiny that made something deep inside her belly buzz and hum.

When Shelley answered on the third ring, Ella Mae gave her friend a brief rundown of Dean’s request.

“Shelley says she has two female puppies available,” Ella Mae told Dean, dropping the mouthpiece to her shoulder, “one black and one cream colored. Both are weaned and ready to go.”

Dean’s smile was white-hot, and her knees caved a little. He took three long strides across the checkered linoleum. “Tell her we’re on our way.”

“We?”

He gestured to her tennis outfit. “Unless you have something else you need to do.”

Other than a tennis lesson she could just as well skip, Ella Mae didn’t have anything else she needed to do. She didn’t even have anything else she wanted to do, other than spend the rest of her day playing with Dean Sullivan’s fire.

She should say no. Say no and show him the door and avoid any more contact with Dean. Did they make blinders for wives with wandering eyes and handsome neighbors? Then again, blinders only help if you were willing to turn your head, and Ella Mae was not.

Nor was she willing to turn him down.

Ella Mae pressed the phone back to her ear. “We’ll be there in about thirty minutes.”

If Shelley answered, Ella Mae didn’t hear. By now Dean was close, so close. Close enough for her to feel his heat. Close enough for him to touch her. He slid a palm to her waist, and she let him. He pulled her up against his body, hard and lean and ready, and she practically fainted with relief.

Finally.

He lowered his mouth to hers, and at the very last second, she somehow came to her senses.

“Shell, it may take us a teeny bit longer.” The words tripped and tumbled in a hurry off her tongue, right before Dean took the phone from her hand and dropped it onto the cradle.