Читать книгу Down Home Dixie - Pamela Browning, Pamela Browning - Страница 10

Dixie’s desk was situated at the very front of the Yewville Real Estate Company’s office where she could watch people walking past and greet them when they came in. That’s because she had started out as an administrative assistant to Jim Terwilliger, the broker in charge, and his wife, Mayzelle, who liked to help out around the office too often to suit everyone else. Mayzelle meant well and had a kind heart, everyone agreed. They just could do with a good bit less of her advice and company.

Right now Mayzelle was on the phone with Glenda at the Curly Q Beauty Salon discussing what to do about her botched hair color, which was supposed to be Desert Dream, but had turned out more like Copper Kettle. She was trying to talk Glenda into working her in immediately.

“Maybe Rose Inglett would switch with me? She’s done it before when it suits her,” Mayzelle said. “I mean, most people would give anything for my Friday slot?”

Dixie, who was inserting new pages in her listing book, tried to concentrate on her task. It wasn’t easy, considering Mayzelle’s distracting conversation and the fact that last night Dixie had been kissed by possibly the best kisser she’d ever encountered. Who knew that Yankees could kiss like that? It pained her to learn what she’d been missing all these years.

Dixie had done her share of making out in her time, and she’d even had a serious boyfriend or two or three. Well, okay, make that four. First Milo Dingle, the boy she’d been engaged to be engaged to in high school. Then Rob Portner, the guy who delivered firewood to everyone in town. And after that, Thad Ganey, who’d gone and enlisted in the navy. Last, and definitely least, Sam Hodges, who’d run off with Tattin Kelly when they were all staying in a rented condo at the beach last Fourth of July. The thing with Sam still rankled, since he’d neglected to pay his share of the condo rental. Plus, Dixie had loaned Tattin her best beach cover-up for the weekend and never got it back. If she’d known those two had the hots for each other, she’d have made sure Tattin borrowed the cover-up with the peach-juice stain down the front.

“Dixie Lee,” Mayzelle said, interrupting her reverie. “I’m going to run over to Glenda’s for a bit? I should only be an hour or so. You don’t mind answering the phones, do you?”

“No, Mayzelle, you go right ahead.” Anything to get Mayzelle out of the office for a while; she tended to drive everyone crazy with her high voice and the annoying habit of ending almost every sentence with a question mark.

Mayzelle woke Fluffy, her elderly poodle, who slept under her desk, and with the unresisting dog tucked firmly under her arm, she exited the office, leaving Dixie alone.

Dixie intended to write letters to a couple of friends who had shipped out with the Guard unit. As it turned out, all she did was replay last night’s kiss in her mind. She took out a pen and paper. She even addressed the envelopes. Before she had a chance to get started on the letters, the phone rang.

“Dixie,” said her friend Joyanne calling from California where she’d lived ever since getting her big break in the Luke Mason movie and embarking on a new career as an actress. “I only have a minute before I leave for an audition, but I heard Milo Dingle is back in town. Have you seen him yet?”

“No, and I don’t expect I will,” Dixie said, pulling up her e-mail screen on the computer. Sure enough, there were two messages with Milo’s name in the subject line, so the Yewville grapevine was in gear.

“Don’t be so sure. Milo told my cousin Norm’s wife, Betty, that he’s going to renew his acquaintance with you. He asked her to get your phone number.”

“Milo knows where to find me, not that I care,” Dixie said. “Right about the tenth pew, lefthand side, in church every Sunday. In fact, that’s exactly where he left me twelve years ago.”

“Milo didn’t leave you,” Joyanne said. “I distinctly recall that he asked you to marry him shortly after the collection plate passed by, and you said no. Milo was ambivalent about joining his father on the family peach farm so he moved to Kingstree to help his uncle grow daylilies for Wal-Mart is all. Since you declined to go with him, that does not qualify as leaving you.”

“I’ve never regretted my decision.”

“It would have been a beautiful wedding,” Joyanne said wistfully. “All those daylilies.”

“I was ready to go out with other guys,” she told Joyanne, not that this was real news.

“Speaking of guys, have you heard from Sam?”

“Sam the Mooch and Tattin are planning their wedding. They’re having two singers, eight candelabra and a string quartet at the First Baptist Church in Florence.”

“Has Sam paid you his share of the condo rent yet?”

“He never will, the cheapskate. He liked to let me cover the tab at the Eat Right Café, and I filled his SUV with gas more than once. I wonder why I put up with it for so long.”

“It was only a couple of months, Dixie.”

“A couple of months too long. It’s some consolation that Tattin will have to deal with him for the rest of her life.” She paused. “How are things going with you?”

“I’m up for a part in a family drama for the Lifetime channel,” Joyanne said. “It’s a cross between Little House on the Prairie and Little Women.”

“All that ‘Little,’” Dixie said. “I hope it’s not only a little money.”

“If I get the gig, I’ll be able to buy my own place.”

“Good for you, Joyanne,” Dixie said warmly, finding gig an odd new word in her friend’s vocabulary.

“What’s up with you? Anything important? How did your tooth whitening go?”

“Good. I got two fillings, as well.” She didn’t mention Kyle Sherman.

“Is that the end of your self-improvement program?”

“I’m not sure. Now that I’ve got a new wardrobe for my job, my hair professionally highlighted and my eyeliner tattooed on, I may be through.” Dixie didn’t believe she was vain, exactly, but she was twenty-nine years old and competition for husbands was stiff these days. She’d merely done what she could to maximize her chances in a town where for every hundred females over the age of eighteen, there were only seventy-one males, many of them away in the military or way over the age of sixty.

Joyanne chuckled. “You couldn’t be anything but gorgeous, trust me. Look, I’ve got to run. Talk to you soon, Dixie. Call me if you hear from Milo.”

“Uh-huh.”

They hung up, and Dixie opened her e-mails. One was from Voncille, who had typed a few lines about Skeeter’s running into Milo at the Eat Right that morning. Another was from Milo’s sister, Priss, who invited Dixie to stop by her house for coffee next Saturday. Dixie was quite sure this was no mere coincidence since she hadn’t seen or talked with Priss for ages.

So back to last night. She and Kyle had kissed with the moonlight beaming down so bright it hurt her eyes, which was why she’d closed them as his lips met hers. He had the softest lips. They were firm, too, and he used them to elicit the most exciting sensations. She’d swooned into the kiss, every part of her body primed for more as he used his mouth to tell her how much he wanted her without saying a word. It was a long kiss, that first one, followed by several more, or perhaps it was one kiss broken into several parts because once they’d started neither of them tried to stop. She’d been tipsy only a couple of times in her life, and this reminded her of that loose, dizzy, confused feeling. It was even better though, because instead of falling asleep as she always did after too much to drink, this time, she was fully alert, aroused and ready.

It probably wasn’t the wisest thing in the world to be deeply kissing a man she’d just met. She’d told herself to put a stop to it right then and there. Only, what harm was there in indulging herself for once in her life, as she did by eating a chocolate bar now and then? Kyle T. Sherman would soon be on his way back to Ohio, and she’d never see him again. Never kiss him again.

Last night she’d instinctively looped her hands around Kyle’s neck, pulling him closer until their bodies came into contact. Electrified, she made no objection when he tangled his fingers in her hair, when he cupped her face, his big hands rough against her cheeks. She couldn’t remember ever kissing anyone with so much feeling and longing. Certainly it had never been that way with Milo or Sam or any of the others. She’d let them take the lead, but with Kyle, she’d be satisfied with nothing less than the whole sexual experience. Longed to lie naked with him in the shadows of the oaks near the edge of the lake. Anticipated guiding him into her and being possessed by him, his flesh hammering her into total surrender. It was bewildering to feel such a strong yearning, one that seemed likely to deprive her of all control.

So if they’d kept on kissing, where might it have ended? However, as things were heating up to the next level, they heard a raucous cry, then a large bird swept out of nowhere, its wings nearly brushing their cheeks as it passed. They sprang apart, both startled.

“I wasn’t expecting that,” Kyle said ruefully. His hand still rested on her shoulder, but the mood was broken and they had awkwardly moved apart.

Due to the untimely interruption, good sense returned, and she’d told Kyle that she’d better get a decent night’s sleep because she had clients to meet the next morning. When they reached the end of the dock, he shook her hand, which was really laughable considering their passionate kissing only a few moments past. He’d told her again how much he’d enjoyed spending the afternoon with her family. Then, her lips still tingling from his kisses, she’d fled into the house, where she leaned against the back door and fanned herself into a semblance of normality with a church program.

She hadn’t seen Kyle this morning when she’d headed to work. What he chose to do with his day was no business of hers. Except now that she’d developed a craving for his kisses and a hankering to learn not only how far she’d go but how far he would, she was determined that they’d both have a chance to find out.

While she was still lost in remembrance of last night, Dixie’s boss returned to the office and inquired how her two showings that morning had gone.

While she was filling him in, Mayzelle walked in with her poodle and started heating up a Lean Cuisine in the microwave in the break room. Two other agents arrived, excitedly discussing the current ad for the old textile mill in the Wall Street Journal, and Dixie fielded a call from a man who had discovered one of her listings on the Internet and asked if the house had a bonus room where he and his wife could raise Maine coon cats. Never a dull moment, Dixie told herself as she headed out to show one of the new houses up on the lake to the man with the cats.

Just the same she sure wished she knew what Kyle Sherman was up to.

AFTER HE CLEANED OUT the remaining three flower beds and fired up the Weedwacker to trim the overgrown grass at the edges of the driveway, Kyle treated himself to a long cool drink of water from the artesian well on Dixie’s property. The water bubbled up out of a pipe sunk into the earth and into a pool made by piling rocks in a circle. The water was clean and cold and pure, though some of the rocks had crumbled or were missing. They needed to be replaced and arranged in a downhill pattern so the pool could become a pretty little waterfall. He’d like to do that for Dixie if he stuck around long enough.

He tried to call his friend Elliott, with whom he’d tented at the reenactment. He wanted to let Elliott know that he was okay, but his cell phone was still not working. In the meantime, he noticed that the sky was a bright china blue with no clouds in sight. The lake crested in tiny waves driven by the warm breeze, and after cooling off, Kyle had an itch to get out and about, to explore this place where he had landed through no planning of his own.

He intended his driving tour to encompass downtown Yewville and leave it at that. Smitty’s Garage and Gas Station seemed to be doing a good business with cars lined up at the pumps. And at the town’s only traffic light, drivers saluted each other by raising a forefinger and nodding solemnly. The one depressing sight was the old Yewville Mill building, closed and shuttered. A For Sale sign hung on the chain-link fence that surrounded it and weeds grew up through cracks in the sidewalk. Someone had scrawled Moved To Mexico on the brick wall in front of the administration building.

His turn about Yewville took seven minutes total, beginning to end, after which he wasn’t of a mood to go back to his Hobbit cottage. Besides, he was hungry, so he stopped at the Eat Right Café.

It was a small storefront restaurant with red-and-white checked vinyl cloths tacked to the tables in the booths. The servers, all women, wore pink uniforms with bright handkerchiefs blossoming from their chest pockets, reminding Kyle of pictures he’d seen of 1940s diners. He sat down at the long black counter and checked out the menu stuck between the sugar shaker and napkin holder.

His waitress, who wore a name tag announcing herself as Kathy Lou, favored him with a great big smile as she came to take his order. “You must be the Yankee who’s staying in that old playhouse out there at Dixie Smith’s new place on the lake,” she said.

“How’d you know that?” he asked mildly, noting that chicken bog was today’s blue-plate special and wondering what in the world chicken bog could be.

“Word gets around.”

“Amazing. What’s chicken bog?”

“Local specialty,” Kathy Lou said. “Some people calls it chicken and rice, more soupy than the usual. I don’t recollect where the bog came from, ’less it’s because somebody was trying to impress people that we have a lot of swamp around here, though I’m not sure why anyone would want to do that, considering that all the swamp ever produced was Lizard Man, and it was a long time ago anybody saw him.”

“All right, I’ll order the chicken bog, only if you tell me about Lizard Man,” Kyle told her, and she laughed.

“Around here we figure the less said about it, the better,” she told him as she dished up a plate of chicken and rice. “It involved a teenager riding home through Scape Ore Swamp with a mess of fried chicken in a take-home bucket on the seat beside him. This thing rushed out of the swamp while the kid was changing a tire, and he said it looked like a cross between a lizard and a man. It tried to steal his chicken dinner. They never found the creature, if that’s what you’re wondering.” She started a fresh pot of coffee as the lunch crowd began to converge on the only eatery in town.

Kyle thanked Kathy Lou for the chicken bog recommendation and the Lizard Man story before leaving. As he walked out the door, several other servers clustered around Kathy Lou to “ooh” and “aah” over his magnanimous tip. He was secretly amused and made up his mind to leave an even larger one next time he stopped in.

He rode back down Palmetto Street, spotting Dixie framed in the big window strung across the front of the Yewville Real Estate Company office. She was talking on the phone in an animated fashion, and she was beautiful.

He wasn’t sure what to make of her. Usually he was a stickler for the accepted pacing of a relationship. In other words, first he’d call the woman in whom he’d developed an interest. Then he’d schmooze her, ask her out, and if his luck held, bed her by the third date. Yet with Dixie, he wanted to move faster than that. Dixie seemed to return his interest four times over, if he was any judge of women.

As he pondered this, he found himself on the highway driving toward the town of Camden. He smiled at Yewville’s famous peachoid water tower as he passed it his way out of town. Dolly’s, a truck stop out on the bypass, was doing a brisk business. A short distance down the road, a decrepit motel advertised ROOMS $6 AN HOUR WEEKLY $85 CLEAN SHEETS. After that, the countryside was mostly flat and canopied with trees rising lush and green on both sides of the narrow highway.