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Embarrassed to tears and mad as a hornet, she had drunk up half a bottle of her father’s most expensive French wine and cried until she got sick and threw up, but that was absolutely the last time she’d ever shed a tear.
“Look, I really appreciate your concern,” she said, once more in control of her voice. “I’m just fine, thanks. I don’t need anybody.” There were things she had to do, but first she had to get herself organized, and she could hardly do that under the glare of those steely gray eyes.
The young fireman came back, sloshing through puddles of dirty water on the turquoise pool surround. “Ma’am, I’m leaving now, but I just wanted you to know, the place’ll be guarded. You don’t have to worry none about looting or anything like that. Soon as things cool down some, they’ll start the inspection. In a few days we’ll know how long it’ll be before you can move back in.”
“A few days,” she wailed.
“I’ve got a phone in my truck,” Jake said. “Why don’t we start calling around? If the hotel’s full, we can try that new motel out near the airport.”
Up went the chin again. A motel? Barringtons didn’t stay in motels. “Thanks, but I’ll be staying with friends.” Priss shied away from the fact that the only friend she would even consider asking for help was Faith Harper, and she happened to know that Faith’s place would never fit the two of them.
“Fine, then we’ll call your friend and tell her you’re on your way. Honey, you don’t want to hang around here any longer. There’s a fresh batch of thunderheads making up over to the west.”
Priss glanced over her shoulder. Oh, fine. Just what she needed. More water on her leaky apartment.
“Besides, you’re starting to shake again. You look like hell, and—”
“Really, I can’t tell you how much better that makes me feel.” She glared at him, but her heart wasn’t in it. “Oh, all right. If you insist, I’ll let you help me carry this stuff out to my car.”
“Thanks,” Jake said, his voice deceptively soft. What he ought to do was throw the lady over his shoulder, haul her off to the nearest hotel and dump her in the lobby. Now that he could see past her butt, what he saw was the kind of female he’d always gone out of his way to avoid. Spoiled little rich girls who pranced around like they were shod in solid gold.
On the other hand, it didn’t take much to see that this spoiled little rich girl was barely hanging in there. Somewhat to his surprise, Jake admitted that in a little less than a couple of hours, what had started out as a simple, wholesome case of lust had run the gamut from amusement to dislike, and was rapidly turning into a grudging case of admiration.
Gathering up an armload of boxes and bags, he followed her down the shallow steps to the parking lot, which was almost empty except for a utility truck and a pumper. The fireman was right. She was getting a late start on finding herself another bunk.
Over in the far corner behind the utility truck, Jake spotted the peach-colored tail fin just before he saw her stop short and heard what sounded almost like a moan, but might have been thunder. Setting his load down on a raised flower bed, he hurried forward just as Priss dropped out of view. By the time he reached her, she was on her knees, stroking a crumpled fender that was wrapped halfway around her left rear tire. Someone had evidently been in one hell of a hurry to get out of there.
“I don’t believe it,” Priss wailed. “I just don’t believe it! Do you know, this has been absolutely the worst birthday of my entire life?”
Jake could commiserate. From what he’d seen so far, it sure hadn’t been cupcakes and lemonade. Stroking his chin and trying to look judicious, he walked around her car, surveying it from all angles. He had a feeling even touching up a scratch on one of these vintage babies was no small deal, but then, what did he know? His auto repair skills began and ended with baling wire and duct tape.
“Frame might not be bent, but I doubt if you can drive it like that, even if I could pry out the fender.”
“I don’t know who to call first, the hotel or the body shop.”
“I thought you were going to stay with friends.”
“Oh, don’t bother me with details now!”
“Right. Okay, honey, if you want to hang around here and figure it out, I reckon I might as well shove off.” He took a long look at the towering thunderheads, another at the row of damaged apartments, and then made as if to leave.
No way was he going to leave her there, but Jake knew a thing or two about dealing with women.
“Wait—that is, if you don’t mind staying another few minutes, could you please just wait here until I find out where I’m going to be staying?”
There—that wasn’t so hard, was it? She’d even said please. “No problem,” Jake replied easily. Standing at ease, he figured he could give her about five minutes before those clouds busted right wide open.
The young fireman slogged over to the utility truck, his boots making almost as much noise as the rumbling thunder. “Ma’am, you don’t want to be hanging around here with that storm coming up. I heard tell you’re expectin’, and I know for a fact that it don’t take much to upset a woman when she’s in the fam—”
Priss stood slowly. “You heard what?”
Glancing from Priss to Jake and back again, he said, “I think it was Miss Ethel that said—I ran into her at the post office this morning when I went by to mail-order me some—that is, she said you were by that baby place out on the highway this morning, and—”
Priss said a word Jake didn’t think ladies even knew, her face about three shades pinker than her car. Shifting his position, he moved in beside her and slung an arm casually over her shoulder. Like she’d been doing it all her life, she leaned into his side.
Jake cleared his throat. “Son, you don’t want to put too much stock in town talk. Some folks got nothing better to do than flap tongues.”
Priss nudged closer to her newfound protector. “Miss Ethel never told a true story in all her life,” she declared, and the fireman nodded nervously. Sweating under his heavy gear, he backed toward the utility truck.
Jake figured it was time to change the subject. “Maybe we’d better get on with those phone calls, Priss.”
The lady was not to be distracted. “I know how it happened. Miss Agnes told Miss Minny about—well, about something I was thinking about doing, and Miss Minny must have told Miss Ethel, and by the time Miss Ethel found somebody to pass on the story to, she’d got it all mixed up, as usual.”
The fireman’s gaze dropped to her flat stomach just before he swung up into the driver’s seat, and Jake decided things had gone far enough. “Come on now, honey, before that lightning gets any closer. I hope you stuck in a decent pair of shoes while you were packing.”
“Shoes?” She blinked, having apparently forgotten that his arm was still around her, practically welding her to his side.
Reluctantly, Jake gave her some space. “Those, uh, things you’re wearing are right pretty, but I wouldn’t want you to get a charley horse trying to walk in ’em.”
“My Jellies are perfectly comfortable, but thank you for your concern.”
“Jellies. Uh-huh.”
Priss knew he was just trying to be kind to her, and she appreciated it, she really did. Only she was having trouble hanging on to what little bit of pride she had left, and Jake’s kindness was distracting. Under the circumstances, even noticing the way he made her feel when he touched her was downright unnatural.
She could hardly go to Faith’s, and by now the hotel was probably full. She’d have to call a cab and head for Dallas, because there was no way she was going to sleep in some chintzy little motel with airplanes taking off right over her bed.
Jake started gathering up her parcels just as a streak of lightning split the sky wide open. “Come on, honey, you need a friend and I’m offering my services.”
“I have plenty of friends, thanks.” She had Faith. And Rosalie, who was in Dallas visiting her sister. And the preacher and his wife, because she had paid for an exterminator to deal with the cockroaches that had infested the parsonage. They’d been too embarrassed to talk about it until she’d found out about it accidentally.
And of course, her kids at the hospital, because she read to them a couple of times a week. And she’d come to know a few of the staff there.
Reaching for her wooden chest, she said, “That sounded real rude, didn’t it? And here you came all this way out of the kindness of your heart.”
Jake let it pass. It wasn’t his heart he’d been thinking about when he’d set out to pick her up that afternoon, although he had to admit it might’ve given an extra thump or two back there when she’d been hanging on to him like trumpet vine on a fence post.
The first drops of rain drilled down like a hail of bullets just as he reached through the open window of his dusty pickup and opened the passenger door. Ever since it had been kicked in by a riled-up stallion, the latch didn’t work half the time. “Come on, get in,” he said, tossing her things into the jump seat. “Give me your car keys.”
Without a single protest, she handed them over, then climbed into the truck while he raised the top of her convertible and locked the doors. He was wet by the time he climbed in beside her, switched on the ignition and backed out of the parking lot.
Out on the highway, he cut her a quick glance. She had a defeated look about her that worried him. In fact, this whole business was beginning to give him a spooky feeling, like trouble was about to blindside him and there wasn’t a blamed thing he could do about it.
Part of it was the way she looked—part of it the way she smelled, all clean and sweet and womany. Part of it was the way she felt when she huddled up beside him, hanging on to his arm, letting him protect her.
And part of it was because she was a broody female and he was a horny male, which was a downright dangerous combination.
All things considered, Jake decided that this hadn’t been one of his better ideas. The minute he discovered that every time he laid a hand on her, certain reflexes kicked in, he should’ve tipped his hat and walked away.
Now that it was too late, he had an idea that Miss Barrington, fancy pedigree and all, was going to be more of a handful than he’d bargained on.
Priss’s social skills, never particularly high, were at an all-time low by the time they finally passed Buck’s Texaco and Barbecue and headed out of town. She told herself it was only because she had never been burned out of her home before. A thing like that could knock the starch out of anybody.
But it wasn’t only the fire. Part of it had to do with the man beside her. With his hat pulled down low on his forehead, he looked grim and dangerously masculine—more like Clint Eastwood than Clint Black. She couldn’t believe she had let herself be talked into going home with a perfect stranger just because both the hotel and the motel were full.
And in his truck, too—not even her own car. Not that she felt much like driving, even if she could. The way her luck was running, she’d have wrapped her car around a telephone pole before she even got past the city limits.
“Is it very far?” Suddenly she was bone tired.
“Few more miles.” He’d been saying that ever since they passed the last stop sign on the way out of town. “The garage has probably picked up your car by now.” He’d called right after he’d checked the hotel and motel.
“Where exactly did you say it was?”
“Your car?”
“Your home.”
“Oh. The Bar Nothing. It’s up the road about half a dozen more miles.”
“Is that what you call it?”
“Is that what I call what?”
“Your home. The Bar Nothing?” Priss knew she was chattering, she couldn’t help it. She always chattered when she was nervous.
Clint Black Eastwood shot her a cool glance. “That’s what it says over the main gate.”
She twisted the bangles on her arm. Her mother would have called them gaudy. Her mother thought anything more colorful than basic black, worn with pearls and a touch of gold, was gaudy, which was why Priss had sort of gone overboard after her mother died. It had driven her father wild.
She stared at the big booted foot on the accelerator and wondered if Jake thought she was gaudy. She wondered if he thought she was sexy. Goodness knows she tried to be, not that it had ever done her much good. Her father had ruined her chances with the entire male population of New Hope, first with threats, then with promises.
According to her mother, who had never gotten over her Virginia-hood, the people of New Hope, Texas, “Simply aren’t our kind of people.“
Later on, after her mother had died, her father had told her during one of their rare conversations that the only reason anyone would take up with her was because of who she was.
Priss had come to hate who she was.
According to Horace Taylor Barrington, that went double for any man who showed any interest in her. Money-grubbers, every last one of them. When the time came for her to marry, he would find her a husband from among the right people.
Her parents had had a way of speaking in italics. Or maybe she only remembered them that way.
Jake slowed down as they approached a long, potholed driveway. There were pastures on both sides, some brown, some green. Off in the distance, Priss could see several horses, an enormous barn and a circular pen.
Priss didn’t know very much about pastures. She knew even less about horses, although at school back east she had let on that she did. Virginia was big on horses, and on learning that she was from Texas, everyone had taken it for granted that she’d grown up riding. One thing she’d inherited from both her parents was pride and a real disinclination to admit her shortcomings, although she was working on it. So first she’d pretended a disdain for eastern saddles, then a bad back. After a while, no one had bothered her about riding.
The arched sign over the entrance said in block letters, The Bar Nothing. “It’s not very original, is it?” she observed, wanting to take him down a notch for reasons she didn’t even try to understand.
“Not particularly. You got a problem with it?”
Squirming under the focus of those steady gray eyes, Priss felt guilty at her meanness. “I shouldn’t have said that. It’s a nice name. I guess what I meant is that the whole idea is sort of silly. Naming houses and land and all. I mean, it’s really kind of pretentious, don’t you think?”
“Reckon I’m just a pretentious sort of guy.”
Priss winced as gravel bounced up and struck the underside of the fenders, sounding like a barrage of hail. He drove too fast, but then, so did she. “I don’t think you are,” she said earnestly. Unclipping her seat belt, she turned toward him, tucking her knee up on the bench seat. “Pretentious, that is. In fact, I think you’re really pretty ordinary.” That didn’t sound right, either. “What I mean is, you don’t look as if you care how you look—I mean—”
The glance he sent her was almost pitying. “Why don’t you just kick back and relax, sugar? Once we get there you’ll want to check the place out, get settled in, maybe make a few more phone calls to let folks know where you’re staying.”
“By now, Miss Agnes probably has me visiting the White House.”
Jake chuckled. Priss sighed, stared through the bugspattered windshield, and wondered who she could call.
Faith, probably. Faith had introduced them, after allmercy, had it only been a few hours ago?
Faith was the only one who understood why Priss shopped in Dallas instead of New Hope. Priss had always shopped in Dallas simply because that’s where her mother had taken her to shop. After her mother had died, Priss had overheard someone saying that the Barringtons had always thought they were too good to spend their money in a little town like New Hope, so naturally, after that she’d been too self-conscious to shop at home except for Faith’s place and a few incidentals.
As they pulled up beside an unpainted frame house set among a scattering of outbuildings, all of which were in far better condition than the house itself, she wondered what her parents would say if they could see her now, riding in a battered pickup that sported duct tape on the seats and a dented door, being driven by a common wrangler who wore sweaty work clothes and dusty, worn-out boots.
They’d say he was not her kind of people.
And they’d be absolutely right. Jake Spencer wasn’t anybody’s kind of people, he was one of a kind. A kind that was totally alien to a woman who was still too embarrassed to buy Cosmopolitan off a newsstand, who until recently had thought the Kama Sutra was a book of poetry, and who had yet to see her first adult movie.
“Welcome to the Bar Nothing,” he drawled, making it sound like a salacious threat.
Or maybe a promise.
Then he grinned, and Priss told herself she was just being silly. The fire, coming right on top of her disastrous visit to the sperm bank that morning, had simply thrown her imagination into overdrive.
She tried to think of something nice to say about his ugly house, but there wasn’t a whole lot to be said. There weren’t even any flowers or shrubs to soften the stark outlines. “It, um, it looks solid.”
“Ye-ep.” He dropped the keys in his shirt pocket, probably, she thought, embarrassed, because there was no room in his blue jeans. Without even looking, she knew precisely where they were frayed the most. The knees, the seat and the—
It was all she could do to keep her gaze away from his lap.
Oh, for mercy’s sake, Pricilla Joan, grow up!
“What I mean is, it looks okay, but some shrubbery and flower beds would be nice. The shutters could stand a coat of paint, too, but then, I suppose they’re more for protection against the weather than for show.”
When he didn’t reply, she slid him a sidelong glance. Were his lips twitching at the corners, or was that her imagination? She tried to think of anything she had said that could possibly be construed as funny.
Jake reached across her and opened her door, causing her to suck in her breath sharply. “Come on inside and we’ll get you settled. I need to ride out for a couple of hours. How’re you feeling, still pretty wobbly?”
She was so pale every freckle on her face stood out like cayenne pepper on a fried egg. “Not at all wobbly,” she said, and he gave her full marks for grit. Walking across the barren yard under a stingy spattering of rain, he attempted to pull her against his side again, telling himself it was because she looked like she could use the support.
She stopped him cold. “I don’t like being touched.”
Jake’s eyebrows shot skyward. “Is that a fact?” he drawled, thinking back to all the times in the past few hours when she’d burrowed against his side like a mouse trying to get into a corncrib.
She took off toward the front steps, and Jake hung back to admire the action. Those damned crazy shoes of hers ought to be against the law, but he’d fight the man who tried to outlaw ’em.
She was probably right, though. No more touching. He just might be able to stand it long enough for her to get her place squared away.
He’d damned well better stand it, if he knew what was good for him. Every time he laid a finger on her he felt like a beer that had been rolling around in the back of the truck under a hot sun and then opened too fast.
Fizzy.
If there was one thing Jake Spencer was sure of—at least when his glands weren’t doing his thinking for him—it was that he was too old to feel fizzy about any woman.
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