One More Knight Read online

  Oh, but I’d give almost anything to make this pain go away.

  There had been a moment…just a moment…when it had dampened some. When the volume of the pain had seemed to diminish at least to a bearable level-something like what happens when you stick your fingers in your ears to shut out noise.

  It had happened in her first moment of freedom, when she’d burst out into the soft June night and heard that god-awful howl and stopped dead in her tracks. And he-Troy-hadn’t been able to stop, and had run into her, and suddenly she’d felt his body, solid against hers, and his hands, strong and sure on her arms. Then for a moment, just a moment, as his masculine heat and smell had enveloped her, she’d felt a flash of warmth and comfort, an instant’s surcease of pain.

  Then she’d made some smart-ass remark and he’d removed his hands from her arms and stepped away from her, and the moment was gone.

  She thought about that moment as she sat watching the man-shape and the dog-shape playing hide-and-seek with the shadows of the woods at the edge of the parking lot. She remembered the way he smelled of warm male and clean clothes and soap and aftershave-she wasn’t up on masculine scents enough to know the name-and just enough of a hint of dog to call to mind the way he’d looked, tussling with that golden-eyed monster. The way the muscles pulled taut across his back and shoulders and rippled down his arms, bunching beneath smooth, tanned skin.

  And this was Troy Starr. Mirabella’s about-to-be brother-in-law. Jimmy Joe’s big brother. Perfect…just perfect.

  What, she thought, did I ever do to deserve this?

  Oh, there was no doubt that he was a magnificent specimen of masculinity-broad of shoulder and narrow of hip and with pecs and abs that were, as she could personally attest, as closely akin to steel as you’d ever want human flesh to be. He had dark blue eyes with both squint lines and thick lashes, a jaw and chin Dudley Do-Right would envy and a mouth with a long upper lip that turned up at the corners, as if it enjoyed smiling. His hair, right now roughly the colour of those famous amber waves of grain, would probably have golden highlights if he ever let it grow out to a decent length. And to lend just the right touch of character and maturity to what might otherwise have been too much perfection, his hairline appeared to be receding just a bit, while his nose looked as if it had been broken, probably more than once.

  In short, he was the all-American male, clean-cut and wholesome as grits, the recruitment poster boy for A Few Good Men.

  And he was everything Charly despised. She’d known him ten minutes, and already she knew that he was polite to a fault, greeted people with “hey” instead of “hi,” and addressed every female over the age of consent as “ma’am.” He had a dog named Bubba that went everywhere he did-probably slept with him-and he drove an American-made 4X4 that she was certain was lacking a gun rack only because it was so new he hadn’t got around to installing it yet. He was, in short, Southern. And even if his touch did seem to have affected her like a straight shot of Tennessee bourbon, there was no way in hell she was going to let him get that close to her again. Ever.

  But, oh Lordy, hadn’t it felt good.

  Chapter 4

  July 2, 1977

  Dear Diary,

  I can’t believe it! This has been just the best day. First it was kind of scary, you know, because I decided I was going to let Richie know I like him, and I was really nervous about it. I mean, what if I made a total fool of myself, right? So anyway, Kelly Grace and I were down at Dottie’s having a coke, and he and Bobby came in together. So I just sort of flirted with him-more than usual, you know-like I brushed up against him accidentally-on-purpose, so that my breast touched his arm. Oh, God, I thought I would die when that happened. It was like I got this weird, tingly feeling all over, and my skin felt all hot, and I couldn’t get my breath. Anyway, then he said he’d walk me home, and…you guessed it, he did it. He asked me to go to the Fourth of July picnic with him! Of course I said yes. But I made him wait awhile before I did-I’m not a complete dufus.

  Thought for the Day: I don’t think it’s a good idea to let boys get too sure of themselves, do you?

  After Bubba had taken care of business and run off some of his excess enthusiasm, Troy took him back to the truck. This time, since it was clear his new passenger wasn’t likely to enjoy having a great big ol’ pup licking and slobbering down the back of her neck, he put the dog in the cargo compartment and tied his leash to the rear door handle.

  She-the passenger-didn’t have a word to say to him when he climbed into the driver’s seat and stuck the key in the ignition. Since he’d given himself a pretty good talking to, out there in the darkness, reminding himself of all the reasons why he ought to cut her a little slack, he waited a moment and then put both hands on the steering wheel and said “Okay, where to…?” He only just remembered not to add “ma’am.”

  He heard her pull in a breath-sort of priming the pump-and then the words came in a rush, if still a little gruff and crusty “Hey, listen, I really do appreciate this. You coming all this way I didn’t want-didn’t expect anybody to do that. And it was nice of you to pay my bail. I want you to know I’ll pay you back.”

  He kept his face deadpan. “I was countin’ on that.”

  “No.” She stopped to clear her throat. “I mean I’ll pay you back right away. Now. I just have to get my purse.”

  Troy had been reaching for the ignition key again; now he let go of it and turned his head to look at her. “You know where it is? From what the man said-”

  “I have a pretty good idea.” She was staring straight ahead so he couldn’t see her expression, but her voice had the same hollow note he’d heard earlier on the phone when she’d said the words “Mourning Spring.”

  He tapped his fingers on the wheel and waited for her to explain, telling himself he didn’t need to know any more about her business than she cared to tell him, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to pry. But at the same time, he had a normal store of curiosity, which had been building up inside him for a while, and damn if he was going to sit in this parking lot all night waiting for her to clue him in. So, when it was obvious she wasn’t going to, he didn’t think it would hurt to give her a little nudge.

  He looked over at her once more and said with exaggerated patience, “So, you want to go get it now.? Say the word.”

  “I don’t think that’s a very good idea, do you?” He could see the corner of her mouth turn upward, more with irony than amusement. “At this time of night? People turn in pretty early around here.”

  “I noticed that.” He gave her a similar smile in return, which was wasted effort since she still wasn’t willing to look at him. He waited another moment or two, then prodded some more. “Okay, so what do you want to do? You hungry? Want to go get somethin’ to eat?” There were some eager whimpers from the back of the Cherokee at that, the words hungry and eat being of major importance in Bubba’s command of human language.

  Charly’s profile tilted and took on a look of surprise. “I am kind of hungry, actually.” She glanced down at the place on her arm where her watch should have been, realized it was in the manila envelope she was holding and frowned. “What time is it, anyway?”

  “Gettin’ on toward midnight”

  “Jeez…all right, well-” she took a deep breath “-the only place that’s going to be open is B.B.’s, out on the highway.”

  “I saw it on the way in,” Troy said, giving the key a turn. “They have food there?”

  “Just the basics-hamburgers, hot dogs. Maybe steaks. At least, they used to.”

  “Sounds good to me.” He put the Cherokee in gear and drove out of the lot, turning left toward the town square. He looked over at Charly. “You know this town pretty well?”

  She didn’t answer that. Instead she cleared her throat and said, in a voice that was still a little rusty, “You know, you don’t need to stay here. If you need to get back-” He stopped her with a snort and a shake of his head just to politely let her know how dumb
that was, but she plowed on anyway. “I mean it. It was nice of you to get me out of jail, but there’s no reason you should have to wait around while I get all this straightened out.”

  Troy let a minute or two go by. Then he said, in a quiet tone not very many people ever heard and fewer cared to argue with, “Look, ma‘am. it’s late. I’m not goin’ anywhere tonight, and neither are you. Now, what I figured I’d do is, I’ll get us a couple rooms at that motel I saw comin’ into town-”

  “You mean the Moanin’ Springs?”

  That surprised him. He gave a bark of laughter. “You know the place?”

  “By reputation only, I assure you.” She glanced at him briefly, then away again. But she was looking more relaxed. Maybe even like she’d remembered her sense of humor.

  Troy grinned his appreciation and drove awhile in silence. It wasn’t a comfortable one; for some reason it seemed to him to have grown stuffy in the car. Downright sultry, even with the air conditioning going. He rolled down the window.

  Charly leaned over and reached for the radio, cocking her head toward him to ask belatedly, “May I?”

  “Be my guest.”

  But when she turned it on, there was only a rush of static, so Troy, being helpful, punched in the tape he’d been listening to since he’d lost the golden-oldies station out of Atlanta. It was a seventies greatest-hits collection, and he’d had it turned up pretty loud, so the theme from Saturday Night Fever suddenly pulsed through the car like jungle drums: “…huh, huh, huh, huh, stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive…”

  Charly swore like a hissing cat. Her hand shot out and silence fell, so suddenly that for a minute or two it seemed as loud as the music it had just eclipsed. Troy held on to his surprise and threw her a mildly questioning look, but she just sat dead still and stared straight ahead, and there wasn’t much he could tell about what was going on with her from that frozen profile.

  Then suddenly she laughed, a light, false-sounding ripple, pure Alabama belle. “My, my, you are full of surprises. I’d have taken you for a country boy, for sure.”

  “Hell, I like country,” Troy said, keeping it light, too, since that seemed to be the way she wanted it. Keeping it easy. “Don’t know anybody that doesn‘t-exceptin’ maybe Mirabella, and she’s comin’ around. But this-” he made a smacking sound with his lips and waved a hand at the now silent tape deck “-this is the music of my youth.”

  She exhaled softly, all traces of lightness gone. “Yeah, mine, too.”

  “Brings back a lot of memories, though, doesn’t it?”

  He could feel her turn her head toward him, but she didn’t speak. And when he looked over at her a moment later, she’d turned away and was staring out the window again.

  He thought about pursuing the conversation anyway but didn’t. He was starting to get an inkling that maybe it was memories that were the crux of her problem.

  As late as it was, B.B.’s Barn was still jumping, judging from the number of cars and pickup trucks and assorted characters gathered around and the country beat pumping out into the parking lot. Which, according to some signs plastered on the front of the building was Live! on Friday and Saturday nights. A hand-lettered sign tacked up on the door identified tonight’s featured attraction as Mudcat Casey’s Band, The Pride Of Chattanooga!

  “We use to call this place the Beer an’ Boogie,” Charly said out of the side of her mouth as she passed under the arm Troy was using to hold the door with. “Doesn’t look like it’s changed all that much.”

  He arched an eyebrow. “You knew the place well, did you?”

  She made that snorting sound again, and he suddenly realized it must be her version of laughter. “You kidding? I was underage. Plus, my father would have skinned me alive.”

  Which confirmed what he’d already guessed-she’d spent at least part of her growing-up years in this town. At the same time, one thing she’d said did surprise him. He thought Charly Phelps might be the first Southern-raised woman he’d ever met that didn’t refer to her male parent as “Daddy.”

  Strange, Charly thought as she crossed the dimly lighted vestibule, listening to the music thumping out a country two-step and breathing in the smell of tobacco smoke, beer and sweat In all the years she’d lived in this town, after all the talk, the jokes, the rumors and wild stories about this place, it was the first time she’d ever been inside. B.B.’s had been the forbidden zone, the hangout of the “fast” crowd, the sort of no-account trash no daughter of Judge Charles Phelps would ever be caught dead associating with. Which was probably why, in the years since she’d left Mourning Spring, she’d seen the inside of a lot of places just like it. It had a familiar feel to it, even though it had been years now since those troubled, searching times. There was something womblike about the warm, smoky darkness, the throbbing beat of the music, the crush of bodies, the muffled voices and laughter.

  Quite a few people were up and dancing, making it hard to tell which tables were occupied and which weren’t, but Charly spotted a small one that hadn’t yet acquired an overflowing ashtray and a collection of beer bottles. She made for it, leaving her all-American Boy Scout rescuer to follow if he chose to.

  He was getting on her nerves in ways she couldn’t quite figure out. For instance, as soon as she dropped into a chair she found herself immediately twisting and turning, making a big deal out of looking for a waitress, just because she didn’t want to have to watch the man pull out the chair across from her and lower himself into it. Because he was too damn good to watch, and in the reckless mood she was in, she didn’t trust herself.

  She was feeling too damn strange. As if all the wires in her system were crossed, hissing and spitting and in imminent danger of short-circuiting. And maybe she wouldn’t care all that much if they did.

  “Hey, how you folks doin’ this evenin’? My name’s Lori. What can I getcha?”

  A cocktail waitress wearing skin tight Levi’s and a tank top had appeared at Troy’s elbow, balancing her tray on one perky hip. She had frizzy blond hair pulled up in a stubby little ponytail and was chewing gum. Charly squinted at her for a moment but decided she was too young to be anybody she ought to know.

  “Well, Lori, tell you what, we’re kind of hungry. You got anything left back there to eat?” Troy was smiling up at the waitress, Charly thought, as if his teeth had been set with diamonds and he was offering them for sale.

  And she was obviously ready to buy. Charly watched in a restless state somewhere between amusement and annoyance as Lori stuck out her hip even more, making sure it brushed up against Troy’s arm. “Kitchen’s closed.” She cracked her gum, lowered her eyelashes to half-mast and smiled. “But I think we still got hot dogs and nachos.”

  “Okay, why don’t you bring me a couple of those hot dogs?” Troy looked at Charly, who shrugged. “Make that two more over there.”

  Lori took time out from flirting just long enough to spare Charly a speculative glance. “That be all the way?”

  All the way. Oh, my. It had been twenty years since Charly had heard those words in that context, which in the South meant the works, including onions and the brown glop they called chili.

  “All the way,” Troy confirmed, beaming.

  Charly seconded it, which was a waste of time since Lori had already taken Troy’s answer for both of them. “Okay,” she chirped, cracking gum, “that’s four all the way. Now, what can I get y’all to drink?”

  “Black Jack on the rocks,” Charly snapped.

  Lori looked as if she thought she might be in the company of aliens-at least one. She edged a little closer to Troy, if that were possible, and said, “I’m sorry, ma’am, but this here’s a dry county.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “No, ma’am. We’re only allowed to serve beer.”

  Good ol’ Troy cheerfully ordered a light beer. Charly moodily seconded it, and waited until the waitress had given her cute little wiggle and departed before she shook her head and muttered, “I can’t believe
this town.”

  Troy leaned back in his chair and drawled, “Ah, hell, that’s not too unusual. There’s lots of dry counties in the South.”

  Charly all but ground her teeth. “Tell me about it. And right now I’d about give my left-” she could see by the anticipatory glint in his eyes that he knew exactly which part of her anatomy she was about to barter, and just to aggravate him, changed it at the last second “-toe for a shot of good old Tennessee bourbon.”

  For a minute there it looked like he might go ahead and smile. Then he looked down at his hands, folded together on the tabletop, and his eyes vanished behind lashes any woman would pay money for. “Maybe it’s none of my business, but isn’t that what got you into this mess in the first place?” The lashes rose suddenly, his blue-eyed gaze skewering her like spear points.

  She stared back at him, bitterness and resentment building inside her until she could feel its vibration in her teeth. She clamped them together and said softly, “What gave you that idea?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, maybe it seemed like the most likely explanation for why somebody’ d be in the drunk tank after runnin’ a car into a tree, instead of, say, in a hospital.” Now his smile was friendly, designed to disarm.

  She resisted it with every ounce of her strength, and offered a stony, unforgiving stare. “Yeah, that’s what the cops thought, too. You’re probably not going to believe me, either, but the last drop of alcohol I had was in a strawberry margarita at Acapulco’s in Brentwood, California. That was…Tuesday. The blood test they gave me at the hospital confirmed it-you can read the arrest report if you don’t believe me.”

  “Hell, I believe you.” He said it in that same annoyingly easygoing way, but his eyes remained intent and thanks to those damn lashes, impossible to read.

  He really did have beautiful eyes.

  The beat of the music was faster now, a rockabilly tune popular with the younger crowd. Charly listened with her eyes half-closed, letting her body move to it. Shutting out the eyes. Closing off thought.