Can't Take My Eyes Off Of You (v1.2) (16 page)

Shelby stopped beside the cherub, put down one coffeepot, and fished in her pocket for two quarters for the video game located in the hallway leading to the rest rooms. The little girl took the coins, then said, “Thank you very much,” before running off to play the game, leaving her grandmother some peace in which to sip her coffee.

“Thank you, Shelley,” she said gratefully.

“My uncle always taught me that good behavior should be rewarded,” Shelby told her with a wink. “And, as you’ve been very good, I thought I’d give you a little reward.”

The grandmother laughed and thanked Shelby again.

The regulars went back to their lunches, napkins in their laps.

And Tony, who had just begun the refrain of his well-known “why I put up with you people I’ll never know” song, saw Shelby approaching, shut his mouth, glared at Tabby impotently one last time, and retreated to his kitchen.

“What a hoot! Do you think he was once frightened by Miss Manners? Anyway, I owe you, babe,” Tabby said, giving Shelby a friendly whack on the shoulder that all but sent her staggering.

Quinn looked at his plate and saw that somehow he’d eaten all of the steak sandwich. Picking up his coffee cup, he walked over to the corner booth, motioned that he’d like to sit down, said he’d like to talk about the “great cycles” he’d seen in the parking lot. It wasn’t much of an opening, but it might do for starters.

The regulars told him to join them, the one named George even kicking out beneath the booth so that the empty chair on the other side of it was pushed away and made ready for Quinn to sit down. “Why, thank you, George.”

Civilization comes to East Wapaneken.

Civilization, and
a possible murder plot?

Amazing.

Shelby looked at the windmill. Watched its blades rotate. Watched the cutout hole at the bottom of the windmill appear, disappear, reappear again as the blades passed by.

She turned to look at Brandy, leaned close, whispered, “You’re kidding, right?”

Brandy was confused. She grabbed Shelby by the elbow and pulled her away from the first hole of the miniature golf course. “Kidding? What do you mean, am I kidding? What’s the problem? I thought you said you were good at this. I’ve bet Gary a half hour of foot rubbing that we’d beat their pants off. Now get some color back in those cheeks, sweetcakes, and hit the damn ball.”

Shelby dug in her heels and refused to be moved. “I said I could putt. I said I could golf. This isn’t golf. This is… this is…” She looked out over the course. At a grinning alligator, its mouth wide open to receive the putt At a wooden granny in a small rocking chair, alternating between blocking and exposing another hole she was supposed to knock her ball through to reach the hole. Eighteen holes, littered with obstacles, hidey-holes, twists, and turns. Even two water holes. “This is
nuts.”

“Wrong. It’s miniature golf. God, you are deprived, aren’t you? Okay, I’ll go first, and you watch.”

While Shelby and Brandy continued whispering to each other in low tones, Quinn took advantage of this short time in which to admire Shelby’s legs yet again and grin a little at her silly red sneakers. Damn, but those legs were long. And straight No knobby knees on this girl, none whatsoever. She had legs like Chita Rivera. Cyd Charisse. Ann-Margret. Legs that could fill a man’s dreams.

And that black sweater? Well, he’d seen black sweaters before, even ones that somehow stopped four inches short of the waist of a pair of tight, faded denim shorts. But he’d never seen one on Shelby Taite, and seeing one on that cool blond beauty was enough to make him damn glad he’d handed in his resignation. Otherwise, Somerton Taite would have to have him killed for what he was thinking, what he was hoping.

He watched as the ponytail she’d fastened in her hair with a red fuzzy something-or-other bobbed up and down as she argued with Brandy. Hell, Somerton probably wouldn’t even
recognize
his sister.

Gary removed the pack of cigarettes from its place in the rolled-up sleeve of his T-shirt, smacked one cigarette out, and lit it with a heavy metal lighter with an enameled hula girl on it. He looked up at Quinn, one eye squeezed shut to keep the blue smoke out of it. “So, what do you think? They’re planning some kind of strategy?”

“I don’t know,” Quinn admitted honestly. He would have thought Shelby’s outfit to be strategy enough, as he was going to have a hell of a time concentrating on hitting the ball when all he wanted to do was pick her up, toss her over his shoulder, and take her someplace Brandy and Gary and the rest of the world weren’t.

“Maybe Brandy’s trying to make her put down that purse,” Gary said, pointing to the large mesh shoulder bag Shelby had slung over one shoulder. “Shelley should have left that feedbag in the car, you know.”

“She won’t putt, holding it,” Quinn said, then wondered why he’d said it. Shelby would do whatever she wanted to do. He was beginning to learn that without fuss, without muss, she was the sort of velvet steamroller type who just politely went through life expecting everyone to simply understand that she simply had to do what she had to do.

Quinn watched as Brandy said something, Shelby nodded, and the two of them returned to the first tee, a rubber mat with a flat, built-in rubber tee.

“I’m going first,” Brandy said, motioning for Gary to get out of the way.

“But Shelley’s name is first on the scorecard,” Gary answered, confused. “That’ll screw me up, Brandy.”

Brandy rested the head of her putter on the mat, turned, and looked dispassionately at her fiance for a long moment. “You scare me sometimes, Gar, you know that?”

Quinn bit his bottom lip, trying not to laugh, and walked over to stand beside Shelby, who was watching the windmill blades with the sort of concentration one usually reserves for looking down the barrel of a loaded gun pointed in their direction.

“Looks like fun, doesn’t it?” he said, daring to slip his arm around her waist Her bare waist. For a moment he thought his arm might catch fire… but what a way to go.

“Uh-huh, yes. Sure,” Shelby said as she watched Brandy address the ball, look toward the moving windmill blades. “She’s holding the club all wrong,” she said quietly, as if to herself, before stiffening, remembering she was supposed to not know what she was doing. Which, in truth, she didn’t. Doglegs she understood. Greens that broke to the left Windmills, she didn’t understand.

“Ah, now I get it,” Quinn said, removing his arm so that he could step in front of her as Brandy stroked the ball, blocking her view. “You thought you could do this, didn’t you? That’s why you offered to be Brandy’s partner. Not to let me win, but to make sure I’d lose. Come on, Shelley, ‘fess up. You’re a ringer, aren’t you?”

“Ringer?” Shelby asked, trying to peer around him and watch Brandy putt “Damn, you’re in the way, Quinn. What happened?”

He looked back over his shoulder. “She made it through. Now she’s doing a small dance, and Gary is still frowning at the scorecard. You’re next”

Shelby approached the tee with all the enthusiasm of a French aristocrat heading up the stairs to the guillotine. She set herself so that her feet were no farther apart than her shoulder blades, then gave a large swing of her hips so that the mesh bag skidded onto her back, hanging just at the base of her spine.

“I could hold that, you know,” Quinn offered.

“Not in a million years,” she said, still looking down at the ball. “I wouldn’t ask you for any favors.”

“No, you wouldn’t would you,” he said, stepping back.

Shelby placed her left palm against the back of the club, flexed her fingers a few times, then closed her fingers around the grip. Added her right hand, using an interlocking grip with her right pinkie and left index finger. Looked toward the windmill. Watched the blades. Began to count. Counted again.

Looked at the ball, still counting, and stroked it

Brandy ran past the windmill, watching to see where Shelby’s ball landed on the other side, and screeched, “Hole in one!
Allright!
I can feel that foot rub now.”

Shelby smiled at Quinn, stepped back, and motioned for him to take his turn.

“Ringer,” he whispered in her ear as he walked past and bent to put his ball on the tee.

“But a ringer with a handicap,” Shelby said, lifting her purse, feeling as if she could leap tall buildings in a single bound. “Your turn now, Quinn. First thing you do is address the ball. It’s an old joke, but you can start by saying, ‘Hello, ball.’ “

“Ha. Ha,” Quinn said, already squinting at the windmill.

Five seconds later, Brandy said, “Nuts, he’s got a hole-in-one, too, Shelley. I can see we’re in for quite a battle.”

“No quarter, no prisoners,” Quinn said as he rejoined Shelby, who came as close to uttering a snort as someone born and raised on Philadelphia’s Main line ever could.

They arrived at the seventeenth hole tied for lowest individual score, but with Gary and Quinn up by a single stroke. It had been cutthroat all the way, with Shelby walking off distances, checking out the obstacles, even going so far as to wink at Brandy, then pull some grass, throw it up, and pretend to check for wind.

Quinn was pretty close to grinding his teeth. It was bad enough she tied with him. Did she have to do it while wearing that stupid purse? “Would you just hit the damn ball?” he complained at last, following after her, as Shelby had walked down the cement pathnext to the hole to check on the second tier of the hole.

He had spent sixteen holes watching her bend over her putts. Watching her sling that damn purse onto her behind, then waggle that behind before she hit the ball. He wondered if she even knew she waggled her behind in those denim shorts, wondered, if she did know, if she also knew what she was doing to him each time, with each sexy, come-hither waggle. Wondered when he could get her alone, damn it.

Shelby could feel Quinn’s eyes on her. She’d been feeling those eyes on her all night She tried to tell herself it was just the outfit, maybe even the red sneakers, but she didn’t think so. He had to be feeling the same strong magnetism she was feeling. How could he not feel it? Was he already figuring out a way to leave Brandy and Gary somewhere so that they could be alone? She certainly hoped so.

But for now she studiously ignored him, bending down to look at the three exit holes that came out from beneath the old lady and the rocking chair. Hit the right spot, and the ball would come out the center hole, heading straight for the cup. Hit it left or right, and the ball would go off into side areas, making it impossible to sink the putt on the second try.

She had to get a hole in one. Brandy had already explained that everyone got a hole in one on the last hole, because that was the way it worked. Hit it up the ramp, and the ball disappeared into a storage box. Oh, you could miss the first time, not get the ball up the ramp, let alone in the center hole that meant getting a free game, but Shelby didn’t believe Quinn wouldn’t be able to get the ball up the ramp.

It had to be now. Now or never. And she really,
really
wanted to win. She didn’t know why; she just did.

“Okay, I’ve got it now,” she said, standing up and turning around quickly. And hitting smack against Quinn’s chest as he bent over behind her. And putting him off balance. And watching him spin his arms like two windmills. And watching him slowly go rump-down smack in the middle of the water hazard on the seventeenth hole.

She couldn’t help it. Actually, she probably could, but she really didn’t want to. So she looked down at him as he sat in three inches of water, shook her head commiseratingly, and said, “Sorry. But I believe landing in a water hazard is a two-stroke penalty. We win, Brandy. Gary, get those foot massage fingers limber.”

They did play out the last two holes, Quinn with his golf cardigan tied around his waist, covering his soggy behind, and Shelby did end up with the low score, and a free game.

Quinn was a good sport about his dunking. Sitting in that cool water, looking up at Shelby as her brown eyes danced, as she laughed until she had to sit down beside him on the cement, had been worth three dunkings, maybe four.

As they rode back to the apartment in the backseat of Gary’s four-door pickup truck—Quinn sitting on some old newspapers Gary had lying on the floor—he was still feeling dazed and amazed.

Here was Shelby Taite, heiress, with a pedigree that probably stretched back to the
Mayflower,
and beyond. Here she was sitting in the backseat of a pickup truck, still giggling like a child who’d just seen her first circus, and not giving a single thought to her family name, her station in life. Her—as she allowed Quinn to take her hand in his, squeeze it in the dark—fiance.

She was having herself a fling. An adventure. He had to remember that. He had to remember that he was only here, only handy, and that he’d promised her family he wouldn’t allow her to be hurt.

But he hadn’t thought about himself, about the fact that he might be more attracted than interested, more serious than serviceable. That he might end up hurt, especially if Shelby really did see him as a part of her great adventure, the one she would have before returning to her family, to that stick of a fiance.

He squeezed her fingers again, then let go and held out his arm in silence, hoping she’d understand and lean against his shoulder.

She did. She moved across the seat, curled up against him, and rested her hand on his chest. They didn’t say a word, didn’t look at each other. They just sat there together in the dark, listening to Brandy and Gary singing along with the country tunes on the radio.

Gary had a really good voice. Brandy didn’t. But the songs were upbeat and the rhythms infectious, so Shelby soon began patting her hand against Quinn’s chest in tune with the music. In tune with his rapidly beating heart. In tune with all the questions that knocked on his brain.

As the truck pulled into the parking lot behind the apartments, he asked one of them. “If you’ll come with me while I get into some dry clothes, we can take a walk?” Then, since this sounded pretty lame, even to his own ears, he added, “I think Gary and Brandy might want to be alone.”