Heaven, Texas (20 page)

“Why not?”

“Because— Because it's outside, and I'd be  .  .  .”

“You'd be naked underneath that cute little skirt of yours, but as long as you sit like a lady, I don't see that anybody's going to know. Except for me, that is.”

Once again, his gaze trailed over her, making her skin feel damp and hot. He didn't understand that she wasn't the sort of woman who went around without underwear, not even in her new, made-over version.

At her hesitation, he released that overly patient sigh he used when he was about to manipulate someone. “I can't believe we're arguing about this. Apparently the fact that there've been so many distractions these past couple of weeks has made you forget we still have an agreement. You know as well as I do that I
own
what's underneath that skirt.” Another sigh. “I never thought I'd have to give you—a former Sunday School teacher—a lecture on ethics.”

Fighting back the urge to giggle, which would only encourage him to be even more outrageous, she tried to sound reasonable. “Former Sunday School teachers don't go around without their underwear.”

“You show me where it says that in the Bible.”

This time she did laugh.

“I'm losing patience, sweetheart.” The sparks in those midnight blue eyes made her feel breathless. “Take 'em off, darlin', or I'll take 'em off for you.”

Oh, Lord.
His smoky drawl slithered through her body like an intimate caress, and she knew a moment of pure recklessness. A lifetime stretched ahead of her where she could be plain old Gracie Snow. For now, she was a wild woman.

Skin burning, she turned her back to him, slipped her hands under her skirt, and pulled off a pair of buttercup yellow panties.

Bobby Tom chuckled and whipped them from her hands.

“Thank you, darlin'. I think I'll bring these along for inspiration.”

He shoved the panties deep into the pocket of his jeans, and they were so tiny they didn't even make a bump.

“Those muscles of yours ought to come with a license.”

“You look like you should be packin' a license yourself, darlin'.”

“Why don't you search me and find out if I am?”

Natalie and Bobby Tom smiled as they tossed away the silly lines, making them sound cute, but not cloying. They were reclined on the blanket Gracie had fetched earlier, which lay spread out in a small glade shaded by sycamore and oak.

“Why don't I just do that.” Bobby Tom kept smiling as he settled Natalie deeper into his embrace and tugged open the drawstring on her peasant-style blouse.

And why shouldn't he smile? Gracie thought, looking away as the fabric slipped off Natalie's creamy shoulder. He was a master at turning sex into an amusing little game.

The warm breeze trickled up under her skirt, caressing her bare bottom. Her hypersensitive skin prickled. She was both aroused by her nakedness and afraid that a sudden gust of wind would flip open the skirt's sarong-style front and expose her secret to the world. This was all Bobby Tom's fault. It was bad enough that she'd let him talk her into going out in public nearly naked, but while he and Natalie had rehearsed, he'd added to his sins by looking over at her and deliberately touching the pocket of his jeans, reminding her what he had there. She'd never shared a sexual secret with a man, and his teasing made her feel both lightheaded and feverish.

The trees rustled above her, and the air in the canyon carried a faint hint of cedar. The dialogue continued until it was broken off by the soft sounds of a kiss. Despite her vow to act professionally, she couldn't bring herself to look. She wanted to be the woman in his arms on that quilt. All alone, just the two of them. Naked.

“Oh, shit!”

Natalie's exclamation interrupted her reverie. “Cut!” the director called out. “What's wrong?” Gracie looked over in time to see Bobby Tom pull away from his beautiful co-star. “Did I hurt you, Natalie?”

“My milk let down. God, I'm sorry, everybody. I'm leaking. I need a new blouse.”

Bobby Tom leaped to his feet as if he'd just been exposed to a deadly disease.

“Ten minutes, everybody,” the director announced. “Wardrobe, take care of Miss Brooks. And you'd better get a change for Mr. Denton, too.”

Bobby Tom froze.

His head dropped.

An expression of abject horror appeared on his face as he saw two damp circles on the front of his own shirt.

A bubble of laughter slipped through Gracie's lips. She didn't think she'd ever seen anyone unbutton a garment so quickly. He thrust it at the wardrobe assistant and immediately made his way to Gracie's side.

“Come on.”

Eyes narrowed and jaw set, he pulled her through the trees and around a rocky outcropping, walking so fast she stumbled. He drew her closer, but didn't slow his pace. Only after they were well out of sight of the others did he stop and lean back against the trunk of a walnut tree.

“This is turning into the most terrible experience of my life. I can't do it, Gracie. I would rather eat rats than go out there and take that woman's blouse off. I cannot make love to a nursing mother.”

He looked so miserable that Gracie couldn't help feeling a certain amount of sympathy for him, even though he'd offended her feminist sensibilities. She tried to use her most reasonable tone of voice, not a simple task when she was standing so close to him. “The primary function of the female breast is to nurture the young, Bobby Tom. It doesn't speak well of you that you find that offensive.”

“I don't say I found it offensive. It just makes it impossible for me to forget that I'm kissing somebody else's wife. Making love to Natalie Brooks gives me the willies. Contrary to what you might have heard, I don't mess around with married women.”

“No, I don't imagine you would. In your own peculiar, male-chauvinistic way, you have a lot of honor.”

Some men would have regarded that as a questionable compliment, but Bobby Tom seemed pleased. “Thank you.”

They gazed at each other for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice was husky. “I'm afraid you're going to have to put me back in the mood if I have any chance of doing a decent day's work out there.”

“Back in the mood?”

He pulled her against his chest and pressed his mouth to hers as if he wanted to devour her. Her response was immediate. Flames raced through her blood, and she met his passion with her own. His mouth was open, his tongue aggressive. She sank her fingers into his thick hair just as he slipped his hand under her skirt. His big hands cupped her bottom and lifted her from the ground. She wrapped her legs around him and felt the harsh abrasion of denim against the sensitive skin of her inner thighs. He turned her so that her back was pressed against the tree trunk. She felt his arousal, thick and hard, press against her and some wanton part of her wanted to tear open the front of his jeans so there was no longer a barrier between them.

Years of deprivation pushed her to the limits of her control. Famished, she moaned and clasped him tighter between her thighs.

She heard a soft curse. He gentled his grip on her bottom and lowered her until her feet touched the ground. “I'm sorry, sweetheart. I keep forgetting how susceptible you are. I shouldn't have started this.”

She sagged against him. He clasped the back of her head and drew it against his bare chest. He smelled so good, like soap and sunshine. She squeezed her eyes shut, wishing she had shown more restraint.

“Give me back my underpants, please.”

She was afraid he'd refuse, but apparently he realized he'd teased her long enough. He released her to reach into his pocket. She kept her eyes on his chest as he handed over the scrap of buttercup yellow nylon. When he spoke, all the laughter had faded from his voice and it was steely with determination.

“Tomorrow night nothing's going to stop the two of us from finishing what we've started.”

Before she could reply, he walked away.

She took several minutes to put herself back together and reluctantly returned to the area where they were filming. Natalie had donned a fresh blouse, and Elvis lay cradled in her arms. Bobby Tom, still bare chested, stood between her and the director, who appeared to be giving them some last minute instructions. The director turned away to address a cameraman, and one of the makeup people approached Natalie with a container of hair spray.

Natalie held up her hand. “Just a minute. I don't want Elvis breathing the fumes. Hold him, will you, Bobby Tom?” Without waiting for his consent, she thrust the chubby baby into his arms and stepped away to have her hair sprayed.

Bobby Tom's eyebrows rose in alarm. At the same time, his body reacted with the instincts of an All-Pro wide-receiver, and he automatically tucked the baby into his chest.

Elvis gave a happy gurgle. Feeling the familiar brush of skin against his cheek, he instinctively turned his head toward Bobby Tom's bare, well-shaped pectoral and opened his greedy little mouth.

Bobby Tom fixed him with a stern glare: “Don't even think about it, pardner.”

Elvis chuckled and sucked his fingers instead.

T
he next evening as dusk gathered, Gracie and Bobby Tom sat in the top row of the wooden bleachers behind Telarosa High, gazing out at the empty football field. “I can't believe you never went to one of your high school football games,” he said.

“There was a lot to do at Shady Acres in the evenings. It was hard to get away.” Even to her own ears, her voice sounded strained. Yesterday in the canyon he'd said that tonight would be the night they finished what they'd started, and she was so nervous she could barely hold herself together. At the same time, he was as cool and collected as ever. She wanted to kill him.

“It doesn't seem like you had much fun as a kid.” He brushed the side of her leg, and she jumped. He gave her an innocent look, then reached farther over to pick up a drumstick from the tub of fried chicken he'd bought for them, along with french fries, containers of salad, and a basket of hot biscuits.

Maybe his touch had been accidental. On the other hand, knowing him as she did, it was quite possible he was deliberately driving her to distraction. He must know she'd been on tenterhooks ever since she'd opened the door of her small apartment and seen him standing on the other side in a pair of jeans, a straw cowboy hat, and a faded Telarosa High School Titans T-shirt that might have fitted him fifteen years earlier, before he'd developed such spectacular chest muscles, but was definitely too tight for him now. Since Bobby Tom was impeccable about his clothes, she knew the old T-shirt was deliberate, part of his attempt to recreate a high school date.

She nibbled on the end of a fry and, when he looked away, slipped it through the opening behind her legs and let it fall to the ground below the bleachers because her stomach was too agitated to hold food. “You miss it a lot, don't you?”

“High school? Not hardly. All those homework assignments put a serious dent in my social life.”

“I'm not talking about the homework. I'm talking about football.”

He shrugged and discarded the drumstick, rubbing against the side of her arm in the process. She felt as if a shock wave had passed through her. “Sooner or later, I had to quit. A man can't play ball forever.”

“But you hadn't planned on quitting so soon.”

“Maybe I'll do some coaching. Just between the two of us, I've talked to a couple of people. Coaching seems a likely next step for me.”

She expected to hear some enthusiasm in his voice, but she heard none. “What about your film career?”

“Some of it's all right. I like the action stuff.” His mouth twisted in disgust. “But I sure will be glad when all this love scene business is over. Do you know they actually expected me to take off my pants today?”

She smiled through her agitation. “I was there, remember? And by the time you were finished with all your chin rubbing and head shaking and 'aw shucks'ing, I don't think Willow or the director or anybody else had the slightest idea what you were saying.”

“I got to keep my pants on, didn't I?”

“Poor Natalie didn't.”

“Gettin' naked is a woman's lot in life. The sooner you accept that, the happier you're gonna be.” He patted her bare knee, sending a shiver of desire through her as he let his hand linger there a moment longer than necessary.

It took enormous self-control not to respond to his baiting. Not only was she too edgy to match wits, but she was feeling remarkably tolerant toward him, despite his sensual torment. She'd been touched by his behavior toward Natalie the past two days as they'd filmed their love scene. His costar's breasts had continued to leak, most of the time on him, until Natalie was so embarrassed, she'd been fighting tears. Bobby Tom had been a perfect gentleman, teasing her until she relaxed and making her feel as if this sort of thing happened to him all the time, as if a day wouldn't be complete without it, as if he looked
forward
to being soaked with breast milk.

Sometimes his ability to hide his real feelings frightened her. No one should have that much self control. She certainly didn't. Right now, just the thought of making love with him had turned her insides to mush.

He dabbed at her bare thigh with his napkin, although she hadn't dropped anything there. His thumb brushed over the inner slope, and she caught her breath.

“Is something wrong?”

She gritted her teeth. “No— No, uh, nothing at all.” He was making her an emotional wreck with his innocent little touches, brushing her leg as he shifted position, grazing her breast with his arm as he reached for a piece of chicken, every moment of contact so brief it could have been accidental, but since Bobby Tom never did anything accidentally, he had to be playing one of his games. If only he'd bring up the subject of the night ahead so they could clear the air between them and she could stop feeling so apprehensive. She'd bring it up herself, except she didn't have the foggiest notion how to go about it.

She dusted some biscuit crumbs off the lap of her crisp white shorts to give herself something to do with her hands. He was the one who had told her to wear shorts tonight, and although she considered them a bit too casual, she'd remembered his flattering comments about her legs and acquiesced. She'd also chosen a cropped turquoise cotton poor boy sweater that bared her lower back every time she leaned forward, a fact that she didn't think had escaped his attention.

“I wish you'd start watching the dailies,” she said, trying to take her mind off her overheated body. “Maybe it would make you more enthusiastic about a movie career. Everybody knew you'd be photogenic, but I don't think anybody expected you to be as good as you are.”

Several times she'd had the opportunity to sit in while Willow, the director, and various other members of
Blood Moon's
production staff gathered to watch the film they had shot the previous day. Bobby Tom had a much quieter presence on screen than he did off, underplaying everything so that he didn't seem to be acting at all. It was a solid, re-strained performance that managed to overcome some of the predictability of the script.

Instead of being flattered by her praise, he frowned. “Of course I'm good. You think I would have taken on something like this if I thought I'd mess it up?”

She gazed at him suspiciously. “From the beginning, you've been surprisingly confident for someone who says he's never acted before.” Her eyes narrowed as a sudden thought struck her. “I don't know why I haven't already figured this out. You're pulling another one of your scams, aren't you?”

“I don't have the faintest idea what you're talking about.”

“Acting lessons, that's what.”

“Acting lessons?”

“You heard me. You've taken lessons, haven't you?”

He looked sulky. “I might have talked to one of my golf buddies a few times while we were playing, but that's it. A couple of conversations walking down the fairways. One or two tips between putts. That's all.”

He hadn't allayed her suspicions a bit, and she gave him her steeliest glare. “Which golf buddy would that happen to be?”

“What difference does it make?”

“Bobby Tom  .  .  .”

“It might have been Clint Eastwood.”

“Clint Eastwood! You've been taking acting lessons from Clint Eastwood!” She rolled her eyes.

“That doesn't mean I'm serious about this business.” He pulled his hat an inch lower on his forehead. “Making love with ladies I'm not attracted to isn't my idea of how I want to spend the rest of my life.”

“I like Natalie.”

“She's okay, I guess. But she's not my kind of woman.”

“Maybe that's because she's a woman, not a girl.”

His expression grew belligerent. “Now what's that supposed to mean?”

Her rising tension was making her cranky. “The indisputable fact is, you don't have the best taste when it comes to female companionship.”

''That's a lie.”

“Have you ever dated a woman with an IQ larger than her bra size?”

His eyes drifted down to her breasts. “A
lot
larger.”

She could feel her nipples tightening. “I don't count. We're not officially dating.”

“You're forgetting about my relationship with Gloria Steinem.”

“You did
not
date Gloria Steinem!”

“You don't know that for a fact. Just because we're engaged doesn't give you the right to tell me what sort of ladies I'm attracted to.”

He was stonewalling. He brushed her bare calf with his leg, and her skin broke out in goose bumps. Since she knew she wouldn't get any farther with him, she abandoned that particular line of attack for another.

“You certainly seem to have a head for business. Maybe you'd be happier doing that than acting. I had no idea how many successful business ventures you were involved in. Jack Aikens told me that you were born with horse sense.”

“I've always been able to make money.”

She'd never heard less enthusiasm, and as she slipped another french fry under the bleachers, she tried to figure out why. Bobby Tom was intelligent, handsome, charming, and he could make a success of anything he put his mind to. Except the one thing he wanted most—to play football again. It struck her that in the time she'd known him, she'd never once heard him complain about having his career ended so brutally. He wasn't a complainer by nature, but she was certain he'd feel better if he could vent his feelings.

“You keep a lot bottled up inside you. Would it help if you talked about what happened?”

“Don't psychoanalyze me, Gracie.”

“I'm not trying to, but having your life turned upside down would be difficult for anyone.”

“If you expect me to start whining because I can't play ball anymore, you can forget it. I've already got more than most people walking this globe even dream about, and self-pity isn't high on my list of desirable virtues.”

“I've never known anyone less prone to self-pity than you, but you've built your life around football. It's natural for you to feel a sense of loss now that it's gone. You certainly have a right to be bitter about what happened to your career.”

“Tell that to somebody who doesn't have a job, or tell that to a homeless person. I'll just bet they'd trade places with me in a second.”

“If you follow that logic, no one who has food and shelter should ever feel unhappy about anything. But life's more than food and shelter.”

He swiped a paper napkin across his lips, touching her breast with his elbow as he did and setting off a chain reaction of sensations inside her. “Gracie, don't take offense, but you're about boring me to death with this conversation.”

She shot him a sideways glance, trying to see if the caress had been deliberate or accidental, but he wasn't giving anything away.

He straightened his leg to reach inside his jeans pocket, and the denim tightened over his hips. A pulse thrummed in her throat. “You've aggravated me so much I nearly forgot what I wanted to do tonight.” He withdrew something and closed his fist around it. “To accurately reconstruct everything you've missed in your relationship with the opposite sex, we'd have to go all the way back to playing doctor behind the garage, but I figured we'd skip that part and jump right ahead to high school when things get more interesting. Sherri Hopper never gave me back my high school ring after we broke up, so we're going to have to make do with this.” He opened his hand.

Lying in his palm was the most massive man's ring she had ever seen. Its gaudy collection of yellow and white diamonds arranged to form three stars twinkled in the fading light. The ring was threaded with a heavy gold chain that he slipped over her head.

The ring settled with a thud between her breasts. She picked it up, crossing her eyes slightly to look down at it. “Bobby Tom, this is your Super Bowl ring!”

“Buddy Baines gave it back to me a couple of days ago.”

“I can't wear your Super Bowl ring!”

“I don't see why not. One of us has to.”

“But—”

“People in town are going to get suspicious if you don't have a ring. Everybody'll get a real kick out of this. Although I wouldn't plan on being in too much of a hurry when you go to town. Everybody's going to want to try it on.”

How many bruising hits had he taken to earn this? How many broken bones and sore muscles had he endured? At the age of thirty, she finally had a man's ring, and what a ring it was.

As she reminded-herself she only had it temporarily, she remembered the pangs she'd experienced as a teenager when she'd seen the girls at her high school with a boy's ring dangling from a chain around their necks. How much she had wanted one for herself.

She fought to hide her emotion. This was only pretend, and she shouldn't let it mean so much to her. “Thank you, Bobby Tom.”

“Generally at this moment a boy and girl would commemorate the event with a kiss, but, frankly speaking, you're a little too hot for me to handle in public, so we'll postpone that till we have a little more privacy.”

She clutched it tighter in the palm of her hand. “Did you give out your high school ring a lot?”

“Only twice. I believe I already mentioned Sherri Hopper, but Terry Jo Driscoll was the first girl I ever loved. She's Terry Jo Baines, now. Matter of fact you're going to meet her; I said we'd try to stop by her house tonight. Her husband Buddy was my best friend all through high school, and Terry Jo's real hurt I haven't introduced you to her yet. Of course, if you'd rather do something else  .  .  .” He gave her a sideways glance. “We could probably postpone the visit until tomorrow.”

“Tonight's fine!” Her throat was dry and her voice sounded squeaky. Why was he prolonging her agony like this? Maybe he'd changed his mind and he didn't want to make love to her. Maybe he was trying to get rid of her.

His arm brushed the bare patch of skin just above her waist as he reached behind her toward the paper carton she'd set on the seat. She jumped.

He looked at her, his dark blue eyes as innocent as a baby's. “I'll help you do dishes.”

With a wicked grin, he began gathering up the fragments of their fried chicken dinner and stuffing it all back in the paper sack, touching her here and there in the process until she had goose bumps everywhere. He knew exactly what he was doing, she decided. He was deliberately driving her to insanity.

Ten minutes later, they were being ushered into the cluttered living room of a small, one-story house by a plump, but still pretty, woman with a baby face and over-processed blond hair, who was clad in a red print top, white leggings, and a battered pair of sandals. She looked like someone who had taken more than her share of knocks in life, but hadn't let it get her down, and her affection for Bobby Tom was so open and honest that Gracie liked her immediately.