Simply Irresistible (3 page)

“Where’s your family?”

She thought of her grandmother. “I have a great-aunt and uncle who live in Duncanville, but Lolly can’t travel because of her lumbago, and Uncle Clyde had to stay home and take care of her.”

The corners of his mouth turned downward. “Where are your parents?”

“I was brought up by my grandmother, but she took her final journey to heaven several years ago,” Georgeanne answered, hoping he wouldn’t ask about the father she’d never known or the mother she’d seen only once at her grandmother’s funeral.

“Friends?”

“She’s at Virgil’s.” Just the thought of Sissy made her heart palpitate. She’d been so careful to make sure everyone matched the lavender punch. Now coordinating dresses and dyed pumps seemed trivial and silly.

A frown bracketed his mouth. “Naturally.” He removed his big hands from her waist and ran his fingers through the sides of his hair. “It doesn’t sound to me like you have a real firm plan.”

No, she didn’t have a plan, firm or otherwise. She’d grabbed her vanity case and had run out of Virgil’s house without a thought to where she was going or how she planned to get there.

“Well, hell.” He dropped his hands to his sides and looked down the road. “You might want to think up something.”

Georgeanne had a horrible feeling that if she didn’t come up with an idea within the next two minutes, John would jump back in his car and leave her on the side of the road. She needed him, at least for a few days until she figured out what to do next, and so she did what had always worked for her. She placed one hand on his arm and leaned into him a little, just enough to make him think she was open to any suggestion he might make. “Maybe you could help me,” she said in her smoothest bourbon-soaked voice, then topped it off with a you’re-such-a-big-ol‘-stud-and-I’m-so-helpless smile. Georgeanne might be a failure at everything else in her life, but she was an accomplished flirt and a bona fide success when it came to manipulating men. Lowering her lashes modestly, she gazed up into his beautiful eyes. One corner of her lips tilted in a seductive promise she had no intention of keeping. She slid her palms to his hard forearms, a gesture made to seem like a caress but that was purely a tactical maneuver to guard against quick hands. Georgeanne hated it when men pawed her breasts.

“You’re real tempting,” he said, placing a finger beneath her chin and lifting her face. “But you’re not worth what it’d cost me.”

“Cost you?” A cool breeze picked up several spiral curls and sent them dancing about her face. “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” he began, then glanced pointedly at her breasts pressed against his chest, “that you want something from me and you’re willing to use your body to get it. I like sex as much as any man, but, honey, you’re not worth my career.”

Georgeanne pushed away from him and batted her hair from her eyes. She’d been in several intimate relationships in her life, but as far as she was concerned, sex was highly overrated. Men seemed to really enjoy it, but for her, sex was just plain embarrassing. The only good thing she could say about it was that it only lasted about three minutes. She raised her chin and looked at him as if he’d just hurt and insulted her. “You’re mistaken. I’m not that kind of girl.”

“I see.” He looked back at her as if he knew exactly what kind of girl she was. “You’re a tease.”

Tease
was such an ugly word. She thought of herself more as an actress.

“Why don’t you cut the bullshit and just tell me what you want.”

“Okay,” she said, changing tactics. “I need a little help, and I need a place to stay for a few days.”

“Listen,” he sighed, and shifted his weight to one foot. “I’m not the type of man you’re looking for. I can’t help you.”

“Then why did you tell me you would?”

His eyes narrowed, but he didn’t answer.

“Just for a few days,” she pleaded, desperate. She needed time to think of what to do now—now that she’d royally messed up her life. “I won’t be any trouble.”

“I doubt that,” he scoffed.

“I need to get in touch with my aunt.”

“Where’s your aunt?”

“Back in McKinney,” she answered truthfully, although she didn’t look forward to her conversation with Lolly. Her aunt had been extremely pleased with Georgeanne’s choice in a husband. Even though Lolly had never been so tactless as to come right out and say so, Georgeanne suspected that her aunt envisioned a series of expensive gifts like a big-screen TV and a Craftmatic Adjustable Bed.

John’s hard stare pinned her for several long moments. “Shit, get in,” he said, and turned to walk around the front of the car. “But as soon as you get in touch with your aunt, I’m dropping you off at the airport or bus depot or wherever the hell else you’re going.”

Despite his less-than-enthusiastic offer, Georgeanne didn’t waste any time. She jumped back in the car and slammed the door.

Once John was behind the wheel, he shoved the Corvette into gear, and the car shot back onto the highway. The sound of tires hitting the pavement filled an awkward silence between them—at least it felt awkward to Georgeanne. John didn’t seem bothered by it at all.

For years she’d attended Miss Virdie Marshall’s School of Ballet, Tap, and Charm. Although she’d never been the most coordinated girl, she’d outshined the others with her ability to charm anyone, anywhere, any time of the day. But this day she had a slight problem. John didn’t seem to like her, which perplexed Georgeanne because men
always
liked her. From what she’d noticed of him so far, he wasn’t a gentleman either. He used profanity with a frequency bordering on habitual, and he didn’t apologize. The southern men she knew swore, of course, but they usually begged pardon afterward. John didn’t strike her as the type of man to beg pardon for anything.

She turned to look at his profile and set about charming John Kowalsky. “Are you from Seattle originally?” she asked, determined that he would like her by the time they reached their destination. It would make things so much easier if he did. Because he might not realize it yet, but John was going to offer her a place to stay for a while.

“No.”

“Where are you from?”

“Saskatoon.”

“Where?”

“Canada.”

Her hair blew about her face, and she gathered it all in one hand and held it by the side of her neck. “I’ve never been to Canada.”

He didn’t comment.

“How long have you played hockey?” she asked, hoping to drag a little pleasant conversation out of him.

“All of my life.”

“How long have you played for the Chinooks?”

He reached for his sunglasses sitting on the dash and put them on. “A year.”

“I’ve seen a Stars game,” she said, referring to the Dallas hockey team.

“Bunch of candy-assed pussies,” he muttered as he unbuttoned the white cuff above his driving hand and folded it up his forearm.

Not exactly
pleasant
conversation, she decided. “Did you go to college?”

“Not really.”

Georgeanne had no idea what he meant by that. “I went to the University of Texas,” she lied in a effort to impress him into liking her.

He yawned.

“I pledged a Kappa,” she added to the lie.

“Yeah? So?”

Undaunted with his less-than-enthusiastic response, she continued, “Are you married?”

He stared at her through the lenses of his sunglasses, leaving little doubt she’d touched on a sore subject. “What are you, the friggin‘
National Enquirer
?”

“No. I’m just curious. I mean, we will be spending a certain amount of time together, so I thought it would be nice to have a friendly chat and get to know each other.”

John turned his attention back to the road and began to work on his other cuff. “I don’t chat.”

Georgeanne pulled at the hem of her dress. “May I ask where we’re going?”

“I have a house on Copalis Beach. You can get in touch with your aunt from there.”

“Is that near Seattle?” She shifted her weight to one side and continued to yank at the hem of her dress.

“Nope. In case you hadn’t noticed, we’re headed west.”

Panic surged through her as they sped farther from anything remotely familiar. “How in the heck would I know that?”

“Maybe because the sun is at our backs.”

Georgeanne hadn’t noticed, and even if she had, she wouldn’t have thought to judge direction by looking at the sun. She always messed up that whole north-south-east-west thing. “I assume you have a phone at your beach house?”

“Of course.”

She’d have to make a few long-distance telephone calls to Dallas. She had to call Lolly, and she needed to phone Sissy’s parents and tell them what had happened and how they could get in touch with their daughter. She also needed to call Seattle and find out where to send Virgil’s engagement ring. She glanced at the five-carat diamond solitaire on her left hand and felt like crying. She loved that ring but knew she couldn’t keep it. She was a flirt, and maybe even a tease, but she did have scruples. The diamond would have to go back, but not now. Now she needed to calm her nerves before she fell apart. “I’ve never been to the Pacific Ocean,” she said, feeling her panic easing a bit.

He made no comment.

Georgeanne had always considered herself the perfect blind date because she could talk water uphill, especially when she felt nervous. “But I’ve been to the Gulf many times,” she began. “Once when I was twelve, my grandmother took me and Sissy in her big Lincoln. Boy, what a boat. That car must have weighed ten tons if it weighed an ounce. Sissy and I had just bought these really cool bikinis. Hers looked like an American flag while mine was made of a silky bandanna material. I’ll never forget it. We drove all the way into Dallas just to buy that bikini at J.C. Penney’s. I’d seen it in a catalog and I was just dying to have it. Anyway, Sissy is a Miller on her mother’s side, and the Miller women are known throughout Collin County for their wide hips and piano ankles—not very attractive, but a lovely family just the same. One time—”

“Is there a point to all of this?” John interrupted.

“I was getting to it,” she told him, trying to remain pleasant.

“Any time soon?”

“I just wanted to ask if the water off the coast of Washington is very cold.”

John smiled and cast a glance at her then. For the first time, she noticed the dimple creasing his right cheek. “You’ll freeze your southern butt off,” he said before looking down at the console between them and picking up a cassette. He popped it in the tape player and a wailing harmonica put an end to any attempt at further conversation.

Georgeanne turned her attention to the hilly landscape dotted with fir and alder trees and painted with smears of blue, red, yellow, and of course, green. Up until now, she’d done fairly well at avoiding her thoughts, afraid they would overwhelm and paralyze her. But with no other distraction, they rolled over her like a Texas heat wave. She thought about her life and about what she’d done today. She’d left a man at the altar, and even though the marriage would have been a disaster, he hadn’t deserved that.

All of her things were packed into four suitcases in Virgil’s Rolls-Royce, except the carry-on sitting on the floor of John’s car. She’d packed the little suitcase with essentials the night before in preparation for her and Virgil’s honeymoon trip.

Now all she had with her was a wallet filled with seven dollars and three maxed-out credit cards, a liberal amount of cosmetics, a toothbrush and hairbrush, comb, a can of Aqua Net, six pairs of French-cut underwear with matching lace bras, her birth control pills, and a Snickers.

She had hit an all-time low, even for Georgeanne.

Chapter Two

Flashes of blue and crystal sunlight, waving sea grass, and a salty breeze so thick she could taste it welcomed Georgeanne to the Pacific coast. Goose bumps broke out on her arms as she strained to catch glimpses of rolling blue ocean and foamy whitecaps.

The squall of seagulls pierced the air as John steered the Corvette up the driveway of a nondescript gray house with white shutters. An old man in a sleeveless T-shirt, gray polyester shorts, and a pair of cheap rubber thongs stood on the porch.

As soon as the car rolled to a stop, Georgeanne reached for the door handle and got out. She didn’t wait for John to assist her—not that she believed he would have helped her anyway. After an hour and a half of sitting in the car, her merry widow had became so painful she thought she might get sick after all.

She tugged the hem of her pink dress down her thighs and reached for her overnight case and shoes. The metal stays in her corset dug into her ribs as she bent to shove her feet into her pink mules.

“Good God, son,” the man on the porch growled in a gravelly voice. “Another dancer?”

A scowl creased John’s forehead as he led Georgeanne to the front door. “Ernie, I’d like you to meet Miss Georgeanne Howard. Georgie, this is my grandfather, Ernest Maxwell.”

“How do you do, sir.” Georgeanne offered her hand and looked into the aged face, which bore a striking resemblance to Burgess Meredith.

“Southern ... hmmm.” He turned and walked back into the house.

John held the screen door open for Georgeanne, and she stepped inside a house furnished in plush blues, greens, and light browns, giving the impression that the view outside the large picture window had been brought into the living room. Everything appeared to have been chosen to blend with the ocean and sandy beach—everything but the black Naugahyde recliner patched with silver duct tape and the two broken hockey sticks placed like a sideways X above a packed trophy cabinet.

John reached for his sunglasses and tossed them on the wood and glass coffee table. “There’s a guest room down the hall, last door on your left. Bathroom’s on the right,” he said as he crossed behind Georgeanne and walked into the kitchen. He grabbed a bottle of beer from the refrigerator and twisted off the top. Raising the bottle to his lips, he leaned his shoulders back against the closed refrigerator door. He’d messed up big this time. He never should have agreed to help Georgeanne, and he for damn sure never should have brought her with him. He hadn’t wanted to, but then she’d stared up at him looking all vulnerable and scared, and he hadn’t been able to leave her on the side of the road. He just hoped like hell Virgil never found out.