Carry Me Home (5 page)

TEXAS TWO-STEP

Zoe looked at him, raised her eyebrows with a cool she wasn’t feeling one bit, and shrugged out of Rochelle’s jean jacket, reminding herself to move slowly, to pretend that she’d expected this, that she wasn’t surprised he wanted to dance with her. Even though she was. Surprised, that is. All right, shocked. She guessed the clothes worked. Too bad the woman in them had less than a single clue.

Call it practice
, she told herself.
Flirting practice.
And boy, did she need practice.

His complete confidence should be bothering her, just like it should be bothering her that his eyes had dropped to her breasts for a split second while she’d arched her back to shrug the jacket off, then flown hurriedly back to her face again. It hadn’t been for long, but she’d seen it.

Unfortunately, her body didn’t seem to be getting the proper messages, because the only thing that glance did was send a few more sexy tingles down her spine. She turned, draped the jacket over the back of her chair, put her little shoulder bag across her body, looked at him and tossed her hair back, and he watched that, too. She would never doubt Rochelle again.

“All right, cowboy,” she said. “Teach me something new.”

He went still, and the fire burned just a little bit hotter. She was better at this than she’d ever realized. Or maybe it was him.

Flirting had never been fun. It had only been awkward. But it felt fun tonight.

He was up, helping to pull out her chair, taking her hand in his and leading her to a spot not too far from the stage. The music was loud up here, the dancers’ energy infectious. His hand was warm and solid around hers, big and hard and a little bit rough, and she liked that, too.

The song, a quick, swinging number that had turned the crowded floor into a twirling mass of bodies and had her wondering if she’d ever keep up, ended with a crash of drums as she stood there with him, hovering at the edge of the smooth hardwood dance floor.

“Hang on a second,” he told her. She stood and waited as he jumped up onto the low stage, and the lead singer turned to him. The man listened as Cal talked, nodded once, and Cal was jumping down again, coming back to her with his easy, loping grace, and some of her newfound confidence left her.

Shoulders broad as Texas, slim hips, boots and faded Levi’s and a black T-shirt stretching over a chest that kept right up with those shoulders. Square jaw, firm mouth, nose that wasn’t quite smooth or straight—broken, maybe. And those thick-lashed eyes, as blue as a midsummer sky in late afternoon. Not quite handsome, but tough? Oh, yeah. Every woman’s dark, dangerous barroom fantasy.

Could she really dance with somebody like that on the bare courage of one lonely beer? She wasn’t some hot babe, no matter whose borrowed clothes she wore or how much makeup she put on. She was a geologist, a geologist who didn’t know how to dance. She was going to make a fool of herself, and he’d realize his mistake. He’d be too polite to humiliate her, but she’d be humiliated all the same. She’d spend the rest of the night sitting at the table with a smile pasted on her face, watching Rochelle dance and trying to look like she didn’t care, wishing they could go home so she could quit pretending. Exactly like the ninth-grade dance.

The ninth-grade dance. Her first school dance, and her last. She hadn’t even started out sitting at a table for that one. She’d had nobody to sit with, so she’d stood against the scuffed wall of the gym in the dress her mother had said was “so cute,” that made her look “so slim and pretty,” her hair painstakingly curled, her blue-framed glasses sitting squarely on her round face and flashing in the lights, but thankfully disguising her shining eyes. Standing there with that lump rising in her throat until swallowing had been hard, and not crying had been torture.

Her one real friend and her one almost-friend had finally showed up, and she’d sat with them for the rest of the interminable evening. Except for the times when she’d sat there alone, because neither of them had been quite as relentlessly unpopular, quite as decked out with hardware, quite as chubby or as geeky as she was.

She’d actually danced twice, and she remembered both of them, and her gratitude at finally being released from the Table of Shame. Rainer from Math Club, who hadn’t seemed much more at ease than she was, and her friend’s brother, because Sylvia had told him to, although he hadn’t exactly disguised his relief at returning her to her table.

She wondered now why she hadn’t just danced with her girlfriends. Why had it seemed to matter so much that she be chosen by a boy? Why had she been willing to give them that kind of power over her? Over even her innermost thoughts, her most tender feelings? But she had.

Her dad had been waiting outside for her with the car afterward, thank goodness, so she hadn’t had to stand there alone, and she could slide in next to him and escape. He hadn’t said much—he never did, not about things like this, because he didn’t think they mattered, and look how right he had been.

Her mom, though, had said plenty. She’d been waiting up to hear all about it, and Zoe had disappointed her. Of course she had, because she always did, and what was the point in even trying?

“So how did it go, honey?” her mother asked eagerly. “Did you dance with all the cute boys?”

“No,” she muttered. “It was totally lame.”

“Oh, sweetie,” her mother said. “Did you smile and look like you were enjoying yourself, like I told you? Boys like a cheerful girl. If you look all mopey, they’ll move on to somebody else.”

“Maybe they don’t think braces and glasses are a hot look,” Zoe said. Not to mention girls whose extra pounds were in all the wrong places.

“Of course they are,” her mother said. “Maybe not exactly,” she amended as Zoe looked at her incredulously, “but remember what I always say. A smile is the best makeup. You ask them about themselves, act interested, and the boys will come to you, just like they’re the bees and you’re the flower.”

“Except I’m not a flower. And they have to be in the general vicinity first,” Zoe said. “Which they’re not. You don’t get how it is. You don’t have a clue.” A smile is the best makeup?
Please
. “Besides,” she said, her voice rising along with her frustration, “that’s what
you
want. I don’t want the same things you do. How hard is that to understand?”

“Well,” her father said, “if you don’t want it, why did you go? No point in getting emotional about it. It matters, or it doesn’t. If it doesn’t, what do you care? Save your energy for the important things.”

“But it’s . . .” she tried to explain, and wondered why he couldn’t understand. Why nobody could understand. “I don’t
care
. Just . . .
forget
it, okay?”

She’d fled to her room, slammed the door, wrenched the dress over her head, stuffed it savagely into the wicker laundry hamper with its flowered liner, and gotten ready for bed. She’d pulled on her rose-printed pajamas, taken her glasses off and set them on the bedside table next to the canopied bed, switched off the lamp with its frilly shade and, finally, in the forgiving shelter of the dark, had allowed herself to cry.

She’d never done anything wrong. She’d never hurt anybody, not like the Mean Girls who looked and smirked and made comments not quite under their voices, because they wanted you to hear. She was nice. She was smart and funny. She was a good friend.

And none of it mattered, because all boys cared about was whether you were pretty, whether you had the right body—a Southern California body, tall and thin and tanned—and the right clothes to put on it. Whether you knew how to flirt and how to look cool and sound cool. She didn’t have any of that, and she was sick of trying to play a game when she didn’t even understand the rules.

That was the year she’d ripped the stupid girly canopy off her bed. She’d gotten rid of all the flowered stuff, refused to let her mother go shopping with her anymore, and changed her wardrobe to jeans and T-shirts, to her mother’s constant distress.

She wasn’t one of those girls, and she never would be, and if she was going to disappoint her mother, it was going to be by choice, because she wasn’t trying anymore to be something she wasn’t. She was a geek, and she was chubby, and she had glasses and braces, and she was smarter than almost all the boys. They didn’t like her, and that was all right, because she didn’t like them, either. Most of them were jerks, or idiots, so who cared?

She’d made friends, guys as well as girls, guys who laughed at her jokes, but she’d never gone to another school dance. Not even when she’d lost the braces, when the glasses had been replaced by contacts. She’d finally had a boyfriend, but he hadn’t been cool, and he sure hadn’t been hot.

But right now, one seriously hot farmer had his hand around hers again, was looking at her with something in his eyes, something in his smile . . .

What white teeth you have
, she thought.
And the big bad wolf said, “The better to eat you with, my dear.”
She couldn’t help the delicious shiver that went down her spine at the thought.

He pulled her out onto the floor, set his right hand on her shoulder blade, the fingertips just kissing bare skin, and that shiver was coming from more than her thoughts. He wasn’t trying to do anything else, but she was as aware of those fingers as if he’d been touching her someplace else. Someplace really good. He was looking down at her, those blue eyes holding hers, and the band was playing again. The drums and the bass starting it, a steady, slow beat, the lead guitar kicking in, and the singer crooning low and deep, an incongruously smooth sound coming from his scrawny body.

“Okay. Two-step. First thing you do,” he told her as the music filled her, swept her up in its insistent throb, “is put your hand on me. Right up here,” he said, patting his right shoulder. “And then you hang on for the ride.”

She set her hand tentatively where he indicated, felt the ridge of muscle rising under his black T-shirt, and very nearly took it right off him again.

He felt the hesitation, smiled a little. “Feels kinda close, huh? Not the way you dance with some guy you just met, back in California?”

“Sort of.” Well, not “sort of” at all, but he didn’t need to know that.

“You’ve got a secret weapon here, darlin’,” he said. “Called your thumb.” He took his hand off her back, put it over hers, maneuvered her thumb so it was resting on his collarbone. “You give this arm a little muscle,” he told her. “Give me some tension, push back a little. Not a bad thing at all. Where we go is up to me, but how close we dance? That’s entirely up to you.”

“I like that part,” she said. “And you know that thing I said about darlin’?”

“I’m going to keep forgetting,” he said, “because I can’t seem to help myself. So maybe you could pretend it’s all right, this one time. Pretend you’re a pretty girl in a bar, dancing with a man who thinks you’re the sweetest thing he’s seen in months, and that he’s mighty lucky to be the one holding you. Just for tonight.”

Her eyes widened, and he smiled, a little crookedly. “Just pretend,” he said. “I’ll never tell.”

She had to smile then. She didn’t know if it was true, or if he was just pretending, too . . . but she couldn’t help smiling.

“And damn,” he groaned, “there go those dimples again. You’re distracting me. Here we go. Backwards, off your toes. Quick-quick slow-slow. Step-together, slow, slow. Just like that.”

He coached and teased, and surely the band was playing chorus after chorus of that song, and she was dancing backward after all, starting to feel just a little bit like somebody else, like a woman who would be dancing in a cowboy bar with Cal Jackson, and having him look at her like that.

“That’s real good,” he told her. “All you need to do now is relax into it and let me drive. I’ve got you, and I’m not going to let you fall or mess up.”

“Maybe it’s that I’m used to being in charge,” she said, trying to maintain her equilibrium. It wasn’t easy, not with his broad chest so close to hers, not looking at the muscular brown column of his neck, the faint shading of beard from where he’d shaved that morning. Dark, because his hair was dark, the hair she hadn’t seen under that hat on Monday. Dark, thick, and cut close to his head.