Dust Devil (14 page)

Was
that how Evie held on to Parker, the most popular boy in high school?
By giving in to his sexual demands? Sarah wondered, another shudder
of fright and anticipation running through her at the idea of
sleeping with Renzo. As they danced, she could feel the hard, strong
muscles that rippled in his back and arms. She thought of him
embracing her, entering her, enveloping her, and she knew that if she
were honest with herself, she must admit she wanted that, too.

“
Renzo.
Oh, Renzo, are you sure about marrying me?” She glanced up at
him earnestly.

“
Surer
than I’ve ever been about anything else in my life, Sarah.”

Seeing
that truth in his dark, intense eyes, she sighed deeply with pleasure
and once more laid her cheek against his shoulder. This was where she
belonged, where she had always belonged. There was nothing to be
afraid of. Renzo loved her. Come what may, he would protect her and
care for her for the rest of her life. She wanted... she needed no
more than that. Her heart and feet had wings. She could have danced
all night. But finally, the last strains of the song died away, and
Renzo was compelled, however reluctantly, to return to the stage.

With
that, the magic he had wrought in the night dissipated for Sarah. The
blue lights again became a kaleidoscope of colors, and the tiny stars
cast by the mirror ball faded from the dance floor. She became
abruptly aware that far from being winged, her feet hurt from the
unaccustomed high heels she wore, that her toes were pinched and
painful. Gingerly, she tottered from the dance floor, relieved now to
sit back down at the empty table, to slip the torturous pumps from
her feet and to watch, unsurprised but wistful and envious even so,
while Evie and Parker were crowned prom queen and king.

The
remainder of the evening passed for Sarah in a blur of impatience and
expectation, along with anxiety that Liz and the rest would not want
to linger after the prom, but would want to head directly for the
Sonic. Fortunately, however, it appeared the other girls had struck
up an acquaintance with members of the band sometime during the
evening. So they were in no hurry to leave after everybody had sung
the Lincoln High School alma mater and the band had played its final
number. Sarah wondered how much Renzo had had to do with the
musicians’ interest in her friends. But she didn’t bother
to ask once the two of them were alone outside, hidden from prying
eyes by the shadowed, tall old trees, the sprawling honeysuckle
vines, and the spreading quince bushes that grew alongside the
exterior walls of the gymnasium, blooming flowers and ripening fruit
sweet and fragrant in the sultry night air.

Renzo’s
mouth was on hers—hot, demanding, making her head spin as
though the pink-lemonade punch had, in fact, been spiked and she had
drunk far too much of it. His tongue teased her lips, opened them,
plunged deep between them, searching, tasting, savoring. Tentatively,
Sarah touched her own tongue to his, unprepared for his swift,
volatile reaction. He groaned low in his throat and pushed her up
against the brick wall of the gymnasium, so the coarse stone abraded
her bare shoulders. But she scarcely felt the pain, she was so swept
away by the emotions and sensations now coursing wildly through her
breathless body. Her heart hammered so fiercely that its pace almost
panicked her. Her blood roared in her ears. Her breath came in harsh
rasps. Her knees felt so weak and trembling that she was dimly
surprised she had not fallen to the ground, had not melted into a
puddle at Renzo’s feet.

He
had one hand roughly ensnared in her hair, tilting her face up to his
for the kisses he rained upon her mouth, her eyelids, her cheeks, her
ears. His teeth nibbled her earlobes. He muttered to her, words she
only half understood, but that sounded sexy and forbidden all the
same, that conjured up dark, misty images in her mind—thrilling,
tempting, terrifying. He cupped her face, stroked her throat, slid
his hands along her shoulders, pushed her sleeves even farther down
her arms. She felt his palms at her breasts, fingers dipping inside
her strapless bra to fondle her nipples, taut with fear and
excitement. His sex pressed against her—hard, taunting,
tantalizing. She wondered what he would feel like inside her. She was
consumed by curiosity, haunted by the thought that she might
unexpectedly die, never having learned what it was to know a man, to
know Renzo as deeply and intimately as she could.

But
Sarah was also just seventeen, young and afraid. She sensed she would
be forever changed somehow by the act of making love, of becoming a
part of Renzo, and he of her. She thought again that things were
moving too fast for her, that she wasn’t ready yet for what he
wanted from her. The lifelong admonitions of her parents rang in her
head, battling fiercely with the yearnings of her heart full of love,
the desires of her treacherously eager young body, awakened and
aroused by Renzo’s increasingly skillful, unstill lips and
tongue and hands. Every time he kissed her, touched her, he seemed to
have found some new way of fanning the flames he had ignited in her
the afternoon of her birthday and that now burned ever more hotly and
brightly. He was handsome and potently masculine. The smell of him
filled her nostrils, musky, male scents of soap and sweat, of cologne
and cigarette smoke. The taste of him was sweet upon her tongue.
Sarah was dizzily aware of his strength, of her own fragility in
comparison.

“
Renzo.
Oh, Renzo,” she whispered, gasping for breath as he took her
mouth again, his tongue shooting deep, before his lips sought her
throat, her breasts, bare now and burgeoning with passion.

It
was the screech of tires upon the parking-lot pavement and the
crunching of metal that brought them both up for air. Then someone
shouted, “Renzo! Hey, Renzo! It’s your bike, man! Some
fool’s run over it!” and at that, at last, he abruptly
tore his mouth from Sarah’s breast, flinging his head up. His
eyes were dark with desire, momentarily drowsy and disbelieving as he
struggled to regain control of himself and his emotions, to make
sense of what was happening. “Renzo! Christ! You’d better
get out here, man!”

“
Sarah...”
The conflict in his eyes was plain for her to

see.

“
Go
on. I know how much that motorcycle means to you.” She fumbled
with her bra, her sleeves, panicked now at the thought that someone
might come in search of him, that he and she would be discovered
together—she half caked. What a shameful, embarrassing scandal
that would be! “I’ll be there in a minute.”

Nodding
his head, Renzo left her then, slipping through the tangle of bushes
to emerge some distance away, giving Sarah time to compose herself
and lessening the chance that she would be inadvertently found and
exposed. She was grateful for that. She thought she must have been
temporarily mad to have forgotten where she was, the fact that the
teachers who had served as the prom’s chaperons were still
cleaning up the gymnasium and patrolling the parking lot, that they
or anyone else might have come upon her and Renzo at any time.

Once
she had rearranged herself, she crept unnoticed from the refuge she
had shared with Renzo, everybody’s attention now focused on the
scene unfolding in the parking lot, near the rented U-Haul truck into
which the band had been loading their equipment. Even before she
neared the crowd that had gathered, Sarah could hear Renzo cursing
and knew how angry he was.

“
Damn
it! Why in the hell didn’t you watch where you were going,
Holbrooke?” he snarled as she warily approached the throng,
pretending as though she had come from the gymnasium, in case anyone
should notice her.

“
Look,
it was just an unfortunate accident, pure and simple. I’ve
apologized for the damage and assured you my insurance will cover all
the necessary repairs. What more do you want from me, Cassavettes?”

“
Your
hide nailed to a barn door for a start. Do you know how many long,
hard hours I worked restoring that bike?”

“
No,
but even if I did, I can’t change what’s happened to it.
It’s dark...I’ve had a lot on my mind lately, and quite
frankly, I didn’t see it parked there. I’m sorry.”
It was Sonny Holbrooke who spoke, Sarah saw as she at last reached
the group clustered around Renzo’s motorcycle and Sonny’s
automobile. Sonny’s Camaro was barely scratched, but the
Harley, lying beneath the car’s front bumper, was badly
mangled. Sarah’s hand flew to her mouth to stifle her gasp at
the sight, for she knew how Renzo prized the bike, how furious and
upset he must be at its wreckage. His eyes were hard and narrowed,
and a muscle worked in his set jaw. It was all the two band members
who restrained him could do to hang on to him, to prevent him from
barging past Mr. Dimsdale, the principal, and taking a swing at
Sonny.

“
My
bike was parked in the grass, Holbrooke,” Renzo ground out
between gritted teeth as he strove mightily to free himself. “Do
you make a habit of driving over the school grounds? Or were you just
too drunk to steer straight? Isn’t that a flask in your
pocket?”

“
Is
that right, Mr. Holbrooke?” Mr. Dimsdale asked sharply. He
stood between Renzo and Sonny, attempting to mediate their quarrel
and prevent it from turning into a fistfight. “Are you in
possession of liquor on school property, young man?”

“
Don’t
answer that, Sonny.” Evie stepped forward to grab hold of her
brother’s arm when he would reluctantly but obediently have
reached into his pocket to turn over the forbidden flask. “You
don’t go to school here anymore. You’re not under Mr.
Dimsdale’s jurisdiction any longer.”

“
Everybody
on school property is under
my
jurisdiction,
young lady!” Mr. Dimsdale snapped huffily, incensed. “Whether
a student here or not. And since you’re not involved in this
affair, I’ll thank you to keep out of it and your mouth closed.
In fact, all of you just break it up and go on home now before I call
Sheriff Laidlaw out here and one or more of you wind up having to
spend the night in jail. Mr. Holbrooke, you and Mr. Cassavettes will
remain behind until this matter is sorted out to my satisfaction.”

Sarah
wanted desperately to stay, to stand at Renzo’s side, offering
her support in case there were further difficulties. But he must have
sensed this, because he shook his head at her silently, warningly,
but so imperceptibly that no one else observed the small movement.
Still, she worried. It seemed as though, one way or another, the
Holbrookes were always causing trouble for her and Renzo.
She
was
startled,
however, that this time the culprit had proved to be Sonny.

Of
all the Holbrookes, he had always been the nicest to her. But
he
was
a
Holbrooke, even if he didn’t precisely fit the mold. His
father, J.D., doted on Sonny and referred to him as the Holbrookes’
“golden boy.” But behind J.D.’s back, people
gossiped that his wife, ZoeAnn, must have slipped down to the
Rest-Rite Motel when he wasn’t looking and crawled into some
out-of-towner’s bed. Because although, like Evie, Sonny favored
his cool, elegant blond mother in looks, his personality was as far
removed from the rest of the Holbrookes’ as a thoroughbred’s
from those of a herd of pack mules. He was quiet, thoughtful,
studious and artistic. In his spare time, he wrote poetry and painted
and played classical piano. Currently a sophomore in college, he
attended Harvard back east. Home for the summer now, following the
end of the spring semester, he had come to the prom as the date of
one of Evie’s friends, Veronica Grenville, who had been sweet
on him for years.

Renzo
must be right, and Sonny must be drunk, Sarah thought, or he would
never have run over the Harley. Unlike his brother, Bubba, he just
wasn’t the type to have done something like that on purpose and
then lied about it afterward. Surely it was all just an unfortunate
accident, as Sonny had claimed. Surely Renzo would realize that, too,
once he had calmed down enough to think things through.

“
Come
on, Sarah.” Liz touched her lightly on the arm. “If we’re
going to the Sonic, we’ve got to be on our way. My folks want
me to be home—with their car intact—by two at the latest.
Krystal, are you coming?”