Razzmatazz-DDL (18 page)

~o0o~

Kennie Sue whipped up the wide front steps of her mother’s house. “Mama, I’m leaving now. See you later,” she yelled through the screen door.

“Wait!” Alex called, and bolted up.

Kennie heard him but didn’t even slow. She had crossed the yard and grabbed the car-door handle when he caught up with her.

“Kennie, I want to talk to you.” He blocked the open door with his arm, sliding in front of her to thwart her attempt to escape.

“My own mother,” she spat out. “I want to get out of here. Either get in, or get out of my way.” But the passenger seat was piled with peach-and-silver bags for the deliveries she had intended to make after choir practice.

“We’ll take my car,” he said.

 
“I’m driving.” She plopped into the driver’s seat of his convertible. “Give me the key.”

“I—I—” He threw up his hands in surrender. “The hell with it. Take them.” He tossed the key ring at her; she snatched it out of midair and had the car started before he could get settled in the passenger seat. “You do know how to drive a standard, don’t you?” he asked warily.

“I’ve been dying a slow death, worried about how this was going to break her heart—” She shoved the gearshift into reverse and the car jerked backward, slinging loose gravel, then she shifted into first gear with only a slight grind. “When I think of how worried I’ve been! She should have been furious! She should have been ready to send a lynch mob after you—not offer you a double shot of whiskey!”

“Kennie, don’t you think—”

She floored the accelerator, and the car shot forward, the force slamming them both against the seats. Without even glancing at the tachometer, she listened for the high-pitched whine as the engine revved.

“You’re going—”

She slid into second and hit fifty miles per hour, which felt more like eighty.

“—To blow a head....” Alex finished weakly. “Where did you learn how to drive?” She glanced over at him. Only his white-knuckled grip on the seat belt gave any indication of his stress level.

“In Rusk’s daddy’s truck. It didn’t handle this easy, but it didn’t slide around on the road so much either.”

Alex groaned. “This car’s a rental. Please don’t smash it.”

“I know how to drive a car,” she snapped as she shifted into third.

“Kennie, don’t you think you’re taking this a little too hard? Would you rather she had a coronary, or threw you out on your behind?”

“Of course not! But she didn’t have to laugh!”

“If it’s any consolation, she did flinch when you mentioned the coin toss,” he offered helpfully.

“Is that supposed to be reassuring?” She downshifted for the only stop sign within two miles of her home.

“Kennie.” His hand covered hers on the leather-covered gearshift. She felt surrounded, trapped actually, by things warm, soft and expensive. “Let’s go someplace where we can talk.”

She pulled off the road and under a massive tin-roofed shed. The air was hot and dry, heavy with the scent of machine oil and agricultural chemicals.

Alex shifted uneasily in his seat. “This looks like the kind of place I’d expect a gun-toting redneck to own.”

“This is Delaney property,” Kennie replied with satisfaction as she cut the engine.

“Delaney, as in Rusk?” His voice was silken.

“Yes,” she murmured, hating herself for listening more to the soft rasp of his voice than to his words, for seeing the allure of that half smile and not what lurked behind it. For something was bound to be lurking, waiting to pounce.

“Tell me you don’t feel what I’m feeling,” he said, his lips brushing her temple, then her cheekbone, then the bridge of her nose and both trembling eyelids before finally settling on the comer of her quivering lips. “Tell me again we can’t work things out.”

She felt as if a large-winged moth fluttered wildly within her breast. Despite the humid warmth of the evening, she shivered as he rasped his chin against her neck, nuzzling her blouse open wider.

“There’s more to marriage than this,” she stated.

“Of course there is.” His words were hot puffs of air on her collarbone. “Although I have to defer to your experience in that area.”

She stiffened. “What are you talking about?”

“Your mother dropped that little bombshell on me. I have to admit, I was staggered....” His lips found the fluttering pulse at the base of her neck, and when she arched against him she was at a loss to know whether it was an effort to pull away or press closer.

“It was none of your business,” she said.

“No, it wasn’t, but it explains a lot, doesn’t it?” He pulled away, and she found herself being studied closely, too closely, yet was unable to tear her gaze away from his.

“More than you know.”

“Why don’t you tell me about it?” he asked softly.

“What’s to tell? We eloped to Oklahoma, had a disastrous two-day honeymoon in a sleazy motel and knew before we came home with our tails between our legs that we had made a mistake. I was so upset, I tried to talk Rusk into not even telling anybody we were married...just let them think we’d spent the weekend together.”

“That doesn’t sound like the kind of behavior a place like Tahoka Springs would condone,” Alex remarked placidly.

“Of course it wasn’t. And of course he refused. So we told everybody we were married, moved into Mama’s garage apartment. We didn’t fight. We didn’t….” She broke off, remembering being too aware of everyone’s knowing grins to venture into public. Even the guys had acted funny. They treated her like someone’s mother or sister or something, not like the same Kennie Sue they’d been wrestling and tussling with since they were five years old. “Well, we didn’t do much of anything but sit and stare at each other and be miserable.”

“For four weeks.”

She glared at him. “At the end of four weeks we couldn’t take another minute of it, so Rusk moved home to his daddy’s until time to go off to Tech, and I got a job and started paying Mama rent for the apartment. Rusk got to leave and I stayed behind, the biggest joke of the decade. If I could just go back and....”

“Not elope to Oklahoma?” Alex supplied.

“Rusk and I were best friends and sweethearts for as long as I can remember. We were so perfect for each other, so made for each other, everybody just knew we’d get married and raise a passel of kids.”

“So what you’re saying....” Alex’s words were measured, even. Never had she seen him so cool, in control. “You’re still in love with Rusk Delaney.”

For one frustrated moment she was tempted to let the idiot believe it. Maybe then he’d leave her alone. But she shook her head impatiently, unable to stifle a low groan. “You’re just as dense as the rest of them. Hell no, I’m not still in love with Rusk! But the way I see it, we had to get married. Rusk and I probably never would have let loose of that crazy notion of getting married, so it’s just as well we got it out of our systems early so we didn’t waste four years pining over each other while he was off in Lubbock.”

“So exactly what is it that you would change?”

“I’d let them think I was a brazen hussy that spent the weekend with my boyfriend, but I sure as hell wouldn’t—”

“Give them a reason to laugh at you,” he finished for her.

“That’s right,” she said softly.

“You’d rather be scorned than laughed at.”

She sucked her cheeks in and shrugged, unable to speak. Darn the man, why didn’t he just drop it?

“Then in waltzes Alex Carruthers and announces that you’ve run off and gotten married again.”

“I don’t care anymore what they think.”

He brushed her cheek, cradled the side of her face. “Really, Kennie? You really don’t care?”

“Maybe only a little.” Right now she didn’t care about much of anything, except that he did understand what her mother and Rusk hadn’t. “You’ve only got half the picture,” she said.

“Then explain the rest. I want to understand.”

Damn it, why did he have to sound so sincere? She shoved her fists into her lap. “Rusk and I lived for each other. We had a foundation as deep as bedrock, and a history that went back to shared chicken pox and shared cigarettes behind his daddy’s barn and shared skinny-dipping when we were eleven years old...and what good did it do us? We loved each other, but love wasn’t enough.”

“I see.”

He sounded so cold, so distant, she thought. Maybe she’d made her point too well.

“So what you’re saying is that since I was deprived the experience of being raised like a west Texas hoodlum I’ve forfeited any chance of loving you? That whatever I have to offer is less than the real thing?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she snapped.

“Then I’m being terribly obtuse. Maybe you need to explain.”

“I’m trying to explain, and you’re twisting my words around!”

“I beg your pardon,” he drawled in exquisite mimicry of her twang.

“What I’m trying to say,” she grated, her fists clenched, “is that if Rusk and I couldn’t make it work—and what we had was real love, not just some sort of crazy combustible attraction—then what you and I have is doomed.”

“Have we ever found ourselves sitting and staring at each other, miserable, afraid to step onto a public street?”

“You’re doing it again. You’re twisting my words,” she pointed out, exasperated.

“Have we ever been at a loss for words, or for...actions?”

“That’s enough.” She was firm.

“Can you honestly say the only things you see when you look at me are money and sex?”

“No!”

“What, then?” he prodded.

“You know this already. You know you make me laugh and you understand things about me that other people never could. In fact, sometimes you seem to understand me too damn well.”

“Ah, then we do have a common bond. It’s not a figment of my imagination.”

“A forty-eight-hour bond! Are you telling me that’s enough to base a marriage on?”

“Are you telling me that a thirty-one-year-old man and a—How old are you?”

“You see? That proves my point! You know nothing about—”

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-four.”

“And a twenty-four-year-old woman can’t make a decision more responsibly than a pair of eighteen-year-old kids?””

“Look at how we did it!” she sputtered.

“And look at what’s happened since then. Our relationship isn’t based on years of habit. How dull, to have everything mapped out and stretching into eternity, with each detail arranged by the circumstances of our pasts. What you and I have is the thrill of discovery, the building of a relationship to match what we feel for each other.”

“You’re crazy! You don’t build a relationship after you get married!”

“In our case we have no choice,” he said.

“But we do. We can get our annulment and—”

“Start over? Do things reasonably? Date, get to know each other gradually, then get married again? You’re being terribly wasteful, you know. Tossing out a perfectly good trial marriage for an inconvenient trial courtship.”

“I didn’t say I wanted a trial courtship. I didn’t say I wanted any kind of courtship! ”

“Oh. So that’s the way it is. You at least gave your first marriage a four-week chance,” he argued.

“That’s a cheap shot.”

“You see? You’re already learning about me. I’ll resort to cheap shots, whenever necessary.”

“And word-twisting and—” Her words were cut off when his lips covered hers, the cheapest shot of all. She mumbled helplessly against him, then her mumble drifted into a wordless sigh.

“So why don’t we be brazen?” he murmured into her ear, and a shudder rustled down her spine. “Let’s take it seriously, Kennie Sue Carruthers. No more fantasy. Let’s go for the real thing.”

“I can’t believe it,” she groaned, trailing her fingers through the thick hair at the base of his neck.

“That I’m so persistent?”

“No. That I’m actually going to agree to this.” Even as she spoke the words, a shivery feeling of excitement coursed through her. “Let’s go....”
Home
was trapped between her lips, never to be heard. It was the darnedest habit he had, cutting her off in mid-sentence.

And darned if she wasn’t beginning to like it.

His kisses were so much like him—persuasive, skillful, beguiling. His tongue slid between her lips and he probed, stroked, filled her with warm, sweet longings. And she returned his kiss, stroke for probing stroke, relishing the strangled sound that came from deep in his throat when she suckled gently.

“Ahh, love….” he rasped, pulling away, his body stiff with reluctance. “Where are we staying tonight? Western Bob’s or your place?” He ended on a choked gasp. “What are you doing?” he demanded as Kennie took her hand and slid it up his thigh, finding the hard fullness of him. ”I think we’d better get out of here before—”

“I don’t want to wait.” Kennie watched his eyes flare with understanding, with desire, then shutter closed. She took his hand in hers and guided it up her leg.

“You can’t be serious. Not here!”

But despite his protest, Kennie noticed his hand didn’t withdraw from beneath her skirt. “You were saying?” she sighed.

“Not here.” His voice was less emphatic, his eyes trained on the shadowed cleavage that was revealed as she leaned closer to him.

“Yes, here,” she insisted.

“What if somebody comes?” With his thumb he traced a slow circle, brushing the cotton barrier of her panties, seemingly by accident. But the next time she felt his pressure, it was firmer, more insistent. She felt herself giving him entrance as his finger slipped under the thin elastic band and found her opening, which flexed expectantly at his first touch.

He squeezed his eyes shut. “You’re sure we’re not going to end up on the wrong end of a shotgun?”

“Positive.” No sooner had the words escaped her lips than she felt his finger slip inside. She caught her lower lip beneath her teeth and stifled a moan. He moved slowly, in and out, spreading her moist heat.

“Is this what you had in mind?” he grated gently, and she could only sigh in affirmation as ripples of sensation radiated from his touch. She felt her nipples hardening, her mouth opening, as he probed deeper, harder, then retreated to a slow teasing. She tried to lick her lips, but even her tongue felt dry. Again he increased the rhythm within her, against her, until she felt herself coiling tighter and tighter. And again he slowed, almost withdrew, brushed that throbbing part of her with exquisite torment. She tried to swallow, tried to breathe, tried to slow her response to match his slowing actions.