Fancy Pants (23 page)
Chapter
16
Francesca might have been invisible for all the attention anyone paid16
her. She stood numbly just inside the doorway while the woman from
Manhattan clucked over Holly Grace, talking about exclusive contracts
and time schedules and a series of photographs that had been taken of
her when she appeared at a charity benefit in Los Angeles as the date
of a famous football player.
"But I sell sporting goods," Holly Grace exclaimed at one point. "At
least 1 did until I got involved in a small labor dispute a few weeks
back and staged an unofficial walkout. You don't seem to realize that
I'm not a model."
"You will be when I've finished with you," the woman insisted. "Just
promise me you won't disappear again without leaving a phone number.
From now on, always let your agent know where you are."
"I don't have an agent."
"I'll fix that, too."
There would be no fairy godmother for her, Francesca realized. No one
to take care of her. No magical modeling contracts appearing at the
last moment to save her. She caught sight of her reflection in a mirror
Miss Sybil had framed with seashells. Her hair was wild, her face
scraped and bruised. She looked down and saw the dirt and dried blood
streaking her arms. How had she ever thought she could get through life
on the strength of her beauty alone? Compared to
Holly Grace and Dallie, she was second rate. Chloe had been wrong.
Looking pretty wasn't enough— there was always someone prettier.
Turning away, she let herself silently out the door.
Nearly an hour passed before Naomi Tanaka left and Holly Grace went
into Dallie's bedroom. There had been some confusion over Naomi's
rental car, which seemed to have disappeared while Naomi was inside the
house, and Miss Sybil had ended up driving her to Wynette's only hotel.
Naomi had promised to give Holly Grace until the next day to look over
the contract and consult her lawyer. Not that there was any doubt in
Holly Grace's mind about signing. The amount of money they were
offering her was staggering—a hundred thousand dollars for doing
nothing more than wiggling around in front of a camera and shaking
hands at department-store perfume counters. She remembered her days in
Bryan, Texas, living with Dallie in student housing and trying to
scratch together enough money to pay for groceries.
Still dressed in Dallie's blue shirt and holding a coffee mug in each
hand, she closed the door to his bedroom with her hip. The bed looked
like a war zone, with all the covers pulled out from the bottom
and
tangled around his hips. Even asleep, Dallie couldn't seem to find any
peace. She set his coffee mug down on the nightstand and then took a
sip from her own.
The Sassy Girl. It sounded just right to her. Even the timing was
right. She was tired of battling the good ol' boys at SEI, tired of
having to work twice as hard as everyone else to go the same distance.
She was ready for a fresh start in her life, a chance to make big
money. Long ago she had decided that when opportunity knocked on her
door, she would be standing right there to answer it.
Taking her coffee over to the old armchair, she sat down and crossed
her foot over her bare knee. Her thin gold ankle bracelet caught the
sunlight, sending an ambulating serpentine reflection onto the ceiling
above her head. Glittering images flashed in her mind—designer clothes,
fur coats, famous New York restaurants. After all her work, all these
years of butting her head against stone walls, the chance of a lifetime
had finally dropped right in her lap.
Cuddling the warm mug in her hand, she looked over at Dallie. People
who knew, about their separate lives and separate home addresses always
asked why they hadn't gotten divorced. They couldn't understand that
Holly Grace and Dallie still liked being married to each other. They
were family.
Her gaze traveled down along the hard curve of his calf, the sight of
which had once produced so many stirrings of lust inside her. When had
they last made love? She couldn't remember. All she knew was that the
minute she and Dallie climbed into bed together, all their old troubles
came back to haunt them. Holly Grace was once again a helpless young
girl in need of protection, and Dallie was a teenage husband trying
desperately to support a family while failure hung over him like a dark
cloud. Now that they'd begun to make it a practice to stay out of each
other's beds, they'd discovered the relief of letting go of those old
parts of themselves. Lovers were a dime a dozen, they had finally
decided, but best friends were hard to find.
Dallie moaned and turned over onto his stomach. She left him alone for
a few more minutes while he pushed his face into the pillows and
stretched out his legs. Finally, she got up and walked over to sit on
the edge of the bed. Putting down her own mug, she picked up his. "I
brought you some coffee. Drink this down and I guarantee you'll feel
almost like a human being by the time next week rolls around."
He eased himself into the pillows wedged up against the headboard and,
with his eyes still half closed, held out his hand. She gave him the
mug and then pushed back a rumpled thatch of blond hair that had fallen
over his forehead. Even with messy hair and stubble on his chin, he
managed to look gorgeous. His morning appearance used to aggravate her
when they first got married. She would wake up looking like the wrath
of God, and he would look like a movie star. He always told her she
looked her prettiest in the morning, but she never believed him. Dallie
wasn't objective where she was concerned. He thought she was the most
beautiful woman in the world, no matter how bad she looked.
"Have you seen Francie this morning?" he muttered.
"I saw her for about three seconds in the living room a little bit ago,
and then she ran away. Dallie, I don't mean to criticize your taste in
women, but she seems flighty to me." Holly Grace leaned back into the
pillows and pulled up her knees, chuckling at the memory of the scene
in the Roustabout parking lot.
"She really did go after you last night,
didn't she? I've got to give her credit for that. The only other woman
I know who could go one on one with you like that is me."
He turned his head and glared at her. "Yeah? Well, that's not all the
two of you have in common. You both talk too damn much in the morning."
Holly Grace ignored his bad temper. Dallie was always grouchy when he
woke up, but she liked to talk in the morning. Sometimes she could pry
interesting tidbits out of him if she kept at him before he was fully
conscious. "I have to tell you that I think she's the most interesting
stray you've picked up in a long time—almost better than that midget
clown who used to travel with the rodeo. Skeet told me how she trashed
your motel room in New Orleans. I sure wish I'd seen that." She propped
her elbow up on the pillow next to his head and tucked her foot up
beneath her hip. "Just out of curiosity, why didn't you tell her about
me?"
He stared at her for a moment over the top of his mug and then pulled
it away from his mouth without sipping. "Don't be ridiculous. She knew
about you. I talked about you in front of her all the time."
"That's what Skeet said, but I'm wondering whether in any of those
conversations you happened to use the exact word 'wife'?"
"Of course I did. Or Skeet did." He shoved his fingers through his
hair. "I don't know . . . somebody did. Maybe Miss Sybil."
"Sorry, baby, but it looked to me like she was hearing the bad news for
the very first time."
He impatiently set his mug down. "Hell, what's the difference?
Francie's too much in love with herself to care about anybody else.
She's past history as far as I'm concerned."
Holly Grace wasn't surprised. The fight in the parking lot the night
before had looked just about as final
as a parting could be
... unless the two fighters loved each other to the point of
desperation, the way she and Dallie used to.
He abruptly shoved back the covers and got out of bed wearing nothing
more than his white cotton briefs. She let herself enjoy the sight of
those tight muscles rippling across his shoulders and the strength in
the backs of his thighs. She wondered what man had first come up with
the notion that women didn't enjoy looking at men's bodies. Probably
some egghead Ph.D. with four chins and a potbelly.
Dallie turned and caught her studying him. He scowled, even though she
knew he probably enjoyed it. "I've got to locate Skeet and make sure he
gave her money for a plane ticket home. If she roams around by herself
for too long, she's bound to get into more trouble than she can handle."
Holly Grace looked at him more closely, and an unaccustomed pang of
jealousy hit her. It had been a long time since she'd minded Dallie
having other women, especially since she collected more than her fair
share of good-looking men. But she didn't like the idea of having him
care too much about any woman who didn't meet with her approval, which
showed exactly what kind of narrow-minded Christian she
was. "You
really liked her, didn't you?"
"She was all right," he replied noncommittally.
Holly Grace wanted to know more, like how good Miss Fancy Pants could
really be in bed after Dallie had already had the best. But she knew
that he would call her a hypocrite, so she set aside her curiosity for
the moment. Besides, now that he was finally awake, she could tell him
her really important news. Moving to a cross-legged position in the
middle of the bed, she filled him in on her morning.
He reacted just about the way she had expected he would.
She told him he could go straight to hell.
He said he was glad about the job, but her attitude bothered him.
"My attitude is my own damn business," she retorted.
"One of these days you're going to learn that happiness isn't wrapped
up in a dollar bill, Holly Grace. There's more involved than that."
"Since when did you get to be such an expert on happiness? It should be
pretty much apparent to anyone who isn't half
brain-dead that rich is better than poor and that just because you
intend to be a failure all your life doesn't mean I'm going to be one,
too."
They kept on hurting each other like that for a while, then they spent
a few minutes stomping around the bedroom without talking. Dallie made
a phone call to Skeet; Holly Grace went into the bathroom and got
dressed. In the old days they would have broken their stony silence
with angry lovemaking, trying unsuccessfully to use their bodies to
solve all the problems that their minds couldn't handle. But now they
didn't touch each other, and gradually their anger ran out of steam.
Finally, they went downstairs together and shared the rest of Miss
Sybil's coffee.
The man behind the wheel of the Cadillac frightened Francesca, although
he was handsome in a scary sort of way. He had curly black hair, a
compact body, and dark, angry eyes, which kept darting nervously toward
the rearview mirror. She had an uncomfortable feeling that she'd seen
that face someplace before, but she couldn't remember where. Why hadn't
she stopped to think more clearly when he'd offered her a ride instead
of just jumping into the Cadillac? Like a fool, she had barely looked
at him; she'd just climbed in. When she had asked him what he'd been
doing in front of Dallie's house, he had said he was a chauffeur and
that his passenger didn't need him any longer.
She tried to shift her feet out from under the cat, but he planted his
weight more firmly across them and she gave up. The man looked over at
her through a cloud of cigarette smoke and then glanced again into the
rearview mirror. His nervousness bothered her. He was acting like some
sort of fugitive. She shivered. Maybe he wasn't really a chauffeur.
Maybe this was a stolen car. If only she'd let Skeet drive her to the
airport in San Antonio this wouldn't have happened. Once again she'd
made the wrong choice. Dallie had been right every one of the dozen
times he'd told her she didn't have any common sense.
Dallie . . . She bit her lip and pulled her cosmetic case closer to her
hip. While she had sat numbly in the kitchen, Miss Sybil had gone
upstairs and gotten her things together for her. Then Miss Sybil had
handed her an envelope containing enough
money to buy an airplane ticket to London, along with a little extra to
tide her over. Francesca had stared down at the envelope, knowing that
she couldn't take it, not now that she had begun to think about things
like pride and self-respect. If she took the envelope she would be
nothing more than a whore being paid off for services rendered. If she
didn't take it...
She had taken the envelope and felt as if something bright and innocent
had died forever inside her. She couldn't meet Miss Sybil's eyes as she
slipped the money inside her case. The lock clicked and her stomach
rebelled. Dear God, what if she really was pregnant? Only by swallowing
hard could she prevent herself from losing the slice of toast Miss
Sybil had forced her to eat. The elderly woman's voice had been kinder
than usual as she said that Skeet would drive her to the airport.
Francesca had shaken her head and announced in her haughtiest voice
that she had already made plans. Then, before she could further
humiliate herself by clinging to Miss Sybil's thin chest and begging
her to tell her what to do, she had grabbed her case and run out the
door.
The Cadillac hit a rut, jolting her to one side, and she realized that
they had left the highway. She stared out at the rutted, unpaved road
that lay like a dusty ribbon across the flat, bleak landscape. They had
left the hill country behind some time before. Shouldn't they be close
to San Antonio by now? The knot in her stomach twisted tighter. The
Cadillac bounced again, and the cat shifted its weight on her feet and
looked up at her with a baleful glare, as if she were personally
responsible for the bumpy ride. After several more miles had slipped
by, she said, "Are you certain this is right? This road doesn't look
very well traveled."
The man lit a fresh cigarette from the butt of his old one, then
snatched up the map that lay on the seat between them.
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