Heart of Dixie - Tami Hoag (1) (21 page)

She dropped the shirt and went to sit on the couch. She stared at the box for a moment, nibbling on her lip and combing back her wet bangs with her fingers. It was obviously from Jake. No one else would have bothered to dust the table. The box was perfectly wrapped, the candles perfectly placed. A going-away present. A little something for her trouble.

She told herself she shouldn't open it, but she had never in her life been able to resist a present and she watched her hands creep toward it even as she told them to leave the thing alone.

Slowly she undid the wrappings, then lifted the lid and set it aside. She inched forward on the sofa cushion to peer into the box as cautiously as if she expected a snake to leap out of it. But she didn't draw back when she saw what was inside. She caught her breath in a surprised gasp and reached in carefully for the gift.

It was a book. A handmade book. The cover was a pen- and-ink drawing of a fairy-tale princess on a magnificent gray horse with small animals running alongside. It was done in a style that reminded her of medieval paintings, beautiful and intricate, filled with whimsical details. There were touches of water-color throughout, sheer, soft colors that had rippled the page slightly, giving the animals a three-dimensional look. There was no title, and the story began immediately on the next page.

"Once upon a time there was a beautiful princess named Devon. All the people in the kingdom loved her because she was so beautiful, but Princess Devon was sad. She thought no one loved her for what was in her heart, so one day she ran away from her kingdom...." Her voice trailed away as she turned the page. She sat on the edge of the old couch with the thin manuscript resting on her knees, and read by the light of the beeswax candles. The story told of the knight who had set out on a quest to find the princess. Through magic the princess had taken the form of another woman and was living in a small kingdom by the sea. She had become a friend to all the people there and to all the small animals. Everyone had grown to love her for her kind heart and sweet nature.

The knight fell deeply in love with her, never suspecting she was the woman he had come in search of. When a butterfly told him she was in fact the princess, he didn't know what to do. He couldn't tell her he had come looking for the princess when she was the only one in his heart. His quest no longer mattered to him, because he had found something far more special than a princess people loved only for her beauty. He had found true love.

He decided to give her time, to gain her trust, to let her tell him her secret herself. But before that could happen she found him out. Thinking he had only been interested in capturing the beautiful princess to claim the reward, she sent him away.

That was where the story ended, with a drawing of the knight leading his horse away, both of them hanging their heads. Dixie stared at the drawing through a mist of tears, her heart tearing in two. Jake. Her perfect golden knight. She hadn't given him a chance to explain. The evidence had been so damning, so hurtful. Even now she trembled as she struggled with the need to believe in him and the fear of being hurt again. She clutched the manuscript in her hands and bit her lip as tears of pain and confusion gathered in her eyes and rolled down her cheeks.

"I haven't settled on an ending yet," Jake said. He materialized out of the blackness of the dining room, cradling a purring Cyclops in his arms. He stroked the cat with a steady hand, but his gaze, that burning blue gaze, was on Dixie. She felt it reach past her barriers, clear to her soul. "I'm leaving it up to you. Either the princess sees the true depth of his love or she sends him away to die of a broken heart."

Dixie just looked at him and said nothing. She watched him set the cat down and kneel before the fireplace to set a match to the kindling on the grate. As the flames licked upward he reached into a card-board box beside the hearth and pulled out several photographs. He fed them to the fire, watching as they curled in on themselves and disintegrated.

"I'm voting for the first ending, myself," he said quietly, reaching into the box for a handful of newspaper clippings. "But it's your book and you can do whatever you like with it." He fed articles to the greedy orange flames. The light from the fire turned his handsome face bronze and made his hair shine like gold. Dixie's heart pounded. Robert Redford had nothing on this man, not even in his heyday. And he was either totally sincere or he was the best actor she'd ever played with.

Dixie's fingers curled tightly around the edge of the manuscript as she faced what was in her heart. The truth of the matter was she was bound to love him whether he was guilty or not, whether he was perfect or not. Her only choice seemed to be whether she would brave a chance at letting him hurt her more or suffer alone.

"It's a good book." She stroked the pages. "Based on a true story, isn't it? I like a book that's based on a true story."

Jake abandoned the fire and turned to look at her once again. "Do you like a happy ending?"

"When I can get one," she said cautiously.

"You can get one now."

He left the hearth and came around the table to kneel at her feet and gaze up into her eyes. "I love you, Dixie. I don't know how else to tell you."

"You came looking for Devon Stafford." "She doesn't hold a candle to the lady who ran away with my heart."

"What about the story you came here to write?"

"I don't give a damn about that book. I wanted to find out who Devon Stafford really was, what it was that made her shine from the inside out. Now I know, but I don't want to share it with the rest of the world." He reached up and touched her cheek, giving her a tender smile. "See? I'm not perfect, I'm greedy. I want you all to myself."

Dixie's lips turned up at the corners. She tapped a finger on the manuscript. "You made a couple of typos in here too."

Jake grinned, flashing his dimples and his straight white teeth. "Only a couple? I typed like a madman by candlelight all afternoon. I think I gave myself arthritis. I can't tell you how many times I got my fingers caught in the keys."

"Yeah, well, you aren't much with machines," she said, chuckling as he shot her a mock scowl. She stroked a hand over the cover of the book again, marveling at its beauty. She touched the signature beneath one of the horse's hooves. "Fabiano did the cover and the illustrations?"

"Yeah. He went into an artistic fit because he claimed the cover wasn't perfect. He wasn't going to let me have it, but I told him you were the last person who would care if the cat's ears weren't quite right."

"Guess you know me pretty well," she said softly.

"Not as well as I will if you marry me and let me hang around for the next fifty or sixty years. That's what I really want. That's all I want from you--your heart, your love. You, Dixie, not some platinum idol. Trust me to love you for who you are, honey. Please."

She shivered at the sincerity in his eyes, her soul craving to believe him. "You don't care that I don't look like Devon Stafford anymore?"

"Not a bit."

"You don't care that I take in every stray that comes down the pike?"

He shook his head. "Not much."

"You don't care that I'm a hopeless slob of a house- keeper?"

His smile tightened. "We'll talk about that."

Dixie laughed. She looked at Jake long and hard, taking in everything about him--the lines of his face, the rigid set of his broad shoulders, the steady, searching quality of his gaze. She would never be able to hide much from him. He looked past every act, every mask, to the woman she was inside.

Wasn't that what she had wanted all along? A man to love her for what was inside her.

Here he was kneeling at her feet with a one-eyed cat crawling up his thigh. How could she not love him? How could she not take that chance? She had already given him her heart. What would her life be without it?

Trust me to love you for who you are....

She reached out a hand and brushed the golden hair that fell across his forehead. "You're too good to be true," she whispered.

"No," he said. "But I'm the man who loves you, Dixie. Please don't push me away."

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She loved him. She needed him. She had vowed to give him everything she was, everything she had been, everything that was in her heart. It was time to take that step.

With a trembling smile she lowered her mouth to his and whispered, "What do you say we go to work on that happy ending?" ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Tami Hoag's novels have appeared regularly on national bestseller lists since the publication of her first book in 1988. She lives in Los Angeles. Her website is www.tamihoag.com. BANTAM BOOKS BY TAMI HOAG

The Alibi Man

Prior Bad Acts

Kill the Messenger

Dark Horse

Dust to Dust

Ashes to Ashes

A Thin Dark Line

Guilty as Sin

Night Sins

Dark Paradise

Cry Wolf

Still Waters Lucky's Lady

The Last White Knight

Straight from the Heart Tempestuous/The Restless Heart

Taken by Storm HEART OF DIXIE

A Bantam Book

PUBLISHING HISTORY

Bantam Loveswept edition published September 1991

Bantam mass market edition / May 2008

Published by

Bantam Dell

A Division of Random House, Inc.

New York, New York

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons,

living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved

Copyright � 1991 by Tami Hoag

Bantam Books and the rooster colophon are registered

trademarks of Random House, Inc.

eISBN: 978-0-553-90550-2

www.bantamdell.com

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