Hold on Tight (3 page)

“And a docile, dependent woman. How would you describe your ideal victim?”

He grinned slyly. His fingers curled and uncurled inside her hand, their intent even more intimate. “Oh, she always has dinner ready for me, she loves all the sports I love, she just lives to give me massages, she fetches and totes whenever my friends come over to play poker, she likes to mow the lawn …”

Dinah laughed helplessly, enjoying his blarney. “When I tell you about myself, you’ll see that I don’t fit that mold at all.” Her traitorous fingers wanted to caress the top of his broad, lightly haired hand. She forced them to remain obedient.

“You’ve got potential,” he insisted again, his eyes deadly serious under their teasing veneer. Dinah rested her chin in her free hand and studied him. “So talk,” he ordered. “You teach high school, right?”

It was hopeless to evade his interrogation, and as long as it remained harmless she’d enjoy it. Dinah told him about getting her master’s degree in political science at Mitchataw College, a small but respected school in central Alabama. She explained how she came to Mount Pleasant to take a job teaching history, fell in love with the town, and got involved in local politics.

“And the town fell in love with you, it looks like,” he said when she finished. “I watched how people acted toward you in the meeting.” His fingers reached out to brush their heat across the sensitive skin of her wrist.

“I suppose. I was elected mayor over the incumbent, Mervin Flortney. He wasn’t much of a mayor. Now let go of my hand.” Breathing a little fast, she tugged it away. He took it back.

“Good girl. How’d you do it?”

She sighed in exasperation. “I’m not a girl. I’m twenty-seven years old.”

“I’m thirty-six, but I’m still a boy,” he teased. “Don’t get caught up in quibblin’ over semantics.”

“Big word, semantics. Congratulations.”

He laughed heartily and gave her hand a joyful squeeze. “Talk, Madam Mayor. Did you bowl these folks over with big-city shenanigans? You were raised in Atlanta, weren’t you?”

“Yes, I was raised in Atlanta. No, I didn’t bowl anyone over with … shenanigans. Are you assuming that I just thrust my chest forward and made insipid speeches? We beauty queens have a few more resources than that, thank you. I work hard to understand this town’s problems and I work hard to make them better.”

“Calm down there,” he said. “It’s just curious to somebody like me, who grew up in … uhmmm … modest circumstances, as my public relations man puts it, that anybody would give up money and glory to teach high-school history in a real-life Mayberry.” He looked over her head as if watching someone come in the diner’s door. “Aunt Bee!” he called. “Opie! Come set a spell!”

Dinah fought to keep from smiling but lost. His fingers wound between hers, and she marveled at her
unwillingness to rebuke him. If she were an impulsive woman, she’d ask Rucker McClure to stop tempting and start satisfying. But she wasn’t. At the age of sixteen she’d won Miss Teen Atlanta on the basis of an oration titled “Pride, Prudence, and Perseverance—Our Faithful Friends.” Though the speech seemed pitifully naive to her today, she could still recite it by heart.

“You don’t understand why I love Mount Pleasant,” she told him. “Let me tell you what life is like here.”

He nodded. “Talk to me, Madam Mayor. I’m a good listener.” Dinah felt an odd sense of camaraderie as she studied the sudden gentleness in his eyes. She hadn’t talked to a man like this in a long, long time. Wait a minute. She’d never talked to a man like Rucker McClure before. A lovable maniac. Lovable?

“Well,” she began, “let me tell you about our grand and exalted Possum Days Festival …”

With his throaty laughter as a backdrop, Dinah told him abut the festival, about Mount Pleasant High and the Mount Pleasant High Wildcats, state AA football champions in 1959 but never since then, about the Warp ’n’ Weave clothing factory that employed three hundred residents, about the fall tourist trade that would begin in a week or so when the leaves started to turn. She told him the history of Mount Pleasant’s World War I cannon, sitting bronzed and proud on the town square. She told him the history of the rose bushes planted around the cannon by the Mount Pleasant Women for a Progressive Future.

And somewhere along the way Rucker stopped being a stranger and became a friend. At about eleven o’clock Alfred set a pot of coffee and a plate of chocolate donuts on the table, then went back to his TV to watch the late news and Johnny Carson. A few truckers ambled in, but other than that the place was quiet. At midnight Rucker was deeply involved in telling Dinah a story about his father, a trucker who’d died in a dramatic highway accident when Rucker was fifteen. Dinah was deeply involved in watching Rucker, her coffee untas ted, her donut half-eaten. At one
A.M
. Alfred shooed them and the truckers out, then locked up for the night.

Rucker kept talking as they walked down Main Street’s oak-shaded sidewalk to where his car was parked. He also kept holding Dinah’s hand. He swung it merrily, as if teasing her to believe that hand-holding was innocent.

“… and so, when I made it big,” he said, “I told Mama, ‘You’ve been a waitress all your life, sweetheart, and you’ve worked damn hard. Now I’m gonna buy you the fanciest condo in Florida and you’re gonna set down there by Mattie and her family—Mattie’s my married sister—and you’re gonna have more fun than a chicken at a worm farm.”

“And what did your mother say?”

“Prrrr-ruck, cluck cluck cluck, prrrr-ruck.”

They were still laughing as he held the Cadillac door for her. Dinah slid inside and looked around curiously at the plush interior. “A black Cadillac Seville,” she murmured as he settled into the driver’s seat. “I expected a custom pickup truck.”

“Don’t worry, I’m still a hayseed at heart.” He handed her a sleek tape case from under the seat. “Pick something. I love music of all kinds.”

“Ah, the soundtrack from
Deliverance
, ‘Honky Tonk Favorites from Nashville,’ ‘Highlights from
Hee Haw.
’ This is music of all kinds?”

“I have wide-ranging musical tastes,” he said solemnly.

“Indeed. I’d say these tapes cover the range from country-western to country-western. With a little country-western thrown in. How will I ever choose? Ah. ‘Banjo Favorites.’ That sounds safe.”

She started to put the tape in. Rucker leaned close to her as she did. “Who wants ‘safe’?” he asked. Dinah twisted to face him, her breath catching as she inhaled his clean, masculine scent. No seductive, fancy colognes for this man. He didn’t need help seducing women.

“I want ‘safe,’ ” she whispered.

“Nah, you don’t. I’m gonna kiss you.” The tone was light, but his voice was husky. “But I’ll keep it safe. For right now, anyway.”

“You want me to kiss you right here on the street?”

“Nah. I’d rather you kiss me right here on the lips. Just aim for a spot about a smidgen below my mustache.”

A flabbergasted laugh started in her throat and never surfaced. His kiss trapped it between them and turned it into a plaintive groan of pleasure and exasperation, mostly pleasure. Rucker slid both arms around her and brought her closer. Dinah raised shocked hands to grip his shoulders. She gripped, then relaxed, then gripped again harder, as his mouth made slow, erotic movements on hers. Suddenly her world was only taste and touch and smell, all of the sensations magnified by a haze of physical desire and shock.

The Fourth of July. A first kiss. Puppy love. All these notions got tangled up in her thoughts as her tongue touched his and sensation exploded across the skin of her abdomen and thighs. His hands rubbed her shoulder blades in circular patterns then slid down her spine, his fingers tracing the indention of bone and muscle even through her clothes.

Lost to his skilled seduction, Dinah wrapped both arms around his neck and leaned into the kiss, her back arching. His soft moan was vulnerable and gentle. Is there really a sensitive, sweet man under all the flirtatious macho humor? she wondered. Would it be wrong to be impulsive? Wasn’t she entitled to ignore common sense with such an amazing man?

Dinah felt him tugging on her left jacket-sleeve. She inhaled raggedly as it started sliding down. The man is seducing me, she thought without much alarm. Right here on Main Street. He’s seducing me, and I’m not lifting a finger to stop him. His hands kept up their wonderful assault on her lower back, slipping lower, lower … Wait a minute, her logical mind protested. Unless he had a third arm, a very unusual talent for magic, or a friend in the back seat, he couldn’t possibly rub her rump with both hands and pull her jacket off one shoulder at the same time.

Dinah jerked her mouth away from his. “It’s happenin’ fast, I know,” Rucker said soothingly, his lips brushing
her cheek. “It’s not wrong, though. Nothing’s ever been so right—”

“I’m being attacked by something!”

“Me, too, hon. Isn’t it wonderful?”

“No, no! Really attacked!” She twisted frantically and came face to face with the possum, which was clinging fervently to her shoulder. Dinah yelped and the possum squeaked. Then its eyes glazed over and it tumbled limply down her back onto the seat.

“You scared it!” Rucker said reproachfully. He reached around her and scooped the small animal into his hand. Dinah cringed away from it and slid into the far corner of the car, her pulse pounding desperately. Insanity had started with a torrid kiss and ended with a fainting marsupial. She gathered her senses for a moment, wondering what in the world had happened to her. Prudence had deserted pride and perseverance.

“It’s playing possum, I assume?” she said coldly. She straightened her jacket with an authoritative tug.

“As a matter of fact, yes. Poor critter.”

He stroked the limp little animal with obvious concern. Dinah’s heart softened and she reached over to pet the possum too. After a moment it came to and wobbled upright.

“Mr. McClure, I’d like to go back to my car at city hall now, thank you. Your possum and I are in the same discombobulated state.”

He reached out and stroked her cheek as languidly as he’d been stroking the possum’s back. “Feel better?” he asked several seconds later. Her skin was fiery under his touch.

“I’m fine,” she said. “Let’s go.”

“When can you and I—”

“Never. Please go back to Birmingham and don’t make fun of me or my town anymore.”

“Look here, Dinah, after that kiss—”

“That’s all she wrote, Rucker. You’re looking for a Playmate Slave of the Year, and I’m not interested.”

“You’re not givin’ me a chance.”

“Please. I don’t want to discuss this anymore. I’m
sorry I got carried away and kissed you,” she said firmly.

“Uh-uh. I don’t believe that any more than I believe in TV weathermen. We’ll just drive on back, and you calm down, and then we’ll talk.”

“We’ve finished talking. We’ve finished, period.”

His face grim, he set the possum down between them and started the car. Music that sounded to Dinah like eight hundred dueling banjos—some of them dying from the duel, if their pitiful twangs were any indication—filled the car as Rucker drove back down Main Street.

“You just ran our red light,” Dinah said.

“What red light?”

“Our only red light. And the police chief saw you. You’d better pull over.”

An incredulous look on his face, Rucker glanced back at the traitorous red light that swung over the intersection by the Twittle County Courthouse. Lights flashing, a police car came after the Cadillac.

“I’m damned doomed,” he said.

Police Chief Dewey Dunne was one of Mount Pleasant’s most prominent black citizens, a Baptist deacon, and a stickler for rules. He tipped his hat to Dinah.

“Mornin’, Dinah.”

“Morning, Dewey.”

“Morning, sir,” Rucker echoed. Dewey scanned Rucker’s driver’s license with a scowl on his beefy face.

“This is expired, Mr. McClure.”

“Nah. Let me … hmmmm … reckon so, sir.”

“Where’s your proof of insurance, Mr. McClure?”

Rucker winced. He turned to Dinah with beseeching eyes. “Haven’t you got any clout?” he asked.

“Not with the chief,” she answered primly. “Haven’t you got an insurance card?”

“My washing machine washed it. It’s currently stuck in the filter, in about two million soggy, little bitty pieces.”

“Mr. McClure,” Dewey intoned in the voice of God, “I’m afraid I’ve got to take you in.”

“Nah, you don’t. I’m with the mayor.”

“That don’t mean diddly to me, Mr. McClure,” Dewey said politely. “Sorry, Dinah. Nothin’ personal about that.”

“I understand, Dewey,” she answered. “But this once, couldn’t you—”

“Out of the car, please, Mr. McClure.”

Dinah closed her eyes in despair. Rucker McClure would wreak a terrible revenge in return for this escapade, she was certain. He’d hunt down every condemning, amusing thing he could find about Mount Pleasant and about her too. Mount Pleasant’s reputation could survive such a war. Hers couldn’t.

Dinah opened her eyes to find Rucker studying the distraught expression on her face. Exasperation and disbelief shown in his eyes, but humor quirked around his mouth. He handed her the possum. “Take care of our baby,” he drawled. His voice was full of determination. “And tell him … tell him Daddy intends to learn all about this mean little town and its mayor. Just as soon as he gets off the chain gang.”

Dinah clutched the baby possum to her stomach and nodded wearily. Her fate was sealed.

“Hey, coach, how was that routine?” the captain of the Mount Pleasant Wildcat drill team called.

Seated on the hood of her small station wagon Dinah shielded her eyes from the late afternoon sun and nodded distractedly to the thirty girls lined up in the school parking lot. “You look great. Tomorrow well go down to the field and practice with the band. Run through it one more time.”

Dinah rewound the tape in the boom box that sat beside her. The drill team snapped to attention, did a dress right, and began their routine to a marching-band version of
Thriller
that pounded out of the tape player. Anxious to get away from the jarring music, Dinah walked across the parking lot and stood at the edge of the stadium embankment, staring blankly down the long, steep hill at the football team practicing for Friday night’s game.