Molly (2 page)

She cavorted with the dogs, spraying them and
herself with equal enthusiasm. There was so much laughter and
barking that she didn’t hear the car pull up in the driveway.

“Excuse me.”

The voice, coming so unexpectedly, startled
her, and Molly whirled around, the hose still in her hand. Water
spattered on her visitor’s polished black shoes and soaked the
pants of his immaculate three-piece suit.

He jumped back.

“I’m so sorry.” Still dragging the hose with
her, Molly leaned down and swiped at the water on his shoes. The
hose nozzle got out of hand and shot a stream of water straight up
into his face. “Oh, dear.” Molly stood to correct her mistake and
sent a stream of water cascading down the front of his shirt. “I
do
apologize.”

“If you apologize anymore I’m likely to
drown.” The stranger lifted the hose out of her hand and twisted
the nozzle shut.

Molly stepped back to survey him. Being
soaking wet didn’t keep him from being the most delicious-looking
man she’d ever seen. In fact it only enhanced his charms. She
couldn’t imagine, though, why anybody would be wearing such a
ridiculous outfit on such a hot day. He had to be an insurance
salesman; they were always out to impress.

“You must be Molly,” he said.

She was pleased that he knew her name. She’d
been back in Tupelo only three weeks now, but she did love fame and
notoriety. She supposed that by now everybody in the city knew that
Venus de Molly was back in town.

She smiled and extended her hand. “Molly
Rakestraw. And you must be...”

“Samuel Adams.” He looked askance at the
grubby hand she held out, hesitated a second and then took it
cautiously, as if he expected to become contaminated by the
dirt.

Out of perverseness, she gave his hand a hard
squeeze and hung on long enough to transfer a good portion of
gardening soil to him. He looked like the kind of man who would
benefit from getting dirty every now and then.

“My goodness, I didn’t expect you until
Tuesday.”

“This
is
Tuesday.”

She tossed her head in a way that set her
golden braid a-swing and all her jewelry a-tinkle. “1 would have
sworn it was Saturday. But then time means nothing to me. I think
one day is just as delightful as the next, don’t you?”

He lifted one eyebrow. “I’ve never thought
about it.”

Molly looked him up and down once again. For
all his delicious looks, Bea’s brother as remote and formidable as
an arctic glacier at high noon. Just the opposite of rambunctious,
straight-talking Bea.

Her heart sank. Good Lord, what if Glory
Ethel had turned into the same stick-in-the mud as her son? Her
daddy would be miserable. He needed a lively woman, not some
ice-encased autocrat.

“Just listen to me, standing here chattering
while you’re dripping wet. Where’s your mother?”

“In the car.”

“Gracious, in this heat?”

“I left the motor running and the
air-conditioning on so she would be cool while I checked to see if
we had the right house.”

He was exactly the type who would do
something practical and sensible like that. She would have bailed
out, bags and all, dragging her daddy by the hand and calling to
everybody that she had arrived.

“Please bring her in. Daddy is eager to see
her, and I haven’t seen her in
years.”

“Will you excuse me while I go and get
her?”

“Certainly.”

Molly grinned as he walked off.

Water swished in his shoes and drizzled down
his legs. What was more, his right hand looked as if he had been
down in the dirt making mud cakes. Molly Rakestraw was even worse
than he had expected, just the kind of woman he didn’t trust, all
fluff and no substance. Where was that skinny little girl with
braces he remembered?

He dreaded meeting the father. Anyone who
would raise such a Bohemian daughter had to have a few screws loose
somewhere.

He was close to cursing by the time he
reached his car. Bending down, he opened the door and got inside.
For once it didn’t matter that he was dripping water and dirt all
over the leather seats of his Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud. There were
more important considerations.

“What in the world?” Glory Ethel was already
grasping the door handle in order to get out.

“Just please be quiet a minute and listen to
me, Mother.”

“I’m listening.”

“The best thing we can do right now is turn
around and head back to Florence. I’ve see the way Molly turned
out, and I can tell you that if her father is anything like that,
you don’t want to be within a city block of him.”

“Was that Molly you were talking to?”

“Yes.”

“She’s turned into gorgeous woman.”

“How could you tell under all that dirt and
jewelry? She must be wearing five pounds of turquoise and silver.
To garden in, for God’s sake. And I’ve never seen a woman bare more
flesh than that outside the bedroom.” He paused to loosen his
tie.

Glory Ethel laughed. “I see she got to
you.”

“This is not one of Chaucer’s bawdy tales;
this is real life. It’s not the woman that is bothering me; it’s
the heat.”

Glory Ethel turned and stared out the window.
Molly was still in the yard, cavorting with two dogs.

“Bea didn’t tell me what a stunning woman
she’d turned into. If she still likes me I’m liable to marry
Jedidiah on the spot.” She turned around and grinned at her son.
“Are you going to escort me like the perfect gentleman you are, or
am I going to have to get out of this car and go visit the
Rakestraws all by myself?”

Samuel knew that mood. Right now it was
useless to argue with his mother. He’d make the best of the
situation and save his arguments for later.

“Mother, you’re giving me ulcers.”

“I wish you’d give
me
something.”

“What?”

“Grandchildren.”

He’d heard that before. And so had his
sister. Steeling himself for another encounter with Molly, Samuel
got out of the car. He was determined to see this through. As he
helped Glory Ethel from the car, he glanced at the woman in the
yard. She was bending over her dogs with her back to him. She had
the most astonishing legs he’d ever seen. They were long and tanned
and extraordinarily beautiful. Perfect. The word came to his mind
just as Molly straightened and turned to smile at him. Good grief.
Everything about her was perfect: the wide turquoise eyes, the
flawless skin, the high cheekbones, the generous mouth, the
exquisitely proportioned body. No wonder artists and sculptors
wanted her for a model.

He could imagine the havoc a woman like that
would wreak in his carefully ordered world. There were men in
Florence who would fight for just a glimpse of her. And his mother
wanted her to be part of the family! All the years he’d spent
rebuilding the family respectability would be for nothing.

“Are you going to stare at her all day, or
are you going to escort me to the door?”

“I wasn’t staring.”

“Humph,” was all she said, which wasn’t even
a word. This could turn out to be the worst day of his life.

His mother had never met a person she didn’t’
like, and this little girl all grown up was no exception. Glory
Ethel greeted her with a huge hug, mindless of the dirt and water
she got on the front of her dress.

“My dear, I can’t tell you how I’ve looked
forward to seeing you again! You even prettier than Bea said.”

Samuel could tell the compliment pleased
Molly. She was obviously a frivolous, gullible woman who would
believe anything a person told her if it were prefaced by a
compliment. And gaudy. Good Lord! She was as gaudy as that floozy
his father had run off with—that two-bit country singer who had
come to cut a record at The Shoals and had ended up with all the
Adams’s family jewels, half the Adams fortune, and Taylor Adams to
boot.

While he was tallying up Molly’s faults, a
slender distinguished-looking man came out the front door. He was a
handsome older gentleman with a thick shock of silver hair and the
bold nose and chin of a Roman gladiator. It was easy to see where
Molly had gotten her good looks.

His mother fluttered and flirted like a
schoolgirl. He didn’t know how she finally managed to make the
introductions.

Mr. Rakestraw gave Samuel’s hand a firm shake
and then turned his attention to Glory Ethel. Bending gallantly
from the waist, he kissed her hand. “My dear, I’ve waited so long
for this.” He tucked her hand into the crook of his elbow. “While
the children are chatting, we’ll go inside. I’ve made
lemonade.”

“That sounds lovely, Jedidiah.” Glory Ethel
cast a smile over her shoulder at her son and allowed herself to be
escorted inside.

Samuel started to follow them and then he
remembered his wet clothes. He hesitated, torn between wanting to
keep an eye on his mother and not wanting to track mud into the
house. His glance swung to Molly. Being stuck in the yard with her
had all the appeal of jumping into a blender full of whipped cream
and cherries. Southern manners and muddy shoes be hanged, he
thought. He was going inside so he could keep his mother from
making any more foolhardy mistakes.

He started toward the front door.

Molly reached out and caught his sleeve with
one hand—the muddy one. But hell, what did a little more mud
matter? He was already wearing enough to furnish his sister Bea
with mud facials for a month or two.

He glanced down at the hand on his arm and
lifted one eyebrow. His look of disapproval had been known to make
people quake in their boots. Molly simply smiled at him.

“Why don’t we sit outside? There’s a lovely
chinaberry tree beside the house.”

The last thing in the world he wanted to do
was sit under a chinaberry tree with Molly Rakestraw. He already
knew more about her than he cared to. He started to decline, and
then thought better of it. Maybe he could find out exactly what the
Rakestraws were up to.

“Perhaps I can dry out a little while I sit
under the... chinaberry, did you say?”

“Yes.”

“You don’t hear of many of those trees
anymore.”

Molly led the way to the swing, talking as
she went. “I remember a great big old chinaberry tree on the farm
where Daddy grew up. In the summertime I used to pick the berries
and pelt the neighborhood hoodlums who came over to bother the cat.
We called her Miss Praline. She was exactly the color of a sugar
praline.”

“The boys must have had a hard time of it. I
can vouch for your aim.” He lifted his limp tie and squeezed water
from it.

“I
am
sorry about your suit.” She
sized him up. “I’d offer you some of Daddy’s clothes, but I’m
afraid they’d be too small.”

“These are fine.” He watched Molly as she sat
down, studying his opponent. The only problem was, none of his
opponents had hypnotic, turquoise eyes.

He sat down and stretched his long legs out
in front of him, then gave Molly his best president-of-the-bank
look.

“Tell me about your father.”

“He’s a wonderful man, an open-minded
freethinker whose world is not limited by rules and
convention.”

That’s exactly what Samuel had thought. A
muscle began to twitch in the side of his jaw.

“What else?”

His clipped tone and the disapproval in his
face immediately got Molly’s dander up. Somewhere in her family
tree was an Irishman known for his fighting spirit. Whatever else
had been watered down over the years, the fighting Irish had been
left intact.

“Are you asking because you are interested or
because you’re trying to find some fatal flaw?”

For all her frivolous looks, she was smarter
then he’d thought.

“Well, naturally I’m interested. I left
important work in Florence to drive over and meet him.”

“And I left important work in Paris to meet
you. I already know your mother, but only a little bit. Still, you
don’t see me giving you the third degree about her. If she suits
Daddy, that’s good enough for me.”

“Naked modeling.”

“What?”

“I said, naked modeling. Isn’t that the
important
work you left in Paris?”

Molly’s fist instinctively doubled, and only
her good upbringing kept her from knocking him out of the swing.
He’d pronounced “naked modeling” as if it were one of the seven
deadly sins. Not only was he bossy, he was also judgmental: The
Lord deliver her from a man who thought he knew everything.

“I guess it’s the three-piece suit that gives
you such a narrow view of life.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“That tie is bound to cut off circulation to
your brain, otherwise you would know the difference between naked
and nude.”

“It all boils down to the same thing. You
pose without your clothes on,” he told her.

“The human body is not sinful.”

“I never said it was... in the right
place.”

“The bedroom, you mean?”

“Precisely.”

“What I do is art, Mr. Adams, not sin.”

“Labels don’t change the facts. You bare
yourself for the entire world to see, and you show absolutely no
remorse.”

Molly gave him another long, frank appraisal.
Even in the wet crumpled suit, he was still a gorgeous man. But he
was also a dictator, and she knew exactly how to deal with
them.

“I’m sorry about only one thing, Mr.
Adams.”

“What’s that, Miss Rakestraw?”

“That I didn’t drown you with the water hose
when I had my chance.” She put one foot on the ground and set the
swing into gentle motion. Then she gave him a wicked grin. “And you
can call me Molly.”

“I can’t think of one good reason why I
should.”

“Because, Samuel, my dear boy, it appears
that we’re going to be one big happy family.” She gave him a big
wink.