The Talk of the Town (9 page)

On his way back to the boardinghouse at the end of a work day, he often cut through the open field, enjoying the clean air and reveling in the boundless view. Sometimes he’d sprawl in the grass, hands beneath his head and watch the puffy white clouds floating across the vast blue sky. Eventually his eyes would drift closed and he would remember the pretty flower printed dress and how its full skirt had swirled around Roxie’s legs as she’d walked toward him in the lunchroom his first day on the job.

He could feel himself getting all worked up, just thinking about it, and he vowed to quit thinking about it, about her, about the two of them. It was a waste of time to be losing himself in hopeless fantasies like that. She was good and pure and everything he wasn’t. He’d made his decision, the only decision he could have made, and he’d stuck to it.

Other than a couple of brief, unavoidable conversations, Luke had kept his distance from Roxie. Whenever she came into the warehouse, which seemed to be less and less frequently these days, he’d found reasons to busy himself elsewhere. Though at first she’d tried to draw him out, reminding him of the lunch she was due and teasing him about his excuses, she eventually quit pressuring him. He told himself he was glad she had, but that wasn’t true and he knew it.

Loneliness was no stranger to him. He’d lived with it most of his life. He knew, or thought he knew, how to live with the isolation. But over these past couple of months the empty hours had become longer, the barren days bleaker. At times he could feel despair eating away at him, wearing him down, corroding his determination to continue walking the straight and narrow. So far, though, he’d managed to stay the course.

Now, he jotted a note in the shipping log and reminded himself that he didn’t need anyone else. His parents were long gone, and, to his everlasting regret, his grandfather had died while he was in prison. No, he had only himself and that was just fine. He liked being alone—or so he told himself.

He glanced up and realized that he was just that, alone. The warehouse had emptied out a half hour earlier. He’d stayed on to finish filling out the log and had wasted his time daydreaming instead. Closing the log with a snap, he took it into Gary’s office and laid it atop the disorganized pile on his desk. Then he switched off the lights and made his way back through the darkened warehouse. His eyes adjusted easily, and his stride was long and confident as he walked through the now-familiar aisles. As he neared the exit, he quickened his step and rounded the last corner.

He smacked into someone. Felt the bone-jarring impact. Heard a smothered exclamation. Saw a silhouette tumble backward.

Luke shot out his arms, but grasped only air as Roxie crashed into a pillar of cartons that had yet to be loaded onto the trucks. The cardboard shaft wobbled, then toppled. Boxes pitched in all directions, landing with thuds and thumps all around him. He heard her land with a resounding
thwack
and her cry of pain rang in his ears.

He knelt, his heart pounding wildly. “Oh, my God, are you hurt?”

Roxie sat perfectly still, gawking up at him in disbelief and wishing one of the boxes had knocked her unconscious. She hated knowing she must look like a complete idiot, sitting there with her arms and legs splayed, the skirt of her dimity dress hiked up around her knees, and her hair falling down into her eyes. It didn’t help that her mouth was hanging open, either, so she clamped it closed and tried to recover at least a semblance of composure.

“Are you hurt?” he repeated, his voice gruff. “Should I call a doctor?”

Pushing her hair out of her face with both hands, she offered a wobbly smile. “No, I’m fine. I mostly just had the breath knocked out of me.”

“Are you sure?”

His obvious anxiety surprised her. After the way he’d steered clear of her recently, she’d figured he would care more about the crushed boxes than about her. “Well, I think so,” she said cautiously. “I probably bruised my dignity more than anything.”

To prove her point, she picked up the clutch purse she’d dropped when she fell and tried to scramble to her feet. Needles of pain flashed up her right shin and her spine. She teetered for a few seconds and then sank like the setting sun beneath the toppled cartons.

He grabbed her, easing her backward tumble. “You
are
hurt,” he said in an accusing tone.

Making a pained face, she nodded and pointed down at her right leg. “My ankle.”

He followed the direction of her extended finger past her exposed calf to the small turn of her ankle. He swallowed dryly. Ah, the hours he’d spent visualizing her legs! With an effort, he assumed the most virtuous bedside manner he could manage and cupped her ankle in his hand. His fingertips were warm, his touch surprisingly gentle as he probed her swollen ankle, but still she winced.

“You’ve definitely given it a bad wrench.” It struck him that she was fragile, as delicate as china. She could have broken the bone so easily. Something within him constricted at the thought. “I’m sorry,” he said again. “I’m so sorry. I never meant to run you down. You’re the last person in the world I’d ever want to hurt.”

An inner tingling dwarfed Roxie’s physical aches. It seemed to radiate from where his fingers encircled her ankle, searing all the way through her silk stocking and her skin. “Don’t be silly,” she said shakily. “It was as much my fault as yours. I was rushing to leave and I wasn’t watching where I was going.”

The gnarl within Luke’s gut uncoiled. His strained muscles eased. He’d been blamed for mistakes all his life, yet the one time he was willing to accept all the blame, she wouldn’t let him. He looked at the pinch of pain upon her features and wished he could absorb all her hurt as easily as she absorbed his.

“I think I’d better get a doctor,” he decided.

“There’s no need for that. It’s just a sprained ankle. I’ve done this before. Honest.” She flashed a mouthful of gleaming white teeth at him. “I’ll be good as new in no time.”

“But we ought to do something,” he persisted. “I can already see the swelling.”

“I just need to soak it in ice water,” she told him. “Maybe you could chip some off the block in the lunchroom icebox. Then after I’ve soaked it a bit and the swelling goes down, I can drive on home.”

Luke scanned the shadowed warehouse and knew it would be impossible. It was too dark, too deserted. If even one person ever learned that she’d stayed there alone with him, her reputation would be in shreds.
His
reputation would guarantee that. No one would ever believe the sprained ankle was anything but a cover. Old-fashioned as it seemed, he couldn’t compromise her.

He removed his hand and said tonelessly, “It would be better if you went straight home.”

Her ankle was throbbing more violently now and Roxie had begun to realize that her bottom felt like a dented fender. He was giving her that remote look she hated, and she decided she’d like nothing better than a good cry. In a voice laden with unshed tears, she contradicted her earlier statement. “I can’t drive almost three miles with a sprained ankle.”

“We could call your parents or one of your brothers,” he suggested.

Roxie wouldn’t have thought it possible to feel so stung by rejection. After Arthur, she’d thought she was immune to that sort of pain. But obviously she’d been wrong. Luke didn’t want her intruding in his life, not even for a few minutes. It shouldn’t have hurt. He’d made his feelings clear long before this. But it did hurt, terribly, and the tears she’d been fighting spurted forth now in a gigantic sob.

Instantly alarmed, he reached for her. “Oh, God, please don’t cry.”

She blindly thrust his hands away. “You don’t need to bother about me.” She contradicted herself yet again, gasping between sobs, “I’ll drive myself home. It’s only three miles.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he chastised her, all business now. “Stop crying and let me help you up.”

With a defiantly loud sniff she allowed him to ease her up with her weight on her left foot.

Luke steadied her as she gained her balance, his heart slamming in his chest when she leaned a hairbreadth away from him. He knew he should let her go, find a chair to deposit her in and run to the warehouse telephone to call for help. But his senses soared and filled with wonder as he lingered over the satin smoothness of her skin beneath his fingertips, over the faint hint of rosewater wafting from her silken hair. He savored the slight mist of her breath and the dewy moisture of her drying tears.

Roxie’s nerves jumped in panic beneath the hands that still clasped her arms. Her pulse leaped out of control. Her tears dried, and she knew she should tell him to release her. But if she were honest enough to admit it, she’d have opted to have him hold her more tightly still. She wasn’t ready to admit this, though, not even to herself. Especially now that that her ankle was throbbing all the way up to her knee.

“I’ll drive you home,” he said after what seemed like an eternity.

“You don’t have to do that.” At the same time that she wanted him to do it, she didn’t want him to feel like she was applying undue pressure. “I can drive myself.”

She might as well have saved her breath. As if she’d not raised the least objection, he put his arm around her waist and half-lifted her. Deciding might was right, she leaned against him and put her arm as far around his shoulders as she could. Together, they hobbled unsteadily outside.

Roxie’s heart pounded more fiercely with each uneven step. The pulsing in her blood surpassed that of her injured ankle. In fact, she was hardly aware of her ankle. She was hardly aware of anything beyond the arm around her waist, the hand resting on her hip, the solid musculature of the man beside her. He was all firm sinews and tanned skin, and she luxuriated in his physical strength. Slanting more closely against his side, she told herself she was doing so only because she’d been knocked dizzy.

Luke’s senses filled to overflowing. Her profile dominated his vision. Her hushed breathing resounded in his ears. He inhaled the sweet scent of her rosewater and absorbed her soft warmth as she pressed against his side. Each sensation tantalized him, teasing his imagination, tempting him almost beyond endurance. By the time they reached her car, he was aching with desire.

He helped her into the passenger seat with something akin to relief and then walked slowly around to the front of her old black car, grateful that he had something to focus on besides the painful excitement of wanting her.

She stuck her head out her open window and said, “I’ll set the hand brake so it doesn’t lurch forward when you turn the crank.”

He nodded and, leaning over, jerked the crank around. A molten ball of sun bounced heat waves off the parking lot and coated his back with a damp heat. He felt burned all the way through.

He slipped behind the steering wheel but sat immobile, staring at the dashboard and wondering if he even remembered how to drive. They said it was like riding a bike, that you never forgot, but the sinking feeling in his stomach made him think they didn’t know what they were talking about.

She tapped his arm and he started. “The key,” she said, pointing to the coil box. “You have to turn the key.”

He did, and the motor purred, but he still didn’t press his foot down on the gas pedal.

“Is anything wrong?” she asked.

He glanced her way. She appeared puzzled, a bit wary even. He could take anything but having her fear him. “Not really,” he answered, trying to sound casual. “It’s just that I haven’t driven since I”—he stopped before he could say “stole that car” and changed it to a more appropriate—”I haven’t driven in a long time.”

She looked down at her lap, where her hands were locked together atop her purse, and then back up at him. “Luke, you really don’t have to—”

“Don’t worry, Roxie, I’ll get you home in one piece.” Hoping he could make good on his word, he released the brake, moved the gear shift lever and stepped on the pedal to feed gas to the engine.

The car rolled forward out of the parking lot and onto the recently-paved highway.

Stewart’s Warehouse sat at the farthest edge of town, almost a mile from where Route 40 met the asphalt road where they needed to turn. The yellow sun hovered in the western sky, promising the summer would continue on its scorching path, and the air was heavy with heat and humidity. The damp, almost musty smell of the Little Blue River wafted in one open window and out the other as they rumbled across the bridge. When they turned right and started up the hill toward town, a big brown dog ran out at the car and chased it a ways before sighting a cat in a ditch and taking off after it.

On the outskirts of town, Roxie gave Luke directions to her house and then lapsed into silence. She looked out the window, trying to ignore the strength of his hands as they steered the wheel, the length of his fingers as they gripped the throttle lever, the bunching of his thigh muscles under his jeans as he worked the clutch. The images seemed to have imprinted themselves over the passing landscape, however, so she dropped her head back against the seat and let her eyes sink shut.

For his part, Luke was just grateful that she didn’t seem to expect him to make small talk. Under the circumstances, he wouldn’t have known what to say to her anyway. But even without words, even with the unfamiliar driving to distract him, he remained tensely conscious of her. Each time she shifted, even slightly, his body heated in response.

Seven years without a woman. It was little wonder that her mere proximity roused him so readily. Yet he was certain that if he’d spent the last seven years in a sheik’s harem instead of the hoosegow, he’d still react as strongly to Roxie. She was a uniquely beautiful person.

He glanced at her again. Framed by breeze-tossed tumbles of honey-colored hair, her profile had a classic old-world aura. To him she looked utterly feminine and unbearably desirable. He riveted his gaze to the road so intently that he almost didn’t notice when, halfway up the hill, they encountered a car coming down. The passing motorist raised his hand to wave and then, upon seeing who was driving her car, dropped both his hand and his jaw.