Chance McCall (22 page)

Victoria smiled and leaned against him, taking advantage of the darkness to wrap her arms around his waist. She nuzzled her chin against his chest. “I like it when you worry about me,” she whispered.

“I always worry about you, Victoria,” he said. “I worry what’s going to happen when you realize that you’re tired of playing this game of hide and seek with your folks. And I worry how I’m going to face it when I know you’re not coming back.”

The low, even measure of his voice struck a chord of concern in her own heart. “It’s not a game, Chance. Don’t you ever say that to me again. And I wouldn’t be ‘playing this game’ if you’d just agree to come meet my family like I’ve been asking you to.”

He frowned. Meeting hers would mean that she’d have to meet his. It was unthinkable.

“I know your mother has problems,” Victoria said, and hugged him gently to ease her words. “You don’t have to spell out the extent of them for me to get the picture.”

“Problems? I don’t think I’ve ever thought of them as problems. She’s not…she’s just…hell, Victoria. She’s just not your type, that’s all.”

“She can’t be all bad, honey,” Victoria whispered. “She had you.”

Chance hugged her tightly. The praise was special because it was so rare in his life. But holding Victoria against him was causing a problem to arise that Chance couldn’t deny.

Victoria moved gently against his lips, aware of his condition, secretly satisfied that she’d been the one to cause it. But it was impossible to act on it. She had less than an hour to get home.

“I’d better be going,” she said softly.

Chance groaned, kissed the top of her head, savoring the smell of shampoo and perfume so he’d remember it when she was long gone. “I know. Remember what I said. Drive careful.”

“I promise. And I wish you’d let me take you…”

“We’ve been through all this, Victoria,” he said as he all but shoved her inside her car. “You’re not taking me home…ever. You don’t belong on my side of town. I won’t have someone ever say that I dragged you down to my level. Go home, girl. Go home, now.”

“Okay, okay.” She frowned as she slid in behind the steering wheel. She looked up at the tall dark man staring down at her with a fierce expression on his face. “You know what? I just realized something. I think you and my father would get along just fine. You know why? You’re just alike. I’ve never met any two men more hard-headed.”

She blew him a kiss to soften her words, and then drove away. Chance watched until her taillights blended into the busy traffic, and he could no longer see her. He stuffed his hands into his pockets and tossed his head back, savoring the clean, fresh breeze that wafted through the street, taking away the scents of the city. He started for home.

Every light in the house was on. Chance could see it a block away.
Oh hell
! he thought.
Either she was having a party, or she had passed out again
. He hastened his steps, drawn back into his sordid world just by proximity.

He burst through the door, ready to do battle if need be. There was no need. Whatever battles had been waged were long over. From the look of the place, Chance supposed it had been a battle of the sexes. Letty was passed out on the sofa, clothing awry, an empty bottle lying just out of reach of her hand. A twenty-dollar bill had been tossed across her breasts.

Tears threatened to erupt and then froze as hard as his heart. Chance brushed the money onto the floor, kicked the bottle out of reach, and bent down and straightened his mother’s clothing. A grim line formed between his eyebrows as he scooted his arms beneath her and lifted her to his chest. As usual, he was always surprised by how light she was.

Her bed was still made. Obviously they’d never made it to the back of the house. He laid her down, pulled off her shoes, and pulled the bedspread over her legs. He turned on the small table fan, positioning it so that she would get the maximum effect of the feeble breeze.

She moaned once, muttered a name Chance didn’t recognize, and then turned onto her side and curled up like a small child.

Chance stood back, looking at the woman who’d given him life, and wondered, not for the first time, how she’d come to be in this place…in this condition…and why she’d come here alone.

He walked through the house, turning out lights and locking doors and windows, and then headed for bed. The twenty-dollar bill still lay where he’d tossed it, the empty bottle and glasses making new stains on old territory. He pulled off his boots, slipped his shirt over his head, and dropped wearily onto his bed, suddenly feeling too tired and old for his years to bother with undressing further. He stretched out on his back, crossed his ankles, stared up at the water stain over his bed, and waited for morning.

12

“
But I want you
to take me to my prom, not some old boy my parents pick out.”

Chance’s lips thinned as his chin jutted in stubborn defiance. He and Victoria had been arguing this same subject for days. There was no way he could afford to take anyone to a prom. He hadn’t even gone to his own. It meant renting a tux, buying flowers and, even more importantly, what would he drive to get there? Victoria Henry wasn’t going to
her
prom in
his
pickup. Even if it was running. Even if she’d agree. And he damn sure wasn’t being picked up and driven in her car like a gigolo.

“Victoria! Dammit, honey. We’ve been all through this.”

“Yes,
you
have,” she said. “And I’ve listened, every time. But you haven’t listened to me. I don’t care what you drive. I don’t care what you wear. I don’t need flowers.” Her voice softened as tears flooded her cheeks. “I just need you.”

“Oh hell,” he muttered. “You don’t have to cry. Please, honey. Don’t cry!” He looked around nervously, convinced himself that they were alone in the station office, and pulled her into his arms. “You once accused me of being hardheaded. But I don’t hold a candle to you, girl. I’ll take you to your damn prom. I’ll wear a tux. And you’ll have a corsage. Just quit crying.” His voice softened. “Please.”

Victoria sighed, wrapped her arms around his waist, and sniffed. “Thank you, Chance. I don’t mean to be selfish. I just don’t want to attend an important event like my prom with anyone but you. If that’s bad, then sue me.”

He grinned, and then looked up and caught his boss waving at them through the window. He’d never hear the end of this.

“Come on,” he urged. “You’ve got to get out of here before I get fired. Charlie’s back from lunch and I’ve got work to do.”

“Okay,” Victoria said, tilting her face up for her kiss.

Chance looked back through the window. Charlie was still there, waving…and grinning. He looked down at Victoria’s waiting lips and cursed softly to himself. She was worth it.

He bent down, tasted the soft, supple curves of Precious Pink he’d watched her applying minutes earlier, and knew that it was not enough.

“You in over your head, boy?” Charlie asked, as they both watched the red car dart out of the driveway and move into the flow of traffic.

“Probably,” he answered. “I just agreed to go to a damn prom.”

Charlie Rollins remembered his own, remembered his daughter’s high school years, and knew that Chance deserved a memory worth keeping, too.

“Well, if you’re goin’, you’ll be needin’ somethin’ to drive. You close for me every night this week, and you can drive my Olds.”

Chance turned and stared. Charlie’s blue eyes got brighter and he fidgeted with the rag hanging out of his hip pocket.

“You don’t have to,” Chance finally managed to say, moved beyond words by the generosity of a man who was, by all rights, only his employer.

“I know that,” Charlie snapped. “That’s why I offered.”

Chance held out his hand. “It’s a deal.”

Charlie grinned. “Damn, but I like a good deal, don’t you, boy?”

Chance laughed. “Yeah, Charlie. And thanks to you, I just got one.”

Chance breathed a small prayer of thanksgiving that his mother had to work tonight. He didn’t want to explain what he was doing with his boss’s car, or why he was wearing a rented tux, or why he’d gotten a haircut. He glanced at the clock over the refrigerator, pulled nervously at the bow tie he’d finally managed to fasten, and opened the refrigerator door. The corsage was still there! A cluster of pale pink miniature carnations haloed with something the florist had called baby’s breath.

He hoped it would do. All Victoria had said was it needed to be pink. He grabbed the box off the shelf, checked his pocket for money and keys, and headed for the door. It was time!

The drive to Midland didn’t take long. But it might as well have been to the moon. The farther Chance drove from Odessa, the more he realized that he was in over his head. He’d never, not once in all his eighteen years, let a girl get to him like Victoria had. And to top it all off, they’d never even gotten close to making out. He frowned at the thought. Somehow, making out wasn’t a term he could associate with the tall, blond girl with flashing green eyes. Making love…maybe. But making out?

The address she’d given him meant nothing. He didn’t know front from back in that town. He just kept repeating the directions she’d given him as he drove into town.

Turn right at the station just past the…Go two blocks north and then take a left at the…

Finally, he turned onto a residential street and breathed a sigh of relief as he saw a familiar red car parked in front of an elegant, two-story, frame and rock home. He pulled into the driveway. Her parents weren’t supposed to be here. He was to meet them later at the prom where they were serving as chaperons. He took a deep breath and knocked.
The things I do for you
.

It swung back almost instantly. She must have been watching out a window. The smile on her face was no less breathtaking than the dress she was wearing. It was strapless. And other than thinking she looked like she’d just stepped off a cake, Chance would have been unable to describe it. The layers and layers of frothy white lace, tipped with the palest of pink, brushed against each other with a swish-swoosh as she walked toward him. The skirt of the dress yielded and then seemed to float around his legs as he walked into her embrace and kissed her softly on the cheek. This Victoria made him nervous. She looked like a princess, and he felt like a damned frog.

“For me?” she asked, pointing to the corsage.

“Oh, here,” he said, suddenly embarrassed. “I don’t know where you’ll wear it, though. If you’d told me you wouldn’t have a…I mean if I’d have known that the dress didn’t have a…”

Victoria laughed. “Chance McCall. I think you’re embarrassed. It’s got to be a first. And it’s good for you, my man. You’re entirely too worldly for me. Come on. The dance won’t wait…and neither can I.”

Before he knew it, they were in the car with the corsage pinned at her waist. Silly smiles, stolen kisses, and a pounding heart, got him to the prom under Victoria’s directions. He parked Charlie’s car, vaulted from his seat, and hurried around to the passenger side to help Victoria and her skirt make as graceful an exit as possible from the car.

“You look so good,” Victoria said softly, as she pulled at a crook in his tie. “All tall, dark, and handsome in this tuxedo. I’m going to have to fight the girls off of you all night, and you know it.”

He grinned. “I may have to fight, but I doubt it’ll be girls, honey. You’re the one who looks good enough to eat. Now come on, let’s get this over with. I don’t know how or why I let you talk me into it.”

“Hush. Come on. Let’s go get this meeting with my parents over with so we can enjoy the dance.”

The smile on his face disappeared. He didn’t have a good feeling about this. And, looking back later, Chance knew he should have followed his instincts.

“Oh my God!” Margaret Henry muttered through a fake smile, as she nodded at an acquaintance and then stared at the couple coming through the door.

She’d known her daughter had been making a lot of trips in her new car, as she’d been paying the gas bill. But she’d never imagined that it would be to another world. That’s where boys like that one came from. In Margaret’s day, it had been called, “the wrong side of the tracks.”

Her eyes missed nothing of the unconscious swagger and dark, knowing eyes that’d seen more of the world than Victoria even knew existed.

“What?” Logan Henry sighed. He hated occasions like these, yet he knew that their standing in the community demanded that they attend them. Especially this year, when their only child was a graduating senior.

“Victoria!” Margaret hissed. “She’s just walked in with her surprise. I told you she’d been up to something. But you assured me that it was nothing. You told me to leave her alone, let her try out her wings. Well Logan, I hope you’re satisfied. It looks to me like your little chicken has flown the coop. I think a fox has been in the hen house.”

“My God, Margaret. Your metaphors boggle the mind. What the hell are you…?”

He turned and looked in the direction of his wife’s anger. Every sin he’d ever committed had just come in the door to haunt him. Logan forgot to finish his sentence. He didn’t hear Margaret’s answer, or the music that had already begun to blare. He saw no one except the tall, dark boy who’d just walked in on his daughter’s arm.

“No!” It came out. Unexpected. Unpreventable.

Margaret turned and stared. “Not now!” she hissed. “Don’t you dare make a scene! This is Victoria’s night. She won’t forgive you…and neither will I if you ruin this for her. Do you hear me, Logan Henry?”

He watched, horrified, as they came toward him.

“Mother…Daddy…I want you to meet my friend, Chance McCall. Chance, these are my parents, Margaret and Logan Henry.”

“Mr. and Mrs. Henry,” Chance said, “it’s a pleasure to meet you.” His gaze slid from Margaret’s face then back to Victoria’s. “Victoria, you have much to be grateful for.”

“Why?” she asked.

“That your father had the good sense to marry someone as beautiful as your mother. You two look more like sisters than mother and daughter.”