Lady Be Good (44 page)

“I don’t know. I only know that it does.” Her chin trembled, she slipped off her sunglasses, and he saw that her eyes were dark with pain. His unruly stomach cramped as he watched her try to pull herself together. “Never mind. I’m being foolish. Besides, I already know the answer.” She slid her sunglasses into her pocket. “What a goose I’ve been about all this. I’m in way over my head with you. Of course, you’ve known that all along. Well, it has to stop.” She managed a brisk little smile. “I’ll do my best to hit your putt, Kenny. And then I’m getting out of your life.”

His stomach . . . it wasn’t ever going to be the same. “You’re talking stupid. I don’t want to hear this.”

“Nevertheless, it has to be said. And you of all people should understand. Don’t you remember, Kenny?” Once again that heartbreak of a smile, full of strong intent, but wobbly at the corners. The saddest thing he’d ever seen. “Love that has to be earned on the golf course, or anyplace else, for that matter, isn’t worth it. Love has to be a free gift or it doesn’t have any value at all.”

Just like that, she pulled the world out from under his feet.

She stepped around him to line up, and as she gripped the putter, he remembered his father, and Petie, and the Diaper Derby, and the way Emma’d looked when she’d jumped on that Gray Line tour bus. He shivered. All morning he’d been sweating, but now he was chilled right down to his bones. And somehow he knew that, if he let her hit this putt, he would have lost her forever.

The knowledge came to him from someplace deep inside, a small, constricted place where he’d kept so many feelings locked away. Now that place spilled open and he saw that he loved this woman with every breath in his body.

She’d already drawn back the putter, her line was perfect, and his heart shot right up into his throat.

“Emma!”

The putter wobbled. Stalled. She looked up.

He smiled at her. Or at least he tried. His vision blurred as his life settled into place around him. “The game’s over, sweetheart,” he said huskily. “We’re going home now.”

“What?” Dallie shot forward, his eyes glittering. “You can’t do that! You heard what I told you. If you walk away, you know exactly what you’ll be giving up.”

Kenny nodded. “I know. But this is upsetting Emma, and I’m not going to have it.” He snatched the putter from her hand and shoved it at Dallie. “I forfeit the match. It’s all yours, and you can damn well do whatever you want with it.”

Then he wrapped his arm around Emma’s shoulders and began to lead her off the green.

“But your putt . . .” she said. “I told you I’d make your putt.”

“Shhh . . . it’s all right. You don’t have to earn my love on any damn golf course, Lady E. It’s yours for the asking.”

She stopped walking and stared up at him.

He’d just thrown his career out the window, but as he gazed down into that heart-stopper of a face, he knew this woman was worth a thousand careers. And with that knowledge, he finally understood everything that had eluded him for so long. He understood that, each time he’d played eighteen holes, he’d been trying to justify his life, and that he wasn’t going to do it anymore. He saw that he was more than a man who knew how to swing a club, that he had a brain, ambition, and some dreams for the future he hadn’t even known existed. As he stood there next to the eighteenth green, he finally understood what had been eluding him—that there were a lot of things more important in his life than golf, and the way he loved this woman was at the top of his list.

He ducked beneath the brim of her hat and brushed her lips with a kiss.

Dallie’s soft chuckle drifted his way across the green. “Congratulations, champ. I knew you’d get the idea sooner or later. And welcome back to the pro tour.”

Kenny barely heard. He was too worried about the fact that Emma wasn’t kissing him back.

A
s Kenny saw the stricken expression on her face, he
realized he was going to have to do some fast taking, but he couldn’t do it here, not with the Beaudine family right on his heels. They were too unpredictable, and he had no idea who they’d side with. Besides, the self-satisfied expression on Francesca’s face was distracting him. It made him wonder if she was quite as bad with that putter as she’d seemed to be.

“We’re getting out of here.” He began half pulling, half dragging Emma toward the clubhouse, gripped by a sense of urgency he didn’t even try to understand. Normally, he would have gone to the locker room to shower and change. But not today. Today she was going to have to take him sweat and all because he wasn’t letting her out of his sight, not until she understood that he loved her, and that they were married for now and forever. Not until she figured out they had a life together that included filling up their ranch house with a whole passel of kids.

The thought of Emma pregnant with his babies was so sweet his damn eyes started filling up with tears. He had to get her out of here right now before he embarrassed himself in front of everybody. Except . . . he’d left his car keys in his locker.

“Listen here, Emma. You stand right there—right by those golf carts, while I get my keys. Don’t you move! You understand me?”

She regarded him stonily. “I haven’t understood you since the day we met.”

It wasn’t the most encouraging response, but he risked brushing another kiss over those stiff lips. “Yes, you have, sweetheart. You understand me better than anybody I’ve ever known.” He began backing toward the door. “Please, just stay right there.”

He whipped around, rushed into the pro shop without bothering to knock the dirt off his shoes, and raced for the locker room, moving faster than anybody at Windmill Creek, or the entire town of Wynette for that matter, had ever seen him move.

His hands were shaking, and he had trouble with the lock on his locker, but even so he didn’t leave her alone more than two minutes. By the time he got back, however, she’d disappeared.

There was only one explanation. The Beaudines had her. Those rotten, perverse Beaudines! The same Beaudines who were coming toward the clubhouse right now from the eighteenth green, with Ted driving the cart, and Dallie and Francesca strolling behind, their arms around each other.

“What did you do with her!” he shouted, even as he realized that she wasn’t with them, so they couldn’t have done anything with her.

Dallie looked amused, Francesca distressed. “Oh, Kenny, you can’t have lost her already.”

He spun around and ran toward the parking lot. Emma didn’t have a car, and she was in a snit, so she’d decided to walk, that was all. She’d be right out there on the highway, marching along the white line like a drill sergeant, probably picking up litter on the way and God help anybody who spit out the window of his pickup.

He raced down a row of cars toward the entrance, his worry mounting because she was too mad at him to pay one bit of attention where she was going. And he didn’t even know why she was mad. Except he did know. He’d been so slippery with her right from the beginning that she didn’t trust his feelings for her.

He stopped running when he reached the entrance to the parking lot and looked up and down the highway, but he didn’t see anything except an old blue Dodge heading in one direction and a Park Avenue heading the other. Maybe he was wrong, maybe she hadn’t come this direction at all. Maybe she’d gone inside the clubhouse and headed for the Wagon Wheel Room to get something cold to drink.

He spun on his heel and ran back across the parking lot, past the Beaudines, and into the club house. But she wasn’t in the Wagon Wheel Room. She wasn’t anywhere.

Emma leaned against the fence and stared at Torie’s emus pecking away at the ground. She was no longer furious; she was simply numb. Once again, Kenny had used her emotions against her. But this would be the last time.

She had no idea what had motivated his display on the eighteenth green; she only knew that she had once again been manipulated. Somehow Kenny had decided to use her as a pawn in his get-even scheme against Dallie Beaudine. Well, she’d finally had enough. She couldn’t bear having her emotions spun about in the whirlwind that made up Kenny Traveler’s life any longer.

What an idiot she’d been! Like every other woman in history who’d fallen in love with the wrong man, she’d imagined that she could change him, but that wasn’t going to happen. And today, with his false declaration of love, he’d finally and forever broken her heart.

One of the larger emus lifted his head to study her. Nothing had ever been more welcome to her than the sight of Shelby and Torie rounding the corner of the clubhouse just as Kenny had disappeared inside. They’d taken one look at her face, thrust her into Torie’s BMW, and brought her here.

On the way, they’d picked and prodded at her in their typically American way, demanding that she give up her secrets and tell them everything. She’d evaded them, but when they’d gotten to the Traveler house, they’d started questioning her all over again.

She knew their probing was well-intentioned. In their minds, they couldn’t help her if they didn’t know what was wrong, but she couldn’t tell them. The truth made her seem too pitiful—the dotty, dear thing who’d unwisely fallen in love with a gorgeous, violet-eyed rogue who couldn’t commit.

Besides, she understood something about them that Kenny couldn’t seem to comprehend. Despite all their protests that they’d never speak to him again because he’d upset her, he was theirs, and they’d do anything for him.

It was Torie who finally seemed to realize how much she needed to be alone, and she’d suggested Emma wander down to the emu pen to see her “critters.” Now, as Emma propped her hands on the wooden fence post and gazed at the ungainly birds, she knew it was time to do what she should have done on Sunday. It was time to get on a plane and go home.

Kenny charged through the front door and nearly ran into his father, who was coming down the stairs into the foyer. “Where is she?”

“Where’s who?”

“Don’t you dare try to hide her! Torie already called and told me she’s here.”

“I just walked in the door,” Warren replied. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I do.” Shelby came into the foyer from the back of the house. As she spotted Warren, she smiled at him like a high school cheerleader looking at the hero of the football team. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

Even through his distress, Kenny noticed the way the old man’s eyes lit up as he gave Shelby a light kiss. “I was just coming out to find you. Where’s Petie?”

“On the patio.”

Kenny interrupted the love fest. “Somebody’d better tell me where Emma is.”

“Let’s talk about it on the patio,” Shelby said.

“I don’t want to go out to the patio. I want—”

“We’re your family, Kenny. The only family you have.”

The quiet intensity behind her words stopped him in his tracks. He looked back and forth between them and felt rattled. He’d seen those stubborn, worried expressions on their faces before, but he hadn’t taken them in, not like he did now. He saw concern there, and caring . . . even from Shelby, his father’s too-young bride, who, despite everything, was starting to seem like another sister. And maybe having another sister wasn’t the worst thing that could happen to him. He loved Torie and, in his own way, he guessed he was starting to feel the same about Shelby. She sure was a good mother. And she’d made his dad happy.

His father slipped his arm around Shelby’s waist, and Kenny felt as if he were staring into a mirror. All his life he’d heard how much he and his old man looked alike, but now he could see it for himself. And as he gazed into that older, but still familiar face, he finally understood exactly how a man could screw things up for somebody he loved, not meaning to, just being stupid.

He drew a deep, shaky breath. He couldn’t explain any of this to his father right now, although he’d have to find a way to do it later, so he just nodded and headed for the patio. But when he got there, he discovered he was in for one more shock in a day full of surprises.

“Boys they wanna have fun. Oh, yeah! Boys, they wanna have fun.”
Torie stood in the middle of the patio swinging Petie around in her arms and singing to him with this smile spread all over her face. Petie was laughing to beat the band while Dex sat on one of the banquettes with a beer in his hand and a grin that stretched from one ear to the other. As Kenny absorbed the change in his sister—the same sister who’d barely been able to look at that little baby boy—he had this crazy urge to kiss Dex smack on the lips, just as Emma’d kissed Torie.

His sister saw him in the doorway and stopped swinging Petie. Petie let out a deep baby-chuckle as he spotted him. Warren and Shelby came out to the patio. His father walked over to the tray of drinks that had been set up, while Shelby sat on the banquette, pulled her knees up to her chest, and watched Kenny with anxious eyes. They were all gathering around to help him straighten out his life. Just yesterday the idea would have driven him insane, but now it was almost comforting.