The Dixie Belle's Guide to Love (21 page)

Rita put her ear to the lounge door. A shy businessman from Philadelphia, who until a couple of songs ago hadn’t so much as raised his eyes from his club soda and pretzels, was tearing up the room with a spirited rendition of “Heartbreak Hotel.”

She smiled. She certainly didn’t have the lock on using music as therapy. She took a deep breath and it filled her with a sense of growing bigger, better, stronger. She had done it. Closing her eyes, she savored the moment. No matter what she had to face from here on out, she would do it with a renewed sense of purpose and poise and…

“Hello, Rita.”

“Good gravy!”

“I beg your pardon?”

She opened her eyes. “It
is
you.”

“In the flesh.”

“In the flesh,” the phrase buzzed softly over her lips. “I can see that but…but why are you here?”

“I don’t know if I mentioned this, but I live in Memphis.”

That’s no answer
, she wanted to shout at him. Oh, hell, when had she ever had the nerve to shout in public, much less at Will? “Yes, but you’re supposed to be in Hellon.”

“If I was in Hellon, how could I see you in this sexy red dress?”

Her dress. She’d had so much fun onstage she’d completely forgotten the makeover. This was Will’s first glimpse of the new Rita. Well, the old Rita in new-and-improved packaging.

“Rita, I have to tell you…” Will took his time looking her over.

If you could feel a man’s gaze, she decided then and there standing in the hallway of that less-than-elegant hotel, it would feel hot. And steamy. She liked it.

“This…dress is…”

“Too much?” She flitted her fingers over the neckline and touched skin instead of fabric. “Or maybe too little?”

“It’s just right.”

“Maybe if I lost a few pounds?”

“No. It’s perfect.
You’re
perfect.”

“I’d ask if lunacy runs in your family, but…I don’t want to know.”

He grinned. “Perfect
and
smart.”

“Not perfect, and I don’t know about smart, that doesn’t sound like me most of the time, but I certainly am curious.”

“Another trait I admire.”

“Why are you here, Will?”

“Disappointed to see me?”

She rubbed the tip of her thumb over her lower lip. Disappointed to see Will? Never. Terrified, perhaps. And thrilled.

He shifted his weight, and his jacket fell open.

The force of his presence, the warmth of his body, the width of his shoulders, and the depth of his eyes, in less than an instant she took it all in. Will had followed her to Memphis. What did that mean?

He stuck one hand in his pocket and cocked his head, “Rita?”

“I…uh. I thought you had to take care of your mother.”

“She’s the reason I’m here.”

“Oh, dear, I hope nothing bad has happened. Jillie went to—”

“Mother’s fine, and I saw Jillie going out.”

“That’s good.”

“
You’re
good.” He straightened up, his head bowed and his eyes stormy. “You always think of others first. You worry about them. You can’t wait to find out how you can get in there and help.”

“I thought you were reciting my good traits, Will, not the things you find frustrating.”

“Did I say I found those frustrating?”

“Those were the very things you worked to try
to get me to change.” She lowered her lashes, hoping to convey a teasing playfulness. She’d never had much practice at flirting or acting coy with a man.

“I was wrong, then. Don’t change that about yourself, Rita. It’s what makes you perfect, and wise, and make-a-man-crazy-with-wanting sexy.”

He
made her feel that way, and she wanted more than anything to do something about it. “This isn’t exactly the kind of place for talk like that, is it?”

“I don’t know. It seems like a damn fine place to remind you of how good you are.” He fixed his gaze on the lounge door.

The last strains of “Heartbreak Hotel” resonated through the thin walls.

“Did you…did you hear me sing?”

“Yeah.” He edged in closer and skimmed his fingers along the side of her neck. “Once.”

She shivered.

He smiled.

“Once?” Her whole body tingled with the memory of lying naked in his arms, singing for him alone. The intimacy of that performance had given their lovemaking a taste and texture, a substance she had never known with any man before. And doubted she ever would again. Yet, she could not trust he remembered things the same way. “Once tonight?”

He shook his head.

“Good, huh?” She wasn’t asking about her singing.

“Incredible.”

“Would you…” She bowed her head. The power rush from singing onstage acted like a kick in the head. It knocked all common sense clean out of her. She would never have dared ask otherwise. But, dammit, the man had come to Memphis. They were in a hotel and…“Would you like for me to…sing for you again?”

He tipped his head toward the lounge door. “After the disco twins?”

“Is that what you came for, the…singing?”

“No.”

In light of everything between them, everything tonight represented, she should have welcomed his bluntness. She didn’t.

He took her hand. “I didn’t even know the disco twins would be here tonight.”

“Funny.” Her fingers fit between his and she pressed their palms and wrists together. “Why did
you
show up here tonight?”

He looked at the lounge door, his brow creased.

The music pounded around them as someone muddled his way through an old Hank Williams cheating song.

“How long before you go on again?”

“It’s just for fun.” She shook her head. “If I miss my turn, they’ll work me in someplace else. If I don’t go back in at all, no one would notice.”

“I find that impossible to believe.”

“I have a room upstairs.”

“I have a house across town.”

“Mine’s closer.”

“Tempting.” Will studied the way her fingers entwined with his and could all but picture their bodies fitting together just as easily, skin to skin, pulse to pulse, naked and intimate. “Very tempting.”

She dipped her head so she could meet his gaze. “But?”

“Yeah, there is a ‘but.’”

“I guess I should have known.” She pulled her hand away.

“The thing is, Rita, I think we need to talk.”

“That can’t be good, can it?”

“Hmm?”

“Man’s offered no-strings-attached sex, and he prefers to talk.”

“I’m beginning to think that’s a myth.”

“That men don’t like to talk?”

“That there is such a thing as no-strings-attached sex.”

“I thought we were living proof that it exists, thrives even.”

“Rita, look me in the eye and tell me that our making love didn’t tangle up your heartstrings just a little.”

She looked into her open hand, the one he had been holding only seconds ago, and brushed her fingers over her palm.

“At the very least tug at your conscience some?”

He only knew that she nodded her agreement when the loose curls of her new hairdo bobbed.

“Then don’t you think we should talk instead of jumping into bed again?”

She settled her back against the wall, looking all wise and wistful, and sexier than the law should allow. “You’re not wild at all, really, are you?”

“You mean outside the bedroom?”

“Yeah.” She wet her lips. Her very-un-Rita-like high heels rasped over the patterned carpet. “You’re not really wild at all, outside of the bedroom
or
outside the narrow box that people in Hellon have put you in.”

“No,” he whispered. “I’m not wild. Not when it comes to things that really matter.”

He could tell that she wanted to ask him if she was one of those things that really mattered.

“I noticed a couple chairs in the corner of the lobby,” he said, before she could ask him a damned thing. “Shall we go over there to talk?”

“Is that why you came all this way tonight?” She walked with him to a pair of blue-green chairs, which sat at angled toward each other. “To talk?”

Why had he come tonight? Now that the initial fire of his mother’s influence had died down, he could not say with unerring certainty. He waited for her to take a seat, then settled into the other chair. “I can’t rightly say why I came, Rita.”

“Well, it’s not like you were in the neighborhood.”

“No. But being back in the neighborhood—being in Memphis again—it does put things in a different perspective for me.”

“Things do tend to lose their rosy glow when you strip away the magical spell of the Pig Rib Palace, don’t they?”

He chuckled, but it did not lighten his mood to do so. “You’re not making this easy on me, Rita.”

“I tried making it easy, Will. In fact I think I went out of my way to make things as easy on you as possible.”

He rubbed his forehead. “And that’s only made things more difficult.”

“You’re scaring me, Will.”

“Scaring you? How?”

“Because you’re building up to something. I can feel it stirring and twitching under the surface.”

“Twitching, huh?” He scratched at his scalp. “Maybe I should see if there’s an ointment for that.”

“You know exactly what I mean.” She aimed a no-nonsense Southern woman of substance glare at him. “There’s something you’ve been trying to contain inside you for a long time.”

The longest time.
He folded his hands and kept his thoughts to himself.

“And right now you’re this close to letting it loose on me.”

“
That’s
what I want to avoid, Rita.” The power of this one truth made his voice go low, hoarse with emotion. His secrets were not so deep nor his sins so desperate that he dared not share them with anyone. Quite the contrary, he’d had a charmed life—a damned charmed life. Unloading his petty grievances on anyone, especially Rita,
was not an option. “I’m not going to dump a lifetime’s worth of pain at your doorstep. You don’t have to be scared of that happening.”

“You’ve got it wrong.”

“How so?

“I’m scared you
won’t
do it.”

“What?”

“Because you don’t respect me enough or revere my opinion enough to trust me with your pain, Will. To trust me to help you the way you have helped me—to move beyond the past.”

“I don’t want to do that to you, Rita.”

“You can.”

“I can. Of course I
can
. And be like everyone else that gravitates into your life and expects you to help them hold their worlds together.”

“Will, haven’t you been paying attention? There is no everybody else.”

“What?”

“Jillie was the last one left. Pernel has moved on with his life, Lacey Marie has grown up, Cozie has up and created a whole alternative universe of activity that doesn’t involve me in the least.”

“And Jillie finally decided to throw out the poor-pitiful-rich-girl routine and take responsibility for her own actions.”

“That just leaves me.” She held her hands out.

“What are you looking for? A project?” He smiled as he said it, but the words drove deep. Is that what he feared? Becoming Rita’s pet project? It would be so easy to let himself slide into that
role. But that wouldn’t be moving on really, would it?

“What I’m looking for is a little honesty, Will.”

“You want honesty? From me?
About me?
You have that, Rita. You had it six years ago when you had me pegged. I am a selfish bastard. One who never deserved any
other
name ever given him, nor any other honor—from town hero to having that precious baby boy christened as my son.”

“Will, is that what’s troubling you?”

“You said it once before when you said you knew what I wanted, what everybody wants. Remember?”

“I said you wanted your life to have meaning?”

“Yes.”

“And that you wanted someone to miss you and mourn for you.”

“And to be really good at something, to hear praise for my work and know it’s earned.”

“And you don’t think you’ve earned the high opinions that people have of you?”

“I haven’t.”

“You’ve earned mine.”

He shook his head. “That from a woman who told me to my face that if I were a changed man, my life would be different.”

“I was hasty and unfair.”

“You were right.”

“Maybe then, but not now.”

“Nothing has changed since then.”

“Do you honestly believe that?”

He sat back in the chair, his hands curved over its overstuffed arms.

She sighed. “For a man who came to talk, you’re sure not saying too much.”

“Rita? You out there, honey?” From around the corner and down the corridor a woman’s voice called out. “Skippy and Daphne are winding it up. Come back in if you’re going to sing.”

“Go on.” He got up from the chair and offered his hand.

“Are you going to stay and listen?”

“I’d love to see you on that stage.” One hand on her back, he guided her inside the lounge without making any promises.

They slipped inside the door just as a pair of women wearing sequin-spangled jeans and satin tops waved and headed off the stage.

“Are they just darling or what?” A woman in a waitress uniform delicately clapped her fingers against her wrist while holding the microphone. “You did good, girls.”

The women took another bow from their seats.

The applause swelled again.

Rita tried to say something to him, but he motioned like he couldn’t hear it. It was a jerky thing to do, but then he’d warned her more than once not to expect better of him.

“I swear, y’all have more energy than a weekend crowd!”

Rita pointed to the front of the room.

He gave her a push in that direction.

“There are plenty of seats,” she said.

“I’ll stand.”

She looked at him. In the darkness of the room she found his eyes and let her gaze sink in.

“Okay, we’re geared up tighter than an eight-day clock in here tonight so let’s not waste no more time.” The waitress looked at a slip of paper in her hand as she worked with the karaoke machine. “Let’s welcome our next singer up here—
again
!”

For one moment he thought Rita would say something more to him, then it passed. She sighed, nodded, and made her way toward the stage.