Page 502 of Summer Heat
He was very close, and he smelled like heaven, and his mouth moved infinitely closer. She felt his breath whisper over her lower lip. Her heart pinched as if a huge heel were bearing down on it, and still she couldn’t move.
And there, so close, millimeters from kissing her, he said, “You’d better get to class, honey, before you’re late.”
Tamara bolted, yanking open the door, half tumbling out, the little hairs on the back of her neck standing on end the way they did when she had to go up the basement steps in the dark, sure there were ghosts and demons and evil spirits on her heels. “Thank you,” she said.
“Tamara.”
She swallowed. “What?”
“Let me have your keys. It takes two dollars and three minutes to change a spark plug, and I’m guessing you have no idea how to do it.” He pointed to a parking lot. “I’ll leave it right over there, the keys in the glove box. You can pay me back next time I’m in the Wild Moose.”
She couldn’t bear one more second of looking at him. Rather than argue, Tamara reached into her purse, dug out the keys and tossed them at him. “Thanks for the ride,” she said, and bolted for class.
Chapter Four
She flunked her test. She got into class, flustered and rushed, only moments before the instructor passed out the forms. When she saw the sheet of questions, she realized she had studied the wrong chapter. Her heart sunk. She knew none of the answers on this test. Not even one, though she made educated guesses on a few.
And the day went downhill from there. In business administration, the teacher sprang news of an elaborate project that would be due in three weeks, an analysis of a corporation that would entail massive amounts of research. She grabbed a granola bar before statistics, which improved her mood marginally. The instructor handed her an envelope as she came in. Seeing the pink slip inside, she was afraid it was going to be a “see me after class” message, and couldn’t think what she might have done wrong.
Instead, it was a scrawled note from Lance. He’d picked up her car, but it was more than a spark plug, and he’d taken the car to his mechanic. He’d left his own car for her use this afternoon. “Don’t curse at her,” he wrote, and signed his name.
She held the key in the palm of her hand as if it were a five-inch field spider. Drive his car? Sit in that fast, bad car and be seen in it? Not in this lifetime.
But in the end, she had no choice. It was her only day off this week, and she had to get her paycheck, then get some groceries in the house or they’d be eating peanut butter crackers for supper.
Safely in the car, away from the pressures of the day, Tamara bent her head and let herself cry. She felt frazzled and hassled and unable to cope. Her Buick, ugly and old as it was, was the only car she had, and if the repair bill was too steep, she wouldn’t be able to do anything about it.
Which meant she’d probably have to drop out of school this semester.
She allowed herself five minutes to gnash her teeth and imagine the worst, then lifted her head and dried her tears with a tissue she found in the bottom of her purse. She checked for smeared mascara in the rearview mirror, and that was when she spied the car seat Lance had transferred from the Buick to the Fairlane. A pang touched her.
In the mirror, she gave herself a stern glare. “Lighten up, Tamara Flynn.”
It made her feel better. With new resolve, she turned the key in the ignition of the car and listened to it catch with a quiet roar. It handled like a dream, responding to her every little command like a dutiful soldier, carrying her down the highway with speed and smooth power. A cassette tape hung out of the stereo, and she impulsively pushed it in and turned it on. She expected some kind of bad-boy rock, but it was Bonnie Raitt, singing “Louise.”
The day was clear and cool, bright as only mountain autumns can be. Tamara rolled the window down and turned up the music, and let the wind blow her hair around as she sang along. The furry green of pines and blazing gold of aspens whizzed by. Sunlight poured from a sky as blue as turquoise.
What a car! she thought with amusement, pulling smoothly into the day care to pick up Cody. Wouldn’t he get a kick out of it?
It was only as she got out and cheerfully slammed the door with a thunk that she noticed the long line of cars ribboning up the road toward Louise Forrest’s house.
The funeral was today. That was why Lance had been dressed up this morning, and why he could let her use his car. With a thick sense of guilt, she followed the progress of the limo in front, wondering if Lance had loved his father. If he would miss him.
If he would love his son, the grandson of the man they buried today.
* * *
Louise served and chatted with the gathered well-wishers—nearly everyone in town. A headache pounded lightly at her temples, pervasive and not unexpected. The past few days had been a strain for all of them.
She eyed her sons carefully. Tyler sat in the rocker in the living room, reading a story to his son Curtis, who was sleepily sucking his thumb, his eyelids drooping as he valiantly fought to stay awake. Louise smiled. What a doll that child was!
Jake was making time with the barely dry-behind-the-ears daughter of a town councilman, a skinny blonde who’d been known to date mainly ski instructors the past few years. Judging by the gleam in her eyes, Jake was her next prey. Or she was his. Louise scowled. Today she didn’t care. She was too tired.
She couldn’t find Lance at first, but found him at last on the deck that jutted out over a hundred-foot drop into the valley. Wind from below blew his hair into disorder, tumbling it onto his collar in bright points. She closed the glass door behind her, and joined him at the rail.
“How are you, honey?” she asked, putting her hand on his broad back. The jacket of his expensive suit had been discarded, and she felt his extraordinary heat through the light cotton shirt. When he’d been a baby, she’d had to wait until his temperature was 102 before she called a doctor. His natural thermometer was just set high.
He roused himself, as if returning from a long way off. “I’m all right,” he said, blinking. “You?”
