Georgeanne hadn’t noticed, and even if she had, she wouldn’t have thought to judge direction by looking at the sun. She always messed up that whole north-south-east-west thing. “I assume you have a phone at your beach house?”
“Of course.”
She’d have to make a few long-distance telephone calls to Dallas. She had to call Lolly, and she needed to phone Sissy’s parents and tell them what had happened and how they could get in touch with their daughter. She also needed to call Seattle and find out where to send Virgil’s engagement ring. She glanced at the five-carat diamond solitaire on her left hand and felt like crying. She loved that ring but knew she couldn’t keep it. She was a flirt, and maybe even a tease, but she did have scruples. The diamond would have to go back, but not now. Now she needed to calm her nerves before she fell apart. “I’ve never been to the Pacific Ocean,” she said, feeling her panic easing a bit.
He made no comment.
Georgeanne had always considered herself the perfect blind date because she could talk water uphill, especially when she felt nervous. “But I’ve been to the Gulf many times,” she began. “Once when I was twelve, my grandmother took me and Sissy in her big Lincoln. Boy, what a boat. That car must have weighed ten tons if it weighed an ounce. Sissy and I had just bought these really cool bikinis. Hers looked like an American flag while mine was made of a silky bandanna material. I’ll never forget it. We drove all the way into Dallas just to buy that bikini at J.C. Penney’s. I’d seen it in a catalog and I was just dying to have it. Anyway, Sissy is a Miller on her mother’s side, and the Miller women are known throughout Collin County for their wide hips and piano ankles-not very attractive, but a lovely family just the same. One time-”
“Is there a point to all of this?” John interrupted.
“I was getting to it,” she told him, trying to remain pleasant.
“Any time soon?”
“I just wanted to ask if the water off the coast of Washington is very cold.”
John smiled and cast a glance at her then. For the first time, she noticed the dimple creasing his right cheek. “You’ll freeze your southern butt off,” he said before looking down at the console between them and picking up a cassette. He popped it in the tape player and a wailing harmonica put an end to any attempt at further conversation.
Georgeanne turned her attention to the hilly landscape dotted with fir and alder trees and painted with smears of blue, red, yellow, and of course, green. Up until now, she’d done fairly well at avoiding her thoughts, afraid they would overwhelm and paralyze her. But with no other distraction, they rolled over her like a Texas heat wave. She thought about her life and about what she’d done today. She’d left a man at the altar, and even though the marriage would have been a disaster, he hadn’t deserved that.
All of her things were packed into four suitcases in Virgil’s Rolls-Royce, except the carry-on sitting on the floor of John’s car. She’d packed the little suitcase with essentials the night before in preparation for her and Virgil’s honeymoon trip.
Now all she had with her was a wallet filled with seven dollars and three maxed-out credit cards, a liberal amount of cosmetics, a toothbrush and hairbrush, comb, a can of Aqua Net, six pairs of French-cut underwear with matching lace bras, her birth control pills, and a Snickers.
She had hit an all-time low, even for Georgeanne.
Chapter Two
Flashes of blue and crystal sunlight, waving sea grass, and a salty breeze so thick she could taste it welcomed Georgeanne to the Pacific coast. Goose bumps broke out on her arms as she strained to catch glimpses of rolling blue ocean and foamy whitecaps.
The squall of seagulls pierced the air as John steered the Corvette up the driveway of a nondescript gray house with white shutters. An old man in a sleeveless T-shirt, gray polyester shorts, and a pair of cheap rubber thongs stood on the porch.
As soon as the car rolled to a stop, Georgeanne reached for the door handle and got out. She didn’t wait for John to assist her-not that she believed he would have helped her anyway. After an hour and a half of sitting in the car, her merry widow had became so painful she thought she might get sick after all.
She tugged the hem of her pink dress down her thighs and reached for her overnight case and shoes. The metal stays in her corset dug into her ribs as she bent to shove her feet into her pink mules.
“Good God, son,” the man on the porch growled in a gravelly voice. “Another dancer?”
A scowl creased John’s forehead as he led Georgeanne to the front door. “Ernie, I’d like you to meet Miss Georgeanne Howard. Georgie, this is my grandfather, Ernest Maxwell.”
“How do you do, sir.” Georgeanne offered her hand and looked into the aged face, which bore a striking resemblance to Burgess Meredith.
“Southern… hmmm.” He turned and walked back into the house.
John held the screen door open for Georgeanne, and she stepped inside a house furnished in plush blues, greens, and light browns, giving the impression that the view outside the large picture window had been brought into the living room. Everything appeared to have been chosen to blend with the ocean and sandy beach-everything but the black Naugahyde recliner patched with silver duct tape and the two broken hockey sticks placed like a sideways X above a packed trophy cabinet.
John reached for his sunglasses and tossed them on the wood and glass coffee table. “There’s a guest room down the hall, last door on your left. Bathroom’s on the right,” he said as he crossed behind Georgeanne and walked into the kitchen. He grabbed a bottle of beer from the refrigerator and twisted off the top. Raising the bottle to his lips, he leaned his shoulders back against the closed refrigerator door. He’d messed up big this time. He never should have agreed to help Georgeanne, and he for damn sure never should have brought her with him. He hadn’t wanted to, but then she’d stared up at him looking all vulnerable and scared, and he hadn’t been able to leave her on the side of the road. He just hoped like hell Virgil never found out.
He pushed himself away from the refrigerator and returned to the living room. Ernie had plopped himself down in his favorite recliner, his attention riveted on Georgeanne. She stood next to the fireplace with her hair all windblown and her little pink dress wrinkled. She appeared exhausted, but by the look in Ernie’s eyes, he found her more appealing than an all-you-can-eat buffet.
“Is there a problem, Georgie?” John asked, and raised the bottle to his lips. “Why aren’t you changing?”
“I have a slight dilemma,” she drawled, and looked at him. “I don’t have any clothes.”
He pointed with the bottle. “What’s in that little suitcase?”
“Cosmetics.”