Last Chance Book Club(34)
Author: Hope Ramsay

Molly’s car turned out to be a canary yellow 1970s-vintage Dodge Charger.

“Holy cow, this is yours?”

“You like it? I restored it myself. I restored Dash’s car, too. So I know how fast it will go.” She smiled. “Now get going, and don’t drive like a girl.”

It was a good thing the roads in South Carolina were more or less straight and usually deserted this time of evening. It allowed Savannah to peg the speedometer at ninety without having to worry about curves or traffic.

Please, God, I need someone to pull Dash over.

And to her utter astonishment, she topped a rise in the road, and there was an Allenberg County sheriff’s deputy on the side of the road, his cruiser lights flashing. He was leaning up against Dash’s cherry red Eldorado.

Savannah hit the brakes and pulled over.

The cop went immediately on alert when she pulled up in front of Dash’s Caddy, sending up a pretty big cloud of dust. He put his hand on his weapon as he strolled up along the driver’s side of Molly’s car. Savannah lowered her window and gave him a smile.

He blinked a couple of times. “You’re not Molly.”

“No, I’m not. I’m one of her friends.”

“Ma’am, are you all right? I mean your face…”

“Oh, I just came from the big fire in Last Chance. I’m sure you heard about it on your radio.”

“Oh, yeah, I heard The Kismet burned down.”

Savannah’s heart lurched. “Well, not quite.”

“You look like you were in The Kismet when it burned.”

“I was rescuing Maverick.”

“You mean someone was in that old theater when it burned down?”

“Maverick is a cat.”

“Oh. I see. Ma’am, why are you here?”

“Well, you see, Mr. Randall’s uncle used to own the theater.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And I guess when he saw the place going up in flames—see, he’s a member of the volunteer fire department?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Well, it must have just done something to him. He just got mad or upset or something. And he tore off, and I came after him to make sure he didn’t do something stupid.”

“You mean stupid like what he did that time on the motorcycle?”

“You know about that?”

The cop leaned on Molly’s car. “Ma’am, everyone knows about that. Dash Randall was our hero, you know. He kind of disappointed us.”

“I see.”

“I remember watching him play in the those state championship games back in the early nineties.”

“I’m sorry I missed that.”

“He was amazing. In his senior year, back in 1996, he went five for five with ten RBIs.”

Savannah understood this comment about as well as she’d understood Pat’s advice for decreasing stitches around an armhole. She assumed it was something good.

“So, anyway,” she said, “I was wondering if you could just give him a break on the ticket you were about to write him. That fire made something snap inside him. You know?”

The cop smiled. “I guess I do. It’s a shame that old place went up in flames. I heard some woman was renovating it. I would have liked to see that.”

“Yes, some woman was,” she said with a long sigh.

“You?”

“Me.”

“I’m so sorry, ma’am.”

“Thanks. So, you won’t give him a ticket, will you?”

“No, ma’am. You just see that he gets back home in one piece. He’s still a local hero, you know. We wouldn’t have deBracy Limited hiring all those folks without him. Not to mention the help he’s given Molly Canaday. She wants to open a place to restore old classics like this one.”

He rubbed his hand along the paint of Molly’s Charger. “Man, that girl sure knows how to paint a car. That finish is smooth as a baby’s butt.”

He tipped his Stetson. “You take care, now.”

He turned and walked back to his cruiser, stopping to say a couple of words to Dash, who was sitting in his car with his head back on the headrest.

Savannah pulled out a couple of wipes from the pack Molly had pressed into her hands. She ran them over her face. She was kind of surprised when they came back black. But then she smelled like a chimney sweep. The smoke smell and soot were everywhere. On her hands, under her nails, in her hair. She was a mess.

But at least she’d caught up with Dash before he did something idiotic.

He sat up the minute she climbed out of Molly’s yellow car. “What in the hell are you doing driving that car? I hope to God you didn’t steal it.”

“Dash, I’m not the kind of person who steals cars for joyrides. Molly loaned it to me. She said my POS Honda would never catch you.”

She strolled up to the passenger’s side of the Eldorado. She gave the white upholstery a glance before she climbed in.

“How did you talk Henry out of throwing the book at me?” he asked, apparently not concerned about her sooty clothes or his pristine upholstery.

“I batted my eyes.”

The corner of his mouth twitched.

“You think I can’t bat my eyes when I want to?”

“Oh, I know you are a champion eye-batter, princess. It’s just that you batting your eyes with that dirty face is kind of amusing is all.”

She wiped her hands over her cheeks. “Henry said he saw you play high-school baseball.”

“Yeah, he did. It’s annoying how many former high-school acquaintances still live here. Like most of them, Henry is annoyed at me because of my last idiocy with a motor vehicle.”

“So I gather. I told him to give you a break.”

“You should be with the EMTs,” he said, changing the subject.

“I’m fine. I’m filthy but I’m fine. You want to explain what just happened back there at the theater?”

He leaned his head on the seat back and looked up at the sky. She followed his gaze, suddenly thinking about the painted ceiling at The Kismet. She had once thought Granddaddy hung the stars. But she’d been wrong. The real stars were more magnificent. And out here in the country, the stars were so much brighter than they were in Baltimore.

It surprised her that she wasn’t nearly as devastated by the fire as Dash had been.

“It’s just a building,” she said.

He didn’t say a word. She let him be silent, almost the way they had danced in silence, only this was way more uncomfortable.

They must have sat there for four minutes before he said “I want you.”

Her insides went a little crazy because the feeling was mutual. When Zeph had handed her off to Dash, she’d felt safe. She’d rested her head on his shoulder, and it had felt so right. Why was it that Dash made her feel safer than she’d ever felt before? It made no sense.

“Dash, I—” she started.

“I don’t want to want you, princess. I don’t want to want anyone.” His voice was gruff with emotion.

She understood why he didn’t want anyone. She’d been there, too. “Well,” she said as her heart rate spiked, “for what it’s worth, I want you back. And I don’t want to want you. I want to be independent. But apparently my libido doesn’t want me living like a nun. It always gets me into trouble. Whenever I dance with a good-looking jock it goes into overdrive.”

He laughed out loud, but it wasn’t a happy laugh. “So, you want hot, dirty sex, is that it?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

He sighed. “Of course you do. Everyone wants hot, dirty sex with me. And darlin’, I’d be happy to oblige you, but not tonight. I have a headache.” The corner of his mouth curled up and stayed there.

The joke didn’t bring a laugh. Instead it turned her core molten. “Be serious, Dash. How can we do that?”

“Pretty easy. We just keep on driving on this road until we reach the outskirts of Orangeburg, and we find a no-tell motel. It’s pretty standard practice if you want to be discreet. And in Last Chance, when it comes to people having hot, dirty sex, discretion is probably the better part of valor.”

Silence stretched out between them while she contemplated this scenario and suddenly found absolutely nothing wrong with it. Her pulse raced, and the excitement of sneaking away and having the one thing that was utterly forbidden seized her. Two months of bumping into him, or trying not to bump into him, had made her completely crazy.

It had made him crazy, too, as evidenced by his behavior earlier in the evening.

“I must be insane,” she muttered.

“Why?”

“Because I’m having this discussion with you like we’re trying to decide where we should have dinner.”

“Sometimes it’s a good thing to talk these things out. There are huge downsides, of course. If we were smart we’d just continue to take lots of cold showers. Or swim in the Edisto.” He sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. “I’ve been swimming in the Edisto a lot lately. It’s freezing this time of year.”

“Really? Since we’re being utterly honest, I’ve been having hot and wicked dreams about you.”

He let go of a deep breath. “Going to a no-tell motel with you would be the second stupidest thing I’ve ever done in my life.”

“What’s the first, putting a snake in my bed?”

He scowled at her. “When I tore out of town, all I wanted was to find a place where I could get a drink. Sitting here thinking about taking you somewhere to have sex with you is just the same damn thing. My addictions are showing up, right on time.”

“And why did they show up tonight?”

He pressed his lips together. “I reckon I cared about the theater.”

“And why is that?”

He shrugged. He wasn’t going to open up to her. But she had a pretty good idea of what was going on in his head. Hell, she empathized with his pain on a very deep level. And that surprised the heck out of her.

“Dash,” she said softly, “I’m here. I didn’t burn up. I’m not going anywhere. I’m not going to leave. I know how bad it sucks when people leave. Maybe that’s why I was so ugly to you when I was ten—because I knew exactly how to hurt you. When I said that you were so naughty that you didn’t deserve a mother and father, I was halfway talking about myself. My dad abandoned me when I was three.” Her voice began to waver.

She took a deep breath. “Sometimes I think I want to fix up The Kismet because I’ve got this stupid idea that if I do that, Granddaddy will rise up from his grave and live again. He was the only one who ever had any faith in me. He was the only real father I ever knew.”

Dash stared at Savannah’s dirty face. She had a big splotch of soot on her nose and over one eye. The gold in her hair was muted by ashes, and she smelled like a fireplace.

She was still beautiful. And alive, thank God. She was here, just for him. But like every other woman in the universe, she only wanted to have hot, dirty sex with him.

“We should go back,” he said. “Check in with the fire department. I can’t imagine what would have caused that fire.”