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“You did?”
“I meant it from the bottom of my heart. And if you, well, you know, if you ever wanted to kiss me again, it would be all right.”
The buzzing inside Bowie’s head almost drowned out the pounding rain on the roof. His heart was beating so hard and fast that it hurt. His throat was tight, but he managed to strangle out, “I do want to kiss you again, Miss Janellen. I surely do.”
He slipped his hands beneath her hair and cupped her jaw, then drew her mouth toward his. Her parted lips responded warmly. This time they needed no warm-up, no rehearsal. They skipped getting reacquainted and picked up right where they had left off, engaging in a kiss that left them breathless when they at last pulled apart.
He pressed his mouth against her throat while her hands clutched at his back. “I never knew it could feel like this, Bowie.”
“Neither did I. And I’ve been doing it for some time now.”
They kissed again and again, each kiss piercingly sweet and increasingly intimate. They kissed until their lips were swollen, their passions brimming.
He longed to nestle his erection in the cleft of her long thighs, but he curbed the impulse. However, with an eagerness that was instinctual and almost childlike in its innocence, she arched her body against his, in effect accomplishing what he wouldn’t do for himself.
The contact was erotically shattering. It would have evoked the animalistic urges of a saint, and that was something Bowie Cato had never claimed to be.
He fumbled beneath her skirt and grabbed a handful of her bottom, kneading the silk-covered flesh once, twice, while mashing his distended fly against her mound. It wasn’t premeditated. He didn’t weigh the benefits against the consequences. If he’d thought about it at all, he’d never have done it. It was an unthinkable thing to do.
Janellen’s soft exclamation brought reality crashing down on his head, and along with it shame and self-disgust.
He released her immediately. Without a word, he crossed the kitchen in three strides, grabbed his boots, his hat, and his jacket, and stomped out the kitchen door and into the donwpour.
The moment he reached the truck he’d left parked behind the garage, a jagged fork of lightning rent the darkness, connecting the firmament and the earth with a hot-white brilliance that crackled with wrath and seared the air with ozone.
Bowie figured it was God, meaning to strike him dead. His aim was just a little off.
Thunder rattled the liquor bottles and glassware behind the bar. “Brewing up a real storm out there,” Hap Hollister observed as he poured Key another drink.
“Grounded me. I was supposed to be flying to Midland tonight, taking an oilman and his wife home.”
“I’m right proud of you, Key. You’ve got better sense than to fly in this weather.”
“Wasn’t me who chickened out. It was the wife. Said she didn’t want to die in a plane crash.”
Hap, shaking his head over the younger man’s derring-do, moved away to serve the other customers who had braved the storm to come to The Palm. Some were playing billiards, leaning on their cues and drinking longnecks as they awaited their turns. Others were watching a late-season baseball game on the large-screen TV mounted beneath the ceiling in one corner of the bar. Drinkers were grouped in twos and threes.
Only Key drank alone at one end of the bar. His dark expression and hunched shoulders signaled his mood. News of the incident at the Sak’n’Save had reached every ear in town, and so his silent request to be left alone was sympathetically honored by everyone in the tavern.
Jody was the subject on Key’s mind as he sipped his fresh drink, but his thoughts weren’t running toward the sympathetic. He’d like to give his mother a good swift kick in the butt. At the hospital and later, when he and Janellen had taken her home against the doctor’s recommendation and their own better judgment, Jody had griped and complained and staved off all their attempts to make her comfortable.
“I’m hiring a live-in nurse for you, Jody,” he’d told her as Janellen urged her to get into bed. “Janellen keeps office hours. I’m away a lot. Maydale’s a good housekeeper, but we can’t count on her to handle a medical emergency like the one that occurred this morning. You should have someone with you constantly.”
“That’s a wonderful idea, Key!” Janellen exclaimed. “Isn’t it, Mama?”
Disregarding Janellen, Jody blew smoke at him from her fresh cigarette. “You took it upon yourself to hire me a nurse?”
“She’ll be here around the clock to fetch and carry for you.”
“I can fetch and carry for myself, thank you very much. I don’t want a busybody fussing over me, bossing me, meddling in my things, and stealing me blind when I’m not looking.”
“I went through a top-notch agency in Dallas,” he patiently explained. “They won’t send us a thief. I specified our requirements. I made it clear that you’re not an invalid, that you’re independent and value your privacy. They’re checking their files to see who’s available, but promised a nurse would be here no later than noon tomorrow.”
Jody’s eyes narrowed to slits. “Call them back. Cancel. Who the hell gave you the authority to make my decisions for me?”
“Mama, Key’s only doing what he thinks is best for you.”
“I’ll tell him what’s best for me. I want him to butt out of my life. And you too,” she said, snatching her jacket away from Janellen, who had assisted her in taking it off. “Get out of my room. Both of you.” At the risk of bringing on another attack, they had left her.
