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“I just wanted you to know I’m missin’ you so bad I got tears in my eyes this very minute.”
He raised his arm to wave at a woman in a blue Firebird who whizzed by blowing her horn. Gracie, a very safe driver herself, grabbed the door handle as she realized he was steering the car with his knee.
“Yeah, that’s right. . . I know, sweetheart, I wish we could have made it, too. The rodeo doesn’t come to Chicago nearly often enough.” He draped his fingers over the top of the wheel, while he tucked the receiver farther into the crook of his neck. “You don’t say. Well, now, you give her my best, y’hear? Kitty and I had some real good times together a couple months back. She even took the quiz, but she hadn’t studied up near enough on the ’89 Super Bowl to pass. I’ll call you as soon as I can, darlin’.”
As he replaced the phone, she regarded him curiously. “Don’t all your girlfriends get jealous of each other?”
“’Course not. I only date nice ladies.”
And treat every one of them like a queen, she suspected. Even the pregnant ones.
“The National Organization of Women should seriously consider putting out a contract on you.”
He looked genuinely surprised. “On me? I love women. More than I like a lot of men, as a matter of fact. I’m pretty much a card carryin’ feminist.”
“Don’t let Gloria Steinem hear you say that.”
“Why not? She’s the one who gave me the card.”
Gracie’s eyes flew open.
He flashed a wicked smile. “Gloria is one nice lady, I’m tellin’ you that.”
She knew right then that she couldn’t afford to lose her concentration around him, not even for a moment.
As the suburbs of Chicago gave way to flat, Illinois farmland, she asked if she could use his phone to call Willow Craig, assuring him that she would pay for the call with her new business credit card. That seemed to amuse him.
Windmill had set up its headquarters at the Cattleman’s Hotel in Telarosa, and as soon as she was connected with her employer, she began to explain the problem. “I’m afraid Bobby Tom is insisting on driving to Telarosa instead of flying.”
“Talk him out of it,” Willow replied in her brisk, no-nonsense voice.
“I did my best. Unfortunately, he wasn’t listening. We’re on the road now, just south of Chicago.”
“I was afraid of this.” Several seconds slipped by, and Gracie could picture her sophisticated employer toying with one of the large earrings she always wore. “He has to be here by eight o’clock Monday morning. Do you understand?”
Gracie eyed Bobby Tom. “It may not be that easy.”
“That’s why I chose you to go after him. You’re supposed to be able to handle difficult people. We have a fortune tied up in this film, Gracie, and we can’t afford any more delays. Even people who aren’t sports fans know Bobby Tom Denton, and we’re getting a huge amount of publicity out of signing him for his first film.”
“I understand.”
“He’s slippery. It took us months to negotiate this contract, and I want this picture made! I’m not going to see the studio bankrupt just because you don’t know how to do your job.”
Gracie had a small knot in the pit of her stomach by the time she had finished listening to another five minutes of warnings about what would happen if she didn’t have Bobby Tom in Telarosa by eight o’clock Monday morning.
He replaced the phone. “She really give you the business, huh?”
“She expects me to do the job I was hired for.”
“Has it occurred to anybody at Windmill Studios that sending you after me was pretty much like sending a lamb to the slaughter?”
“I don’t see it that way. I happen to be exceptionally competent.”
She heard a chuckle that sounded faintly diabolic, but was quickly drowned out as he flipped the volume back up on the radio.
Listening to the raucous sounds of rock and roll instead of the innocuous music heard around Shady Acres gave her a moment of such delicious pleasure that her tension faded and she nearly shivered with delight. Her senses seemed especially acute. She felt dizzy from the woodsy scent of Bobby Tom’s after-shave, while her hands unconsciously stroked the soft leather seats of what he had informed her was a restored 1957 Thunderbird. If only the car had a pair of fuzzy pink dice swinging from the rearview mirror, it would be perfect.
She’d had so little sleep the night before that her head began to nod, but even so, her eyes wouldn’t stay closed for long. The fact that Bobby Tom had allowed her to come along on the first leg of his trip didn’t lull her into thinking she could easily persuade him to change his mind about letting her stay with him. Unless she was very much mistaken, he planned to get rid of her as soon as he had the chance, which meant she couldn’t let him out of her sight, no matter what.
