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Grabbing a bottle of cleansing lotion, she set to work repairing the mess. As the heavy makeup came off, she felt a need to distance herself from the two men, to make them understand that she belonged to a different world. “Honestly, I look a fright. This entire trip has been an absolute nightmare.” She pulled off her false eyelashes, moisturized her eyelids, and applied a light dusting of highlighter along with taupe shadow and a dab of mascara. “Normally I use this wonderful German mascara called Ecarte, but Cissy Kavendish's maid—a really impossible woman from the West Indies—forgot to pack it, so I'm slumming with an English brand.”
She knew she was talking too much, but she didn't seem to be able to stop herself. She swept a Kent brush over a cake of toffee blusher and shaded the area just beneath her cheekbones. “I'd give almost anything for a really good facial right now. There's this wonderful place in Mayfair that uses thermal heat and all sorts of other incredibly miraculous things they combine with massage. Lizzy Arden does the same thing.” She quickly outlined her lips with a pencil, filled them in from a pot of rosy beige gloss, and checked the overall effect. Not terrific, but at least she almost looked like herself again.
The growing silence in the car was making her increasingly uneasy, so she kept talking to fill it. “It's always difficult when you're in New York trying to decide between Arden's and Janet Sartin. Naturally, I'm talking about Janet Sartin on Madison Avenue. I mean, one can go to her salon on Park, but it isn't quite the same, is it?”
Everything was quiet for a moment.
Finally, Skeet spoke. “Dallie?”
“Uh-huh?”
“Do you think she's done yet?”
Dallie pulled off his sunglasses and set them back on the dashboard. “I have a feeling she's just warming up.”
She looked over at him, embarrassed by her own behavior and angry with his. Couldn't he see that she was having the most miserable day of her life, and try to make things a bit easier for her? She hated the fact that he didn't seem impressed by her, hated the fact that he wasn't trying to impress her himself. In some strange way that she couldn't quite define, his lack of interest seemed more disorienting than anything else that had happened to her.
She returned her attention to the mirror and began snatching the pins from her hair, silently admonishing herself to stop worrying about Dallas Beaudine's opinion. Any moment now they'd stumble on civilization. She'd call a taxi to take her to the airport in Gulfport and then book herself on the next flight to London. Suddenly she remembered her embarrassing financial problem and then, just as quickly, found the solution. She would simply call Nicholas and have him wire her the money for her air fare.
Her throat felt scratchy and dry, and she coughed. “Could you roll up the windows? This dust is dreadful. And I'd really like something to drink.” She eyed a small Styrofoam cooler in the back. “I don't suppose there's an off chance that you might have a bottle of Perrier stashed away in there?”
A moment of pre
gnant silence filled the interior of the Riviera.
“Shoot, ma'am, we're fresh out,” Dallie said finally. “I'm afraid old Skeet finished the last bottle right after we pulled that liquor store holdup over in Meridian.”
Chapter
8
Dallie was the first to admit that he didn't always treat women well. Part of it was him, but part of it was them, too. He liked down-home women, good-time women, low-down women. He liked women he could drink with, women who could tell dirty jokes without lowering their voices, who'd boom out that old punch line right across the sweating beer pitchers, wadded-up cocktail napkins, and Waylon Jennings on the jukebox—never wasting a moment's thought on how some blue-haired club lady in the next town might be listening in. He liked women who didn't fuss around with tears and arguments because he was spending all his time hitting a couple hundred balls with his three-wood at the driving range instead of taking them to a restaurant that served snails. He liked women, in fact, who were pretty much like men. Except beautiful. Because, most of all, Dallie liked beautiful women. Not phony fashion-model beautiful, with all that makeup and those bony boys’ bodies that gave him the creeps, but sexy beautiful. He liked breasts and hips, eyes that laughed and teeth that sparkled, lips that parted wide. He liked women he could love and leave. That's the way he was, and that's what made him pretty much turn mean on every woman he had ever cared about.
But Francesca Day was going to be the exception. She made him turn mean just by being there.
“Is that a filling station?” Skeet asked, sounding happy for the first time in miles.
Francesca peered ahead and breathed a silent prayer of thanksgiving as Dallie slowed the car. Not that she'd actually believed that story about the liquor store holdup, but she had to be careful. They pulled up in front of a ramshackle wooden building with flaking paint and a hand-lettered “Live Bate” sign leaning against a rusted pump. A cloud of dust drifted in through the car window as the tires crunched on the gravel. Francesca felt as if she'd been traveling for aeons; she was perishing of thirst, dying of starvation, and she had to use the lavatory.
“End of the line,” Dallie said, turning off the ignition. “There'll be a phone inside. You can call one of your friends from there.”
“Oh, I'm not going to call a friend,” she replied, extracting a small calfskin handbag from her cosmetic case. “I'm calling a taxi to take me to the airport in Gulfport.”
A loud groan emanated from the back. Dallie slumped down in his seat and tipped his hat forward over his eyes.
“Is something wrong?” she inquired.
“I don't even know where to start,” Dallie muttered.
“Don't say a word,” Skeet announced. “Just let her out, slip the Riviera into gear, and drive away. The guy pumping gas can handle it. I mean it, Dallie. Only a fool sets out to make a double bogey on purpose.”
“What's wrong?” Francesca asked, beginning to feel alarmed.
Dallie tilted the brim of his cap back with his thumb. “For starters, Gulfport is about two hours behind you. We're in Louisiana now, halfway to New Orleans. If you wanted to go to Gulfport, why were you walking west instead of east?”
“How was I supposed to know I was walking west?” she replied indignantly.
Dallie slammed the heels of his hands against the steering wheel. “Because the goddamn sun was setting in front of your eyes, that's how!”
