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Francesca cleared her throat and stepped into the living room, making everyone aware of her presence.
The woman in the gray suit audibly gasped. “My God! Those photographs didn't do you justice.” She walked forward, smiling broadly. “Let me be the first to offer my congratulations to our beautiful new Sassy Girl.”
And then she held out her hand to Holly Grace Beaudine.
Chapter
16
Francesca might have been invisible for all the attention anyone paid her. She stood numbly just inside the doorway while the woman from Manhattan clucked over Holly Grace, talking about exclusive contracts and time schedules and a series of photographs that had been taken of her when she appeared at a charity benefit in Los Angeles as the date of a famous football player.
“But I sell sporting goods,” Holly Grace exclaimed at one point. “At least I did until I got involved in a small labor dispute a few weeks back and staged an unofficial walkout. You don't seem to realize that I'm not a model.”
“You will be when I've finished with you,” the woman insisted. “Just promise me you won't disappear again without leaving a phone number. From now on, always let your agent know where you are.”
“I don't have an agent.”
“I'll fix that, too.”
There would be no fairy godmother for her, Francesca realized. No one to take care of her. No magical modeling contracts appearing at the last moment to save her. She caught sight of her reflection in a mirror Miss Sybil had framed with seashells. Her hair was wild, her face scraped and bruised. She looked down and saw the dirt and dried blood streaking her arms. How had she ever thought she could get through life on the strength of her beauty alone? Compared to Holly Grace and Dallie, she was second rate. Chloe had been wrong. Looking pretty wasn't enough— there was always someone prettier.
Turning away, she let herself silently out the door.
Nearly an hour passed before Naomi Tanaka left and Holly Grace went into Dallie's bedroom. There had been some confusion over Naomi's rental car, which seemed to have disappeared while Naomi was inside the house, and Miss Sybil had ended up driving her to Wynette's only hotel. Naomi had promised to give Holly Grace until the next day to look over the contract and consult her lawyer. Not that there was any doubt in Holly Grace's mind about signing. The amount of money they were offering her was staggering—a hundred thousand dollars for doing nothing more than wiggling around in front of a camera and shaking hands at department-store perfume counters. She remembered her days in Bryan, Texas, living with Dallie in student housing and trying to scratch together enough money to pay for groceries.
Still dressed in Dallie's blue shirt and holding a coffee mug in each hand, she closed the door to his bedroom with her hip. The bed looked like a war zone, with all the covers pulled out from the bottom and tangled around his hips. Even asleep, Dallie couldn't seem to find any peace. She set his coffee mug down on the nightstand and then took a sip from her own.
The Sassy Girl. It sounded just right to her. Even the timing was right. She was tired of battling the good ol' boys at SEI, tired of having to work twice as hard as everyone else to go the same distance. She was ready for a fresh start in her life, a chance to make big money. Long ago she had decided that when opportunity knocked on her door, she would be standing right there to answer it.
Taking her coffee over to the old armchair, she sat down and crossed her foot over her bare knee. Her thin gold ankle bracelet caught the sunlight, sending an ambulating serpentine reflection onto the ceiling above her head. Glittering images flashed in her mind—designer clothes, fur coats, famous New York restaurants. After all her work, all these years of butting her head against stone walls, the chance of a lifetime had finally dropped right in her lap.
Cuddling the warm mug in her hand, she looked over at Dallie. People who knew about their separate lives and separate home addresses always asked why they hadn't gotten divorced. They couldn't understand that Holly Grace and Dallie still liked being married to each other. They were family.
Her gaze traveled down along the hard curve of his calf, the sight of which had once produced so many stirrings of lust inside her. When had they last made love? She couldn't remember. All she knew was that the minute she and Dallie climbed into bed together, all their old troubles came back to haunt them. Holly Grace was once again a helpless young girl in need of protection, and Dallie was a teenage husband trying desperately to support a family while failure hung over him like a dark cloud. Now that they'd begun to make it a practice to stay out of each other's beds, they'd discovered the relief of letting go of those old parts of themselves. Lovers were a dime a dozen, they had finally decided, but best friends were hard to find.
Dallie moaned and turned over onto his stomach. She left him alone for a few more minutes while he pushed his face into the pillows and stretched out his legs. Finally, she got up and walked over to sit on the edge of the bed. Putting down her own mug, she picked up his. “I brought you some coffee. Drink this down and I guarantee you'll feel almost like a human being by the time next week rolls around.”
He eased himself into the pillows wedged up against the headboard and, with his eyes still half closed, held out his hand. She gave him the mug and then pushed back a rumpled thatch of blond hair that had fallen over his forehead. Even with messy hair and stubble on his chin, he managed to look gorgeous. His morning appearance used to aggravate her when they first got married. She would wake up looking like the wrath of God, and he would look like a movie star. He always told her she looked her prettiest in the morning, but she never believed him. Dallie wasn't objective where she was concerned. He thought she was the most beautiful woman in the world, no matter how bad she looked.
“Have you seen Francie this morning?” he muttered.
“I saw her for about three seconds in the living room a little bit ago, and then she ran away. Dallie, I don't mean to criticize your taste in women, but she seems flighty to me.” Holly Grace leaned back into the pillows and pulled up her knees, chuckling at the memory of the scene in the Roustabout parking lot. “She really did go after you last night, didn't she? I've got to give her credit for that. The only other woman I know who could go one on one with you like that is me.”
He turned his head and glared at her. “Yeah? Well, that's not all the two of you have in common. You both talk too damn much in the morning.”
Holly Grace ignored his bad temper. Dallie was always grouchy when he woke up, but she liked to talk in the morning. Sometimes she could pry interesting tidbits out of him if she kept at him before he was fully conscious. “I have to tell you that I think she's the most interesting stray you've picked up in a long time—almost better than that midget clown who used to travel with the rodeo. Skeet told me how she trashed your motel room in New Orleans. I sure wish I'd seen that.” She propped her elbow up on the pillow next to his head and tucked her foot up beneath her hip. “Just out of curiosity, why didn't you tell her about me?”
He stared at her for a moment over the top of his mug and then pulled it away from his mouth without sipping. “Don't be ridiculous. She knew about you. I talked about you in front of her all the time.”
“Thai's what Skeet said, but I'm wondering whether in any of those conversations you happened to use the exact word ‘wife’?”
“Of course I did. Or Skeet did.” He shoved his fingers through his hair. “I don't know... somebody did. Maybe Miss Sybil.”
“Sorry, baby, but it looked to me like she was hearing the bad news for the very first time.”
He impatiently set his mug down. “Hell, what's the difference? Francie's too much in love with herself to care about anybody else. She's past history as far as I'm concerned.”
Holly Grace wasn't surprised. The fight in the parking lot the night before had looked just about as final as a parting could be... unless the two fighters loved each other to the point of desperation, the way she and Dallie used to.
