Page 32 of Heart of Dixie
“Dude, you have to rescue me! I just found out thisthingshe wants to drag me to is a chick thing.” The panic in his voice would normally amuse me. Except tonight when thatchick thingwas over, all would be well over at Blake’s place with Donna cuddled up in his bed.
Dixie’s memory didn’t throw off much body heat.
“Come on, be a pal! Don’t you have a fence that needs mending? Maybe a wild boar we can flush out of the woods and hunt down? Something manly!”
Manly?The guy taught poetry for chrissake, and tonight he was worried about his balls? I mulled it over for a minute. “The best I can offer is a game of pool down at The Barn. Is that macho enough for you?”
“Perfect! I’m ready to go.”
I laughed. “Slow down, turbo.” I checked the clock on the computer monitor.Damn, later than I realized. “I have a few things to take care of first. Give me an hour and I’ll meet you there.” I clicked the mouse to start shutting down programs. “Sorry, that’s the best I can do.”
He sighed—like the girl he was.
“And if you mutterfine,you’ll make me regret saving your ass.” Then I disconnected our call before he could.
By the time I arrived at The Barn, the parking lot was packed and the only free spots were in the dirt overflow lot, far beyond the lighted gravel. Probably a good thing I came in the truck; Lucy was well known around town, and Trent Anderson tanked last week’s quiz. Dark night, all that chrome—a mighty temptation for the up and coming juvenile delinquent I had on my radar for the town’s recent episodes of vandalism.
Blake kicked up dust and rocks as he cruised through the lot in his Tahoe, found a spot near mine and fell in beside me on the trek to the door. “Dude, I’m a shit, but I didn’t even ask if you had plans tonight. I mean, Dixie’s in town. Not that I agree with it, but maybe you’d rather spend Saturday night knocking boots with her than babysitting me.”
I had memories of Dixie in boots and not a scrap of anything else. It’d be one hell of a way to spend a Saturday night—if I wanted to lose my balls forever. If I was as brilliant as the certificates on my studio wall proclaimed, I’d steer clear of Dixie Barnes until after her father’s service and she was winging her way west.
“‘Enhanced Electronic Engine Monitoring with a Main Objective of Increased Driver Performance’. The title is fairly simple, but it’s the address I’ll be delivering in less than a month.”Blake halted, and I only hoped my audience at the convention didn’t seem so dumbfounded when I started speaking. I gave him a shove to get him moving again. “I finally got my head out of my ass and got it on track, so my extensive variety of options for tonight’s entertainment included stretching out the presentation to the allotted fifty minutes, or . . .”
He reached around me, opened the door.
I walked in ahead of him. “Babysitting your ass.”
The floor inside was littered with chaff from the hay bales lining the stage. A couple of band members were getting ready for the first set. Over the din of the crowd, someone tuned a slide guitar.
Blake followed as I cut right around the dance floor and threaded my way through a mass of high-top tables, nodding and waving as we went. Half the town had to be here tonight.
I found a break at the bar and leaned against it to wait our turn.
“But what’s Dixie doing? Maybe you can hook up later.”
His obsession with Dixie was beginning to wear on me, but he was a man in love—even if he was in exile for the night—so I kept my usual sarcasm on lockdown. “My head’s been on ass-backward since she rolled into town. I saw her earlier today—”
Blake threw up his hand to cut me off. “Dude. You mean like yousawher earlier today? Because maybe you should have led with that.”
I shook my head. “You’d think you never got any of your own.” I narrowed my eyes at him. “Yes, I saw her. And then she blew me off. Something about catching up on girl talk with Beth.” I caught Earl’s eye and ordered a couple of drafts, slid him my card to start a tab. With our frosty mugs in hand, we headed back across the straw-strewn hardwood, around the dance floor and toward the pool tables on the far side of the spacious building. “I have no plans to sit around thinking about her, or talking about her, or worrying abouthooking up. We’re good.” My attention turned from Blake to the selection of available tables and—“Jesus!”
We passed the dance floor. We passed the fucking wooden patch crowded with its double row of line dancers, Beth there on the edge of it, laughing and shuffling her boots and seeming to have a great time, and it hadn’t even occurred to me that if Beth was here tonight, then Dixie might be, too. But there she was, nowhere near the dance floor, where all I had to worry about was Tommy Roy Heaton forgetting he was still married and wrapping his wandering arms around her as he scooted her around a shadowy corner of parquet.
Nope. That would be too easy.
My Dixie was draped across a pool table, ass in the air, sparkling jeans painted on, fuck me heels dangling from her endless legs, stroking the cue stick in such a way I’d lay odds the men circling the table were all sporting their own wood. I took a long gulp of beer to douse the flames that had suddenly ignited.
Dixie gave her shot a sharp jab; the cue ball ricocheted off the far bumper andcrackedas it knocked the black eight into the near corner pocket. With a victorious grin, she wiggled down from the table.
Molly appeared from the far side and gave her a high five. “Way to go, Dixie!” She selected her cue from those lined against the wall and began to disassemble it, sliding the pieces into her pink case. “I want you on my team in the ladies’ league. We have shirts and everything. Hey, Blake. Deke.”
Dixie spun at the sound of my name. Her face went crimson, which was more than a little odd. Blake said hello, then wandered away to chat with a few of the guys who moved to the next open table. “Hey, Molly. Leaving already?”
Molly lifted a shoulder and zipped up her case. “I keep toddler hours when I have breakfast shift. I’m already an hour past my bedtime. Oh, good, here comes Beth. You and Blake can play against her and Dixie and I won’t feel guilty about cutting the match short.”
Beth marched up to our little group as the band started in on another song, something with a quick-tempo and a tight bass. She held her purse in one hand and had her phone gripped in her other fist as if she wanted to throw it across the room. The storm in her eyes had me thinking it might be a real possibility.
“Harley Abbott shot at someone skulking near his wife’s garden so I need to check it out, make a report. She’s been guarding those damn tomatoes for the Founder’s Day judging and swears she’s got a record breaker in the making.” She shoved her phone in her bag and the furrows between her eyebrows deepened. “Doesn’t anyone have anything more important to do than mess with an old lady’s tomatoes?”
