“Hey, yourself,” he replied, looking up at her. Reaching a hand up to shade the glare of the rising sun behind her, as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing.
“Hattie sent me out with a cup of coffee for you and strict orders to get rid of you,” she said cheerfully, coming down the stone steps and into the shadows. “What do you want?”
“I promised Mary I’d help her with something,” he murmured absently, taking the delicate cup from her hands. He should be drinking from a mug, she thought, but obviously people didn’t use mugs in 1949, just those delicate, hardly hold anything teacups.
“What?”
He took a deep drink, obviously stalling. “Hattie makes some of the best coffee in the world,” he said.
Susan kept a straight face at that one. “Are you going to keep acting like a television commercial or are you going to answer my question?”
“Television?” he echoed, startled. “I didn’t know the lordly Abbotts owned such a plebian appliance.”
“They don’t,” she said, guessing. “But the ads must be the same as the radio, right?”
“With the added benefit of pictures,” he drawled. “What’s between Mary and me is a secret She likes surprises, and she doesn’t realize what a joke this wedding is. I think she just wants to get the happy couple a wedding present.”
“It’s not a joke...”
“Okay, okay,” he muttered, draining the coffee. “You want to tell me why you’re dressed like that?”
She glanced down at the jeans, the white shirt, her sneakered feet. “It’s comfortable. I’ll have to dress up later so I might as well wear what I want now.”
He reached out a hand and caught one long, damp strand of hair. It curled lightly against his fingers. “I’ve never seen you without your hair curled and arranged, your clothes just right I sure as hell have never seen you without makeup.”
“Sony,” she said, unrepentant. “Now you get to see what a hag I really am.”
“Not quite,” he murmured. “Why are you wearing my shirt?”
She glanced down, startled. “What makes you think this is yours?”
“Because I gave it to you, five years ago, after the dance at the country club. You had a fight with your parents and you’d taken off, and by the time I found you you’d fallen and skinned your elbow. Like the perfect gentleman I always am, I gave you the shirt off my back to bind your wounds and then drove you home.”
“You drove me home shirtless? Doesn’t sound gentlemanly to me,” she said, trying to disguise her feverish thoughts. Why did Tallulah still hold on to Jack’s shirt?
“I was wearing an undershirt, sweetheart And trust me, you were too distraught to be seduced by my manly charms. I was only sorry Jimmy wasn’t around to take care of you, but he’d already shipped out.” He reached out and touched the shirt just above her left breast, and for the first time she noticed the faint rust-colored stain of old blood. “That’s how I know it’s mine.”
“Don’t start imagining things. Jack,” she said. “I only held on to it because it’s comfortable. It’s the only thing that goes with my jeans.”
“Your jeans? Oh, you mean your dungarees.”
Damn. “Jeans, dungarees, blue jeans, Levi’s. Whatever you want to call them,” she said carelessly. “I couldn’t very well steal my father’s old shirts—he’s too short.”
“Yeah,” Jack said. “Mine fits you.”
There was a sudden, strained silence between the two of them. The air smelled of a cool summer morning, and in the distance she could hear birds singing. His dark eyes slid over her, over the shirt she’d wrapped around her body, and it was like a caress, hot and intensely physical, and she wished to heaven that she’d opted for a girdle and seamed stockings.
“Don’t many him, Lou,” he said quietly. “It would break Jimmy’s heart.”
“Jack...”
“Don’t get me wrong, he’d want you to get married. Just not to Neddie Marsden. He’s a crook, Lou. A cheap, lousy war profiteer, a bully and braggart and just the kind of man who’d break your heart.”
“No, he isn’t,” she said.
“You think he’s some kind of tin god? Because I always thought you were smarter than that.”
“I’m not arguing with anything you say about him,” she said. “He’s just not going to break my heart.”
