Katie searched for the words. “It appears that you and Douglas have gotten close in a short amount of time.”
Wilhemina's gaze turned guarded. “'Yes, we have. He's been very kind to me.”
“I'm glad he's been kind,” Katie said and cleared her throat. “But there are other concerns when you get close with someone.”
Wilhemina frowned; “What do you mean?”
“Well, you will be leaving and while I'm glad for you to have a good—” She broke off again searching for the right word. “A good experience with Douglas, I wouldn't want you to have to face any unpleasant repercussions.”
“Unpleasant?”
Katie decided to be blunt even though she felt like a complete hypocrite. “Pregnancy or a sexually transmitted disease.”
Wilhemina's eyes widened. “Oh, that. Douglas uses a condom every time. Even when I get in a hurry and just don't want to wait for him to put—”
Katie was hearing far more than she wanted to. “That's good,” she cut in. “That's good to know. I know you haven't had a lot of experience with men, so I felt like I should just remind you to take care of yourself.”
Wilhemina stood and took Katie's hand. “That's so sweet of you. You're right. I haven't had much experience with men, but I've been doing my best to make up for it the last few days.”
Again. More than she wanted to know. Katie forced her lips into a strained smile. “You just keep making sure you protect yourself, then.” She patted Wilhemina's shoulder. “That's all I wanted to tell you.”
Wilhemina smiled. “Okay, I'd like to get back to Douglas now.”
Katie nodded, hating the necessity of taking some of the sparkle from her eyes. “Remember, Wilhemina, we are all leaving tomorrow.”
Wilhemina's smile fell. “Yeah. I guess so. Are you coming back in?”
“Just to finish cleaning the kitchen. Then Michael and I will probably go to the trailer. We've had a long day. Please tell Douglas we appreciated the meal.”
“I'll do that,” Wilhemina said, and hotfooted it back to her hog farmer lover.
Katie sighed and returned to Michael in the kitchen. He had loaded most of the dishes and was wiping off the counter. “I'm impressed,” she said.
“With what?”
“It takes a real man to do the dishes,” she said, unable to prevent a smile.
He rolled his eyes. “I seem to recall a similar statement about changing diapers. Dishes and diapers? Sounds like pansy material to me.”
“Not with your body,” she murmured.
He stopped and looked at her, something electric coming from his eyes. “What a surprise. That kind of remark could make me think you'd like to do a lot more than
look
at my body.”
Katie's stomach twirled at the velvet invitation in his voice. He was taunting her, and she probably deserved it. She struggled with a strange undercurrent of danger and excitement. She liked his attention entirely too much. “You're full of it. You're not surprised. You walk around with your shirt off every chance you get just to distract me.”
She barely got the words out of her mouth before he backed her up against the kitchen counter. “Is it working?”
Her nerve endings jiggled up and down, but she lifted her chin. “I don't have to answer that.”
His lips lifted in a sexy, but maddening grin. “You just did.”
She scowled at him and pushed at his muscular chest, barely resisting the urge to allow her hands to linger on his muscles.
Michael chuckled, stepping back slightly. “So are we chaperoning or not?”
“Not.”
He lifted his brows. “So Douglas wears a sock?”
She nodded. “Every time even when Wilhemina gets—” She gave him a pained look. “Eager.”
“Eager,” he repeated, his lips twitching with humor, but his eyes dark with an undercurrent of something hungry and wild. “Maybe I need to ask Douglas his technique for making women eager,” he ventured.
She groaned and started walking. “That's it. I'm going back to the trailer I've had all of this loony bin I can take.” When she heard him laugh, she walked faster, stepping swiftly to the door and letting it fall as she skipped down the stairs. She needed some fresh air. Her brain was getting all gooey with Michael. She'd barely taken a few steps on the dirt road before Michael swooped up behind her and grabbed her hand.
“Was the discussion with Wilhemina that rough?” he asked.
“It's just the whole situation. She and Douglas walking around like they're going to rip each other's clothes off any minute and make those-never-ending sound effects.”
He pulled her around and took her mouth so fast her head spun. He gave her a swift, hot kiss that gave her a glimpse of his need. And hers.
He pulled back and inhaled. “Feeling deprived?” he asked, then didn't give her a chance to lie. “I am.”
She took a mind-clearing breath, but still felt dizzy. “Why me?”
“I could ask the same of you.”
“That's not an answer.”
His gaze flicked over her. “You're strong, you're tough, but you have a lot of soft spots. You're sexy even when you try not to be. I wanted—” He broke off and shook his head.
“What?” she asked, dying to know what he was going to say. “What?”
“I watched you with Wilhemina and that deaf woman. You were passionately protective of both of them. I think you would do just about anything to help them. I'm betting you're the same way about your brother.”
She felt somehow naked by his assessment of her, but she couldn't deny it. She nodded. “I would.”
“I've never met anyone like that. Like you.”
She felt her heart swell in her chest “But you said something about wanting.”
“You make me want a lot of things. Do you really want me to go into all of them?”
Katie felt her insides heat up several degrees.
Whew!
“Maybe not tonight,” she said in a breathy voice and began to walk. “Lots of stars out. Did you notice?”
“Yeah.” He walked beside her. “Do you remember a lot of nights like this from your childhood?”
She nodded. “My sisters and I used to catch fireflies and when they went to bed, I would let them go.”
“How much baby-sitting did you do when your mom went out at night?”
“A lot. Sometimes she worked as a waitress. She was always looking for the man who would make her life perfect. I liked to think she was always looking for someone as good as my father, but I never knew him, so I'm not sure what he was really like. She was always talking about wanting to go back to Myrtle Beach, but heaven knows, we never had enough money for that. That's where she met him.” She always felt both hopeful and silly when she thought about her father. “She said that was where I was conceived. I know she had this romanticized version of it in her mind, but I can't help wondering if it was some kind of spring break fling. My mother saw potential when most other people would see a big question mark.”
“It's hard when you want answers to questions and the people who can answer aren't around anymore.”
Katie nodded, looking at Michael and remembering what had happened with his father.
“I've heard about your youngest sister's dad. What about the middle sister?”
“Ah, Delilah,” Katie said, smiling at the memory of her sister. “Delilah was three years younger than me. Prissy, but she liked frogs too, so that saved her from being a pain. Her father was from a well-to-do family. He got involved with my mother when he was part owner with the local bar owner. My mother won a wet T-shirt contest and he was smitten. Temporarily. When his mother found out he was carrying on with a waitress in a bar, she had a stroke. Literally. He felt so guilty that he repented of his sins, ditched my mother, and went to seminary.”
Michael stared at her in disbelief. “You're joking.”
“Nope, and my mother was too proud to go after him, so she had his baby and named her Delilah just to drive him and his mother crazy if they ever found out.”
“And they did.”
Katie felt her humor fade. “Yeah, he took her away one day before Lori left.”
“That must have been rough on you.”
“It wasn't fun. That was when I started dreaming about running away. I didn't really hate my mother. I just hated the situation and how people whispered about me behind my back.
“I didn't understand a lot of the things they said, and when I grew to understand what they were saying, it felt like a box was closing in around me. I couldn't wear a dress without someone commenting on the length. I never dated. I was too afraid of what guys would expect. According to just about everyone, I was destined to be white trash just like my mother.”
“But you weren't;” Michael said and his voice soothed some of the rough spots she was feeling.
“I guess not. I don't feel like I've really had a chance to be normal.”
He gave a half smile. “What's normal?”
She closed her eyes and revisited the daydream she'd had when she was a child. “Having a dad who fussed at you if you were late and who grilled your potential boyfriends. Having a mother who does
not
draw wolf whistles and cat calls when she walks down the street. Having a mother who is home every night.”
“She must have done something right.”
Katie opened her eyes and looked at him. “Why do you say that?”
“You turned our pretty well.”
“When she was there, she was always affectionate: She hugged and kissed us nearly to death. She was always playing with our hair,” she said, smiling at the memory. “She made everything fun, even taking out the trash and doing the dishes. Cleanup was a relay and the one who did the most in the shortest time got the first ice cream sandwich.” She paused. “Even when we probably deserved it, she never spanked us. She called us her little flowers and she told us we were beautiful even when we weren't.”
“You missed her when you left, didn't you?”
Her eyes filled with sudden dampness that caught her off guard. She blinked. “I did, even though I left the day I turned eighteen,” she admitted in a low voice. “She sent me postcards and asked me to come back to visit, but I just couldn't,” she said, shaking her head. “I was nobody in Philadelphia, but nobody was better than the somebody I was in Texas.”
Feeling strange about all she'd revealed, she hesitated a moment, then lifted her chin. “Don't feel sorry for me.”
He chuckled, lifting his thumb to her jawline. “Not likely, Katie Priss.”
She frowned. “Why do you call me that?”
“Because you're both,” he said.
“No, I'm not.”
“Yes, you are, and when you accept it, things will be easier for you.”
“And what makes you such an expert?”
“I've watched you a lot during the last month.”
“Yeah, well, I've done the living and I know who I am, and it's not Priscilla,” she insisted, feeling an itchy; hollow sensation even as she made her declaration. “I need to go to bed. I have a feeling tomorrow's going to be a long day. We've got to get Wilhemina on a plane soon.” She briskly walked the rest of the way to the trailer. She wanted to walk fast and go to sleep fast to get away from the thoughts whirring around in her brain. Just as she opened the door, Michael called to her.
“I have something for you,” he said, jogging up the pathway.
She turned and her heart gave an involuntary flutter. “What?”
He joined her on the porch. “Give me your hand.”
She noticed his hand was in a closed fist. “Why?” she asked, warily.
“Trust me. You'll like it.”
She didn't want to trust him. She didn't want to rely on him. That was edging too close to other feelings she didn't want to be feeling. But she would feel like a shrew if she said no. Sighing, she extended her palm. “Okay.”
He took her hand and opened his fist to shake three fireflies into her palm. A spurt of nostalgic little-girl delight pulsed through her. “I didn't see them.”
“Too busy running from Priss.”
She refused to reply. Regardless of his comment, she couldn't help smiling as the fireflies crawled on her palm while he kept them trapped. “You're a city boy. What do you know about fireflies?”
“After my mother got sick, I was moved from relative to relative. One of my aunts had a place in the country, so I caught them. We weren't as nice as you. We would pull off their lights and make designs on the front porch.”
Katie wrinkled her nose at him. “That's gross.”
“We thought it was like hunting. You bring a rack to display your hunting success. You stick the lights on the porch to show off your—”
“Sick cruelty to helpless insects. My sisters loved it when I caught these for them. They didn't ever understand how they got out of the jar by the next morning.” She looked at him, then shook her hand and released them. “I don't want you giving in to the temptation of pulling their lights off to show off your hunting success.” She watched them fly away, then little lights flickering. With mixed feelings, she looked at him. “Thanks.”
“That hard to say?” he said with a half chuckle.
“It's easier for me when you're a jerk.”
“Easier how?”
She thought about that lonely condom burning a hole in her little purse. “In every way. G'night.”
“Good night, Katie Priss,” he said and she felt as if he'd slid past another locked door. She wondered how she was going to continue to keep, him out.
Wilhemina heard a knock at the front door and nearly hyperventilated. Lifting her hand to her chest to calm herself, she glanced at her unpacked luggage. The tapping sounded again.
Her heart in her throat, she forced her lips into a smile as she opened the door to Katie. Katie smiled in return and Wilhemina's stomach turned with guilt.
“Ready to go?” Katie asked.
“No. I'm not ready to go.” Her voice broke and she felt her eyes well with tears. “I don't want to go back!”
Katie's eyes widened in alarm. “Wilhemina,” she began.
Wilhemina shook her head, not wanting to hear Katie's practical words. “I love Douglas. I've never been so happy. I don't want to go.” Unable to hold back her emotions, she began to cry.
“Katie?” Michael's voice carried from the porch.
Katie's eyes widened and she made a panicky sound. “Talk to you later,” she said to Michael, then shut the door in his face. Wincing at her rudeness, she turned a concerned gaze on Wilhemina. “Oh, Wilhemina, you've gotten yourself all upset” she said, giving her a hug. “You need to catch your breath. Let me get you some water.”