Hold on Tight by Deborah Smith Read Free Book Online

him now. She supposed that his speech had hypnotized her. Or that the man himself had. “Isn’t it beautiful out here tonight?” she murmured. Dinah tilted her head back and looked up at a star-filled sky.
    “Hmmm. Beautiful place, beautiful company.” He took her hand.
    “You’re a seductive rascal, you know that?”
    “I have your best interests at heart. You might never find a suitable man up here in the hinterland. You gotta import a man from somewhere else.”
    “You, I assume?”
    He clicked his tongue and arched one brow wickedly. “I’m a good choice. I could rough up those smooth edges of yours. Make you a little more wild. That’d be good for you.”
    “It sounds painful.”
    A smile crooked one corner of his mouth, and he looked at her through half-closed eyes. “Not the method I had in mind. It’d be anything but painful.”
    “Come along, you determined flirt. Let’s go sit on that bench over there and look at the stars. The view is wonderful.”
    The bench was just beyond the edge of the parking lot, under a maple tree. The Methodist church sat on a high ridge along with the rest of Mount Pleasant, and they could see a panorama of dark forest and scattered house lights. A slivered moon hung over the horizon. “God took some extra time with this night,” Rucker commented softly.
    Dinah gave him a pensive, charmed look. Then she sat down, faced forward, and studied the sky. He sat close beside her, still holding her hand. “Where do you live? In Birmingham?” she asked quietly. “I can’t picture you in a city.”
    “You’re not gonna believe this, but I’ve got a swank house in a country club subdivision. The suburbs. Got a swimmin’ pool, got lawyers and doctors for neighbors, got a gardener, got a lady who comes in once a week to keep me neat.”
    “She must bring a blow torch,” Dinah teased.
    He chuckled. “I know you suspect I’m a pig, but I keep a very clean house. You should see my office at the newspaper, though. My secretary says it looks like a graveyard for old golf clubs. It’s a mess.”
    “You play golf?” She turned to gaze at him quizzically.
    He nodded. “Love it.”
    “You’re a fascinating person, you know that? Just when I think I have you stereotyped, you confuse me. You ought to pitch horseshoes or bowl, not play golf. And you ought to live in a house trailer and drive a pickup truck. That’s what I expected.”
    “Am I a disappointment?”
    “Oh, not at all.” She said that a little too fervently and looked away, biting her lower lip. His hand closed tighter around her own.
    “You’re not a stereotype either, Madam Mayor. I figured any woman who’d devoted so much time to bein’ a beauty queen would have the brains of a frog.”
    “Hmmmph!” She echoed his earlier words. “Am I a disappointment?”
    “No. I like smart women. I married one once.”
    Dinah spoke carefully. “And she was interviewed for a magazine piece on you. One of my students brought me a copy today. I read part of it at lunch.”
    Now he faced forward, and Dinah watched the moonlight follow the straight, tense lines that formed in his features. “What’d you think?” he asked after a long moment.
    “She was awfully tough on you, although she did say you have talent. Funny, though. I couldn’t see anything particularly condemning. The part about your three-day poker game in the locker room with the New York Knicks was sort of endearing.” Dinah paused. “She said your views on marriage had all the sophistication of a country western song.”
    “Yeah.” Rucker let go of her hand. He leaned forward, idly selected a twig from the ground between his feet, and rested his elbows on his knees. His head down, he slowly began snapping the twig into tiny pieces. When he spoke again, his voice was low and strained. “I thought we should try and make it work, but there was nothing left.”
    After a moment of amazement Dinah tilted her head and studied him tenderly. She