JEZEBEL'S BLUES Page 7

  The black case was gone. He stared at the vacant place in the seat with a sense of terrible loss for an instant.

  Then he straightened, his jaw hard. No more illusions. The guitar, like Retta and his old car, was gone, along with everything else that had existed before that night.

  Except Laura.

  Stonily, he closed the door and the hood and headed back toward his sister’s place.

  As night crept in, he found himself drawn outside to the porch. The long day was catching up with him and he settled on a kitchen chair in the hot night, putting his feet up on the rail. In the dahlia bushes nestled around the small bungalow, crickets whirred and chirped, and the sounds of Jezebel came faintly, rushing through the night. Above the silhouettes of pine trees across the road rose the moon, round and pale, nearly full.

  Silver light shone over the road, the color of a woman’s hair, the color of her big eyes. Fey Celia.

  Eric plucked the harmonica from his shirt pocket. A shroud of clouds crossed the moon, giving it an ominous aspect, and Eric felt a ripple of foreboding shoot through his chest.

  Where was Laura?

  He knew with the certainty that stemmed from his own terrifying memories of the last flood that she would not have ventured out with the river on the rise. He’d been six, Laura nine, when Jezebel had swept them into her skirts. What he remembered in bits and pieces, Laura remembered in acute detail.

  She wouldn’t have gone out. Not voluntarily.

  Restlessly, he walked out to the road and stared down the long, dark ribbon of blacktop as if he could make her materialize. He swore and paced back to the porch, knowing he’d be unable to sleep.

  Every time he came back to Gideon, something happened. Bad things, most often. The last time, just after the accident, he’d come home to find Laura married, her husband so jealous, he didn’t even want Eric talking to her. Last time, in the hardware store, Etta’s cousin had called him a murderer.

  He paced, thinking it had only been last night he had sat with Celia in her attic, braiding her hair. It had been only this morning she had stood on her tiptoes to kiss him goodbye.

  Her kiss. Sweet as honeysuckle, rich as cream. He’d hardly known how to respond to a kiss given so freely, without demands or conditions attached. No expectations or wiles or hidden motives had marred that offering. So simple, as simple as her words, which echoed in memory no matter how he tried to push them away. You’re the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen.

  Her generosity had slipped through his guard as nothing else could have. For the space of long moments, Eric had been free to take what she offered. He remembered the brush of her hair on his arms, the press of her breasts and hips, the rainbow taste of her plump mouth.

  As he remembered, he drew on his harmonica without much direction. The notes leapt out into the night and hearing them, Eric grinned to himself. In his mind’s eye, he saw a picture of Cinderella in the Disney movie, surrounded by tiny bluebirds and all kinds of other little creatures.

  He chuckled, amazed that so much of the romantic in him had managed to survive.

  Then he sobered, remembering the end of that kiss, the trembling that had shook him, the devouring hunger he’d felt. A hunger that had gone far, far beyond a need for sexual release. As she had nestled against him, Eric had wished with all his being that he had something to offer her, something to give. His body had trembled with the wish to be someone else, anyone else, someone who was right for that sweet and gentle woman. Someone worthy of her.

  Because Eric Putman was not. He had nothing. Once, he might have offered her pleasure, but Retta had taught him how destructive that could be. No amount of passion ever made up for love.

  Whatever happened the next few days, he had to keep reminding himself of that.

  Chapter 6

  The high school, a structure built of native stone at the turn of the century, served as the Red Cross station. The gymnasium was turned into an emergency shelter for those left homeless, and the auditorium was lined with long tables and folding chairs where Red Cross volunteers handed out food, clothing, supplies and information.

  After four days of volunteer work, Celia felt like an old hand. In spite of the mess still littering her farmhouse, she felt grateful as she handed out clothes from the Salvation Army to entire families who had lost everything in the flood. She counted her blessings as she served stews to mothers with children clinging to their skirts. At night when she returned to the intimidating reality of just exactly how long it would take to get things together in the house, she was grateful that Eric had appeared at the right moment to urge her to move the mattress from her bed upstairs.

  She was also grateful for the bone-deep weariness that let her sleep without dreams.

  Now, at the end of the fourth day, she sorted a box of clothes by size and sex, rubbing absently at an ache in her lower back.

  A tall black woman, dressed in the apron she’d donned over her clothes to help prepare the evening meal, plopped down in the chair beside Celia. “Hey, lady.”

  Celia looked up and smiled. Lynn taught geography and history and had a reputation for being the toughest teacher in Texas. Except for Celia. Their reputations had given them an instant bond. “You’ve got flour on your nose,” she said.

  Lynn brushed at it distractedly, her wooden bracelets clacking on her arm. “You about to finish up there?”

  “I hope so. I don’t think I have a single brain cell still functioning.”

  “I know what you mean. “Lynn untied her apron. “I’m thinking I’d like an escape. Are you game?”

  “Hmm,” Celia said, folding a baby’s sleeper. “Sometimes your schemes leave a little to be desired in the sanity realm.”

  “Oh, I’m too tired to be reckless. I was thinking about going over to the blues joint tonight. You ever been there?”

  Celia felt a ripple of excitement, thinking of the pictures Eric’s harmonica had called up in her mind. “No, I never have.”

  Lynn raised an eyebrow. “Your daddy used to hang out there, I’m told.”

  “I’d love it. Let’s go.”

  “I’ll pick you up about ten.” Lynn stood up, tucking a lock of hair into place.

  “Ten?”

  “If we wanted to be hip, we wouldn’t show until midnight, but I’m afraid I’d fall asleep.”

  “What should I wear?”

  Lynn turned, smiling wickedly. “Well, you don’t want to go as a schoolteacher. Think sin.”

  Celia laughed. “I’ll do my best.”

  * * *

  What Celia had failed to take into consideration, however, was that most of her clothes, aside from the few everyday pieces she had managed to wash out in the bathtub, were still covered with flood droppings.

  She’d bought a pair of stockings at the drugstore on the way home, had showered and done her hair, then gone upstairs to the trunk, smiling to herself.

  The dress had belonged to someone other than her grandmother, or else she’d worn it when she was quite, quite young, because it fit Celia exactly. Made of black crepe with a draped neckline, its lines were exquisitely simple, but if ever she’d seen a dress that shouted sin, this was it.

  And when Lynn appeared, Celia wasn’t disappointed. Electricity had not yet been restored to the outlying farm, and she greeted her friend by the light of a candle. Lynn whistled in admiration. “Honey, I had no idea you could look like that.”

  “Lacking your voluptuousness, I had to get creative,” Celia replied. Lynn’s dress, too, was black. Strapless, the silky fabric clung to a dizzying array of curves and stopped mid-thigh, showing off what Celia’s father would have called ‘racehorse legs.’ “You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Lynn. Some man is going to have a heart attack and it’ll be all your fault.”

  Batting her eyelashes, Lynn struck a pose. “I know,” she said sweetly.

  Celia laughed.

  The club was nestled on a small bluff on the western bank of the river. A simple wooden str
ucture settled obscurely in the middle of a clearing, it hardly looked like anything to Celia. No sign marked the exterior. “It sure doesn’t look like any nightclub I’ve ever seen.”

  “It’s not,” Lynn promised.

  It wasn’t. But the instant Celia stepped through the door, she knew she’d at last found her father’s Gideon. Small, simple tables cluttered the open room, many of them filled despite what Lynn implied was a very early hour. The only lights in the room were over the long, long wooden bar against one wall and over a small stage that was empty at the moment, although a collection of instruments and microphones stood waiting.

  Someone had put quarters in the jukebox, and a Billie Holiday song floated through the air, hazy and dark, adding to the mood of the smoky, hot room. Celia turned and squeezed her companion’s arm. “Oh, Lynn,” she whispered, “this is great!”

  Lynn’s attention had caught on something and a soft, ripe smile touched her mouth. “I’m inclined to agree.”

  Celia followed her gaze. Not something—someone; an impossibly tall man with the shoulders of a fullback and a clean-shaven chin was bent over a table, talking with two other men. All three were as shiny clean as new pennies, and Celia knew they’d smell like heaven. “Who is he?” she asked as Lynn led the way to a small open table near the dance floor.

  “David West. He’s just come back from Dallas to work for the Sheriff’s Department.”

  “Nice-looking,” Celia commented.

  “No.” Lynn shook her head. “Nice-looking is a car. Nice-looking is your grandpa.” Her eyes fastened on David. “That’s drop-dead gorgeous.”

  Drop-dead gorgeous. Celia bent her head, her vision suddenly filled with a memory of Eric standing in her attic without his shirt, casually touching his chest.

  She had told no one that he’d been there. Not even Lynn, although a part of her now wanted to. She wanted to say, “Speaking of gorgeous, did I tell you about the man marooned with me for two days and nights during the flood? Did I happen to mention I can’t stop thinking about him even though I know I’ll never see him again?”

  But she didn’t. She ordered a drink—Jack Daniel’s, neat—and watched the waitress turn her lips down in surprise. It gave Celia almost the same satisfaction she got by telling people she taught calculus.

  The band eased out of the crowd and assembled on the stage by ten, laughing and joking among themselves with the easy camaraderie of long acquaintance. The leader was old, with long lines in his dark face and grizzlings of white in his hair. He slipped a guitar strap over his head and glanced at the other members of the group—a trumpet player as skinny as a cattail, a bass player arched like a bow and a piano player even older than the guitarist. They ambled into their music, starting off slow and easy. The club settled in anticipation, and Celia felt a strange, electric clutch catch her chest. She sipped gingerly at the whiskey in her glass.

  The guitarist led, both with his instrument and his rough voice. Woven through his lead was the mournful saxophone, whining like a cold wind one minute, chuckling like a fat man the next.

  The songs were about lost love and mean women and hard times—and yet, Celia, falling adrift in the seduction of the sounds, felt the celebration in them, too. Lynn got up to dance, leaving Celia alone at the table to analyze the surprising notion of the blues being a celebration. Everything she’d ever believed about them said otherwise.

  But it was hard to maintain an analytical mood amid the seductive sounds that filled the room. Even for Celia. Her instinctive need to take things apart slipped away under the force of the pictures dancing all over the room, pictures like those Eric had given her with his harmonica. No two were alike, and as Celia glanced around at the other patrons tapping their feet and smiling and moving their heads in time with the music, she knew her pictures were not quite the same as anyone else’s.

  She smiled and lifted her glass, only to find it empty. Surprised, she glanced over her shoulder for the waitress to order another.

  And froze. For there, perched on a stool, his elbows bent against the bar, was Eric. At the now-familiar shock his face always gave her, a sense of relief washed through her. He was still here. And she’d known somehow that she might find him in the steamy blues club. He’d flashed through her mind the instant Lynn had suggested it.

  In just a few days, Celia had forgotten again how startlingly beautiful he was. Pale yellow light from behind the bar spilled over his hair, neatly combed away from his clean-shaven face, and he wore a Civil War-style shirt with his time-whitened jeans.

  An ache struck her belly and quivered through her nerves. Every time she looked at him, she wanted to make love. She wanted to feel his big body wrapped around hers, wanted to lose herself in his lonely, sapphire eyes. She wanted to crack the walls he kept between himself and the world, and instinctively she knew the only way it would happen was in bed.

  Hearing her thoughts, she was mildly shocked. But somehow, under the spell of the music and the thick heat that filled the room, it seemed as natural to think of making love as to drink water to quench her thirst.

  As she watched, his jaw went hard and he lifted his glass with a stony expression, his gaze unwaveringly fixed upon the band. Celia wondered suddenly what his story was, what he had lost to put such a yearning in his eyes. She wanted to learn the details of his life, then set about soothing the pain from each and every one.

  But unlike her dreamy vision of making love, this wish gave her a jolt—had she lost her mind? She’d spent too much time with stormy, moody people to miss identifying one now. Whatever he’d lost, it had to do with the blues.

  Squaring her shoulders, she turned back toward the band. The last thing in the world she wanted was to get mixed up with somebody who could get that kind of an expression on his face.

  * * *

  Eric swallowed more whiskey, hoping to ease the panic in his chest. Four days he’d been looking for his sister, and in four days he’d found no trace of her.

  Today, braving the shops in town, he had learned a fact more chilling than her disappearance. Her ex-husband was missing, too—the very same jealous husband who’d thrown fits about Eric the last time he’d been in town. Jake Gaines was a mean son of gun, a fact Laura had learned too late.

  Eric cursed inwardly. The reason he’d come to Gideon this time had been to stay with Laura for a while, until Jake got the message that Laura was finished with him.

  “Doin’ all right there, son?” the bartender asked, wiping the bar down alongside Eric’s half-full glass.

  Eric nodded. “Fine, thanks.”

  The bartender, not to be dissuaded, leaned on the wide, polished wood surface. “Come on now,” he said, gesturing toward the musicians. “Man’s supposed to leave his troubles at the door when he comes in the Five O’Nine.” He winked. “Ain’t nothing a pretty woman can’t make you forget—for a little while, anyway.”

  Eric grinned reluctantly. “Some troubles, my friend, grab on to your ankle and follow you in.”

  The bartender pursed his lips and nodded. “Like that, is it?”

  Then, hailed by a waitress, the gold-toothed man headed away. Eric watched him go, thinking maybe he was right. A woman, a little dancing, a little whiskey…

  But even as he scanned the crowd, he knew it was futile. The only way to ease this trouble was to find his sister.

  A flash of moon-colored hair, bright in the dimness of the club, caught his eye. And despite himself, Eric felt a leap of anticipation, a sudden lightness amid the thickness of worry in his chest. He shifted, and the couple blocking his view obligingly got up to dance, leaving him a clear view.

  It was Celia, all right. Eric felt a pang, seeing her, and he remembered the calm of her attic, the quiet peace they had shared even amid the storm. It was an absurdly nostalgic emotion and, annoyed, Eric shoved it away.

  This Celia was nothing like the girl in the oversize shift he’d left at the farmhouse. This Celia wore a black dress that showed her collarbone a
nd a lot more chest than he would have thought she’d allow. The fabric clung to her modest curves and small waist like a lover, and when she stood up to allow a group to pass by in the slender aisle, he saw that it did amazing things for the fine, round little fanny.

  He shifted and without taking his eyes from her, lifted his glass to swallow a brace of Jack Daniel’s. Her legs, too, were pretty, elegant in the silky casing of black stockings.

  Admiring her fine shape and graceful movement, Eric remembered the mischievousness in her eyes, remembered her kiss, remembered how her breast had exactly fit his palm, as if the two were made to meet. An abrupt, insistent heat stirred below his belt.

  He wanted her. And if she were willing, what would it hurt? This Celia hardly looked like the innocent he’d believed her to be, and realizing she’d spent her childhood running all over Europe with her parents, he thought maybe that had been a foolish assumption in the first place. She could hardly be as innocent as she appeared.

  The bartender returned. “See, now?” he said with a soft chuckle. “She’s pretty as sunshine. Don’t it feel better?”

  Eric smiled and glanced over his shoulder at the man, lifting a rueful eyebrow in agreement. He stood up, about to cross the room to ask her to dance.

  But the band ended their song and the musicians took a break, melting into the crowd. Eric shrugged at the bartender.

  The man laughed. “Next time,” he said.

  As Eric settled back on his stool, oddly disappointed, a deep, rough and familiar voice at his side said, “Thought that was you, boy. You gone and got so uppity you can’t even say hello?”

  Eric turned, grinning. “Wild Willie,” he said in greeting, holding out a hand. “How you doin’, old man?”

  The guitarist who led the band settled on the stool next to Eric, inclining his head. “Can’t complain.” He smiled, showing a mouthful of extraordinary teeth—teeth he’d been heard to boast of more than once. “You picked a hell of a time to drop by the old hometown.”