Last Chance Book Club

Chapter 16


Savannah ripped the oxygen mask off her face and shook off the hands of the EMTs. “I’m fine.”

She stood up and gave Todd a big hug. “I gotta go get Dash before he does something even stupider than I did.”

Her son looked wide-eyed and scared. He nodded.

“Don’t worry. I’ll bring him back. He just got upset because of the theater.”

“Here, honey, you take my car.” Molly dangled a set of keys in her direction. “It’s way faster than your POS Honda.” She grinned. “Oh, and Momma sent you these.” She handed over a small package of Handi Wipes. “Your face is all black.”

“Any idea of where he went?”

“He headed off toward Route 70. You’ll have to drive like the wind to catch him, though.”

Molly pressed Savannah’s purse into her hands. “If you’re lucky, the cops will pull him over for speeding.” She dragged Savannah off to the parking lot behind The Knit & Stitch.

Molly’s car turned out to be a canary yellow 1970s-vintage Dodge Charger.

“Holy cow, this is yours?”

“You like it? I restored it myself. I restored Dash’s car, too. So I know how fast it will go.” She smiled. “Now get going, and don’t drive like a girl.”

It was a good thing the roads in South Carolina were more or less straight and usually deserted this time of evening. It allowed Savannah to peg the speedometer at ninety without having to worry about curves or traffic.

Please, God, I need someone to pull Dash over.

And to her utter astonishment, she topped a rise in the road, and there was an Allenberg County sheriff’s deputy on the side of the road, his cruiser lights flashing. He was leaning up against Dash’s cherry red Eldorado.

Savannah hit the brakes and pulled over.

The cop went immediately on alert when she pulled up in front of Dash’s Caddy, sending up a pretty big cloud of dust. He put his hand on his weapon as he strolled up along the driver’s side of Molly’s car. Savannah lowered her window and gave him a smile.

He blinked a couple of times. “You’re not Molly.”

“No, I’m not. I’m one of her friends.”

“Ma’am, are you all right? I mean your face…”

“Oh, I just came from the big fire in Last Chance. I’m sure you heard about it on your radio.”

“Oh, yeah, I heard The Kismet burned down.”

Savannah’s heart lurched. “Well, not quite.”

“You look like you were in The Kismet when it burned.”

“I was rescuing Maverick.”

“You mean someone was in that old theater when it burned down?”

“Maverick is a cat.”

“Oh. I see. Ma’am, why are you here?”

“Well, you see, Mr. Randall’s uncle used to own the theater.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And I guess when he saw the place going up in flames—see, he’s a member of the volunteer fire department?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Well, it must have just done something to him. He just got mad or upset or something. And he tore off, and I came after him to make sure he didn’t do something stupid.”

“You mean stupid like what he did that time on the motorcycle?”

“You know about that?”

The cop leaned on Molly’s car. “Ma’am, everyone knows about that. Dash Randall was our hero, you know. He kind of disappointed us.”

“I see.”

“I remember watching him play in the those state championship games back in the early nineties.”

“I’m sorry I missed that.”

“He was amazing. In his senior year, back in 1996, he went five for five with ten RBIs.”

Savannah understood this comment about as well as she’d understood Pat’s advice for decreasing stitches around an armhole. She assumed it was something good.

“So, anyway,” she said, “I was wondering if you could just give him a break on the ticket you were about to write him. That fire made something snap inside him. You know?”

The cop smiled. “I guess I do. It’s a shame that old place went up in flames. I heard some woman was renovating it. I would have liked to see that.”

“Yes, some woman was,” she said with a long sigh.

“You?”

“Me.”

“I’m so sorry, ma’am.”

“Thanks. So, you won’t give him a ticket, will you?”

“No, ma’am. You just see that he gets back home in one piece. He’s still a local hero, you know. We wouldn’t have deBracy Limited hiring all those folks without him. Not to mention the help he’s given Molly Canaday. She wants to open a place to restore old classics like this one.”

He rubbed his hand along the paint of Molly’s Charger. “Man, that girl sure knows how to paint a car. That finish is smooth as a baby’s butt.”

He tipped his Stetson. “You take care, now.”

He turned and walked back to his cruiser, stopping to say a couple of words to Dash, who was sitting in his car with his head back on the headrest.

Savannah pulled out a couple of wipes from the pack Molly had pressed into her hands. She ran them over her face. She was kind of surprised when they came back black. But then she smelled like a chimney sweep. The smoke smell and soot were everywhere. On her hands, under her nails, in her hair. She was a mess.

But at least she’d caught up with Dash before he did something idiotic.

He sat up the minute she climbed out of Molly’s yellow car. “What in the hell are you doing driving that car? I hope to God you didn’t steal it.”

“Dash, I’m not the kind of person who steals cars for joyrides. Molly loaned it to me. She said my POS Honda would never catch you.”

She strolled up to the passenger’s side of the Eldorado. She gave the white upholstery a glance before she climbed in.

“How did you talk Henry out of throwing the book at me?” he asked, apparently not concerned about her sooty clothes or his pristine upholstery.

“I batted my eyes.”

The corner of his mouth twitched.

“You think I can’t bat my eyes when I want to?”

“Oh, I know you are a champion eye-batter, princess. It’s just that you batting your eyes with that dirty face is kind of amusing is all.”

She wiped her hands over her cheeks. “Henry said he saw you play high-school baseball.”

“Yeah, he did. It’s annoying how many former high-school acquaintances still live here. Like most of them, Henry is annoyed at me because of my last idiocy with a motor vehicle.”

“So I gather. I told him to give you a break.”

“You should be with the EMTs,” he said, changing the subject.

“I’m fine. I’m filthy but I’m fine. You want to explain what just happened back there at the theater?”

He leaned his head on the seat back and looked up at the sky. She followed his gaze, suddenly thinking about the painted ceiling at The Kismet. She had once thought Granddaddy hung the stars. But she’d been wrong. The real stars were more magnificent. And out here in the country, the stars were so much brighter than they were in Baltimore.

It surprised her that she wasn’t nearly as devastated by the fire as Dash had been.

“It’s just a building,” she said.

He didn’t say a word. She let him be silent, almost the way they had danced in silence, only this was way more uncomfortable.

They must have sat there for four minutes before he said “I want you.”

Her insides went a little crazy because the feeling was mutual. When Zeph had handed her off to Dash, she’d felt safe. She’d rested her head on his shoulder, and it had felt so right. Why was it that Dash made her feel safer than she’d ever felt before? It made no sense.

“Dash, I—” she started.

“I don’t want to want you, princess. I don’t want to want anyone.” His voice was gruff with emotion.

She understood why he didn’t want anyone. She’d been there, too. “Well,” she said as her heart rate spiked, “for what it’s worth, I want you back. And I don’t want to want you. I want to be independent. But apparently my libido doesn’t want me living like a nun. It always gets me into trouble. Whenever I dance with a good-looking jock it goes into overdrive.”

He laughed out loud, but it wasn’t a happy laugh. “So, you want hot, dirty sex, is that it?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

He sighed. “Of course you do. Everyone wants hot, dirty sex with me. And darlin’, I’d be happy to oblige you, but not tonight. I have a headache.” The corner of his mouth curled up and stayed there.

The joke didn’t bring a laugh. Instead it turned her core molten. “Be serious, Dash. How can we do that?”

“Pretty easy. We just keep on driving on this road until we reach the outskirts of Orangeburg, and we find a no-tell motel. It’s pretty standard practice if you want to be discreet. And in Last Chance, when it comes to people having hot, dirty sex, discretion is probably the better part of valor.”

Silence stretched out between them while she contemplated this scenario and suddenly found absolutely nothing wrong with it. Her pulse raced, and the excitement of sneaking away and having the one thing that was utterly forbidden seized her. Two months of bumping into him, or trying not to bump into him, had made her completely crazy.

It had made him crazy, too, as evidenced by his behavior earlier in the evening.

“I must be insane,” she muttered.

“Why?”

“Because I’m having this discussion with you like we’re trying to decide where we should have dinner.”

“Sometimes it’s a good thing to talk these things out. There are huge downsides, of course. If we were smart we’d just continue to take lots of cold showers. Or swim in the Edisto.” He sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. “I’ve been swimming in the Edisto a lot lately. It’s freezing this time of year.”

“Really? Since we’re being utterly honest, I’ve been having hot and wicked dreams about you.”

He let go of a deep breath. “Going to a no-tell motel with you would be the second stupidest thing I’ve ever done in my life.”

“What’s the first, putting a snake in my bed?”

He scowled at her. “When I tore out of town, all I wanted was to find a place where I could get a drink. Sitting here thinking about taking you somewhere to have sex with you is just the same damn thing. My addictions are showing up, right on time.”

“And why did they show up tonight?”

He pressed his lips together. “I reckon I cared about the theater.”

“And why is that?”

He shrugged. He wasn’t going to open up to her. But she had a pretty good idea of what was going on in his head. Hell, she empathized with his pain on a very deep level. And that surprised the heck out of her.

“Dash,” she said softly, “I’m here. I didn’t burn up. I’m not going anywhere. I’m not going to leave. I know how bad it sucks when people leave. Maybe that’s why I was so ugly to you when I was ten—because I knew exactly how to hurt you. When I said that you were so naughty that you didn’t deserve a mother and father, I was halfway talking about myself. My dad abandoned me when I was three.” Her voice began to waver.

She took a deep breath. “Sometimes I think I want to fix up The Kismet because I’ve got this stupid idea that if I do that, Granddaddy will rise up from his grave and live again. He was the only one who ever had any faith in me. He was the only real father I ever knew.”

Dash stared at Savannah’s dirty face. She had a big splotch of soot on her nose and over one eye. The gold in her hair was muted by ashes, and she smelled like a fireplace.

She was still beautiful. And alive, thank God. She was here, just for him. But like every other woman in the universe, she only wanted to have hot, dirty sex with him.

“We should go back,” he said. “Check in with the fire department. I can’t imagine what would have caused that fire.”

“The door was open.”

“What?”

She shrugged. “The door was open to the theater. The contractor must not have locked up.”

“Great. I told you—”

“Don’t. I don’t want to talk about the theater right now. I want to talk about you and me and that motel.”

“We’re not going there.”

She cocked her head. “No?”

Heat flowed through him. It was his addiction singing to him like a siren from the shore.

That was probably why he sat there like some fat, dumb, and happy idiot when she slid across the bench and pulled his hands away from the steering wheel.

He didn’t fight too hard when she placed his hands on her rib cage and then moved in, slanting her mouth over his. She invaded him like the Union marching on Atlanta.

She tasted like barbecued heaven, all warm and soft and smoky. The breath caught in her throat right before the round, soft contours of her breasts pressed up against his chest. She threw herself into that kiss like she’d thrown herself into everything she’d done in the two months she’d been in Last Chance.

Fingers roamed up over his scalp, sending hot tingles down his spine; her tongue teased his and then danced away right before she thrust it back. Blood pounded in his ears and other places.

Damn, she was as hot as T-bone’s chili special.

A man with his weaknesses could never stand up against something like this. Savannah was all over him, and he wasn’t about to sit there like a lump.

Or push her away.

Not when she unleashed this torrent of longing and lust that he’d been battling for so long.

But she needed a bath. Which of course sent his mind racing in all sorts of directions that involved her naked in lots of water. With soap.

For low-down dirty sex, his fantasy was surprisingly clean.

“Okay,” he murmured against her sooty cheek. “Okay, let’s go.”

She backed away. “Let’s go? To a no-tell motel for discreet, but hot and dirty sex?” There was an impish grin on her face, and those dark eyes of hers were lit up with starlight. She wanted her bad-boy fix. And he wanted his Savannah fix.

“Aren’t you even sorry about the fire?” he asked, his voice cracking like a teenager’s.

Her face fell. And he hated himself for bringing up the topic. Although maybe, he’d just managed to get himself out of a really dangerous situation.

“I am.” She rested her head against his shoulder. “I’m heartbroken. And I’m also kind of pissed off, to tell you the truth.”

“Pissed off?”

“Yeah, at myself.” She pulled back and looked right up in his eyes. He couldn’t look away. “I should have taken your advice. I should have listened to you. But I had to do everything myself. And I don’t know squat about anything, except maybe cooking strudel.”

Her lip quivered. Why the hell had he brought up the fire anyway?

“Uh, there are other things you’re good at.”

“There are?”

“Yeah. You’re a great dancer. And you sure can kiss, princess. And you’re a pretty terrific screamer when it comes to snakes.”

“Right. That’s not very impressive.”

“I’m not finished. You can cook more than strudel, you’re kind to Aunt Mim, everyone in town loves you. And you used to make your grandfather’s eyes light up. I used to be so jealous of that.”

She blinked up at him. “I loved him. You loved him. But you know something? Bringing The Kismet back to life isn’t ever going to bring him back.” She rested her forehead on his chest.

And his heart swelled up and lodged in his throat. “Shit.”

“What?” Her breath heated his chest through the fabric of his shirt.

“I want you.”

“Yeah, we’ve established that. Can we do something about it or are we just going to sit here arguing with one another about who loved Granddaddy more?”

“You think he would approve of this?”

She raised her head and stared at him, the connection between them stronger than ever.

“I know he wanted us to be friends.”

“This is a lot more than that. This is dangerous, princess. You don’t even know how dangerous it is.”

She wasn’t listening to him, as usual, because she leaned forward and kissed him again. This kiss was demanding and wicked and not at all the kind of kiss a princess would unleash on anyone. Good Lord, that woman had a talent for dirty, sexy kissing. And then she dropped her sweet little hand to his thigh and started walking her fingers up to his crotch.

Well, of course he had to retaliate. So he cupped her breast. It was just the right size, and her nipples were straining against her T-shirt. He ran his thumb over one of them, and she growled. A flush of lust came at him like a big, fat, floating curveball right over the plate.

A man like him had no defense for something like that. None. Whatsoever. He had to take a swing at it. Didn’t he?

The Orangeburg Motor Lodge looked like any motel you might find by the side of an interstate. In this case, the two-story stucco building stood right at the intersection of I-26 and Route 301, about twenty-five miles northeast of Last Chance and smack-dab in the middle of the route between Columbia and Charleston. Yessir, this jumping-off place in the middle of nowhere couldn’t have been more anonymous if it tried.

Maybe that’s why the proprietors had erected a giant sign for passing motorists that proclaimed a room rate of only fifty dollars a night. And for that you got a small swimming pool, cable television, and a continental breakfast in the bargain.

Dash procured the room key, no doubt paying cash for it, and he drove his Cadillac around to the back of the building, away from the access road.

He killed the engine and set the brake. He turned his hip into the seat, and for the first time in the last forty-five minutes, he looked her right in the eye. “Honey, are you sure about this?”

Was she sure? No way. Confusion, insecurity, and fear ruled her emotions at this moment. But all of that was nothing compared with the lust, which made her feel alive.

She needed to get back into his arms.

She looked out the passenger’s window at the blue motel door bearing the brass numbers above its peephole. She needed to remember this, but the door couldn’t have been less extraordinary. It looked like every motel door she had ever seen.

She could imagine the room beyond. A single picture window with a view of the parking lot and heavy drapes that hid the air-conditioning unit. A chair, a lamp, a couple of forgettable prints on the wall, a counter bolted to the wall in a dark, walnut Formica. Two double beds with rough sheets and ugly bedspreads, separated by another built-in containing a cubbyhole where you’d find Gideon’s Bible.

She focused on the door number for a moment. Forty-seven. Nothing came to mind to connect this number with anything else in her life.

Maybe that was a good thing.

She pulled the car door handle and got out of the car. She wasn’t going to look at Dash, and she wasn’t going to talk to him either. She didn’t quite trust him right at this moment. He might work himself back to the point of being noble and chucking the whole plan or he might actually talk her out of it.

He got out of the car, too. They walked to the room door in silence and he opened it. A blast of air-conditioning, heavy with that impersonal motel scent, hit them like a slap across the face.

A moment later, they stood in the room with the glare of highway traffic streaming through the large window. Dash drew the heavy curtains closed. Savannah switched on the lamp between the two beds.

He looked at her from across the room. Studied her, in fact, while she studied him, trying hard to memorize the contours of his face—the lines at the corners of his cheeks, the little fold of skin that appeared at the bridge of his nose when he raised his eyebrows, the dent in his chin, his lopsided half grin. There wasn’t anything not to like in his face.

“So now what?” she asked.

He crossed the distance between them and stood there looking down at her, without touching her at all. Time hung suspended, the venture suddenly teetering on a fulcrum. Which way would they fall?

She couldn’t risk that he might change his mind. With a trembling finger, she reached out to touch the dimple in his chin.

He took a deep breath in through his nose and closed his eyes. “You need a shower,” he said.

He hauled her over his shoulder and carried her into the tiny bathroom at the back of the room.

He set her on her feet in front of the mirror.

“Oh, my God,” she said, “I look like a refugee from a coal mine.”

She turned toward him. “And you let me kiss you looking like this?”

He shrugged. “Honey, you taste a little like Earl Williams’s barbecue.”

“I do not.”

His mouth tilted. “Uh, well, there’s a solution to that problem. And I gotta tell you, princess, I’ve been having a lot of shower fantasies recently.”

“Me too.”

“Well, what are we waiting for, then?”

That must have been some kind of rhetorical question because, in the very next instant, he pushed her back against the bathroom door, his big body invading her space. His mouth closed hot and heavy on hers, and his tongue assaulted her mouth. He undid her ponytail, and her hair tumbled over her shoulders. He ran his fingers through it, cocking her head back so that he had access to her neck. He had her imprisoned between his hard thighs, his massive chest, and his warm lips.

She couldn’t breathe even when he backed off a fraction, letting his tongue travel lightly over her bottom lip, nipping at her, dipping back into her mouth, and then finally traveling over her cheek to the hollow of her neck.

While all this transpired, her hands developed a mind of their own. They crept around his waist and tugged at his shirttail until it came free of its moorings. She finally insinuated her hands under the fabric and came up against the warm skin of his back. The unexpected silkiness of his skin sent another rush right through her.

Her fingers climbed up his back as tension corkscrewed inside her belly. She wanted to climb right inside his skin, but instead of getting closer, he backed away.

“Okay, it’s shower time.” He pulled off his shirt. The T-shirt left his hair all spiked around his head, but she wasn’t paying much attention. God, he had an incredible chest, sculpted by hours in the gym and sprinkled with just a little hair right over his nipples. He snaked his arms around her waist and pulled her a little closer, his hands sliding down to her backside. She resisted his pull because she wanted to study his chest, imprint the look of it in her mind. She ran her hands over him, zeroing in on his hard brown nipples, brushing them with the backs of her fingers. He tensed beneath her touch, his fingers clamping a little harder onto her butt. Then he chuckled.

“Honey, we’re gonna run out of hot water if we don’t hurry.”

She ignored him and sank her head onto his chest, his unique male scent filling her head. If she couldn’t crawl into his skin then maybe she could just eat him up. Oh, God, he tasted sweet and salty all at once as she let her mouth roam over the expanse of muscle and sinew until she found a particularly delicious spot on his neck. She nibbled at the warm skin there for a few moments until Dash captured her head and tilted it up to look at him.

“Darlin’, there are a couple of rules about illicit sex in rural South Carolina that you need to learn, and the first one is—no hickeys above the clavicle. Love bites on the neck can be mighty hard to explain. And Lillian Bray has a way of noticing things like that. And if Miz Lillian sees a hickey on my neck, she’s going to make some assumptions about Hettie Marshall that are liable to get the gossips in an uproar.” He smiled at her like a cherub. “However, you may proceed to bite me anywhere else, if you are so inclined.” He let go of her head and maintained his position against the door awaiting her next move.

She sank against his chest. “I can’t believe you just said that.”

“Sorry, did that break your concentration?” He didn’t wait for her reply. Instead, he pivoted, and Savannah found the tables turned again, with her up against the door.

He ran his fingers down her jawline and over her collarbones. “He who hesitates is lost,” he said softly. His gaze roamed briefly over her face then sank down to the vee in her cotton tee where her cleavage showed.

Dash pulled his gaze back up to her face, capturing her eyes. He licked her bottom lip, he pressed kisses along her jaw, he laved the lobe of her ear until she thought she would die from the pleasure that once again coiled down inside her.

Suddenly she needed more. “You’re right, the water is hot. I can see steam or fog or something. I… I think I want to get naked.”

His hands moved under the hem of her top and before she even knew what happened, Dash had unhooked her bra and pulled her T-shirt over her head. The garments hit the bathroom floor.

He pushed her back against the door again. His mouth traced a line of pure fire down her throat, while his hands roamed over her rib cage and then brushed the undersides of her breasts. His mouth and his fingers circled and circled, building up the tension in her until she thought she would scream. Just when she couldn’t bear it a moment longer, his mouth finally closed over her nipple.

He drew it tenderly into his mouth. He suckled, and he licked, and he finally bit. She went a little crazy.

His hands, so incredibly warm, inserted themselves between her and her blue jeans. He unsnapped them and peeled back the fabric, all while his mouth was doing incredible things to her.

Her pants and panties dropped to her ankles. She braced herself on his shoulders and kicked them and her sandals away.

Without shoes, she came only up to his shoulders, and she suddenly felt tiny in his arms as he ran his hands down along the skin of her bottom and then up over the bumps in her spine. The caress was ever so gentle, and for the first time, she became truly aware of Dash’s own state of arousal. He was breathing hard and his heart was racing against the fingers she had splayed against his chest.

He stepped away from her and undid his belt and then attacked the zipper on his pants. He seemed a little less graceful kicking off his boots and getting himself out of his old, faded jeans. His pants and underwear managed to tangle themselves around his ankles, and he had to hop on one foot and then the other to extract himself. Savannah stood there naked, not feeling remotely embarrassed as she watched his little floor show with undisguised interest.

“Oh, my,” she said on a soft puff of air as he finally managed to get off his last sock.

He straightened up. “You like it?” he asked with an unabashed grin on his face.

“It’s very… impressive.”

His eyes traveled down to her ankles and back up to her chest. “So are you. Impressively dirty.”

He pulled her into the tiny shower. And the next thing she knew, he had a washcloth and a bar of soap, and he was getting her all squeaky clean, and incredibly high.

And when the soot had been washed away, he pulled her close, all soapy, and he kissed her again. And he started touching her in all the right spots. Spots that sent up sparks in every direction.

“Oh, God,” she ground out between her teeth.

“Does that feel good?” he asked in a hoarse voice.

“Oh, God, yes.”

He chuckled against her breast. “Didn’t your granddaddy ever tell you it was a sin to take the name of the Lord in vain?”

“Shut up. I can’t think right now.”

“That’s good, darlin’. Neither of us should try that right at this moment.”

She reached for him then, part out of pique and part out of sheer curiosity. Her hand glided down across the ridges of his belly and closed in a tight fist around him. He let the fondling go on for a long time until he finally said, “That’s it, darlin’. I’m a strong man, but you have to stop doing that, now.”

“Now?” she said, her fingers running up and down him, ignoring his command.

“Yeah, now,” he said, swatting her hand away. He pushed the shower curtain out of the way and reached for the jeans he’d left on the bathroom floor. Several choice curse words escaped his lips as he rummaged through the pockets until he came up with a small foil packet.

He tore it open, sheathed himself, then took her right to the stars.