"What?"
"Tell me you can cook."
"Cook?"
"Cook. You know, in a kitchen on a stove.
Putting food products into pots and pans and making them edible."
"I can cook."
"Good," he replied, slipping the car into first gear and turning onto the intersecting, two-lane highway. "But nothing with a sauce. I don't like sauces, except for cream gravy on chicken-fried steak. Sauces are for sissies."
"Oh, please," she groaned. But she was smiling.
At the next crossroad, he pulled up in front of a combination grocery store and filling station.
"Let's go shopping."
A half hour later, he pulled the car onto a narrow country road. The trees growing on either side of it formed a dense green canopy overhead. The hardwoods were intermingled with tall, straight pines.
"Where in the world are we going?"
The town where they'd made their purchases hardly deserved that designation. Besides the grocery store-filling station, it had only a feed and hardware store, a post office, a fire station, a Dairy Queen, a school and three Protestant churches.
"To my grandparents' house." He laughed at the astonishment she registered. "That's right.
Not only do I have a mother, but I have a father.
Or did. This farm belonged to his parents. They willed it to him. When he died a few years ago, the property was handed down to me. I sold off the pastureland, but kept the twenty acres surrounding the house."
"Twenty very beautiful acres," she noted.
"Thanks."
The house was another surprise. It was situated in a clearing surrounded by massive pecan trees that were just coming into full leaf. There was a windmill, a detached garage and a barn.
All were painted white and trimmed in green. All could have used a facelift. The flower beds bordering the porch were overgrown with weeds.
There was an air of desolation and neglect about the place.
"It needs some work," he remarked, understating the obvious. "It looks better on the inside, I promise."
"It's charming," Stevie said graciously. She alighted from the car, then had to duck under a spider web that had been spun from one tree to another.
Judd unlocked the front door with a key he took from beneath the welcome mat and ushered her inside. They were greeted by the dim, hushed, musty atmosphere of a house left vacant for a long time.
Standing in the wide hallway, his voice slightly echoing, he said, "Initially this was meant to be a weekend getaway, but I can rarely leave town on the weekends because so many sporting events are going on. And it's just not practical to come during the middle of the week. As a result, I don't get over here as often as I'd like or as often as the place deserves."
"What's that?" Stevie asked, nodding at the room behind him.
He pivoted on his heels. "That's a dining room with one card table, one folding chair and one portable typewriter in it." She gave him an inquiring look. "The dining-room furniture is now at my mother's house."
"Oh." That wasn't the question Stevie had in mind, but she let his explanation pass for the time being. Apparently he had done some writing here. "Upstairs?"
"Three bedrooms, one bathroom. There's also a powder room tucked behind the staircase if you're feeling the urge. No?" he said when she shook her head. "Then let's get these things into the kitchen."
She followed him past a spacious living room.
All the furniture was covered with dust cloths.
They took a right turn at the end of the central hallway and entered the kitchen. Judd set the sacks of groceries on the round oak table.
"This looks like a grandma's house," Stevie commented wistfully as she ran her hand over the carved back of one of the dining chairs. "I never got to know either set of my grandparents. They died before I could really remember them."
"Whew!" Judd was at the refrigerator, lifting out something that was curled and black and, as a result, unidentifiable. He carried the foul-smelling thing at arm's length to the back door and threw it out. "Glad Grandma isn't here to see that. She'd have a fit."
He opened the windows to let in fresh air while Stevie built them sandwiches out of the cold cuts and cheeses they had bought. As she was doing it, she felt one of the twinges in her lower abdomen that she had come to recognize, almost anticipate.
Strange, though, she hadn't thought much about her illness since leaving Dallas. She guessed she had Judd Mackie to thank for diverting her mind.
Only two days ago, she would have thought that if she were left alone with the columnist for any length of time, she would slowly strangle him and derive a great deal of pleasure from watching his eyeballs bulge out of his skull as she did.
It was surprising that she found his droll sense of humor so comforting. He didn't mollycoddle or pity her, which she would have found untenable.
He didn't play the clown, forcing laughter when it would have been inappropriate.
She would never have guessed that getting along with him would be so effortless. He was being the friend she needed right now, entertaining, but easy to talk to. She was glad he had come along when she needed someone who was detached, objective and uncomplicated. But she would rather have her tongue cut out than tell him so.
"Lunch is ready."
He washed his hands, then joined her at the table. "Hey, this looks great," he said enthusiastically as he straddled the seat of his chair.
Stevie took a bite of her sandwich. Through the mouthful, she asked, "What are we going to do after lunch?"
And through his mouthful of sandwich, he replied, "Make love."
Stevie swallowed her bite whole and gaped at Judd who calmly swallowed and blotted his mouth with a paper napkin. "Just a suggestion, of course," he said.
In a flash, she was out of her chair and headed for the door. "I should have known better than to trust you, you… Oh! When I think how gullible I was to believe that you-Ouch!" As she sailed past his chair, he had reached out and grabbed the swishing end of her braid. Using it, he reeled her in. "Stop that!" she cried. "Let me go" 'Sit down." He tried to sound stern, but she saw that he was having difficulty keeping a straight face. "Can't you take a joke?"
"That was a joke?"
"Sure, what did you think? That I was serious?"
"Of course not!" she snapped.
"Well, then, why didn't you just laugh?"
"It wasn't funny."
"I thought so. But not near as funny as the expression on your face." He mimicked it, and if she had looked anywhere near that idiotic, she wanted to vaporize. "Kind of like you'd been hit in the face with-"
"I get the picture," she interrupted crossly as she sat down and took a savage bite out of her sandwich. "It would have been in perfect character for you to lure me here under false pretenses, then try to seduce me."
Rather than being insulted, he seemed flattered.
"How do you know it would have been in character for me to seduce you?"
"I said try to seduce me."
"Okay. How do you know it would have been in character for me to try to seduce you?"
"One hears things," she said snootily.
"Oh, really? Like what? What have you heard about me?"
"Never mind"
'You're not referring to that story going around about me and the redheaded triplets, are you? Listen, that was a damn lie."
"Triplets?" she repeated thinly.
"They might be the most outstanding contortionists in the world, but even so…"
She eyed him suspiciously. "Are you putting me on?"