I’ll risk forty dollars that he can outjump any frog in Calaveras County.
— Mark Twain
Annie scrunched down in the seat of Grady’s car and lifted up her jeans-clad legs, pressing the soles of her sneakers against the inside of the windshield.
And waited.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“Guess,” she told him, moving her feet against the glass in a sort of dance. “Maybe this will help. ‘My God, his mother didn’t have any teeth!’”
“Right. And Annie Kendall has just lost her marbles,” Grady said, keeping one eye on the road, the other on his once-pristine windshield. Then he held out his hand, saying, “Okay, okay. I got it. Smokey and the Bandit, part one—the good one. You’re Sally Field, and you’re practicing dance steps on my windshield. The question now is, why?”
Annie counted out, “... and tap, and tap, and heel and toe,” then lowered her legs, although she was still sitting practically on her spine in the bucket seat. “I have no idea why,” she told him honestly. “It just suddenly seemed like it might be fun. Was it good for you, Mr. Sullivan, sir? It was good for me.”
Grady looked at her owlishly. “I only saw you drinking bottled water before dinner. Did Dickens slip something in it?”
“I don’t think so.” Annie giggled. “Ah, I’m sorry, Grady. I guess I’m just trying to ease the tension a little. There is tension inside this car, you know, unless I’m the only one who feels it.”
“Oh, I feel it,” Grady agreed, turning his attention back to the road, still not sure where he’d take Annie for dinner now that they’d escaped Peevers Mansion. She’d changed out of her “lady clothes” while he’d showered, put on khaki slacks and a black knit top, and he’d been more than a little aware of the fit of her lime green sweater top ever since. Not to mention how her jeans fit her, and what they had to cling to.
Tonight was the night. He knew it. She knew it. He knew she knew it. He knew she knew he knew he knew it—ah, hell, did he really know anything? Did she?
She probably didn’t know he was nervous as hell, more nervous than he’d been since he’d first discovered the delights to be found in backseats in his senior year in high school. If he could believe that, hang on to that, maybe he could pull it off. Right now, he doubted that highly. He felt so ineptly Harry High School right now he was surprised he hadn’t broken out into zits.
“You quote movies a lot,” he said after a moment, as Annie sat up once more, rebuckling her seat belt.
“Um, yes,” she said, pushing her hands through those delightful dark curls and then sighing, settling back in the bucket seat. “I think I used to live to go to the movies. Great place to escape, don’t you think? Into someone else’s reality?”
“If you can call Hollywood’s idea of reality anything close to real.”
“Well, there is that,” Annie said, watching the billboards as they flashed by on the thruway. “But there are more happy endings than not, so it works out. I don’t go to horror movies, you understand. If I want to shriek, get sweaty palms, and have my heart rate triple, I can just look at the balance in my checkbook.”
“Ah, yes, money. Filthy lucre. The folding green. Archie’s giving you a pretty big payday, isn’t he?”
“And I’m money grubbing trash,” Annie shot right back at him, although she smiled, just to let him know she wasn’t insulted. “But it is true, I’ve never seen fifty thousand in two years, let alone in one month. Archie’s was pretty much the offer I just couldn’t refuse.”
“The Godfather, part one, also the best one,” Grady said, nodding. “And you didn’t even need a horse head in your bed.”
Annie shivered. “I knew that was coming. Did you know that was coming? The minute the camera panned to the bed, I just knew that poor horse was going to be there. Well, part of him anyway. Imagine if Archie woke up to that one morning! And speaking of Archie, shouldn’t we be back at the mansion, watching out for him?”
“I left Dickens in charge,” Grady told her. “The bedroom door is locked, the drapes are drawn, and the two of them are playing checkers. It’s a Saturday night ritual, I understand. He’ll be safe enough while we’re gone. Speaking of which—what are you hungry for?”
Annie sat up straight and pointed out the window. “Cotton candy!”
“Of course. Served in all the best restaurants,” Grady said.
“No, no, really. Didn’t you see it? That little billboard back there? There’s a small fair going on tonight. At some church; I couldn’t get the name. But it says to exit at MacArthur Road North and follow the signs. Come on, Grady, it’ll be fun. Pull over into the right lane, okay? You don’t have to pass the pickup—just slow down and pull in behind him.”
“I can make it.”
Annie banged her palms against the sides of her head and grimaced. “Honestly! You men. Why can’t you just ease into another lane? Why do you always have to pass everyone else first? Women don’t. Oh, the heck with it. Just pass the guy and get into the right lane before we miss the exit.”
Grady was caught between laughter and longing to tape Annie’s mouth shut. “Tell me where to go, lady, but don’t tell me how to get there,” he said at last, easing up on the gas pedal once he’d passed the red pickup. “Are you sure you want to do this?”
“Positive. I haven’t been to a church fair in ages. I’ll bet they have pork barbecue. Church fairs always have pork barbecue. And cotton candy. You’ve been to one, haven’t you?”
“My grandpa Sullivan used to take me to Saint Mary’s end-of-the-summer picnic and fair,” Grady said, smiling in reminiscence. “He’d play the games, sit with all his cronies, and give me enough money to get myself sick on junk. But that was a lot of years ago. I wonder if he still goes?”
“You don’t see him much anymore?”
Grady made a left turn, then followed in the direction a man holding a red flag was pointing, pulling the sports car onto a grassy field taken over by about a hundred parked cars. “I see him, but not as often. My business. My long hours.” He sighed. “My loss.”
“That’s a shame,” Annie said, when he’d come around to open her car door for her. “I never had a grandfather around when I was growing up. Or a grandmother. I had a friend once, at one of the schools I attended, whose grandmother used to have pretend tea parties with her and take her shopping on her birthday. I was so jealous of her.”
Grady kept his voice light, just politely interested. “You and your parents moved around a lot while you were young, did you?”
Annie, who had been looking across the street at the lights on the small Ferris wheel and other rides set up on the regular church parking lot, stopped, turned to look up at Grady. “Is this a fishing expedition? Because, if it is, maybe I should go back and get my wading boots. Now, what do you want to know?”
Grady looked down at her, saw that the light in her eyes that had been there the moment she’d seen the billboard for the fair had now faded away. “Nothing. Forget it. Let’s go find out what smells so good.”
Annie took a deep breath, part sigh, part testing the air. “Pork barbecue. I knew it!” She grabbed his hand, and, together, they headed across the street.
Thirty minutes, two pork barbecues and an order of homemade cheese and potato pierogies split between them later, Grady watched Annie pull long, fluffy strings of bright pink cotton candy off a paper cone and shove them into her mouth. If her expression could be any indication, she was eating the food of the gods.
“That good, huh?” he asked as she licked her fingertips. One after the other, closing her lips around each tip, washing each tip with her tongue. He imagined men had suffered less undergoing Chinese water torture, or maybe staked out on an anthill, with honey poured all over them.
“Buy your own,” she teased, half-turning away from him, pulling the cotton candy out of reach. Then she grabbed his hand, once more pulling him along after her. She’d been pulling him along after her one way or another ever since they met, he realized, and, sick ticket that he was, he was actually beginning to like it. “Look, Grady, the games are all over here. Win something for me. Nobody’s ever won anything for me.”
“Nobody?” he asked, finding that difficult to believe.
“Well, nobody but me, and I don’t count. Come on, Grady, see if you can win that great big panda for me. See it? All you have to do is knock down those three wooden milk bottles with a ball. A great big Softball, Grady. You can do it.”
“Nobody can do it, Annie. This might be a church fair, but these games are all rigged so that nobody wins. The fair makes a lot of money, the priests all go to Confession afterward, and God lets them go back to weekly bingo games for the rest of the year. I know. Grandpa Sullivan told me.”
Annie took a last bite of cotton candy, then tossed the cone in a nearby trash can. “You’re just chicken,” she told him, giving her fingers one last cleaning, and reminding Grady that his plans for this evening included games of quite another sort. She did a little dance, putting her hands under her arms and flapping pretend wings. “Cluck. Cluck-cluck-cluck. Chicken!”
“You’ll pay for that one,” Grady said as he heard laughter around him. “Now, lead me to those damn bottles.”
Annie rubbed her hands together as she stood to one side, encouraging Grady as he held the first softball and glared at the trio of wooden milk bottles set on a board about fifteen feet away. “Okay, okay,” she said, her voice low. “We’re gonna plant our feet, balance our weight. Take a bead on those bottles, Grady. You want to hit them low, not necessarily all that hard. Placement is everything. Now, we’ll both go into our windup... and bam! Well, that’s depressing.”
He’d missed. How the hell had he missed? He hadn’t hit even one of the bottles, even nicked one a little. It had been a flat-out miss. But he didn’t need Annie to tell him that.
Grady loved to play, golf mostly. And hated to lose. It wasn’t that he wasn’t a graceful loser. He was always polite, always shook his opponent’s hand and smiled nicely while holding his second-place trophy. But he’d made it a habit not to take second place too often. He liked to win.
Usually, he didn’t whine about losing. Tonight he felt himself making an exception.
“It’s your fault. You distracted me,” he said now, plunking down another two bucks and picking up another softball. “And what was with that high leg kick anyway?”
“Juan Marichal, Hall of Famer, I think,” Annie told him. “He had a real high leg kick, remember? Don’t you watch ESPN? I thought all men watched ESPN. I just love when they do those retrospectives on the best players.”
“Really.” Grady held the ball and looked at her dispassionately. “You are not Juan Marichal, Annie. You’re barely Charlie Brown.”
“And who says I couldn’t knock down those bottles? Huh? Huh? You?”
“You gonna throw that ball, mister, or let the little lady do it?” the carny asked around the cigarette hanging from his thin lips.
“This is a private discussion, if you don’t mind,” Grady said, then pulled out a twenty and slammed it down on the bare wood shelf that acted as the front of the stand. “Five balls each, Annie, and this sixth one for you, just to be fair.”
“Don’t do me any favors,” Annie growled, then spit— yes, she spit—on her hands before taking the softball from him. “Although I accept. You can go first.”
Grady picked up one of the balls the carny had put in front of him, then stepped back a bit, believing he needed more distance in order to get the thrown ball down low enough to do any damage.
That’s when the carny got into the act. “Here we go, ladies and gentlemen!” he called out, picking up a microphone Grady hadn’t seen before and bellowing into it. “The big strong man here and the little lady, in a battle of the sexes. Gather round, gather round. Lots more room here for everyone to play!” He covered the microphone with his hand, asking Grady’s name.
When Grady didn’t answer, Annie did it for him. “He’s Grady, and I’m Annie. Tell them he gave me one of his balls, just so nobody thinks he’s not playing fair.”
“Ah, jeez, Annie...” Grady began, wanting to dig a hole somewhere and disappear into it. But it was too late.
“Okay, ladies and gentlemen. It’s Annie and Grady. And listen to this! The little lady wants you to know Grady here has already given her one of his balls. Isn’t that something?”
Annie scooted over to Grady, leaning a shoulder against him and speaking to him out of the corner of her mouth. “I thought this was a church fair. He shouldn’t have said it that way, and these people shouldn’t be laughing.”
“Ya think?” Grady whispered back, glaring down a real boulder of a man holding a hot dog in each hand and laughing so hard Grady wondered if he might injure himself. “Now, if you’ll let me knock down these damn milk bottles, maybe I can walk away with at least some of my dignity intact.”
“You want me to throw the contest? Take a dive? Is that it? Because I’m going to win, Grady. You can count on it. In fact, how about a little side bet?”
“That isn’t what I meant. Besides, you’re broke,” he reminded her. “You’d be betting with borrowed money. My borrowed money, as a matter of fact.”
She shook her head as she looked up at him, pretending amazement. “You’ve got a real stuck needle in that record, don’t you, Grady? Okay, how about this. I win, and you let me really be your partner as we protect Archie? Every step of the way. No secrets. You tell me everything, let me help.”
“And when I win?”
He could see her biting the inside of her cheek as she considered his question. “I’ll tell you why I went to the movies,” she said at last.
“Good, but not enough.”
She rolled her eyes. “Okay, so I’ll tell you everything. Answer any question you have about me. Is that good enough?”
“Deal,” Grady said, sticking out his hand and shaking hers. “Now stand back, and let the master work.”
The master missed, actually, but he’d gotten closer, knocking down the top bottle in the pyramid. “I’m finding the range, okay?” he said when the onlookers hooted. They only hooted louder.
Then it was Annie’s turn, and she did that spit-in-her-hands thing again before rubbing the ball in her palms. As Grady stood off to one side, watching in amazement, she turned to her side, eyeing the milk bottles as she seemed to line them up with her left shoulder. Her eyelids narrowed to slits, and a look of determination came over her features that would have been comical if she hadn’t been so serious about the thing.
“Come on, Annie!” a woman in the crowd yelled out. “Knock ’em down! Do it for all of us!”
“For crying out loud, now we’re making a feminist statement?” Grady grumbled to a young man standing near him.
“Yeah, right. Women,” the young man said, then gave out a small “ooof!” as his girlfriend elbowed him in the ribs.
“Come on, Annie, throw the ball,” Grady urged her. “Before you turn this into a free-for-all.”
Annie took a deep breath, her shoulders rising, then let it out. Looked at the bottles again. Then she shook her head, just as if she were facing a batter and the catcher had offered a sign she was shaking off.
“I don’t believe this,” Grady said, turning away. But he had to turn around again. He had to see what she’d do next.
Annie continued to glare, deep in concentration, then smiled tightly, nodding. Obviously the catcher had now signaled for a pitch she wanted to throw. Wasn’t that just peachy?
“Oh, good,” Grady sniped. “Any year now, and she should throw it.”
The young man opened his mouth, his girlfriend said, “Don’t even think about it,” and he shut his mouth again.
The boulder of a man still held his two hot dogs.
The crowd went quiet.
Annie went into her windup, a complicated maneuver that had a lot to do with raising both hands over her head as her left leg rose in a high, graceful kick.
And Grady held his breath. She was going to do it. He just knew it. She was going to knock down those damn bottles. He didn’t know how he knew, or why, but he was about to be shown up by a curvy gal in a mop of curls.
Grady mentally practiced his best “second-place” smile.
Annie threw the ball, her follow-through a true work of art, and the milk bottles went down as, in typical form, “the crowd went wild.”
Panda bear in tow (and ego definitely in check), Grady walked down the entire row of games of chance as Annie’s banker and only a small part of her growing crowd of cheerleaders. She tossed basketballs. She threw darts at balloons. She aimed a water gun at a mechanical clown’s mouth. She shot a rifle at a small red star—for that one she won a pocketknife she quickly presented to Grady as a gift.
He refused the goldfish she’d won by tossing a Ping-Pong ball into a fishbowl, but she didn’t pout about it. She said she’d give it to Maisie.
Grady watched as she gave all the stuffed animals she’d won away to little children who had been watching her, keeping only the panda bear.
“Wasn’t that fun?” she asked him, her eyes bright as they walked away from the stands and back to the food stands, because she had a sudden hunger for a candy apple. “But we had to make a quick run and then get out of there, before they figured it out.”
“Before who figured out what?” Grady asked. He’d been in a sort of daze for the past fifteen minutes.
“That I’d worked as a carny, silly,” Annie said, shaking her head at his naïveté. “Didn’t you figure it out? How else do you think I knew where to hit the milk bottles? And there’s this trick to getting the basketball into those undersize hoops. But if I told you either trick, I’d have to kill you, so I won’t.”
Grady was barely listening anymore, having zeroed in on just one thing. “You were a carny?”
“Only for one summer, until they caught me and sent me back,” she said, then took a huge bite out of her candy apple. “It was the best summer of my life.”
He didn’t know her. He just flat out did not know this woman. He knew nothing about her. Okay, so he wanted to go to bed with her. He was fascinated with her, had been fascinated with her from that first glimpse he’d seen of her face in the photograph Archie had given him. That he knew. But that’s all he knew.
“I don’t believe this,” Grady said, as she held out the apple, offering him the side she hadn’t bitten into yet. “Who are you, Annie Kendall?”
“Uh-uh. I won, remember? Our bet? You have to show me yours, but I don’t have to show you mine.”
“That’s before I knew you were a ringer,” Grady pointed out, hoping the words didn’t come out in a whine.
“No, you didn’t. I agree. You just thought you were the great big caveman about to show off for the little lady. You were trying to be as unfair as you could be, sure you’d win. But I forgive you. It’s the testosterone, you can’t really help yourself.” She cocked her head to one side, listening to the music he’d been hearing without thinking about for the past few minutes. “A band! And they’re playing country music. Come on, Grady, let’s dance.”
One more time her hand slipped into his, and one more time he followed where she led. If Quinn could see him now he’d either be rolling on the ground, laughing his ass off, or already be hauling him off to the nearest shrink. This was not how Grady Sullivan lived. What he was doing tonight was not what Grady Sullivan did for fun.
Grady Sullivan played golf at the country club. Grady Sullivan dated models with long legs and wonderfully vacant heads. Grady Sullivan dined in five-star restaurants and danced in black tie to world-class orchestras.
So what in hell was he doing here? And why in hell was he smiling?
A small band shell had been set up behind a roped-off area, strung with Christmas lights, that had been reserved for dancing. Now that the sun had gone down, and there were more than a few strollers parked on the grass with sleeping babies in them, the parents had taken to the asphalt.
The area was crowded. Mothers held hands with their children, dancing with them. Daddies held sleeping tots in their arms and swayed to the music. Elderly couples held hands as they sat in folding chairs set around three sides of the dancing area, although many grey-haired couples were up and dancing themselves.
A three-year-old with bright red hair was dancing by himself, gyrating to a much faster beat he heard inside his head, whirling about smack in the middle of the crowd.
A young priest, his clerical collar slightly askew, stood at the edge of the dancers, tapping his foot and singing along with the Willie Nelson look-alike strumming his guitar and doing a damn good imitation of his hero.
“Don’t you just love it?” Annie asked, her smile hurting Grady’s heart. “Quick, what has forty pounds of hair and three teeth?”
“I have no idea,” Grady said, laughing. “What has forty pounds of hair and three teeth?”
“The front row audience at a Willie Nelson concert!” Annie told him. “It’s an old joke, and not very real, because everybody likes Willie Nelson. I’ve been a fan for years. But it is funny. Dance with me?”
He could say no. But, as he’d never been one to pull the wings off butterflies or kick roly-poly puppies, he asked the priest to hold the fishbowl, then led Annie into the crowd and took her in his arms.
After all, hadn’t he been wanting Annie Kendall in his arms for a long time? He just hadn’t planned on a panda joining them in the dance. But he was versatile, resourceful. He owned his own business, right? He’d cope. Considering himself brilliant, he handed the panda to the redheaded boy. After all, the kid needed a partner.
Annie smelled like candy apple and cotton candy. She probably tasted of the two confections, too, which was something he planned to find out later, when they were more alone.
He held on to her hand, pressed his other palm against the flat of her back, and tipped his head so his cheek rested on the curls that tickled at his chin.
She fit so well against him. Her sigh of contentment had to be real. Everything about her was so unaffected, so spontaneous, so very Annie. He knew so little about her, next to nothing. But he did know one thing. Annie Kendall, no matter who she was, no matter what her name, definitely was very, very real. Maybe too real.
Grady found himself closing his eyes as they danced, as they moved together as if they’d been dancing with each other all of their lives. Not a fan of country music, he listened to the words of the unfamiliar, rather sad song, making out words that had something to do with an angel flying too close to the ground.
And then Annie began to sing along, her voice quiet but pure, her heart in every word, “I knew someday you’d fly away...” She knew every word; and she wrung the emotion out of each and every one of them.
The singer went into the bridge, the beat and the melody combining in such an elemental way, making it so easy to take Annie into more complicated steps that matched mood to music.
Grady lightly pushed her away from him, holding her with one hand as she stepped back, did a small twirl, then he pulled her back against him once more, spinning them round, and round, and round before the singer began the second chorus.
She sang to him again, and he began to sing along with her when the words became more familiar. The music soared, the simple, sad passion of it beating inside Grady’s chest. He let go of her hand, turning her so that they went through the steps side by side, their arms around each other’s waists. Two forward, one back, another tricky forward step she followed without effort, then sweeping her into yet another turn, another twirl.
Another rush of heat as he brought her back against his chest, against the length of him. He didn’t know, he didn’t think. He only acted. They swayed together, moved together, two bodies responding as one... into the last flourish... into the last turn... into a dip where he followed her down, caught her mouth with his own.
Cotton candy and candy apples became his all-time favorite foods.
It was only when he belatedly heard the applause that he looked up, pulled Annie with him, and saw that everyone else had stopped dancing to watch them. Even the little redheaded boy was standing there, grinning, and clapping his hands.
Annie blushed. She was even more beautiful when she blushed, and smiled, and dropped into a curtsy to their “audience.”
Suddenly, Grady could feel himself losing a battle he didn’t know he’d been fighting. And he knew he was in real trouble when Annie bent down, kissed the redheaded boy on the cheek, then gave him the panda to keep “for your very own.”
She was so good, so wonderful, so real; so everything he’d needed when he spent his life up to that moment not knowing what he’d wanted. She was almost too good to be true.