Ladies' Night Andrews, Kay (great novels .txt) 📖

She opened her mouth to protest, but she didn’t have a chance, because suddenly he was kissing her. Both his hands were tangled in her hair, and he pulled her right up against the door and teased her lips open with his tongue. The kiss lasted another minute or so, and left Grace breathless and dazed. And hot. When a car pulled alongside the truck, she reluctantly pulled away.

“See?” Wyatt said, grinning as he put the truck into reverse. “Moves.”

32

The little cottage—okay, he could call it a cottage, but it was really a glorified double-wide—was ablaze with lights when he pulled the truck under the carport. Wyatt tucked Sweetie under one arm and carried her and her luggage inside.

“Home sweet trailer,” he said, setting her down on the vinyl floor. She took a few tentative steps and sniffed one of Bo’s discarded flip-flops before picking it up in her mouth and turning to him, as if asking permission.

“Knock yourself out,” Wyatt said generously. “It’s way better than a Ken doll, right?”

He could hear the television in the back room. “Dad? He called loudly. All his conversations with Nelson had to be at top volume these days. He walked toward the tiny den and poked his head around the doorway. The recliner was facing the television, but there was no tell-tale tuft of white hair poking above the headrest. “Dad?”

The chair was empty, the television turned to a Law and Order rerun. A plate with the remains of a chicken potpie sat on the folding TV tray beside the recliner. Wyatt felt his pulse blip. He passed the open bathroom door, knocked softly on Nelson’s closed bedroom door. “Hey old man,” he called. “You sleeping?” When there was no answer, he opened the door to find the room empty and the bed still made, the worn quilt folded neatly at its foot. The room smelled like his father, like Old Spice and Bengay. But where the hell had the old man gotten to?

He opened the back door and peered out into the darkness. “Dad?” Nothing. He gave a soft whistle and Sweetie dropped her flip-flop and trotted over, her nails clicking on the harvest-gold vinyl flooring. “Come on girl, let’s take a walk and find Granddad.” Now he wished he’d taken that ridiculous pink leash.

“Stay here,” he told the dog. He went out to the carport and rummaged around until he found a length of clothesline. Back in the house, he found a flashlight and fashioned a makeshift leash from the rope.

His heart was pounding as he stepped out of the cottage. It was nearly ten. His father was usually fast asleep by now, either in his recliner or his room. Nelson’s car, a gas-guzzling Olds, was parked in the carport, its hood covered in a fine haze of cobwebs and pine needles. He seldom drove it anymore, claiming his night vision was fading, but Wyatt suspected his father probably realized his driving days were mostly over. Now he noticed that the golf cart was missing. He cursed softly.

Sweetie sat on her haunches and looked up at him expectantly. What was it Timmy used to tell Lassie in those old Nick at Night reruns? “What’s that girl? Granddad fell down the old well?” Only Sweetie was definitely not a collie, and as far as he knew, there were no abandoned wells at Jungle Jerry’s Olde Florida Family Fun Park.

“Let’s take a walk,” he said in a surprisingly calm voice. Sweetie inched forward, testing the air with her nose, and then set off at a trot. For lack of a better idea, Wyatt let her take the lead, playing the flashlight over the curtains of green. It was a typical summer night in Florida, the air nearly dripping with humidity. Clouds of mosquitoes swarmed his already-inflamed face, and the smell of night-blooming jasmine blanketed the thick spongy air. Sweetie trotted on, heading past the huge old banyan tree with its sinister-looking tracery of roots draping from the elephant-gray lower limbs, and around the reflecting pool with its island rookery for herons and egrets nesting in the moss-draped cypress trees. The moon was nearly full and its reflection was a butter-yellow orb in the black water of the pool. Every hundred yards or so, the little brown dog stopped, sniffed, and then readjusted her course.

Sweetie, Wyatt thought, had a lot more hunting dog in her gene pool than he would have guessed.

They were just rounding the Nursery Rhyme Garden, with its two-story concrete Mother Hubbard shoe when a pair of sharp cracks pierced the still night air. Wyatt knew that sound. It was Nelson’s double-gauge shotgun.

Sweetie pricked up her ears and took off at a surprisingly fast full run, with Wyatt following close behind, the flashlight’s beam bouncing off the landscape. She was barking now, excited and on full alert. She made a sharp right turn at the stand of crimson-flowering royal poinciana trees, and Wyatt realized she was headed for the area they’d always called Birdland, because it was where all the tropical bird cages and the parrot-show amphitheater were located.

The little dog barked as she ran, and Wyatt’s mind conjured up every conceivable tragedy as he sprinted through the thick tropical foliage. Maybe his father had gotten confused and wandered off into the darkness, on the golf cart, armed with his favorite old shotgun. Maybe he’d imagined an intruder and gone to investigate. None of the story lines flashing through his imagination had a happy ending.

Finally, Sweetie skidded to a stop. She sat on her haunches, her ears folded back, a deep, guttural growl rising in her throat, aimed at some unseen enemy lurking in the darkness.

Silvery moonlight revealed Nelson Keeler, sitting on one of the splintery green-painted benches ringing the amphitheater, his shotgun resting across his pajama-clad knees. In the round, chicken-wire-ringed aviary nearby, Cookie, the African gray parrot, hopped agitatedly from foot to foot. “Shots and beer, shots