Page 37 of Heart of Dixie
“Well, maybe we should get busy. It won’t get done by itself.” I put my hand to the small of her back and led her to the house. At the base of the metal steps I paused at the sight of two rather large balls of fur guarding the doorway. “Who’s this?”
Dixie squatted and reached out to scratch the orange tabby behind the ears. “This is Miss Kitty. I’m pretty sure she was Cooter’s cat. She’s been hanging around since I first arrived.” The cat hopped off the step, and Dixie glided her hand in one long stretch along the back of the black and white cat. “I call this guy Marshal Dillon. He’s never far behind Miss Kitty. Pretty sure he’s the one that knocked her up.” Sure enough, before the tabbyhad gotten far, the black and white cat chased after her as she lumbered across the yard.
We climbed the few steps to the landing and I had to give her a tug to keep her from pulling me into the house. I pointed down at my feet. “This stuff is already drying between my toes. Do you think you could get me a pan of water and an old rag?”
She laughed and darted into the house, then returned within minutes. “You’re lucky you had on shorts or you’d be traipsing around in your boxers.” She paused and gave me a considering gaze, starting at my now-clean toes and working its way up to my waist. She reached a finger out and snagged it in the elastic waist of my gym shorts, gave it a tug. “Or maybe I would have been the lucky one if you’d been wearing jeans.”
Lucky. I wasn’t feeling so lucky right now. I frantically searched for a distraction from the pounding of blood heading south on vacation and found it when I stepped inside.
Nests of various sized boxes covered all the available floor space. “So, we packing it all up? Do you have a U-Haul truck coming, or what’s the plan here?”
She kicked off her shoes near the door and removed her suit jacket, leaving only a pale pink camisole tucked into her brighter pink skirt. She gave the room a slow perusal. “I’m not sure how long it will take to sell the place so we’ll leave the furniture inside. We only need to get rid of the personal items, then store the boxes out in the studio.” Cardboard grocery cartons covered every horizontal surface.
“How about if we split up? Divide and conquer—that sort of thing? I’ll take the living room and the bathroom; you take the bedrooms. We’ll tackle the kitchen together.”
She lifted a stack of boxes and moved toward the hallway. “There’s tissue paper over there somewhere.” She loosened a couple of fingers and waved them toward the kitchen table, seenthrough the open doorway. “And there’s a radio on the counter if you want music.”
A minute later we had background noise, and I had arranged a stack of boxes around the living room. I shooed her away. “Scoot! I got this.”
She finally quit hesitating and within minutes the banging of drawers and closet doors punctuated by unfeminine grunts echoed from Cooter’s room as she presumably shoved his belongings into packing cartons. From time to time the bed springs squeaked, followed by a loud sigh and what might have been a sob. It also may have been a box shuffling across the thin carpet. Either way, Dixie deserved a few minutes’ privacy with what was left of her father.
In the meantime, I sorted and stored trophies and photographs. They were all of Dixie, and some included her parents over the course of time, but what shocked me most was that they all seemed happy. I’d known Dixie forever, and her family of course, but my memory of our childhood was slippery, and I barely recalled Miss Olivia when she lived in Kissing Creek. The only memories I had of Cooter were better left forgotten. He’d always intimidated me as big as he was, with that deep, booming voice, but I vividly recalled he was a man changed once his wife left. Changed to mean.
With the knickknacks and whatnots wrapped and packed, I stacked my cartons along a wall and moved on to the bathroom down the hall. There wasn’t much here; I started by emptying the few hygiene items from the shower and pulled a face at the scum left behind. No way was I cleaning that crap. Dixie better have a cleaning crew lined up.
Since the box was still near empty, I balanced it on the Formica counter top and opened the mirrored cabinet over the sink. I swept the contents of the upper glass shelf with a single swipe—Band-Aids, antiseptic, cold medicine, and a few similarover-the-counter drugs. In truth, it all should go in the trash, but that was between Dixie and her old man. The middle shelf was nearly empty so I scooped out those few items and bypassed the wastebasket for the carton on the counter.
I’d been quick at my task, and focused, and hadn’t paid much attention to what lay on the bottom shelf, but now it stopped me cold. A four-pack of disposable razors—one missing—a pair of reusable insulin pens, and a couple of prescriptions. No big deal; the guy wasn’t ancient, but he was no spring chicken. Everyone had old antibiotics laying around. The razors and needle kits hit the trash—there was no good reason to hold on to those. The meds, though; that I had to share.
21
Deke
“Hey, Dixie, this you have to see!” I stepped through the doorway and met her in the hall. “Your dad drove two counties over to get his Viagra. Just got it refilled, too.”
I followed her into her room, which was trashed, pushed aside a bag of chocolate and mint layered candies that gave me a clue to her decorating scheme, and took a seat on the bed. She rushed across the room and slammed the closet doors closed, then spun with her back against them.
“What if thoseweresex sheets on Elsie’s line, Dixie?”
She scrunched up her nose. “That’s disgusting.”
A laugh escaped me. “As a perfectly healthy male of the species, I beg to differ. What’s disgusting about it? That a man in his fifties could still get it up, albeit with a little chemical assistance, or that you have a mental picture of your father naked and in the throes of passion?” Her cheeks went rosy.
The little devil riding my shoulder cackled in my ear and urged me to cage her in, each fist filled with a plastic pill bottleand holding up the wall on either side of her. I lowered my mouth to her ear so my words vibrated throughout her body. “I’ll have you know, princess, when I’m fifty, I intend to still be skinny dipping in the pond, fucking my woman in the shower, and giving her nights of pleasure that will make her wonder what she ever found so special about her twenties.”
“Jesus, Deke.” Her head fell back as the words crawled out of her throat and a crimson flush crept up her chest. Her hands found my shoulders and latched on to handfuls of my T-shirt. I nosed my way along her jaw and let her scent lead me down to her collarbone. Her skin was warm where I lapped at it with my tongue, then pressed my open mouth against it and sucked. A low growl ripped from her throat. It was urgent and primal . . . and fucking hot.
My lips found the skinny strap of her top and shoved it toward her shoulder. It drifted over the edge and fell and left the fullness of her breast exposed above the support of her lacy bra. I nibbled a path over the textured lace that left me aching for more.
“Dixie, we never made love here in your room, in your bed.” The idea of it had me slipping over the edge as well. My hands were still locked against the closed closet doors, trapped there by the plastic bottles locked in my fists. I gave them a short heave and they landed atop the mattress. It left my palms free to bracket Dixie’s face. Her hands lowered until they wrapped around my waist. I lowered my mouth to hers for a quick taste and ground my stiff cock into her center in case she had any question about where this was headed. “But today won’t be the first time.” Her hooded gaze widened. “No condom on me, babe. I’m only wearing gym shorts. No pockets, no wallet.” I even left my cell phone out with Blake. “We need to move this party.” Her eyes grew heated.
“You can’t do that, Deke.”
I lowered her top and wrapped my lips around a puckered nipple. She bucked off the wall and further into my mouth. I let the rigid flesh glide off my tongue and out of my mouth. “Can’t do what, princess?”
“Can’t tease me like that.” Her breathing was choppy, restless. “I’ll take care of it.”Take care of it? What does that mean, take care of it?But her hands were coasting up and then down my sides, and then burrowing under my shirt until she was plucking at my nipples. I reached behind my head and stripped the soft cotton off. Her lips latched onto me like a barnacle, and the mystery was forgotten.
I yanked off her flimsy top in record time. Her breasts filled my palms through the thin fabric of her lingerie. I rocked into her again and got a low growl in response. Her hands moved up my chest, to my neck, to my scalp. Her lips were close behind. It was stimulating. And erotic. My blood raced through my body like fire. She could continue all night.
