Mirror Image

* * *

“She said for me to be careful of you.”

The motel room was cheap, dusty, and dank. But as Fancy bit into a fried chicken drumstick, she didn’t seem to notice or mind. She’d become accustomed to the shabby surroundings in the last several weeks.

She would rather have had her trysts with Eddy in a more elegant hotel, but the Sidewinder Inn was located on the interstate between campaign headquarters and the ranch, so it was a convenient place for them to meet before going home. The motel catered to illicit lovers. Rooms were rented by the hour. The staff was discreet—out of indifference, not empathy.

Because they had worked through the dinner hour this evening, Fancy and Eddy were sharing their time together with a bucket of Colonel Sanders’s best. Naked, they were sitting amid the rumpled sheets, eating fried chicken and discussing Carole Rutledge.

“Careful of me?” Eddy asked. “Why?”

“She said I shouldn’t be getting involved with a man so much older,” Fancy said, tearing off a bite of meat. “But I don’t think that’s the real reason.”

Eddy broke apart a chicken wing. “What’s the real reason?”

“The real reason is because she’s eaten up with jealousy. See, she wants to play the good wife for Uncle Tate, just in case he wins and goes to Washington. But in case he doesn’t, she wants to have someone waiting in the wings. Even though she pretends not to, I know Aunt Carole craves your body.” Playfully, she tapped his chest with the drumstick.

Eddy didn’t respond. He was staring absently into space, frowning. “I still wish she didn’t know about you and me.”

“Let’s not have another fight about that, okay? I couldn’t help it. I walked out of your room and there she was, clutching that stupid ice bucket to her chest and looking like she’d just swallowed her tongue.”

“Has she told Tate?”

“I doubt it.” A piece of golden-brown crust fell onto her bare belly. She moistened her fingertip, picked up the crumb, then licked it off. “I’ll tell you something else,” she said in a mysterious whisper, “I don’t think she’s quite right in the head yet.”

“What do you mean?”

“She asks the dumbest questions.”

“Like what?”

“Yesterday I mentioned something she should have a vivid memory of, even if she did suffer a concussion.”

“What?”

“Well,” Fancy drawled, dragging the nearly clean drumstick across her lips, “another ranch was buying some horses from Grandpa. When the cowboy came to look at them, nobody was around. I took him into the stable myself. He was real cute.”

“I get the picture,” Eddy said drolly. “What does Carole have to do with it?”

“She discovered us screwing like rabbits in one of the stalls. I thought I was sunk, see, because this was a couple of years ago and I was barely seventeen. But Carole and the cowboy connected immediately. You know, snap, crackle, pop. The next thing I know, she’s as naked as we are and rolling around in the hay with us.”

She fanned her face theatrically. “God, it was fantastic! What an afternoon. But yesterday, when I mentioned it, she looked ready to puke or something. You want some more chicken?”

“No thanks.” Fancy tossed her cleaned bone into the box and took out the last chicken leg. Eddy encircled her ankle with his hard fingers. “You didn’t give away any of my secrets, did you?”

She laughed and nudged him in the butt with her bare foot. “I don’t know any of your secrets.”

“So what did you and Carole talk about regarding me?”

“I just told her you were the best I’d ever had.” She leaned forward and gave him a greasy kiss on the lips. “You are, you know. You’ve got a cock of solid iron. And there’s something about you that’s so exciting—dangerous, almost.”

He was amused. “Finish your chicken. It’s time you headed home.”

Disobediently, Fancy looped her arms around his neck and kissed him languorously. She left her lips in place as she whispered, “I’ve never done it doggie fashion before.”

“I know.”

She drew her head back sharply. “Didn’t I do it good?”