"I suppose that'll be a start."
"About Little Alvin, Jack Ed, the fight?"
"I suppose."
"You'll explain why you were in the place."
"He'll understand that part."
"But not the rest. What'll you tell him about the motel?"
"I don't know," she admitted with increasing impatience.
"Well, you'd better think of something."
She turned on him with agitation. "Tell me, Lucky, what should I say? What can I say? What words could possibly make this situation easier for him to accept, hmm? Put yourself in his place. He's in prison. How would you react if your roles were reversed? How would you feel if I were your wife and had slept with another man?"
He reached for her and pulled her against him, snarling, "If you were my wife, you wouldn't have slept with another man."
She deflected his kiss. "Don't." He could tell by her tone that she wasn't being coy. He gazed into her eyes. "Don't," she repeated firmly. "Let me go."
He relaxed his embrace; she stepped out of it. "For reasons I can't comprehend, your family has been cordial to me when all I deserve from them is scorn and contempt. I expected to be shunned like a woman of the streets. Instead, they've been inordinately kind. I won't betray their consideration by playing your tramp."
His body was pulled taut, as though he were held back by an invisible leash. "You're not a tramp," he said meaningfully. "I never thought of you that way. I never treated you that way. Didn't I nearly throttle someone today for suggesting that you were?"
Suddenly she ducked her head, and he thought it might be because of the tears that had filled her eyes. "So far," she said in a low, stirring voice, "I've got only one sin to confess to my husband. Please don't make it any worse, Lucky."
"That's the first time you've called me by name," he murmured, taking a step nearer. "That's a beginning."
She raised her head. Their eyes met and held. Eventually she moistened her lips, pulled the lower one through her teeth, and whispered, "We aren't allowed a beginning." Having said that, she turned and headed for the house.
"My, my. Wonders never cease."
At the sound of his sister's voice, Lucky angrily spun around. "What the hell are you doing out here?"
Sage stepped from behind one of the peach trees. "There's actually a woman who can say no to Lucky Tyler. My faith in womankind has been restored."
"Shut up, brat," he grumbled. "How long have you been there?"
"Long enough to set my heart to palpitating."
"Why were you spying on us?"
"I wasn't. Mother sent me out to tell you that Chase and Tanya are leaving. She thought you'd want to say congratulations one more time. I sensed the nature of your conversation, and decided it would be imprudent to interrupt."
"So you eavesdropped."
Unfazed, she fell into step beside her brother as he stamped toward the house.
"Poor Lucky," she sighed theatrically. "He finally finds a woman he really wants, and she turns out to have the loathsome three."
"Loathsome three?"
"A brain, a conscience, and a husband."
Lucky glowered at her. "You know, the day Mother and Dad brought you home from the hospital, Chase and I considered tying you up in a gunnysack and tossing it into the stock pond. Too bad we didn't."
* * *