When he thought of Kristy, he thought of a…

He flinched.

He thought of an efficient doormat. Always there, always willing to extend herself to help out. Never demanding anything for herself, only for others.

He stared off into the night. What a phony he was, calling himself a minister. This was one more example of his flawed character and why he needed to find another profession.

Kristy was a good person, a good friend, and he'd hurt her. That meant he had to make amends. And he only had two weeks to do it before she would disappear from his life.

14

The next afternoon Gabe pried open the lid of the KFC bucket and extended it toward Rachel. They were sitting in their favorite place to take a lunch break, by the concrete turtle on the playground, with the big white screen looming above them offering shade from the midday sun.

Nine days had passed since that rainy afternoon they'd made love. The drive-in was opening a week from tonight, but instead of concentrating on that, all he'd been able to think about was having that sweet body underneath him again. Except she wasn't cooperating. First there'd been her hang-up about her period, something he was certain he could have overcome. But he hadn't pressed because he knew the money problem loomed in her mind, and he wanted her to realize how ridiculous that was.

His patience, however, had run out. There were only so many days he could spend watching those old cotton housedresses shape themselves around her body whenever a breeze swept through the lot, so he was making his move.

"You'll be glad to know I figured out the answer to our little dilemma."

"Which dilemma is that?" She pulled out a drumstick. He'd noticed she was partial to drumsticks. He, on the other hand, was partial to breasts, and, as he took one from the bucket, he enjoyed what he could see of hers peeking from the open buttons of today's ugly housedress, a red calico number he could swear he remembered Annie wearing when he'd been small enough to sit in her lap.

Rachel had pulled up the skirt and stretched her bare legs out in front of her. They were suntanned and lightly freckled. One knee sported an old scab, another a Band-Aid he'd affixed that morning after she'd ignored a scrape. Her calves seemed to get the worst of it. A bruise here, a scratch there. She worked too damned hard, but she wouldn't stick to the easier jobs he tried to give her, no matter how much he growled.

Her calves looked slim and feminine in contrast to the heavy white sweat socks collapsed around her ankles and those clunky black shoes. She kept them polished, he'd noticed, and he could only imagine the work it took to remove the paint and grime the shoes accumulated every day. At first he hadn't understood why she bothered, and then he realized that someone with only one pair of shoes had to take care of them.

He didn't like to think about Rachel slaving over those ugly shoes every night to keep them clean. He'd buy her a dozen pairs if he could, but she'd throw them right back in his face.

He cleared his throat. "The dilemma about your hourly salary and what you can do or not do during those hours."

"You're giving me a raise!"

"Hell no, I'm not giving you a raise."

He did his best not to smile at her look of disappointment. Although it wasn't easy, he was trying hard to keep her short of ready cash while he also made certain she had everything she really needed. The way she squeezed a dollar, he knew that if he gave her too much money, she'd save it up. And once she had enough, she'd leave town.

Sooner or later, she'd have to accept the fact that G. Dwayne hadn't left his five million dollars hidden away in Salvation, and then she'd no longer have a reason to stay. Gabe needed to make certain she couldn't afford to go. Not yet. Although he knew this town wasn't a good place for her, he also couldn't have her taking off until he was certain she had some way to stabilize her future. Her hold on survival was so very precarious, and somehow he had to make sure that she wouldn't ever be destitute again.

"I deserve, a raise, and you know it."

Ignoring her, he said, "I don't know why I didn't think of this right away." He stretched out on his side in the grass, propped himself on one elbow, and took a bite of chicken he didn't want. "I've decided to put you on straight salary. That means that whether we fling or not, your paycheck won't be affected."

Her eyes lit up with dollar signs. "How much straight salary?"

He told her and waited for that little ripe strawberry mouth to bite his head off. Which it did.

"You are the stingiest, the most penny-pinching, tight-fisted-"

"Look who's talking."

"I'm not rich like you. I have to pinch pennies."

"With a straight salary, you'll come out ahead. I'll still pay you overtime, but you won't be penalized if you have to take an hour off to run an errand. Or something." He paused and took another bite of chicken. "You should get down on your knees and thank me for my generosity."

"I should take a crowbar to your knees."

"Excuse me? I didn't quite catch that."

"Never mind."

He'd wanted to pull her into his arms right there. But he couldn't do it, not after the way it had been the first time between them. For all her talk about being a wanton woman, she deserved a bed this time, and not G. Dwayne's bed, either.

She deserved a date, too, although that didn't seem to have occurred to her. He wanted to take her out for a meal at a four-star restaurant just so he could watch her eat.

He loved doing that. Every day he came up with an excuse to feed her. He'd bring Egg McMuffins with him when he arrived in the morning and tell her he couldn't stand eating breakfast alone. Around noon, he'd announce that he was so hungry he couldn't concentrate until he had a bucket of KFC in front of him. In the middle of the afternoon, he'd haul out some fruit and cheese from the snack-bar refrigerator and make her take another break. If this kept up much longer, he wouldn't be able to snap his jeans, but she was looking healthier by the day.

Her cheeks had filled out just enough so that her green eyes no longer seemed to be falling out of her face, and the bruises beneath her bottom lashes had disappeared. Her skin had taken on a healthy glow, and a few more freckles had popped out on her cheekbones. Her body was filling out a little, too. She'd never be plump, but she no longer looked quite so emaciated.

A shadow fell over him as he remembered how Cherry used to fret over her weight. He'd told her he'd still love her if she weighed three hundred pounds, but she'd counted calories anyway. He would have loved her fat or thin. He would have loved her crippled, old, shriveled. There was nothing that could have happened to her body that would have made him stop loving her. Not even death.

He tossed his half-eaten piece of chicken into the sack, leaned back into the grass, and threw his arm over his eyes as if he wanted to take a nap.

He felt her hand settle over his chest, and her voice was no longer angry. "Tell me about them, Gabe. Cherry and Jamie."

His skin prickled. It had happened again. She'd said their names. Even Ethan didn't do that anymore. His brother wanted to protect him, but Gabe was starting to feel as if they didn't exist in anyone's memory but his own.

The temptation to talk was almost overwhelming, but he held on to the few remnants of sanity he had left. He was crazy, but not crazy enough to have a cozy little chat about his dead wife's virtues with a woman he planned to make love to as soon as possible. Besides, he could just imagine what fodder Rachel and her sharp tongue would find in his memories.

The muscles in his shoulders flexed. He was lying to himself. Rachel would rip him apart for many things, but not his memories. Never that. Still, he resisted.

Her hand rested over his heart, and her soft breath fanned his cheek as she spoke with a tenderness he'd never heard. "Everybody else is too kind to point this out to you, Bonner, but you're in imminent danger of turning into one of those self-focused, self-pitying people nobody can stand." She gave him a gentle rub. "Not that you don't have plenty of reason for self-pity, and if you didn't still have so much of your life left, it might even be all right."

His blood churned, and a terrible anger rushed through him. She must have felt the constriction of his muscles because she laid her head on his chest to quiet him. A strand of her hair fell over his lips. He smelled her shampoo, and it reminded him both of sunshine and clean rain.

"Tell me how you met Cherry."

Her name again. His anger evaporated, and he felt an urgent need to talk about her, to make her real again. Still, it took him a while to manage the words. "A Sunday-school picnic."

He grunted as Rachel's sharp elbow dug into his stomach. Automatically lifting his arm, he opened his eyes.

She'd propped herself comfortably on his chest as if he were a lounge chair, and instead of giving him one of those pity-filled looks he'd grown accustomed to, she was smiling. "You were kids! Teenagers?"

"Not even. We were eleven, and she'd just moved to Salvation." He shifted into a half-sitting position, rearranging her elbow at the same time so it wasn't aimed directly at his diaphragm. "I was running around, not watching where I was going, and I spilled a glass of purple Kool-Aid on her."

"I'll bet she wasn't happy about that."

"She did the damnedest thing. She looked up at me and smiled and said, 'I know you're sorry.' Just like that. 'I know you're sorry.' "

Rachel laughed. "She sounds like a pushover."