"Look, Kenny, this is ridiculous! I'm a full-grown adult and I'm playing games with you like a kid. Just don't tell Faith I did this, all right?"

She reared up on one knee, dropped sideways, braced a hand on the driver's door, and kissed him. Angled beneath his straw hat, she found his mouth with her own and stayed a while, forcing the issue they'd both been sidestepping since… since when? Hard to remember when the compulsion first arrived. Sometime between the night of her arrival when he'd snubbed her and the night of choir practice when he'd ridden in her car. She'd caught him so off guard that he'd actually pulled back. She used it to her advantage and took a fair bit of time having her way with him while he was still wondering what his sense of honor would allow him to do. It was a good kiss, and honest, a two-way exchange, and when it ended he had both hands around her ribs under the lopped-off T-shirt to keep her from falling completely against him.

She drew back a mere inch. His breath came fast and his lips were open in surprise. She smiled in the dark, and told him, "That's for the time I teased you on the school bus." Her pose was awkward, his hands on her rib cage warm and spanning two-thirds of her girth. "Consider this completely my doing," she added. "I absolve you from all guilt, my dear Saint Kenny. Thanks for a wonderful day."

She kissed him again, quickly, got out and ran through the cold, driving rain to the house.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Inside the house Mary and Renee were watching 60 Minutes. Tess came charging in the back door, dripping. "Hey, will somebody bring me a towel, please?"

Renee showed up a moment later and tossed her one.

"About time you got here. We were getting worried."

"Sorry. I should have called." She threw off her cap, mopped the ends of her wet hair and sponged her soaked T-shirt.

"You weren't out riding all this time. Not in the thunder and lightning."

"No. I went to the Sonic Drive-in with Kenny."

"With Kenny. Well." Tess sat on a step and pulled off her boots while Renee studied the top of her red hair. "I thought you went riding with Casey. I didn't know he was going along."

Tess stood up, damp but no longer dripping, and set her boots against the wall. "Hey, listen, are you in a hurry to get home or could I talk to you for a minute?"

"I can stay awhile longer."

Tess led the way across the kitchen and said quietly, so Mary couldn't hear, "Come upstairs with me." In the liv-ing room Mary said, "You're back, did you have a good time?" and returned to her show.

"Sure did."

Upstairs Tess stripped off her wet clothes while Renee sat cross-legged on her old bed. "Just like when we were girls," she said. "So what's going on?"

Tess threw on a cotton pullover, pulled the rubber band out of her hair and sat at the vanity table, facing Renee, combing her wet bangs straight back, flat to her head. "It's bizarre," she told Renee. "You aren't going to believe it."

"Something with you and Kenny, obviously."

Tess looked down at the comb in her hands and said, "Talk some sense into me, will you?"

"Maybe you'd better tell me what's going on first."

"I kissed him about five minutes ago in his car. He wouldn't kiss me so I finally kissed him. Pretty stupid, huh?"

"That's all. Just a kiss?"

"Yes. But, Renee, something has happened to me in these couple weeks I've been home. I'm bumping into him all the time and he turns out to be about the nicest guy I've met in years, and all of you treat him like he's your brother, and he treats Momma like he's her son, and then Casey gets into the picture and I'm just crazy about that girl, and I see what a good father he is, and the next thing you know we're going to choir practice together, and this afternoon he shows up at Dexter Hickey's and I start acting like a lovesick teenager. Renee, that's not like me."

Renee digested this for a moment. "Is he the reason you're taking Casey to Nashville?"

"No! Renee, what do you take me for?"

"You're sure?"

"Of course I'm sure. The thing with Casey started before I even said two words to Kenny."

Renee took stock of her sister, weighing the situation for some time before speaking again.

"What about Faith?"

"He won't tell me anything about their relationship."

Renee's face looked as if she'd given this plenty of thought on her own. "They're intimate, I'm sure. They just don't flaunt it, so people around here accept it.'" Tess stared at her sister, unhappy to have her suspicion corroborated. "You've got to be careful, Tess. You can't toy with people's feelings."

"I'm not toying."

"Aren't you?"

"No!"

"Then what's going to come of it? You'll head back to Nashville and leave him behind, and if you've spoiled what's between him and Faith, he'll end up the loser. Maybe you've lost sight of just how big a star you are, and just how impressed a man could be with your attention."

"I haven't. I've thought about that."

"And Kenny had a crush on you in high school. He's got no defenses against you, Tess."

Tess stared at her comb while the curls around her face began drying and coiling free. She thought about the perfect day she'd had with Kenny, starting with church this morning until they sat in the sexually charged atmosphere of his car in the rain. Any other woman would simply be able to do what she had done and not require confession afterward.

"You know what, Renee? Sometimes it can be mighty lonely being Tess McPhail."

"I'm sure it can, but pick on someone else besides Kenny."

"Who? The germs who hang around by the stage door? The guys in the music industry who are probably after me to further their own careers? Some other big star who'll be out on the road the few times when I'm not? The guys in the band?" She laughed ruefully. "Good way to lose a good band member."

"You chose it, Tess, I didn't."

Tess sighed, half swiveled and threw her comb on the vanity.

Renee studied her and caught a hint of defensiveness. "What about this guy from this other band that Momma said you're dating? She says he's called you a couple times since you've been here."

"Burt. Yeah, he's called. I made a date with him to get together in Nashville as soon as we both get back. I thought if I had that to look forward to it might distract me from Kenny."

"But it hasn't. So you made a play for him tonight."

"I didn't make-" Tess stopped herself, realizing how false she sounded. She jumped up from the stool and crossed the room to the rough railing around the stairwell. Leaning against it she could see out the window through the driving rain to the blurred lights from Kenny's house. His bedroom lights came on.

Behind her Renee said, "You wanted me to talk some sense into you, well, here it is. For the rest of the time you're home, stay away from Kenny. Leave him to Faith and you'll thank yourself later." She rose from the bed and approached her sister, placing her hands on Tess's shoulders. "Okay?" she asked.

Tess nodded glumly.

"Hey… come here." Renee turned her around and hugged her. "You mad at me now for saying what I think?"

"No." They rocked for a while, clenched together, and Tess began crying. "Oh, why did I have to come back home and get my priorities all screwed up? I love what I do! And most of the time I never even think about what I've given up!"

"But sometimes that big old S word rears its head and starts making demands, huh?"

In spite of her tearfulness Tess chuckled and pulled back, drying her face with her hands. "Oh, damn it. And damn you for dragging me back here."

Renee said with humor, "Well, I never thought you'd get the hots for Kenny Kronek." She went and got a tissue from the vanity and handed it to Tess, who blew her nose.

"I don't have the hots for Kenny Kronek." Renee gave her a scolding look. "Well, all right, maybe I do, but if Faith's got first dibs on him, I'll be a good girl and keep my distance, and if he comes to Nashville to visit Casey I'll… I'll…"

"You'll what?"

Tess crumpled. "Hell, I don't know what I'll do."

"You know, Tess, there's one thing we're overlooking."

"What's that?"

"Kenny himself. If he's the kind of man I think he is, he'd never two-time Faith. You said yourself he refused to kiss you."

Tess thought for a moment, then said, "You're right. And you know what? That's one of the reasons I think so much of him."

Tess accepted Renee's admonition and took it to heart. She decided she'd been wrong trying to provoke Kenny into kissing her, and made a resolution that she would do everything in her power to avoid him from now on.

On Monday, in spite of aching everywhere, she mowed the lawn in the midday heat to avoid doing it when he was home. That evening Casey called, and said, "So how'd it go with Dad?"

"Why don't you ask him?"

"I did, but he's in one of his wounded-boar moods and all he did was snap at me."

Wounded boar? Tess figured Kenny had probably come up with the same conclusion as she; that it was better if they avoid each other.

"Well, nothing happened," Tess lied.

"Oh, shoot. Well, I'll keep hoping."

She saw him, naturally, coming and going from his house, but she stayed inside whenever he appeared in the backyard. Sometimes he'd glance at Mary's house as if hoping Tess would appear in the doorway, but she stayed hidden from sight.

On Tuesday evening, by mere chance, four of Mary's friends came visiting, one right after the other, and Tess was kept busy brewing coffee and visiting. But her mind kept veering to choir practice where she'd been a week ago. She had seen Kenny leave at seven-fifteen and pause beside his garage and look this way, but in the end he had gone without coming to ask if she was going along.