Biding Her Time. Wendy Warren

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      Life was full of people who had no problem loving you when everything was going right. But throw ’em a curve—financial ruin, physical hardship, a little terminal illness, say—and the phonies scattered like rats to a sewer.

      Her eyes began to burn. She blinked hard. Lately she was tired and not above wondering why some lives seemed to be inherently more graceful, crafted more exquisitely…hell, just plain easier… than others.

      Maudlin alert. Stop thinking.

      Turning, Audrey let her eyelids drift shut as she moved to the beat of Cyndi Lauper’s quirky vocals, intent on shutting out every other sound and especially intent on drowning out her thoughts as she danced alone toward the middle of the floor.

      Raising her arms over her head, she sang along, pretending she believed every word of the lyrics.

      “Girls just wanna have fun.”

      “If your eyebrows dip any lower, you’re going to get hair in your beer.”

      His tablemate’s comment jerked Shane from the odd trance into which he’d fallen. Reaching for his drink, he smiled apologetically. “Sorry. I must be jet-lagged.”

      “Mm-hmm.” Hilary Cambria, who’d traveled with him to Kentucky from their native Australia, and who looked fresh as a daisy, gave him a pitying look. “You should be out there, dancing.” Pursing the lips Shane had always thought were one of her best features, she cocked her head to consider him. “You need to lighten up, boyo. Live a little.” She raised her glass. “Like her.”

      Shane didn’t have to glance over to know whom his cousin meant. The redhead. The pool shark who bought shots for her mates and drank whiskey like one of the boys. There’d been so much laughter and melodramatic groaning around the pool table when he and Hilary had first entered the bar, he couldn’t help but notice the woman who’d been in the middle of it all.

      She behaved as if she hadn’t a responsibility in the world. She dressed as if she didn’t give a damn, yet she had more men around her than a swimsuit model.

      He knew without having to look again that her skin was the color of wheat, her hair a red-brown that was several shades darker than her many freckles. She was tall, strong and curvy like a milk-fed farm girl, her innocent look at odds with her bold personality.

      “Live for today, for tomorrow we may die.” He’d heard her toast, and frankly it had irritated the hell out of him. He couldn’t stomach a cavalier attitude toward life, yet part of him wanted to challenge her to a game of pool and give her a real race for her money. He wanted to spend the night finding out what was truer: the sassy attitude or the fresh-off-the-farm appearance.

      Another part of him knew that a woman like the redhead was simply one of life’s distractions, and he’d stopped indulging in those years earlier, when he’d realized his need to find a purpose for his life outweighed all other desires.

      “I saw you watching her.” Hilary interrupted his thoughts. “She wanted to dance with you, you know. She was walking right toward you.”

      Shane took a sip of his beer, buying himself a moment. He wanted to answer this well.

      Returning the frosted glass to a damp cocktail napkin, he reached across the round table, laying his hand on Hilary’s. “I’m with the prettiest girl in the place. And I happen to know she’s a great conversationalist. Why would I give all that up for a dance?”

      His heart sank when he saw her neat jawline tense.

      “Because I’m your cousin. And because dancing… is… fun.” She spoke slowly, as if she were addressing a half-wit. “Or don’t you like fun anymore?”

      Exhaling her anger, she plucked up her wineglass, her blue eyes narrowing above the rim. “You know I love you, but I can’t spend all my time babysitting so you won’t be lonely. It’s starting to put a crimp in my social life.”

      Understanding her true implication, Shane responded immediately and firmly. “I’m not babysitting you.”

      “Tell it to someone who hasn’t known you since you wore tighty whities.”

      She took a gulp of wine, and Shane felt the awesome burden of his own ineffectualness. “What, pray tell, are tighty whities?” he asked, mostly to fill time until he figured out how to talk to her. She’d changed so much in the past year.

      Surprising him, she laughed, and thankfully the sound wasn’t quite as brittle as he might have feared. “You really need to get out more. Tighty whities are men’s jocks. The plain kind. Do you know that in America, some men wear jocks that are red-white-and-blue on the Fourth of July? I wonder how they fit all the stars and stripes on there?”

      She had decided to make him laugh, and she succeeded. He felt a rush of affection for the girl who had always loved everything American. He hoped this trip to the States would be a gift to her, hoped it would bring back some of her joy.

      He was tempted to tease her in return, to lighten the mood still more, but when he looked at her face, he saw that she was already glancing beyond him, her expression so wistful, so rich with longing that he turned to see what was affecting her.

      On the dance floor, the redhead had found a partner—a jockey, Shane guessed. Wiry, compact and several inches shorter than the girl, he looked like a dervish, spinning and kicking his seemingly boneless legs out at odd angles. Shane suspected, though, that it was not so much the jockey but the girl whom Hilary watched.

      The redhead would never win a dance contest. Like her partner, she flung her arms and legs about in what appeared to be several directions at once. Given her long legs, long neck, plus the russet hair and freckles, he figured he could be forgiven, although probably not by her, for thinking she looked like an enthusiastic giraffe. Once again, his interest caught and held.

      When the jockey did a crazy move, kicking one leg way in the air and then spinning around, the woman laughed and matched him move for move.

      “She’s got the right idea,” he heard Hilary murmur with a catch in her voice that made his gut ache. “Dance like there’s no tomorrow.”

      Her eyes swam with pain. She’d never been good at hiding her feelings, even now when, for the first time, she earnestly tried. Immediately Shane felt helpless. Then he felt the roiling frustration and anger that his helplessness aroused.

      “I’m beat,” he said, watching her expression. “Mind if we head back to the motel?”

      He thought he handled that relatively well, making their hasty retreat about him rather than her, but the twist of her lips said she knew exactly what he was doing, and she snapped.

      “Don’t coddle me.” The rage underlying the low, frustrated growl was so unlike Hilary that even she seemed shocked.

      A terrible, impotent grief choked Shane. He wanted to rail at the unfairness of a life that would harm a woman like her, but leave him standing—he, who in thirty-four privileged years had never found a purpose to his existence. Hilary had always been the one with plans, goals. Gratitude. He had been the discontent wanderer.

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