town. I explained that I wasn’t ready to get married. All I had to my name was two hundred dollars in the bank, a shack on the water and a used Harley. I was earning barely enough as a fishing guide to support myself. I couldn’t give you the things I wanted you to have or provide a decent place for you to live.”
“You’d been telling me the same tale for two years. I was sick of waiting. I told you dozens of times that money wasn’t that important to me. Besides, I had my teaching job. We could have gotten by just fine.”
“But I didn’t want to just get by. I wanted—” He scraped the red kerchief from his head, tossed it aside and raked his fingers through his hair. God, how to say this? “I wanted to give you fine things and a big beautiful house. But more than that, I wanted to be somebody, somebody that your family wouldn’t look down their noses at. Somebody you could be proud to marry in front of the whole damned town instead of having to sneak off and find a justice of the peace. That’s why, even though it took me eight years to do it, I got my college degree. I had a burning desire and a crazy idea that I could be a writer.”
Her brows went up and her eyes grew wide. “A writer? You?”
“Yep.” He rested his chin on his arms again. “I’ve always had a powerful urge to write. In fact, I used to stay up half the night, pounding away on an old typewriter I scrounged up. I fancied myself as the next Ernest Hemingway.”
“This is the first I’ve heard of it. Why in the world didn’t you tell me?”
“Pride, I guess. Nobody knew except Miss Fuller, my English teacher in high school, and Dr. Stephenson, my creative writing teacher at Lamar.”
Her eyes turned sad. “I can’t believe that you didn’t tell me something so important to you.”
“I’m sorry. I should have, but I was waiting until I sold something. All I’d done was collect enough rejection letters to paper the whole courthouse. What kind of a profession was writing for somebody like me—the town bad boy, that old drunk Wilber Durham’s kid? Hell, maybe I was deluding myself in thinking that I could be a writer. I was scared to death that you would laugh at me.”
“Gee, thanks! It’s nice to know that you thought I was so shallow and insensitive. No wonder you jilted me!” She sprang to her feet. “This has gone far enough. Take me home this minute.”
“Not until I’ve had my say. Remember, I have the keys.”
She rolled her eyes upward and made exasperated growling sounds between her clenched teeth. She marched around in quick circles, pulling at her hair, most of which had come loose from its pins and hung in charming dishevelment. He knew that she was furious and getting madder by the minute, but he was desperate. No way in hell was he going to let her get away until he made her understand that the two of them were meant for each other.
“You have to sleep sometime,” she said, smirking.
“Julie, honey, will you listen to me? I’m trying to explain. I didn’t jilt you. I asked you to wait for another year.”
“And after that it would have been another year…and another.”
“I promised you that a year was all I was asking.”
“You promised me that you would write to me, too, but you didn’t.”
“I did write to you. I wrote you several letters.”
“Baloney! I never got them.”
He frowned. “You didn’t send them back to me with the newspaper clipping from your wedding?”
She looked truly stunned. “Certainly not.”
“Then who did?”
“I don’t know.” Julie dropped to the chair, hung her head and was silent for several seconds. “My mother,” she whispered. “It could only have been my mother.” She looked up, a pained expression on her face. “Dear Lord, how could she have done such a thing when she knew—” She clamped her mouth shut and glanced down at her fingers.
“When she knew what?”
Tears trickled down Julie’s cheeks. “When she knew how…how much I loved you, how much I needed you.”
Flint’s heart nearly choked him. “Oh, darlin’.” He pulled her up from her chair and into his arms. “I love you, too. And I need you. I hurt from needing you.” He started to kiss her, but she started hissing and spitting like a wildcat. “Babe, what’s wrong?”
“What’s wrong?” she shrieked. “‘What’s wrong?‘ he asks. You waltz off to become Ernest Hemingway, then waltz back in six years later—on my wedding day, I might add—and expect me to take up where we left off? Well, think again, bub. And don’t call me babe.”
“But I explained, or at least part of it. If you had read my letters—”
“But I didn’t read them.”
He raked his hands through his hair again. “You would have if it hadn’t been for that bitch of a mother of yours.”
“Don’t call my mother names!” she yelled.
“She’s called me worse.”
Julie jacked up her chin and glared lightning bolts. “She has not. She never even says ‘darn.’ But I have. I’ve called you every name in the book for leaving me. Would you like to hear some of them?” She let loose with a string of invectives that turned his ears red.
“Julie! I don’t like to hear you talk like that.”
She cocked one eyebrow. “Well, la-de-dah. Isn’t that just too bad? If my choice of words offends you so badly, you can just take me home. Maybe I can still salvage my wedding.”
“No chance. Cuss until you’re blue in the face, but you’re staying here until I make you understand that there will never be anybody else for you except me.”
“You’re going to have a long wait.” She turned her back and crossed her arms.
“Honey, will you let me explain why I had to leave Travis Creek in such a hurry?”
“I’m not talking. I’m not listening.” She covered her ears and started singing “Dixie” again.
“Dammit, Julie,” he yelled. “I had received a letter the day before that knocked me for a loop. I was offered a full scholarship—”
“Look away…look awaaaaaay Dixieland,” she caterwauled.
Exasperated, he retreated to the couch and sat down. He plunked his booted feet on the pine coffee table, picked up a magazine and began leafing through the pages. He couldn’t have read it if he’d wanted to, not with all that howling and screeching going on. Julie was gorgeous; she had a well-modulated speaking voice that was sexy as hell; and he loved the woman with all his heart and soul—but the bare-faced truth was that she couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket. Never could sing worth a damn. Six years hadn’t changed that, either.
A few minutes later, she ran down. After an interval
