nodded, offered her father a weak smile, then ran from the dining room. She didn’t stop running until she reached her bedroom, upstairs. And all the while her mind whirled with unanswered questions, with doubts and uncertainties and with an un-bidden sympathy for Dylan Bridges.
She tossed herself across her bed and cried as if her heart were breaking. And in all honesty, she wasn’t sure her heart wasn’t breaking. Her safe, secure and sane life had in a few short months begun to unravel, to come apart at the seams. And there didn’t seem to be anything she could do to stop it.
She couldn’t help wondering if she was responsible for the constant bickering between her parents; it seemed they seldom had a kind word for each other. When the police had called her parents the day Dylan had taken her for a ride in a stolen car, her mother had blamed her father.
“It’s all your fault for allowing her to attend public school and to associate with riffraff,” Nadine had said. “If you had listened to me and we’d sent her to private school, she would have known better than to even speak to someone like that Bridges boy.”
“My father sent me to public school and it didn’t hurt me one bit,” Jock had replied. Her mother had simply rolled her eyes. “I felt Maddie needed to learn how to deal with people from all walks of life, just as my father believed that was best for me. Along with great wealth comes great responsibility, you know.”
“You should have acted in a more responsible manner toward your daughter!”
Could she have prevented what happened that day? Maddie wondered. Had her comments about Dylan’s dilapidated truck a few days earlier prompted him to steal the car that Saturday? Had the embarrassment her mother experienced because of her involvement with Dylan’s car theft created a rift between her parents?
Maddie curled into a fetal ball in the middle of her bed and cried until her eyes were red and her nose stuffy. As she uncurled her body, turned over and gazed up at the ceiling, she sniffed several times and wiped her face with her fingertips.
Enough of this feeling sorry for yourself, she thought. Your life hasn’t been drastically changed; not the way Dylan Bridges’ life has been. He’s going away to a correctional facility for underage criminals.
You shouldn’t waste your time feeling sorry for him, she told herself. He doesn’t mean anything to you.
Was she lying to herself? Was she trying to convince herself that Dylan Bridges had no effect on her whatsoever? If only that were true. She hated the very idea that Mission Creek’s rebel without a cause plagued her thoughts day and night. For goodness sakes, she didn’t even like him. But she did feel something for him. Those strange, unnerving feelings scared the heck out of her. During the past six months, whenever she saw him, her heart beat a little faster and a her stomach quivered. And heaven help her, she had daydreamed about him kissing her. Her reaction to Dylan was different from anything she’d ever felt. Even when Jimmy Don Newman French-kissed her, she didn’t get weak in the knees.
Maddie closed her eyes as memories of that Saturday at the country club six weeks ago flashed through her mind like a movie.
Jimmy Don had picked her up in his red Corvette at ten-thirty for their tennis date. They had played doubles with friends, then eaten lunch at the country club’s Yellow Rose Café before Jimmy Don and several of his buddies left the girls alone to go play billiards. Bored with the idle chitchat and endless discussion of next year’s Debutante Ball, Maddie wandered around on her own and finally went outside. Looking back at what happened that day, she wasn’t a hundred percent sure she hadn’t deliberately gone looking for Dylan. But if she had, it had been an unconscious action.
“Hey there, Red.” Dylan surveyed her from head to toe. “Looking good today, honey. But then you always look good. Mighty good.”
She pretended to ignore him.
“Get tired of Jimmy Don?” he asked.
“No, I did not get tired of—Leave me alone. I don’t want to talk to you.”
“What would you like to do to me?”
Maddie gasped, understanding the none-too-subtle innuendo.
Dylan laughed. “How about going for a ride with me? It’s a beautiful sunny fall day.”
“Aren’t you working?” She told herself to go back into the country club, to get as far away from Dylan as possible, but she didn’t heed her own warning.
“I get a lunch break,” he replied.
“Oh. Well, it doesn’t matter because I wouldn’t be caught dead in that old truck of yours.”
“See that silver Porsche over there?” He pointed to the sleek sports car in the private parking area at the club. “How would you like to take a ride with me in that?”
“But that’s not your car.”
“It belongs to a friend. He won’t mind if I borrow it.”
Maddie’s moment of indecision obviously prompted Dylan to assume she wouldn’t reject his request. By the time she managed to form her thoughts into words, he had raced over to the car, jumped in and started the engine.
Oh, no. Now what? She was not going anywhere with him. Not even in a Porsche. Her mother would be appalled if she ever found out that her daughter had even talked to Dylan Bridges, let alone taken a ride with him.
Dylan eased the car around to the front of the club, flung open the passenger door and grinned at Maddie. “Come on, Red. Live dangerously for once in your life. You know you’re dying to come with me.”
“I can’t.”
“Yes, you can.”
“No, Dylan, really, I can’t. I wish you’d stop pestering me. You get me all confused and I don’t like it.”
With that confession, Dylan hopped out of the Porsche, grabbed Maddie’s hands and dragged her toward the car. She skidded across the sidewalk, her efforts doing little to halt Dylan’s determination. She realized that she really did want to go with him, so her protest was only halfhearted. When they reached the car’s passenger side, Maddie jerked her hands back, but Dylan held tight.
“Come on, honey. Don’t chicken out on me now.”
“I—I…Oh, all right. But—”
Dylan swept her off her feet. She cried out in surprise, barely able to believe that he’d lifted her up into his arms. He deposited her in the bucket seat, then bolted around the hood and got behind the wheel. As he sped down the circular drive, the wind whipped Maddie’s long hair into her face.
I’ve lost my mind, she thought. A niggling sense of uncertainty fluttered inside her. What was she doing here, flying down the highway with Dylan in a borrowed car?
About fifteen minutes later, Dylan turned off on a bumpy dirt road. After pulling under a tree several yards from the highway, he killed the motor, then threw his arm across the back of Maddie’s seat as he leaned toward her. Before she realized his intention, he kissed her. A quick brush of his lips over hers. She gasped.
“What’s the matter, honey? You’ve been kissed before, haven’t you?”
