Fancy Pants (Wynette, Texas #1)(14)

“Evan!”

“No!” An awful hardness probed at her. “Call me— Bullett.”

“Bullett?”

The instant the word left her lips, he thrust inside her. She screamed as she felt herself being consumed by a hot stab of pain, and then, before she could release the second scream, he began to shudder.

“You swine,” she sobbed hysterically, beating at his back and trying to kick at him with her pinioned legs. “You awful, filthy beast.” Using strength she hadn't known she possessed, she finally pushed his weight off her and jumped from the bed, taking the coverlet with her and holding it over her naked, invaded body. “I'll have you arrested,” she cried, tears rushing down her cheeks. “I'll see you punished for this, you bloody pervert.”

“Pervert?” He pulled his dressing gown closed and got up from the bed, his chest still heaving. “I wouldn't be so quick to call me a pervert, Francesca,” he said coolly. “If you weren't such an inept lover, none of this would have happened.”

“Inept!” The accusation startled her so much that she nearly forgot the throbbing pain between her legs and the ugly stickiness leaking onto her thighs. “Inept? You attacked me!”

He knotted the sash and looked at her with hostile eyes. “How amused everyone will be when I tell them the beautiful Francesca Day is frigid.”

“I'm not frigid!”

“Of course you're frigid. I've made love to hundreds of women, and you're the first one who's ever complained.” He walked over to a gilded commode and picked up his pipe. “God, Francesca, if I'd known you were such a dreadful f*ck, I wouldn't have bothered with you.”

Francesca fled into the bathroom, shoved herself into her clothes, and raced from the house. She forced herself to suppress the realization that she had been violated. It had been a dreadful misunderstanding, and she would simply make herself forget about it. After all, she was Francesca Serritella Day. Nothing truly horrible could ever happen to her.





The New

World





Chapter

3



Dallas Fremont Beaudine once told a reporter from Sports Illustrated that the difference between pro golfers and other big-time athletes was mainly that golfers didn't spit. Not unless they were from Texas, anyway, in which case they pretty much did any damn-fool thing they pleased.

Golf Texas-style was one of Dallie Beaudine's favorite topics. Whenever the subject came up, he would shove one hand through his blond hair, stick a wad of Double Bubble in his mouth, and say, “We're talking real Texas golf, you understand... not this fancy PGA shit. Real down and dirty, punch that sucker ball upwind through a cyclone and nail it six inches from the pin on a burned-out public course built right next to the interstate. And it doesn't count unless you do it with a beat-up five iron you dug out of the junkyard when you were a kid and keep around just ‘cause it makes you feel good to look at it.”

By the fall of 1974 Dallie Beaudine had made a name for himself with sportswriters as the athlete who was going to introduce a welcome breath of fresh air into the stuffy world of professional golf. His quotes were colorful, and his extraordinary Texan good looks spruced up their magazine covers. Unfortunately, Dallie had a bad habit of getting himself suspended for cussing out officials or placing side bets with undesirables, so he wasn't always around when things got slow in the press tent. Still, all a reporter had to do to find him was ask the locals for the name of the seediest country-western bar in the county, and nine times out often Dallie would be there along with his caddy, Clarence “Skeet” Cooper, and three or four former prom queens who'd managed to slip away from their husbands for the evening.

“Sonny and Cher's marriage is in trouble for sure,” Skeet Cooper said, studying a copy of People magazine in the light spilling from the open glove compartment. He looked over at Dallie, who was driving with one hand on the steering wheel of his Buick Riviera and the other cradling a Styrofoam coffee cup. “Yessirree,” Skeet went on. “You ask me, little Chastity Bono's gonna have herself a stepdaddy soon.”

“How you figure?” Dallie wasn't really interested, but the flickering of the occasional pair of oncoming headlights and the hypnotic rhythm of I-95's broken white line were putting him to sleep, and they still weren't all that close to the Florida state line. Glancing at the illuminated dial of the clock on the dashboard of the Buick, he saw that it was almost four-thirty. He had three hours before he had to tee off for the qualifying round of the Orange Blossom Open. That would barely give him time to take a shower and pop a couple of pills to wake himself up. He thought of the Bear, who was probably already in Jacksonville, sound asleep in the best suite Mr. Marriott had to offer.

Skeet tossed People in the back seat and picked up a copy of the National Enquirer. “Cher's startin’ to talk about how much she respects Sonny in her interviews—that's how I figure they'll be splittin’ up soon. You know as well as I do, whenever a woman starts talkin’ about ‘respect,’ a man better get hisself a good lawyer.”

Dallie laughed and then yawned.

“Shoot, Dallie,” Skeet protested, as he watched the speedometer inch its way from seventy-five to eighty. “Why don't you crawl in the back and get some sleep? Let me drive for a while.”