Fancy Pants (Wynette, Texas #1)(161)

He didn't even know what he'd done until he heard Holly Grace's cheer and his vision cleared enough to see the ball fly out two hundred ninety-five yards and roll to a stop well beyond Seve's drive. It was a great shot, and Skeet slapped him jubilantly on the back. Seve and Jack nodded in polite acknowledgment. Dallie turned toward the gallery and nearly choked at what he saw. Francesca had her snooty little nose tilted up in the air, as if she were ready to expire from boredom, as if she were saying in that exaggerated way of hers, “Is that the absolute best you can do?”

“Get rid of her,” Dallie snarled under his breath at Skeet.

Skeet was wiping the driver with a towel and didn't seem to hear. Dallie marched over to the ropes, his voice full of venom but pitched low enough so that he couldn't be overheard by anyone except Holly Grace. “I want you to get off this course right now,” he told Francesca. “What the hell do you think you're doing here?”

Once again she gave him that lofty, superior smile. “I'm just reminding you what the stakes are, darling.”

“You're crazy!” he exploded. “In case you're too ignorant to have figured it out, I'm in a three-way tie for second place in one of the biggest tournaments of the year, and I don't need this kind of distraction.”

Francesca straightened, leaned forward, and whispered in his ear, “Second place isn't good enough.”

Afterward Dallie figured that no jury in the world would have convicted him if he'd strangled the life out of her right there on the spot, but his playing partners were moving off the tee, he had another shot coming up, and he couldn't spare the time.

For the next nine holes he made that ball beg for mercy, ordered it to follow his wishes, punished it with every ounce of his strength and every morsel of his determination. He willed his putts into the cup on one sure stroke. One stroke—not two, not three! Each shot was more awesome than the last, and every time he turned to the gallery, he saw Holly Grace talking furiously to Francesca, translating the magic of what he was doing, telling Miss Fancy Pants that she was seeing golf history being made. But no matter what he did, no matter how astounding his shot, how breathtaking his putts, how heroically he was playing—every goddamn time he looked at her, Francesca seemed to be saying, “Is that the best you can do?”

He was so caught up in his anger, so immersed in her scorn, that he couldn't quite comprehend the consequences of the rapidly changing leader board. Oh, he understood what it said, all right. He saw the numbers. He knew that the tournament leaders playing behind him had fallen back; he knew Seve had dropped off. He could read the numbers, all right, but it wasn't until he'd birdied the fourteenth hole that he could actually comprehend in his gut the fact that he had pulled ahead, that his angry, vicious attack on the course had put him at two under par for the tournament. With four holes left to play, he was tied for first place in the United States Classic.

Tied with Jack Nicklaus.

Dallie shook his head, trying to clear it as he walked toward the fifteenth tee. How could this have happened to him? How had it happened that Dallas Beaudine from Wynette, Texas, was going one-on-one with Jack Nicklaus? He couldn't think about it. If he thought about it, the Bear would start talking to him in his head.

You're going to fail, Beaudine. You're going to prove everything Jaycee used to say about you. Everything I've been saying for years. You're not man enough to pull this off. Not against me.

He turned back toward the gallery and saw that she was watching him. As he glared at her, she placed one sandaled foot in front of the other and bent her knee slightly so that ridiculous little polka-dot flounce at the bottom of her dress rode up higher on her legs. She pressed her shoulders back, making the soft cotton jersey cling to her breasts, outlining them in memorable detail. Here's your trophy, that little body told him quite plainly. Don't forget what you're playing for.

He slammed the ball down the fifteenth fairway, promising himself that when this was all over he would never again let himself near a woman with a bitch's heart. As soon as the tournament was finished, he was going to teach Francesca Day the lesson of her life by marrying the first sweet-voiced country girl who came along.

He scrambled for par on the fifteenth and the sixteenth holes. So did Nicklaus. Jack's son was with him the whole way, handing him clubs, helping read the greens. Dallie's own son stood by the ropes wearing a Born-to-Raise-Hell T-shirt and a look of furious determination on his face. Dallie's heart swelled every time he looked at him. Damn, he was a feisty little kid.

The seventeenth hole was short and nasty. Jack talked a little bit to the crowd as he walked toward the green. He had cut his teeth on pressure shots, and there was nothing he loved more than a tight spot. Dallie had sweat through his golf shirt and through two gloves. He was famous for joking with the crowd, but now he maintained an ominous silence. Nicklaus was playing some of the best golf of his life, chomping up the fairways, burning up the greens. Forty-seven was too old to play like that, but somebody had forgotten to tell Jack. And now only Dallie Beaudine stood between the greatest player in the history of the sport and one more title.

Somehow Dallie pulled off another par, but Jack did, too. They were still tied going into the final hole.

Cameramen balancing portable video units on their shoulders followed every movement as the two players headed for the eighteenth tee. The network announcers heaped one superlative after another on them while word of the blood contest taking place on the Old Testament spread throughout the world of sports, sending dials flicking and the network's Sunday afternoon ratings soaring into the stratosphere. The crowd around the players had grown to the thousands, their excitement feverish because they knew that whatever happened, they couldn't lose. This crowd had been charmed by Dallie when he was still a rookie, and they had been waiting for years for him to win a major title. But the thought of being on the spot when Jack won again was irresistible, too. It was the 1986 Masters all over again, with Jack charging like a bull toward the finish, as unstoppable as the force of nature.