Lady Be Good (Wynette, Texas #2)(111)

Kenny barely heard. He was too worried about the fact that Emma wasn’t kissing him back.





Chapter 24

As Kenny saw the stricken expression on her face, he realized he was going to have to do some fast taking, but he couldn’t do it here, not with the Beaudine family right on his heels. They were too unpredictable, and he had no idea who they’d side with. Besides, the self-satisfied expression on Francesca’s face was distracting him. It made him wonder if she was quite as bad with that putter as she’d seemed to be.

“We’re getting out of here.” He began half pulling, half dragging Emma toward the clubhouse, gripped by a sense of urgency he didn’t even try to understand. Normally, he would have gone to the locker room to shower and change. But not today. Today she was going to have to take him sweat and all because he wasn’t letting her out of his sight, not until she understood that he loved her, and that they were married for now and forever. Not until she figured out they had a life together that included filling up their ranch house with a whole passel of kids.

The thought of Emma pregnant with his babies was so sweet his damn eyes started filling up with tears. He had to get her out of here right now before he embarrassed himself in front of everybody. Except . . . he’d left his car keys in his locker.

“Listen here, Emma. You stand right there—right by those golf carts, while I get my keys. Don’t you move! You understand me?”

She regarded him stonily. “I haven’t understood you since the day we met.”

It wasn’t the most encouraging response, but he risked brushing another kiss over those stiff lips. “Yes, you have, sweetheart. You understand me better than anybody I’ve ever known.” He began backing toward the door. “Please, just stay right there.”

He whipped around, rushed into the pro shop without bothering to knock the dirt off his shoes, and raced for the locker room, moving faster than anybody at Windmill Creek, or the entire town of Wynette for that matter, had ever seen him move.

His hands were shaking, and he had trouble with the lock on his locker, but even so he didn’t leave her alone more than two minutes. By the time he got back, however, she’d disappeared.

There was only one explanation. The Beaudines had her. Those rotten, perverse Beaudines! The same Beaudines who were coming toward the clubhouse right now from the eighteenth green, with Ted driving the cart, and Dallie and Francesca strolling behind, their arms around each other.

“What did you do with her!” he shouted, even as he realized that she wasn’t with them, so they couldn’t have done anything with her.

Dallie looked amused, Francesca distressed. “Oh, Kenny, you can’t have lost her already.”

He spun around and ran toward the parking lot. Emma didn’t have a car, and she was in a snit, so she’d decided to walk, that was all. She’d be right out there on the highway, marching along the white line like a drill sergeant, probably picking up litter on the way and God help anybody who spit out the window of his pickup.

He raced down a row of cars toward the entrance, his worry mounting because she was too mad at him to pay one bit of attention where she was going. And he didn’t even know why she was mad. Except he did know. He’d been so slippery with her right from the beginning that she didn’t trust his feelings for her.

He stopped running when he reached the entrance to the parking lot and looked up and down the highway, but he didn’t see anything except an old blue Dodge heading in one direction and a Park Avenue heading the other. Maybe he was wrong, maybe she hadn’t come this direction at all. Maybe she’d gone inside the clubhouse and headed for the Wagon Wheel Room to get something cold to drink.

He spun on his heel and ran back across the parking lot, past the Beaudines, and into the club house. But she wasn’t in the Wagon Wheel Room. She wasn’t anywhere.

Emma leaned against the fence and stared at Torie’s emus pecking away at the ground. She was no longer furious; she was simply numb. Once again, Kenny had used her emotions against her. But this would be the last time.

She had no idea what had motivated his display on the eighteenth green; she only knew that she had once again been manipulated. Somehow Kenny had decided to use her as a pawn in his get-even scheme against Dallie Beaudine. Well, she’d finally had enough. She couldn’t bear having her emotions spun about in the whirlwind that made up Kenny Traveler’s life any longer.

What an idiot she’d been! Like every other woman in history who’d fallen in love with the wrong man, she’d imagined that she could change him, but that wasn’t going to happen. And today, with his false declaration of love, he’d finally and forever broken her heart.

One of the larger emus lifted his head to study her. Nothing had ever been more welcome to her than the sight of Shelby and Torie rounding the corner of the clubhouse just as Kenny had disappeared inside. They’d taken one look at her face, thrust her into Torie’s BMW, and brought her here.

On the way, they’d picked and prodded at her in their typically American way, demanding that she give up her secrets and tell them everything. She’d evaded them, but when they’d gotten to the Traveler house, they’d started questioning her all over again.

She knew their probing was well-intentioned. In their minds, they couldn’t help her if they didn’t know what was wrong, but she couldn’t tell them. The truth made her seem too pitiful—the dotty, dear thing who’d unwisely fallen in love with a gorgeous, violet-eyed rogue who couldn’t commit.