Down Home Dixie. Pamela Browning

He liked Luke Mason’s movies, which generally consisted of snappy dialogue, an attractive cast and a couple of improbable car chases. Plus, a discussion down on the dock might lead to something far more interesting.

      He was delighted when Dixie said, “If you like,” though he cautioned himself against getting his hopes up. They walked together across the grass, past the flower bed he’d cleared earlier and onto the dock. Several loose boards could use nailing down, he noticed in the light of the full moon, and certainly one or two needed to be replaced.

      When they reached the dock’s end, they leaned companionably side by side on the railing where the moon path on the water rippled toward the opposite shore. The air was fragrant with the scent of green growing things and another indefinable fragrance that Kyle suspected was Dixie’s shampoo.

      “Would you really like to hear about my sister and Luke Mason?” she asked.

      “Of course,” he replied easily. Suddenly it seemed as if everything about her interested him.

      With a wistful half smile she said, “Carrie and Luke Mason are a love story that was meant to be. She didn’t figure it out right away, it took her a while. Oh, when she realized—well, she blossomed. Bloomed.”

      Kyle was slightly uncomfortable with this topic because love had certainly never done that for him, but he’d rather not destroy Dixie’s romantic notions. He wasn’t required to comment, however, because she went on talking.

      “Luke Mason was here to film a movie, Dangerous. It’ll be released next summer. It’s about our local stock-car-racing hero, Yancey Goforth, and how he came out of nowhere to become one of the greatest race-car drivers of all time.”

      “I’ve read something about the movie. Doesn’t it have a more serious plot than his earlier films?”

      “Carrie says he may be nominated for an Academy Award, it’s that good.”

      “He’s an underrated actor, in my opinion.”

      “They filmed part of the movie in Smitty’s, my sister’s garage, because it offered the ambience of the era when Yancey was getting started in stock-car racing. In fact, Yancey and my grandfather were friends. A couple of weeks before Carrie signed a contract with the movie company, I tried to talk her into converting the garage into a real estate office so we could go into business together, but she refused. Our dad left her the garage and the home place and me enough money to take a real estate course and put a down payment on my house.”

      “How can your sister keep her business if she’s married to a movie star?”

      “She sold Smitty’s to her mechanic. She retired so she could travel with Luke, and she wants to bear his children.” This was said dramatically, though Dixie was smiling. “Who wouldn’t?” she added wryly.

      “You’ve got a point there,” he agreed.

      “How about you, Kyle? Ever been married? Have any children?”

      He shook his head. “No, unfortunately.” The last angry quarrel with Andrea two weeks ago still rankled; she’d informed him that even if they got married, which according to her was most unlikely, she didn’t want kids.

      Dixie gazed out over the water, and he began to suspect that she didn’t discuss personal things with strangers. Why she’d chosen to so honor him, he couldn’t imagine, but something inside him opened to her.

      “I’ve never been married, either,” she said. “I wish—but you don’t need to hear about that.”

      In his time, Kyle had lent an ear to women who bemoaned the fact that they weren’t getting any younger but hadn’t found the right partner yet and to several others who belatedly wished they’d borne children in marriages that had ended in divorce. Usually he tried to steer them away from the topic. However, with Dixie, he was eager to learn more.

      “Try me,” he said, gazing down at her.

      “I could have married young, to my high-school boyfriend. I sent Milo away, and he never came back.” She seemed pensive but stoic in the manner of someone who had given a great deal of consideration to whether she’d done the right thing.

      “That’s too bad,” he said automatically, but was it?

      “A marriage between us would have been a disaster,” she said.

      “That depends on if you’d been able to grow together,” Kyle suggested mildly.

      Dixie slanted a glance up at him. “Do you consider that important? Learning and growing with a life partner, I mean?”

      “Of course,” he answered, unable and unwilling to stop himself. “Shared experiences are the glue that holds two people together.”

      Dixie leaned closer, which might have been by accident or design, he couldn’t tell which. Or maybe the rough railing was sticking a splinter into her arm, a distinct possibility if a person wasn’t careful.

      She easily resumed the thread of conversation. “Take my cousin Voncille and her husband, Skeeter, for instance. They got married when she was seventeen, and she dropped out of school to work until their baby was born. She’ll tell you herself that when they started out, she had a lot to learn about marriage and children. Even though they don’t have much money, there’s a lot of love in that family. Together Voncille and Skeeter are both better people than they would have been apart.”

      Kyle didn’t often get the chance to state his own opinions about relationships and how they worked. He usually left that to someone else. But if he had been in the habit of saying what he wanted or needed from a woman, he would have said that two people together should be halves of one whole. That each of them should help the other become the best person he or she could be. Dixie’s understanding of this principle not only surprised him, it validated his thinking. He was silent for so long that Dixie studied him out of the corner of her eye for a long moment before speaking.

      “I haven’t said anything to offend you, have I?” she ventured.

      He cleared his throat. “No.”

      “For a while there, I wondered.”

      “I, uh, well. Of course I’m not offended,” he said. Where have you been all my life? he was thinking.

      He liked her way too much, and maybe she was assuming things that she shouldn’t. He wasn’t ready to enmesh himself in another situation where there was no getting out, yet he was thirty-two years old and ready to settle down.

      Dixie was gazing up at him, the moon reflected in her blue, blue eyes, her eyelashes casting feathery shadows across her cheeks. He longed to run his hands under her sweet-smelling hair, press his body close to hers and whisper her name softly in her ear. Don’t do this, he told himself. Stop it. Don’t. Not that any relevant part of him was listening.

      Dixie saw his intent, and she did not back away. Even though he’d known her only a bit longer than twenty-four hours, even though when they’d met, he’d been wearing a Yankee uniform, even though she knew nothing about him other than what he’d seen fit to relate.

      “Oh, Kyle,” she said, exhaling his name on a long breath. Before she could tell him to stop, he did what was possibly the stupidest thing in his life, considering that he quite possibly still had a girlfriend back in Ohio. He swept Dixie Lee Smith into his arms and kissed her.