Sleepless Nights:The Donovans of the Delta 2(25)

He smiled. “Brava, Amanda. You’re a hell of a lady.”

Clearing the table, he stored the leftovers in the refrigerator, then searched the cabinets until he’d found a pencil and notepaper. His handwriting was as bold as he was. “This time, Amanda, you’ll choose me.”

He propped the note on the table, picked up his picnic basket, and headed through the house. The next day he would begin the romance of the century. Tonight he needed to make plans.

o0o

Upstairs, Amanda heard the whistling. She stopped her restless pacing to listen. It didn’t surprise her that the man who’d received a crushing blow at her hands should be whistling. That was Tanner, through and through. Arrogant to a fault, self-confident to the core. In spite of her turmoil, she smiled. Any other man would be down there licking his wounds, and Tanner Donovan was whistling. It wasn’t a funeral dirge, either. The song was Get Me to the Church on Time. She knew the lyrics well, for she’d played the role of Eliza Doolittle her freshman year at the University of Southern Mississippi. Weekends, when she was visiting him in Alabama. Tanner had cued her. Quick study that he was, he’d learned all the songs also.

“What is that rake up to now?” She went to her bedroom door, half expecting him to come storming up the stairs. Instead she heard the front door slam.

“So, I’ve sent him home in defeat.” But she knew, even as she said the words, that it wasn’t true. Tanner was never defeated and rarely retreated. She was glad. In spite of the blood she’d drawn, she had no desire to hurt him. She was merely defending herself, covering her vulnerability with bravado.

She hurried to her bedroom window and drew back the curtain. Tanner was getting into his car. She supposed it was instinct that made him know he was being watched. He looked up. The smile he gave her had enough voltage to light every Christmas tree in Greenville. She almost forgot their encounter in the kitchen.

He stood in the moonlight, bold and impossibly handsome, a real hero, and not just according to the papers. He was a man who had succeeded at everything he’d attempted, a generous man who had used his wealth and fame to endow libraries and build orphanages and establish scholarships. And a dangerously charming man who thumbed his nose at failure and whistled in the face of defeat.

She pressed her forehead against the windowpane. “Oh, Lord, Tanner. I won’t fall in love with you again.”

It was almost as if he had heard her.

“Amanda!” he called.

Every fiber of common sense she possessed warned her to ignore him. Instead she opened the window.

“Go away, Tanner. It’s over between us.”

“It will never be over between us. Remember that, Amanda.” He blew her a kiss, climbed into his flashy car, and drove off.

Amanda made herself turn away from the window and not watch his car disappear down the street. She would have an ordinary evening, she vowed. She’d address Christmas cards and call Aunt Emma, and maybe even bake a cake.

She went to the small cherry-wood desk in her bedroom and took out her cards. With great determination she sat down and picked up her pen. An enormous restlessness continued to stir in her. Maybe she should bake the cake first.

She started toward the kitchen, then remembered her paltry supply of staples. There was not enough flour to make a cupcake, let alone a whole cake, and she had less than a quart of milk and no sugar.

She prowled and paced through her house half a dozen times, then suddenly remembered that the drive-in theater ran all-night movies on Mondays. Even during the winter.

Amanda loved the movies, and she wasn’t discriminating—horror, fantasy, drama, classics, musicals—it didn’t matter what was showing. She enjoyed immersing herself in the make-believe world of the movies.

She got her coat from the hall closet and was headed out the door when the phone rang. She picked it up.

“Hello, darling. It’s your Aunt Barbara.”

Amanda sighed. The only thing more longwinded than Aunt Barbara was a freight train full of hot-air balloons.

“Hello, Aunt Barbara. How are you?”

Aunt Barbara began to tell her, in minute detail, exactly how she was. Amanda resigned herself to missing the first two shows at the drive-in.

o0o

Tanner whistled all the way home. He was still whistling when he bounded up the steps to his house.

“Tanner’s home,” he heard his dad say. “Nobody bangs the front door the way he does.”

He walked down the hall and stuck his head around the door. His parents were sitting in front of the fire. “Hi, Mom, Pop. Is that popcorn I smell?”

Matthew Donovan laughed. “What did I tell you, Anna? That boy can smell popcorn a mile away. I might as well make another popper full.”