The Trouble With Tomboys(27)

“Why, just a couple years ago, B.J. and I…”

In the hallway, B.J. froze and felt the blood drain from her head. What the hell? Why was he mentioning her name in the middle of his sexual exploits? If he splurged a single detail about their one time together, she was going to murder him slowly and painfully.

Straining to hear what he was going to blab

about her, she jumped when he hollered, “Hey, B.J.!”

She closed her eyes and then covered them for good measure.

“Where’d she go?” she heard Ralphie say. “I

coulda swore she came in here the same time I did.”

B.J. shook her head sadly. Yep, she was going to kill him.

“I think she headed toward the john a few

minutes ago,” Sal answered.

B.J. sank further into the shadows of the hall.

But it didn’t help, because suddenly there was Ralphie poking his big, dumb head around the corner.

“Hey, B.J.,” he hollered.

“What?” she snapped and gritted her teeth as she moved out of the hallway, brushing past him and storming back to her booth where, thank God, her breakfast still sat waiting.

75







Grady was at the bar with a coffee cup steaming in front of him. He turned slightly and regarded her with a shuttered gaze. She paused as their eyes met.

She wondered what he was thinking of her,

realizing she’d been with Ralphie. As shame filled her, she turned away and slid into her seat. She commenced to ignore him and tried to ignore Ralphie too, but the idiotic man just kept on.

He fell into the seat across from hers. “You remember when we went skinny dipping that one night, right?”

B.J. had just picked up her fork, but at his words she stopped in her tracks, the utensil paused halfway between her mouth and plate.

“What the hell,” she said.

“Now tell me that wasn’t fun and adventurous, huh?” he encouraged with a goofy grin.

She could only gape in disbelief.

“Ralphie,” she sputtered. “You...you stupid oaf!

Nan’s going to skin you alive if you go announcing to everyone in the goddamn diner you went skinny dipping with someone else.”

Ralphie blinked in confusion. “But...but that happened way before me and her got together. Hell, it was years ago.”

“So why did you even—”

She broke off, unable to believe the dumbass.

How dare he announce to the entire place she’d had a weak moment and gotten kinky with him once?

And with Grady present too. Not that she cared what Grady thought, but damn it, she did care. She didn’t want him to think she was... Lord, she didn’t care. Let him think what he wanted. It didn’t matter.

“Jesus, Ralphie,” she snapped and threw down her fork. After getting to her feet, she dug into her wallet and tossed down a load of bills. “Don’t go bragging about someone else and expect Nan to be 76



The Trouble with Tomboys



fine with that. I don’t care if it was five years ago or five days ago.”

Ralphie looked worried now. “Y-you really think she’ll be upset?” He bumbled to his feet as well, crowding her with an anxious look.

B.J. lifted an eyebrow and set her hands on her hips. “Did you take lessons to be a moron, or does it just come naturally?”

She pushed by him and stormed angrily from

the diner.



****

It only took Ralphie an hour to show up at the

hangar. B.J. had her Cessna sitting out in the sun where she had a side hood lifted to expose the engine. After almost crashing, she’d been going through and checking everything. After replacing the torn gas line, she’d installed a few other items needing replaced. Stuff she’d been thinking about fixing someday was suddenly top priority, and B.J.

was giving her skywagon the spit and polish

overhaul.

Ralphie pulled his truck alongside her plane, his forearm hanging out the opened window and his big, dopey face drooped in mute apology. In the bed of his truck were the four tires she’d won in the poker game that suddenly felt like years ago.

“B.J.,” he said solemnly as he cut the engine and exited the truck.

She slipped a grease rag from her back pocket and wiped off her hands as she followed him to his tailgate. Once he had it opened, he turned to her and tightened his face with regret.

“I’m real sorry,” he said, kicking at a pebble on the ground. “’Bout what I did at the café. I shouldn’t of—” “Hell, it’s no big deal,” she grumbled, giving up her dirty hands for hopeless and stuffing the rag back into her pocket. “I was just in a mood. You 77







didn’t do anything wrong.”

Ralphie didn’t answer. He merely lifted his face, squinted at her since the sun was in his eyes and said, “Well, I’m sorry anyhow. I had no call to start that kind of tale about us. True or not.”