Winning Dixie Read online

  A sudden lull in the wind allowed the whap of the bat hitting the ball to sound louder than usual. There was no crack in Little League as there was in Major League baseball. Eight-year-old arms could not swing as hard. But the sound was no less satisfying for its lack of decibels.

  The crowd cheered, and the wind slammed back, as if in response. Or maybe the wind was cheering, too.

  “Way to go, Bobby!” Dixie yelled.

  Now it was Tate’s turn at bat. Wade felt a smile coming on as the kid started his usual antics. He held the bat above his head in both hands and faced the stands, grinning like the Cheshire cat. After he’d gotten a few hoots and hollers, he lowered the bat and took a bow.

  Next to Wade, he heard Dixie groan.

  “Ah, come on, Mom,” he said. Forgetting they hadn’t been particularly close for the past couple of days, he nudged her arm with his. “He’s a kid, and he’s adorable.”

  “And if you don’t believe it,” she offered, “just ask him. He’ll tell you exactly how adorable he is.”

  Pops braced his hands on his knees and leaned forward. “Smart kid, I’d say. He knows it’s a poor dog that won’t wag its own tail.”

  “I believe,” Dixie said, “he’s about to do just that.”

  On the other side of the tall, chain link backstop, Tate stepped up to the plate. He widened his stance and bent forward. He held the bat beside his ear and poked his elbows out. He turned his head to face the pitcher.

  Wade smiled in anticipation of what he knew would come next.

  “Here it comes,” Dixie murmured.

  Even the wind hesitated, as if waiting.

  The pièce de résistance: he wiggled his butt.

  “That’s my boy,” Pops crowed.

  “This,” Dixie muttered, “from a kid who can’t keep a Hula-Hoop up.”

  Tate waited, and when the pitch didn’t come, he wiggled his butt again.

  From somewhere in or around the stands, a young girl’s voice called out, “Go, baby, go!”

  Wade nearly swallowed his tongue.

  Pops chortled and slapped his knee.

  Dixie came to attention. “Baby?” she kept her voice to a low growl. “Some little eight-year-old hussy is calling my baby ‘baby’? He’s too young to be some girl’s baby.”

  “Now, now, Mom.” Wade forgot they weren’t touching each other. He smiled and patted her just above her knee. “It’s just a saying.”

  “A saying?” She scanned the crowd through slitted eyes.

  “Yeah.” To be safe, he took his hand from her thigh. “You know, like, ‘Atta boy,’ or ‘Way to go.’ That sort of thing.”

  “Yeah, right.” She shot him a look that said, Get real. “For wiggling his butt?”

  “If you wiggled your butt in my direction, I’d probably get excited and yell myself.”

  She turned slowly to face him and arched her brow. Her eyes sparkled with a mixture of mirth and challenge. “Oh, really?”

  He would meet that challenge. He directed his gaze to her son at home plate and smiled. “Absolutely.”

  The pitcher, in this case the coach, finally pitched. Tate swung and missed.

  Overhead, thunder rumbled.

  Wade looked up, surprised to see dark, bulging clouds hanging low in the sky. The sun wouldn’t set for more than an hour, yet it looked much later.

  He had experienced as many thunderstorms as the next person, but he’d managed to live his life without a tornado. Texas tended to have a lot of tornados, didn’t they?

  He glanced at the people in the stands, and no one seemed to be concerned with anything but whether or not Tate was going to hit the next pitch.

  If no one else cared about the weather, neither would he. He looked back down at the field in time to see Tate swing and miss a second time.

  “That’s all right, Tate!” Dixie yelled.

  “Take your time,” Pops hollered. “Pick your pitch!”

  The boy took his great-grandfather’s advice and let the next pitch, which was so far outside it should have been a crime, go by. The next one, he fouled. The fourth, however, he connected with what might have been a line drive, had it been hit with more force, and had it gone straight. As it was, the ball rolled past the pitcher then curved out toward third, but stopped about halfway there.

  Meanwhile Tate didn’t wait around to see where his ball went. He ran to first. Then, because out in midfield no one could decide who should get the ball still on the ground, he ran to second.

  By then the third baseman decided to get the ball, so Tate stood pat on second.

  Wade felt the tension in his muscles ease and nearly laughed out loud. If his colleagues in New York, the ones who knew the old Wade, pretransplant, preheart trouble, could see him getting worked up over a Little League game, they wouldn’t even recognize him.

  He barely recognized himself, but he didn’t care. He sat under a stormy Texas sky with a beautiful, sexy woman on one side, a wise elderly man on the other and a field full of energetic children to entertain them. What more could a man ask for?

  Chapter Six

  In the top half of the fourth inning the sky opened up. The only warning was a big fat drop of rain here and there. Then nothing. Then, whoosh! Even if anyone had an umbrella with them in the stands or out on the field, there was no time to get one up to prevent a serious soaking. This was no gentle shower, but a torrent of hard, cold bullets of water hurtling down with enough force to hurt.

  The bleachers erupted in curses and shouts as spectators scrambled down the risers to race for the shelter of their vehicles. Wade followed Dixie and Pops to the end of their bench, then they started down the stairs. He saw it happen as if in slow motion and was helpless to prevent it.

  Lightning shot a jagged spear from cloud to ground no more than fifty yards away. The explosive sound was deafening. The smell of sulfur stung the eyes and nostrils.

  In reaction, Dixie jerked and slipped on the rain-slicked stairs. To regain her balance she waved her arms wildly, but in the process she accidentally hit Pops just hard enough to throw him off balance.

  Pops’s foot slipped down between the open steps. He cried out and started to fall.

  Wade grabbed the back of the man’s plaid shirt and pulled him back. The two of them ended up seated on the steps. Pops cried out again.

  “You okay?” Wade had to raise his voice to be heard over the pounding rain.

  “My ankle,” he managed breathlessly.

  Wade’s gut tightened. “Is it broken?” God, he hoped not.

  “I can still move my toes, but the ankle hurts like blazes.”

  “Pops?” Dixie came back for him. “What happened?”

  “Slipped.” Pops’s mouth was ringed with a thin line of white. He was definitely in pain.

  Wade tried to wipe water from his face so he could see better. “It’s his ankle.”

  “Is it bad?” she asked. “Can you walk?”

  “Of course I can,” Pops said irritably. “No need to fuss.”

  “Don’t tell me not to fuss.” Dixie braced her shoulder beneath the man’s right arm while Wade pushed Pops up from behind. “I’m a woman. Women fuss. It’s genetic.”

  They got Pops upright, but his injured ankle wouldn’t bear any weight. Wade took as much of the man’s weight as Pops would allow. They hobbled down the last few stairs to level ground.

  “What about the boys?” Pops worried.

  “It’s just a little rain,” Dixie answered. “They won’t melt.” So she said, but her expression said she was worried, about them, about Pops.

  “Is there a problem, folks?” Two men in EMT shirts approached holding an umbrella and carrying what looked like a red tackle box.

  “Just a sprained ankle,” Pops groused. “Don’t know why everybody’s making such a fuss.”

  One man squatted down and carefully pulled up Pops’s pant leg. The inside of the ankle was bloody.

  “Why don’t you come on over to the truck and let
us have a look at it?”

  “Thank you,” Dixie responded before Pops could deny he needed help.

  The two EMTs took over and practically carried Pops to the back of their ambulance. They got him out of the rain and checked out his ankle.

  “Why don’t I go round up the boys,” Wade offered.

  “Oh, would you?” The look of gratitude on Dixie’s face made him want to kiss her. But he refrained.

  Wade found the boys huddled beneath the bleachers with several other kids and adults. The bleachers offered some protection, but water still streamed down between the steps. Everyone there was as soaked as he was.

  “Golly, Wade, you’re all wet.” Tate, water running down his face, grinned.

  “I am? How did that happen?”

  “Where’s Mom and Pops?” Ben asked.

  “Pops hurt his ankle. Your mom went with him to have the EMTs look at it.”

  Tate scrunched up his face in worry. “Is it bad?”

  “Probably not,” Wade offered. “Your mom just wanted to be sure. I told her I’d come get you guys.”

  “You want us to go back out in that?” Ben protested.

  “Yeah.” Tate snorted. “Like it’s so dry under here, dip weed.”

  A loud crack had everyone flinching.

  “Hail,” said another man under the stands with them.

  Another icy ball shot down from the clouds and bounced on the hood of a nearby car. Then another and another, until the din from the hail drowned out all talk, all thought. It pelted, it roared. It hammered into the bleachers just over their heads and shot through the openings at each bench seat and step. Wade pulled Ben and Tate close and leaned over them, protecting them with his body from the hailstones that came through the open spaces above them. And some did get through; he would have a bruise or two on his back to prove it.

  The pounding went on for several minutes, then stopped as if someone had flipped a switch. Even the rain let up, nothing more than a heavy drizzle now.

  Wade straightened and heaved a sigh of relief, not surprised to realize he was breathing hard. If his hands weren’t already wet, he was sure they would be sweating.

  “Come on, guys, lets go find your mom and Pops.”

  They found them inside the ambulance, out of the rain. They’d left the back doors open, so Wade and the boys leaned in to get their heads out of the rain.

  One paramedic was fiddling with something inside a built-in drawer while the other squatted and worked over Pops’s bared ankle. He and Pops and Dixie spoke together in low, indistinguishable tones.

  “Mom?” Ben asked tentatively.

  “There you two are. Thank you, Wade.”

  “No problem,” Wade answered.

  The tech poked again on Pops’s ankle. Pops hissed in pain.

  “Is Pops okay?” Tate asked, sounding much younger than his eight years.

  “I will be,” Pops said irritably, “soon as everybody quits poking and fussing.”

  “I don’t know, Mr. McCormick,” the tech said. “I know you can still wiggle your toes, but that doesn’t mean you didn’t break something, or at least crack a bone or two. It’s already starting to swell. We’ll run you up to the hospital and get an X-ray to be sure.”

  “Ah, hell, I don’t need no—”

  Dixie cut Pops off. “Wade can drive the boys home to get dry clothes. I’ll ride with you, and they can meet us at the hospital with dry clothes for us.”

  “Sounds like a good plan,” Wade added. “Come on, boys, lets go get dry.” He looked over at Dixie. “Keys?”

  “You sure you don’t mind? I should have asked before I volunteered you for this.”

  “Dixie, come on. This is me you’re talking to. If you need something, you don’t have to ask.”

  She smiled and pressed her keys into his hand. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome. I guess the boys know where to find dry clothes for you and Pops?”

  “In our bedrooms. Just bring me some dry jeans, shirt, socks.” She looked down at her soaked sneakers. “And shoes.”

  “We’ll take care of it,” he promised. “Come on, boys, lets go.”

  Wade was tempted to forgo dry clothes for himself. He wanted to take care of the boys and get dry clothes to Dixie and Pops as soon as possible, and going by his place would slow things down. But he knew that deliberately staying chilled, then walking into a hospital, notoriously brimming with enough germs, viruses and bacteria to choke a bull elephant, was nothing short of foolish for a transplant patient with little to no immune system.

  He decided to swing by his place first and grab clothes to change into later. That would only keep everyone else waiting, including driving time, three minutes, max. Small towns definitely had their advantages.

  He pulled up next to his front door and killed the engine. “Stay here, boys, I’ll be right back. I’m going to run inside and get dry clothes.”

  “Can we come?” Tate asked. “We wanna see where you live.”

  “Okay, but we have to hurry. Your mom and Pops are waiting for us.”

  How odd, Wade thought a moment later as he unlocked his door and held it open, that he would be nervous over what Ben and Tate thought of his home. Or, what they thought was his home.

  And how fitting that they were his first visitors.

  Both boys made for the couch, where they plopped down, soaking-wet butts and all.

  “Does anybody live here with you?” Ben wondered.

  “No. Just me.” He went directly to the dresser in his bedroom and scooped out shorts and socks, then, from the closet, jeans and a shirt and a dry pair of shoes. In the bathroom he grabbed a towel.

  “Cool, man, you’ve got your own TV.” Tate grabbed the remote and started pushing buttons.

  The television came on at a blare.

  “No time,” Wade turned the set off. “We have to go.”

  He wouldn’t have been surprised if they had dragged their feet, or darted off to the kitchen or bedroom or bathroom, anything to explore and delay. They were, after all, boys.

  But they followed him out and climbed up into the SUV with no argument, squishing in their wet sneakers.

  The rain had stopped. The sun streaked golden and rose from the western horizon. It looked odd, with the sky overhead still dark and gray.

  The next stop was the McCormick residence, maybe four minutes away by car. He would have used one of the keys Dixie had given him, but the boys bolted ahead of him to the back door and dashed inside. The door had been unlocked.

  He shook his head. He didn’t care how small the town was. He doubted he would ever be able to deliberately leave the door to his home unlocked.

  He followed the boys inside, pleased to note that they weren’t dripping copious amounts of water on the floor. “Point me to your mom’s room. I’ll get her dry clothes while you two change.”

  “This way.” Tate tugged his arm and led him through the kitchen to the hall. “That’s Mom’s room down there.” He pointed to the right.

  “Okay. You two change into dry clothes.” Remembering his own boyhood, and a young boy’s basic inclinations, he added, “That means dry underwear, too.”

  A round of back-and-forth snickering and shoving was their response.

  Wade stepped into Dixie’s bedroom. He found the light switch on the wall next to the door and flipped it. Soft light flooded the room, gleaming along oak furniture, making the peach-colored coverlet and drapes glow with warmth. A woman’s room, but one in which a man would not feel uncomfortable.

  However, entering a woman’s bedroom without her there to invite him left him feeling like a cross between a peeping Tom and a burglar. It didn’t matter that she’d asked him to come there. He still felt odd. The sooner he could leave, the better.

  But when he opened a dresser drawer and saw a neat stack of filmy, lace-edged bikini panties in shades from pale barely blue to touch-me-and-burn red, he suddenly found it hard to breathe, let alone move. He swallowed.
Hard. And did his best not to visualize what Dixie might look like in a pair of these teasers and nothing else.

  With a deep breath, he closed his eyes, grabbed a pair and shut the drawer.

  Oh, hell. She would need a dry bra, too.

  He opened another drawer and there they were, lacy bras to match the panties.

  He looked at the scrap of fabric in his hand. Red. Okay. One red bra, to match. If his hand wasn’t quite steady when he reached for it, well, that was to be expected, wasn’t it? It had been a long time since he’d been anywhere near a woman’s underwear. So to speak.

  And this woman, in particular, was waiting, cold and wet and worried about Pops, for Wade to show up with dry clothes for her. “Get it in gear, mister,” he muttered to himself.

  In the closet he found jeans, a shirt and shoes.

  Did she need socks?

  Back to the dresser. Socks were in the bottom drawer on the right. He grabbed a pair.

  Makeup. Should he take her makeup to her?

  If he did, would she think that he thought she needed it?

  If he didn’t take her makeup, and she wanted it, would she think he was an unthinking jerk?

  The underwear was one thing. She had to have dry underwear. But she was going to know he was in her underwear drawers. What was she going to think of that?

  How was a man supposed to know what to do when it came to women and underwear and makeup?

  Forget the makeup, he decided. He found the linen closet in the hall and grabbed a couple of towels for her and Pops.

  “Boys? How are you doing?”

  “We’re ready.” They bounded out of their room and met him in the hall.

  “All right. Let’s turn out the lights.” He reached into Dixie’s bedroom and flipped the switch off, plunging the room into deep shadows. The sun had set. There was no twilight this far south. Once the sun set, it got dark quickly.

  He wrapped Dixie’s clothes in one of the towels and placed the bundle in the SUV. The evening air smelled of fresh rain.

  “Now we need clothes for Pops.”

  “Come on.” This time Ben took his arm. “We’ll show you. Pops lives back here.”