Quiet Walks the Tiger - By Heather Graham Page 0,17
becoming oppressive. The grass at the park had never seemed greener, the day more lustrously blue, the air more exhilarating.
“Shade or sun?” Wes asked after the Lincoln was parked. He handed Sloan a small cooler from the trunk as he grabbed the heftier food basket himself along with a wide blanket.
“Shade, I think,” Sloan chose. “I’m out so little that I have to be careful not to burn.”
Wes smiled noncommittally and led the way to a draping sycamore that provided a broad and gentle shelter. “Okay?”
“Perfect.”
Sloan was overwhelmed by that strange shyness again as Wes competently spread out the blanket and adjusted the basket and cooler. Absurd sensation! she told herself with an inward shake. Some vamp I’m shaping up to be!
Determined not to behave like a gauche, tongue-tied girl, she sat leisurely on the blanket and started the conversation rolling herself. “You were right about your housekeeper. She’s wonderful. Where did you find her?”
“I didn’t.” Wes grinned, half reclining beside her and opening the cooler to pull out a pair of semifrosted glasses and a bottle of Chablis. “Grab the glasses, will you? As to Florence”—he poured wine for them each—“she raised me. Her husband was killed in World War II, and she determined never to marry again, but she was crazy about kids, so she went to work for my mother. When my folks decided to move to Arizona, they sent Florence after me. They were worried—a little belatedly, since I was thirty at the time—but they thought a bachelor football player might not take care of himself properly.”
“Too much of a wild life, eh?” Sloan chuckled, sipping her wine and feeling relaxation steal over her.
“Not too wild,” Wes replied. “Thirty in sports is middle-aged. As a dancer you must know that there’s only so much you can do to a body and expect it to keep functioning properly.”
“You must have quit shortly after,” Sloan observed. She hesitated slightly, hoping she wasn’t traveling into troubled waters. “Cassie mentioned you had a knee injury. Was it serious?”
Wes shrugged. “Ligaments,” he replied casually. “I could have just sat out a season, but I’d had enough. I played for ten years. I wanted to get into something else while I was still young enough to give it everything that I had. Dave—my brother—had started with the horses on a small scale a few years before and so”—he lifted his shoulders and dropped them, turning lazy eyes to her as he took a sip of wine—“there’s the whole story.”
Sloan chuckled. “By what I hear from Cassie—she’s one of your staunchest fans, you know—there’s a lot more to the story than that.”
He shrugged again and plunged into the picnic basket. “Nope. That’s about it. A lot of monotony in between a few broken bones and sprained ankles.”
“But you never married.” The words were out before Sloan realized what she was saying. Prying a little was one thing—pushing too fast could get her into hot water.
“No, I never married.” His glance was cool and fathomless. “What would you like to start with? We have all kinds of salads, fried chicken, fried shrimp and—I am good at this if I do say so myself—I have a honey dip for the chicken and a choice of tartar or cocktail sauce for the shrimp.”
“I think I’ll start with everything,” Sloan murmured, a little uneasy since she had so openly pried and thinking it might be to her benefit to keep her mouth busy for a while with food. “I just realized I’m ravenous, and...you are very good at this!”
“Thank you.” Wes dunked a shrimp into the plastic container of cocktail sauce and popped it into her mouth. He laughed at her surprised expression, and the unease she had been feeling slipped away.
They both talked as they ate, and they began to learn a great deal about one another. While she managed to draw information diplomatically from Wesley about his summer camp and the battering years of pro football, he managed to get her talking about Terry. It was strange that she could talk about her deceased husband with Wes, a man she was supposedly seducing, when she found it difficult to talk about Terry to anyone. But he seemed interested, genuinely sympathetic. He seemed to offer her strength...silly. It was simply the way he was built, and the character that the years had ingrained in his face. Next to such a man it was easy to feel that he could take away the cares of the world