"Is something wrong?" she inquired.

"I don't even know where to start," Dallie muttered.

"Don't say a word," Skeet announced. "Just let her out, slip the Riviera into gear, and drive away. The guy pumping gas can handle it. I mean it, Dallie. Only a fool sets out to make a double bogey on purpose."

"What's wrong?" Francesca asked, beginning to feel alarmed.

Dallie tilted the brim of his cap back with his thumb. "For starters, Gulfport is about two hours behind you. We're in Louisiana now, halfway to New Orleans. If you wanted to go to Gulfport, why were you walking west instead of east?"

"How was I supposed to know I was walking west?" she replied indignantly.

Dallie slammed the heels of his hands against the steering wheel. "Because the goddamn sun was setting in front of your eyes, that's how!"

"Oh." She thought for a moment. There was no reason for her to panic; she would simply find another way. "Doesn't New Orleans have an airport? I can fly from there."

"How do you intend to get there? And if you mention a taxi again, I swear to God I'll throw both pieces of that Louie Vee-tawn right over into the scrub pine! You're out in the middle of nowhere, lady, don't you understand that? There aren't any taxicabs out here! This is backwoods Louisiana, not Paris, France!"

She sat up more stiffly and bit down on the inside of her lip. "I see," she said slowly. "Well, perhaps I could pay you to take me the rest of the way." She glanced down at her handbag, worry furrowing her brow. How much cash did she have left? She'd better call Nicholas right away so he could have money waiting for her in New Orleans.

Skeet pushed open the door and stepped out. "I'm gonna get me a bottle of Dr Pepper while you sort this out, Dallie. But I'm tellin' you one thing-if she's still in this car when I get back, you can find somebody else to haul your Spauldings around on Monday morning." The door slammed shut.

"What an impossible man," Francesca said with a sniff. She looked sideways at Dallie. He wouldn't really leave her, would he, just because that horrid sidekick of his didn't like her? She turned to him, her tone placating. "Just let me make a telephone call. It won't take a minute."

She extricated herself from the car as gracefully as she could and, hoops swaying, walked inside the ramshackle building. Opening her handbag, she took out her wallet and quickly counted her money. It didn't take long. Something uncomfortable slithered along the base of her spine. She only had eighteen dollars left… eighteen dollars between herself and starvation.

The receiver was sticky with dirt, but she paid no attention as she snatched it from its cradle and dialed 0. When she was finally connected with an overseas operator, she gave Nicholas's number and reversed the charges. While she waited for the call to go through, she tried to distract herself from her growing uneasiness by watching Dallie get out of the car and wander over to the owner of the place, who was loading some old tires into the back of a dilapidated truck and regarding all of them with interest. What a waste, she thought, her eyes straying back to Dallie-putting a face like that on an ignorant hillbilly.

Nicholas's houseboy finally answered, but her hopes of rescue were short-lived as he refused the call, announcing that his employer was out of town for several weeks. She stared at the receiver and then placed another call, this one to Cissy Kavendish. Cissy answered, but she was no more inclined to accept the call than Nicholas's houseboy. That awful bitch! Francesca fumed as the line went dead.

Beginning to feel genuinely frightened, she mentally ran through her list of acquaintances only to realize that she hadn't been on the best of terms with even her most loyal admirers in the last few months. The only other person who might lend her money was David Graves, who was away in Africa somewhere shooting a picture. Gritting her teeth, she placed a third collect call, this one to Miranda Gwynwyck. Somewhat to her surprise, the call was accepted.

"Francesca, how nice to hear from you, even though it's after midnight and I was sound asleep. How's your film career coming? Is Lloyd treating you well?"

Francesca could almost hear her purring, and she clenched the receiver more tightly. "Everything's super, Miranda; I can't thank you enough-but I seem to have a small emergency, and I need to get in touch with Nicky. Give me his number, will you?"

"Sorry, darling, but he's incommunicado at the moment with an old friend-a glorious blond mathematician who adores him."

"I don't believe you."

"Francesca, even Nicky has his limits, and I do believe you finally reached them. But give me your number and I'll have him return your call when he gets back in two weeks so he can tell you himself."

"Two weeks won't do! I have to talk to him now."

"Why?"

'That's private," she snapped.

"Sorry, I can't help."

"Don't do this, Miranda! I absolutely must-" The line went dead just as the owner of the service station walked in the door and flipped the dial on a greasy white plastic radio. The voice of Diana Ross suddenly filled Francesca's ears, asking her if she knew where she was going to. "Oh, God…" she murmured.

And then she looked up to see Dallie walking around the front of the car toward the driver's side.

"Wait!" She dropped the receiver and raced out the door, her heart banging against her ribs, terrified

that he would drive off and leave her.

He stopped where he was and leaned back against the hood, crossing his arms over his chest. "Don't

tell me," he said. "Nobody was home."

"Well, yes… no. You see, Nicky, my fiance-"

"Never mind." He pulled off his cap by the brim and shoved his hand through his hair. "I'll drop you

off at the airport. Only you have to promise that you won't talk on the way."

She bristled, but before she had time to reply, he jerked his thumb toward the passenger door. "Hop in. Skeet wanted to stretch his legs, so we'll pick him up down the road."

She had to use the toilet before she went anywhere, and she would die if she didn't change her clothes.

"I need a few minutes," she said. "I'm sure you won't mind waiting." Since she wasn't sure of any such thing, she turned the full force of her charm on him-green cat's eyes, soft mouth, a small, helpless hand on his arm.

The hand was a mistake. He looked down at it as if she'd put a snake there. "I got to tell you, Francie-there's something about the way you go about doing things that pretty much rubs me the wrong way."

She snatched away her hand. "Don't call me that! My name is Francesca. And don't imagine I'm exactly enamored with you, either."

"I don't imagine you're exactly enamored with anybody except yourself." He pulled a piece of bubble gum from his shirt pocket. "And Mr. Vee-tawn, of course."

She gave him her most withering glare, went to the back door of the car, and pulled it open to extract her suitcase, because absolutely nothing-not abysmal poverty, Miranda's betrayal, or Dallie Beaudine's insolence-was going to make her stay in her torturous pink outfit a moment longer.

He slowly unwrapped his piece of bubble gum as he watched her struggling with the suitcase. "If you

turn it on its side there, Francie, I think it'll be easier to get out."

She clamped her teeth together to keep from calling him every vile name in her vocabulary and jerked

on the suitcase, putting a long scratch in the leather as it banged into the door handle. I'll kill him, she thought, dragging the suitcase toward a rusted blue and white rest room sign. I'll kill him and then I'll stomp on his corpse. Grasping a chipped white porcelain knob that hung loose from its plate, she pushed on the door, but it refused to budge. She tried two more times before it finally swung inward, squealing

on its hinges. And then she gulped.

The room was terrible. Dirty water lay in the recesses of the broken floor tiles revealed by a dim bare light bulb hanging from the ceiling by a cord. The toilet was encrusted with filth, its lid had disappeared, and the seat was broken in half. As she stood looking at the noisome room, the tears that had been threatening all day finally broke loose. She was hungry and thirsty, she had to use the toilet, she didn't have any money, and she wanted to go home. Dropping the suitcase outside in the dirt, she sat down on it and began to cry. How could this be happening to her? She was one of the ten most beautiful women in Great Britain!

A pair of cowboy boots appeared in the dust at her side. She began crying harder, burying her face in her hands and releasing great gulping sobs that seemed to come all the way from her toes. The boots took a few steps to the side, then tapped impatiently in the dirt.

"This kickup gonna take much longer, Francie? I want to fetch Skeet before the 'gators get him."

"I went out with the Prince of Wales," she said with a sob, finally looking up at him. "He fell in love with me!"

"Uh-huh. Well, they say there's a lot of inbreeding-"

"I could have been queen!" The word was a wail as tears dripped off her cheeks and onto her breasts. "He adored me, everybody knew it. We went to balls and the opera-"

He squinted against the fading sun. "Do you think you could sorta skip through this part and get to the point?"

"I have to go to the loo!" she cried, pointing a shaky finger toward the rusty blue and white sign.

He left her side and then reappeared a moment later. "I see what you mean." Digging two rumpled tissues from his pocket, he let them flutter down into her lap. "I think you'll be safer out back behind the building."

She looked down at the tissues and then up at him and began sobbing again.

He took several chomps on his gum. "That domestic mascara of yours sure is falling down on the job."

Leaping up from the suitcase, tissues dropping to the ground, she shouted at him, "You think all this is amusing, don't you? You find it hysterically funny that I'm trapped in this awful dress and I can't go

home and Nicky's gone off with some dreadful mathematician Miranda says is glorious-"

"Uh-huh." Her suitcase fell forward under the pressure of Dallie's boot toe. Before Francesca had a chance to protest, he had knelt down and flipped open the catches. "This is a god-awful mess," he said when he saw the chaos inside. "You got any jeans in here?"

"Under the Zandra Rhodes."

"What's a zanderoads? Never mind, I found the jeans. How about a T-shirt? You wear T-shirts, Francie?"

"There's a blouse," she sniffed. "Greige with cocoa trim-a Halston. And a Hermes belt with an art deco buckle. And my Bottega Veneta sandals."

He propped one arm across his knee and looked up at her. "You're startin' to push me again, aren't you, darlin'?"

Dashing away her tears with the back of her hand, she stared down at him, not having the faintest idea what he was talking about. He sighed and got back up. "Maybe you'd better find what you want yourself. I'll amble back to the car and wait for you. And try not to take too long. Old Skeet's already gonna be hotter than a Texas tamale."

As he turned to walk away, she sniffed and bit on her lip. "Mr. Beaudine?" He turned. She dug her fingernails into her palms. "Would it be possible-" Gracious, this was humiliating! "That is to say, perhaps you might- Actually, I seem to-" What was wrong with her? How had an ignorant hillbilly managed to intimidate her so badly that she couldn't seem to form the simplest sentence?

"Spit it out, honey. I got my heart set on findin' a cure for cancer before the decade's over, or at least having a cold Lone Star and a chili dog by the time Landry's boys hit the Astroturf for the division championship."

"Stop it!" She stamped her foot in the dirt. "Just stop it! I don't have any idea what you're talking about, and even a blind idiot could see that I can't possibly get out of this dress by myself, and if you ask me,

the person who talks too much around here is you!"

He grinned, and she suddenly forgot her misery under the force of that devastating smile, crinkling the corners of his mouth and eyes. His amusement seemed to come from a place deep inside, and as she watched him she had the absurd feeling that an entire world of funniness had somehow managed to pass her by. The idea made her feel more out of sorts than ever. "Hurry up, will you?" she snapped. "I can barely breathe."

"Turn around, Francie. Undressing women is one of my particular talents. Even better than my bunker shot."

"You're not undressing me," she sputtered, as she turned her back to him. "Don't make it sound so sordid."