strange happened in the vicinity of her middle. She suddenly felt like a hungry woman who had just been presented with a tempting dessert. Her moment of sensory weakness embarrassed her, and she frowned.

"Damn, you're pretty," Dallie said softly.

"Not half as pretty as you," she snapped, determined to squash whatever strangeness was lurking in the air between them. "Where are we? Whose house is this?"

"It's mine."

"Yours? We can't be more than twenty miles from Wynette. Why do you have two houses so close together?"

"After what happened back there, I'm surprised you can even ask that question." He stood aside to let

her out.

She stepped from the car and gazed thoughtfully toward the front porch. "This is a hideaway, isn't it?"

"I guess you might call it that. And I'd appreciate it if you didn't tell anybody that I brought you here. They all know about this place, but so far they've kept their distance. If they find out you've been here, though, it'll be open season and they'll be lining up with sleeping bags and knitting needles and coolers

full of Dr Pepper."

She walked toward the front step, curious to see the inside, but before she could get there he touched

her arm. "Francie? The thing of it is, it's my house, and we can't fight in it."

His expression was as serious as she had ever seen it. "What makes you think I want to fight?" she inquired.

"I guess it's pretty much in your nature."

"My nature! First you kidnap my son, then you kidnap me, and now you have the nerve to say that

I want to fight!"

"Call me a pessimist." He sat down on the top step.

Francesca clutched her arms, uncomfortably aware that he'd gotten the best of her on that exchange.

And then she shivered. He'd carried her out of the house without her jacket, and it couldn't be much

more than forty degrees. "What are you doing? Why are you sitting down?"

"If we're going to have it out, let's do it right here, because once we go inside that house, we have to be real polite to each other. I mean it, Francie, that house is my retreat, and I'm not going to have it spoiled by the two of us going after each other."

"That's ridiculous." Her teeth began to chatter. "We have things to talk about, and I don't think we're going to be able to do it without getting upset."

He patted the step next to him.

"I'm freezing," she said, thumping down at his side, but even as she complained, she found herself secretly pleased by the idea of a house where no arguments were allowed. What would happen to

human relationships if there were more houses like this one? Only Dallie could have thought of

something so interesting. Surreptitiously, she moved closer to his warmth. She'd forgotten how good he always smelled-like soap and clean clothes. "Why don't we sit in the car?" she suggested. "You only have on a flannel shirt. You can't be all that warm yourself."

"If we stay here, we'll get done quicker." He cleared his throat. "First of all, I apologize for making that smarmy remark about your career being more important to you than Teddy. I never said I was perfect, but still, that was a low blow and I'm ashamed of myself."

She pulled her knees closer to her chest and hunched into them. "Do you have any idea what it does

to a working mother to hear something like that?"

"I wasn't thinking," he mumbled. Then he added defensively, "But damn, Francie, I wish you wouldn't

fly off the handle every time I say the slightest little thing wrong. You get too emotional."

She dug her fingers into her arms in frustration. Why did men always do this? What made them think they could say the most outrageous-the most painful-things to a woman, and then expect her to keep silent? She thought of a number of pointed comments she wanted to make, but bit them back in the interest of getting into the house. "Teddy marches to the beat of his own drummer," she said firmly.

"He's not like me and he's not like you. He's completely himself."

"I can see that." His knees were spread. He propped his forearms on them and stared down at the step for a few moments. "It's just that he's not like a regular kid."

All her maternal insecurities jangled like bad music. Because Teddy wasn't athletic, Dallie didn't approve of him. "What do you want him to do?" she countered angrily. "Go out and beat up some women?" He stiffened beside her, and she wished she'd kept her mouth shut.

"How are we going to work this out?" he asked quietly. "We fight like cats and dogs the minute we get within sniffing distance of each other. Maybe we'd be better off if we turned this over to the bloodsuckers."

"Is that really what you want to do?"

"All I know is that I'm getting tired of fighting with you, and we haven't even been together for a whole day."

Her teeth had begun to chatter in earnest. "Teddy doesn't like you, Dallie. I'm not going to force him to spend time with you."

"Teddy and I just rub each other the wrong way is all. We'll have to work it out."

"It won't be that easy."

"Lots of things aren't easy."

She looked hopefully toward the front door. "Let's stop talking about Teddy and go inside for a few minutes. Then after we get warmed up we can come back out and finish."

Dallie nodded his head, then stood and offered his hand. She accepted it, but the contact felt much too good, so she let go as quickly as she could, determined to keep the pressing of flesh between them to a minimum. For a moment he looked as if he'd read her thoughts, and then he turned to unlock the door. "You got a real challenge for yourself with that Doralee," he remarked. Stepping aside, he gestured her into a terra-cotta hallway lit by an arched window. "How many strays you figure you picked up in the

last ten years?"

"Animal or human?"

He chuckled, and as she walked into the living room, she remembered what a wonderful sense of humor Dallie had. The living room held a faded Oriental rug, a collection of brass lamps, and some overstuffed chairs. Everything was comfortable and nondescript-everything except the wonderful paintings on the walls. "Dallie, where did you get these?" she asked, walking over to an original oil depicting stark mountains and bleached bones.

"Here and there," he said, as if he wasn't quite sure.

"They're wonderful!" She moved on to study a large canvas splashed with exotic abstract flowers. "I didn't know you collected art."

"I don't collect it so much as just nail up a few things I like."

She lifted an eyebrow at him so he'd know his country-bumpkin act wasn't fooling her for a minute. Hayseeds didn't buy paintings like these. "Dallas, is it remotely possible for you to carry on a

conversation that's not loaded down with manure?"

"Probably not." He grinned and then gestured toward the dining room. "There's an acrylic in there you might like. I bought it at this little gallery in Carmel after I double-bogeyed the seventeenth at Pebble Beach two days in a row. I got so depressed I either had to get drunk or buy me a painting. I got another one by the same artist hanging in my house in North Carolina."

"I didn't know you had a house in North Carolina."

"It's one of those contemporaries that sort of looks like a bank vault. Actually, I'm not too crazy about

it, but it's got a pretty view. Most of the houses I been buying lately are more traditional."

"There are more?"

He shrugged. "It got so I could hardly stand staying in motels anymore, and since I started finishing in the money at a few tournaments and picking up some decent endorsements, I needed something to do with my cash. So I bought a couple of houses in different parts of the country. You want something to drink?"

She realized that she'd had nothing to eat since the night before. "What I'd really like is food. And then I think I'd better get back to Teddy." And call Stefan, she thought to herself. And meet with the social worker to discuss Doralee. And talk to Holly Grace, who used to be her best friend.

"You coddle Teddy too much," Dallie commented, leading her toward the kitchen.

She stopped in her tracks. The fragile truce between them was broken. It took him a moment to realize she wasn't following him, and then he turned to see what was holding her up. When he spotted the expression on her face, he sighed and reached for her arm to lead her to the front porch. She tried to

pull away, but he held her fast.

A chilly blast hit her as he pushed her outside. She spun around to confront him. "Don't make judgments about my mothering, Dallie. You've spent less than a week with Teddy, so don't start imagining you're

an authority on raising him. You don't even know him!"

"I know what I see. Damn, Francie, I'm not trying to hurt your feelings, but he's a disappointment to me is all."

She felt a sharp stab of pain. Teddy-her pride and joy, blood of her blood, heart of her heart-how could he be a disappointment to anyone? "1 don't really care," she said coldly. "The only thing that bothers me is what a disappointment you apparently are to him."

Dallie stuffed one of his hands in the pocket of his jeans and looked out toward the cedar trees, not

saying anything. The wind caught a lock of his hair, blowing it back from his forehead. Finally he spoke quietly. "Maybe we'd better get back to Wynette. I guess this wasn't such a good idea."

She looked out at the cedars herself for a few moments before she nodded slowly and walked toward

the car.

The house was empty except for Teddy and Skeet. Dallie went back out without saying where he was going, and Francesca took Teddy for a walk. Twice she tried to introduce Dallie's name, but he resisted her efforts and she didn't push him. He couldn't say enough, however, about the virtues of Skeet Cooper.

When they returned to the house, Teddy ran off to get a snack and she went down to the basement where she found Skeet putting a coat of varnish on the club head he'd been sanding earlier. He didn't look up as she came into the workroom, and she watched him for a few minutes before she spoke. "Skeet, I want to thank you for being so nice to Teddy. He needs a friend right now."

"You don't have to thank me," Skeet replied gruffly. "He's a good boy."

She propped her elbow on top of the vise, taking pleasure in watching Skeet work. The slow, careful movements soothed her so that she could think more clearly. Twenty-four hours before, all she had wanted to do was to get Teddy away from Dallie, but now she toyed with the idea of trying to bring them together. Sooner or later, Teddy was going to have to acknowledge his relationship to Dallie. She couldn't bear the idea of her son growing up with emotional scars because he hated his father, and if freeing him

of those scars meant she would have to spend a few more days in Wynette, she would simply do so.

Her mind made up, she looked over at Skeet. "You really like Teddy, don't you?"

" 'Course I like him. He's the kind of kid you don't mind spending time with."

"It's too bad everybody doesn't feel that way," she said bitterly.

Skeet cleared his throat. "You give Dallie time, Francie. I know you're the impatient type, always

wanting to rush things, but some things just can't be rushed."

"They hate each other, Skeet."

He turned the club head to inspect it and then dipped his brush in the varnish can. "When two people

are so much alike, it's sometimes hard for them to get along."

"Alike?" She stared at him. "Dallie and Teddy aren't anything alike."

He looked at her as if she were the stupidest person he'd ever met, and then he shook his head and

went back to varnishing the club head.

"Dallie's graceful," she argued. "He's athletic. He's gorgeous-"

Skeet chuckled. "Teddy sure is a homely little cuss. Hard to figure how two people as pretty as you and Dallie managed to produce him."

"Maybe he's a little homely on the outside," she replied defensively, "but he's a knockout on the inside."

Skeet chuckled again, dipped his brush, and then looked over at her. "I don't like to give advice, Francie, but if I were you I'd concentrate more on nagging Dallie about his golf than on nagging him about Teddy."

She looked at him in astonishment. "Why ever should I nag him about his golf?"

"You're not going to get rid of him. You realize that, don't you? Now that he knows Teddy's his boy,

he's going to keep popping up whether you like it or not."

She'd already come to the same conclusion, and she nodded reluctantly.