Love on the Line - Deeanne Gist [100]
Ding.
He blindly set the earpiece down, grabbed the arms of her chair, and gave her his full attention. She tunneled her fingers into those thick brown curls, holding him steady.
Ding.
She tugged on his hair. He pulled back slightly.
“I have two people holding—”
He cut off her words with a peck to her lips.
“—and three drops down,” she finished between pecks.
He rested his lips against hers. “They can wait two seconds. I’ve been waiting all day.”
Though she knew she should protest, she closed her eyes and gave herself over to the kiss. By the time he finished, she’d lost all train of thought and sense of time.
He touched his forehead to hers. “I could do that all day long.”
She smiled, eyes still closed. “Me too.”
“What are you doing after work?”
“Tinkering in my garden. With Maifest, I let it slide some. I have some making up to do.”
“Need any help?”
“Sure.”
“I’ll see you after supper, then.” He kissed her again, then straightened.
She opened her eyes.
“I’m going to deliver these,” he said, scooping up a stack of bills. “While I’m out, I’ll swing by Ragston’s. He’s only had his phone for a couple of weeks. I think I ought to go by, even though nothing’s wrong with it.”
The fog began to clear. “There is no ‘swinging by’ the Ragstons’ place. It’s over an hour each way.”
“Doesn’t do us much good to string wire out there if we can’t service it when they call.” Picking his hat up off the rack, he propped it on his head. “See you tonight.”
No sooner had he stepped out than Bettina rushed in. “Mr. Prysborski done kicked up his heels. So you’d best be ready when the death bell starts tollin’.”
Ding.
Georgie gasped. “But I just met the Prysborski family at Maifest and the father looked to be in good health.”
“The undertaker said he was doin’ some night huntin’ and got shot.”
“Shot?”
“Yep. Probably by another hunter who thought he was a coyote or somethin’.”
“They don’t know who shot him?”
“Nope, but the sheriff says it were an accident.”
“Well, of course it was. That’s awful.”
Ding.
Fumbling for the cable, Georgie pictured Mr. Prysborski’s wife and ten children. They lived quite a ways away and she didn’t know them at all, but her heart ached for them nonetheless.
She’d no more answered the waiting calls than the church bell began to toll, one ring for every year of Mr. Prysborski’s life. Within seconds, every drop on her board fell, the entire town wanting to know who had died.
Luke never made it back to her house after supper. Instead, he’d had to clear Spanish moss off Ragston’s line. It, along with all the rest, had been busy with calls about Mr. Prysborski’s death. With every call initiated, Luke received a healthy jolt of magneto current.
After the third jolt, he decided to wait until after hours to finish the job. By the time he returned to town, it was well after dark and too late for a social call.
At church this morning, he told her he’d made previous plans with some members of the Gun Club. She squelched her disappointment and put on a bright face for him, but in truth, she was terribly let down.
Refusing to be one of those females who pined away at home while her suitor was otherwise occupied, she put on a serviceable brown dress, slipped her opera glasses over her neck, and gathered up her field notebook. It had been several weeks since she’d gone birding and today was the perfect weather for it.
Crisp breezes compensated for steady sunlight, culminating in the perfect temperature. She headed southwest of town, past the school, the ice factory, the cotton yard, and on toward Industry, the closest town with another switchboard. Of course, theirs was in a saloon and run by a man operator, but it was progress nonetheless.
It took over an hour to reach the spot she was looking for. An old pecan with arms as thick as Paul Bunyan’s stretched out over a hushed opening in the thicket. A brown thrasher had visited the tree the last three times she’d been out.
Standing near an oleander, she raised her opera glasses and