Carnal Innocence

step. “That’s a good dog, yeah. That’s a pretty good dog. So what’s his name?”
    “Useless,” Caroline muttered as the puppy—her puppy, she reminded herself—stretched himself adoringly over Tucker’s lap. “I’ve already figured out he would be, as a guard dog.”
    Tucker’s brows drew together briefly. “Guard dog, huh?” He tickled the puppy into turning over. “Hey, boy, let me see those teeth.” Useless obligingly chewed on Tucker’s knuckle. “Well, they’ll grow soon enough. Just like the rest of him. Couple of months he’ll start to grow into his feet.”
    “In a couple of months I—I’ll be in Europe,” she finished. “Actually, I may be leaving sooner than that. There’s an engagement I might have to take—in September—that would require me to go to D.C. in August to prepare.”
    “Have to take?”
    She hadn’t meant to put it that way. “There’s an engagement,” she said, dismissing the rest. “But I imagine I’ll be able to find a good home for the puppy before I leave.”
    Tucker looked up at her, golden eyes calm and just a little hard. He had a way of looking now and again, she thought, that stripped away all the nonsense and carveddown to truth. “I expect you could take a dog along if you wanted to.” His voice was quiet, hardly more than a ripple on the hot, still air. “You’re a pretty big deal in what you do, aren’t you?”
    She hated the fact that she had to look away, had to before he saw through to things she was still hiding from herself. “Touring’s complicated,” she said, and left it at that.
    But he didn’t.
    “Do you like it?”
    “It’s part of what I do.” She started to make a grab for the puppy, when he scrambled off Tucker’s lap to go exploring. “He could wander off.”
    “He’s just sniffing the place out. You didn’t answer me, Caroline. Do you like it?”
    “It’s not a matter of like or dislike. When you’re performing, you travel.” Airport to airport, she thought, city to city, hotel to hotel, rehearsal to rehearsal. She felt the tightening in her stomach, the little pull of a knot being tied. It warned her to ease off unless she wanted to extend an invitation to her old friend Mr. Ulcer.
    When a man was rarely tense himself, he recognized the symptoms. Casually, he put a hand to the back of her neck and rubbed. “I never could understand why somebody’d make a habit of doing something they didn’t care for.”
    “I didn’t say—”
    “Sure you did. You didn’t say, Oh my gracious, Tuck, there’s nothing like it. Flying off to London, scooting on to Paris, cruising over to Vienna or Venice. Now, I’ve always wanted to see some of those places myself. But you don’t sound like you’ve piled up a load of fun by doing it.”
    See?
she thought. What did you really see between interviews, rehearsals, performances, and packing? “There are people in this world who don’t consider fun their life’s ambition.” She heard her own voice, recognized it as prim, and pouted in disgust.
    “Now, that’s a shame.” He settled back to light a cigarette. “See that pup there? He’s sniffing ’round there, happy as a frog with a belly full of flies. He’llwater your grass, chase his tail if it appeals to him, then settle down and take a nice nap. I always figured dogs had the best idea for getting through.”
    Her lips twitched. “Just let me know if you have an urge to water my grass.”
    But Tucker didn’t smile back. He studied the glowing tip of his cigarette a moment, then shot her that calm, scapel-honed look. “I asked Doc Shays about those pills you gave me. The Percodan? He said they were potent. It caused me to wonder why you’d need them.”
    She toughened up. The way she drew in reminded him of a porcupine curling up and showing spines to anything curious enough to take a poke. “That’s none of your business.”
    He put a hand on her cheek. “Caroline, I care about you.”
    She was very aware—they both were—that he’d said that before, to dozens of women. And they were both aware, uncomfortably, that this time it was different.
    “I get headaches,” she said, hating the fact that her voice was waspish and defensive.
    “Regular?”
    “What is this? A test? A lot of people get headaches, especially if they do more than sit in a porch rocker all day.”
    “I prefer a good rope hammock myself,” he said equably. “But we were talking about you.”
    Her eyes went flat and cold.