Free Palmetto Moon by Kim Boykin Page A

handsome, but he is not a good driver. The car slows as we enter the small town. Frank turns down Washington Street and pulls into a space in front of Harold’s Southern Diner and puts the car in park. “I hear Mr. Stanley is sweet on her.”
    “Really?” I spit the word out. “You can’t be serious.”
    His look is defensive, but there’s a hint of a smile. “I don’t mean to rile you, but a woman in her position doesn’t have many options. Especially with those three boys.” I move away from him and his voice softens as he pleads his case apologetically. “I wish things were different for her, Vada, really I do, but that won’t make it so.”
    I get my white tea gloves out of my purse and put them on absentmindedly. “I offered to share a house with her.” Oh, this isn’t a stuffy sit-down dinner. It’s a diner, for goodness’ sake. I yank them off.
    “
No,
” his eyes nearly bug out of his head, “you can’t—you don’t want to do that.”
    “Yes. Yes, I know, the Boston-marriage thing.”
    Frank looks around and lowers his voice. “You know about that?”
    “Claire told me because she was horrified when I offered to share a house with her and the children. But that doesn’t matter, Frank—”
    “But it does matter, Vada. Round O is a small community and you’re a schoolteacher.”
    “Even if I was an actual participant in this so-called Boston marriage, which I am not, it wouldn’t affect my teaching skills one iota. The whole idea of Claire trapped at the boardinghouse with the children breaks my heart, and I know it’s breaking hers, too.”
    He rubs his knuckles across my cheek and smiles at me. I can’t help but smile back. Without thinking that we are sitting in broad daylight, in front of a busy restaurant, he leans toward me. I can feel his warm breath on my cheek. I watch his lips moving closer to mine. A horn honks, startling both of us, and he sits straight up with a look on his face like he can’t believe what he’s almost done. I squeeze his hand to let him know I hope I won’t wait long for our first kiss.
    A
Charleston Evening Post
newspaper rack just outside the restaurant door catches my eye. I fumble in my pocketbook for some change.
    “Allow me,” Frank says. He inserts a nickel, opens the box, and hands me a newspaper. “Hope you’re not so bored already you’re planning on reading the paper during dinner.”
    I laugh and fold the paper in half and put it in my purse, intent on combing through it when I get back to the boardinghouse to see if there’s anything about my disappearance. Although I am reasonably sure my father wouldn’t use the police to find me; he’d use his own resources to be discreet.
    I’m not sure if this place really smells better than the Sit Down Diner, or if I’m just hungrier than I was this morning after my interview. The restaurant is bigger than Frank’s place, much busier, loud. The portly cook behind the counter wipes his round red face and turns up the radio. The whine of Bill Monroe crooning “Blue Moon of Kentucky”
quiets the crowd a little. People look at us and nod, tapping their toes in time to the music.
    We walk past the line of shiny red Naugahyde stools at the lunch counter. Frank’s hand brushes the small of my back, guiding me toward the only table for two, near the powder room, away from the clatter, the most romantic one in the diner.
    He pulls my chair out for me. In the tight space, I can feel his breath on my hair, like he’s breathing me in before he sits down across from me. His face is dreamy: high cheekbones, suntanned skin, blond hair slicked back with pomade. Quite dapper.
    “I’ve thought it a million times all the way here,” he smiles and my heart flips over in my chest, “hell, since the second you walked into the diner this morning, but I haven’t said it—”
    “Said what?”
    “That you were beautiful.” He shakes his head, then looks at me with those gorgeous green eyes. “You are