Free Hold on Tight by Deborah Smith Page A

“I’m an old woman who’ll be thirty in just three years. What are you trying to do? Give a teacher heart palpitations?”
    They laughed. “If you want to learn, you’ve got to suffer and sweat,” Lorna told her. “We can’t just tell you how to lift the weight. You have to practice.”
    “Suffering is beneath me,” Dinah joked. “I’ll work out devotedly, but I’ll never forget what Cicero said: ‘The pursuit, even of the best things, ought to be calm and tranquil.’ ”
    “Cicero,” Eddie echoed. “Didn’t he play for the Rams?”
    Dinah smothered a smile. “The Romans,” she corrected drolly. “An Italian team that was big on philosophy.”
    “Oh,” he grunted. “Well, we better go. We gotta get a good seat for the pep rally. See ya at the game tonight.”
    Dinah grimaced as she rubbed her aching arm. “Perk up, Ms. Sheridan,” Lorna urged. “It’s Friday afternoon. Class is over for the week.”
    “Go away. I’m old and out of shape. I’ve got no perk.”
    They laughed again, and she shooed them with a graceful wave of one hand. Dinah watched Eddie and Lorna stroll out of the weight room hand in hand. Love, Dinah thought pensively, can blossom even in the most unusual circumstances. But not with Rucker McClure, she added. Alone among the cool, concrete-block walls, she let sorrow and concern settle inside her again. She walked wearily to an ancient soft-drink machine in one corner.
    Her small mauve purse lay atop her briefcase on a weight bench nearby. Dinah retrieved some change and put it in the machine, which rattled, hummed, and produced absolutely nothing in the way of a canned drink.
    Dinah jiggled the coin return. No response. She put in more money. The machine ate it. Dinah’s eyes narrowed. She hadn’t slept well after last night’s disturbing dinner with Rucker. She wasn’t in the mood to be flamboozled by a mechanical monster. “ ‘These violent delights have violent ends,’ ” she muttered. “So sayeth Shakespeare.” Then she raised a fist and whacked the machine hard.
    “Let’s hear some applause for the Mount Pleasant Masher and the Killer Soda Machine!” an unmistakable voice boomed behind her. “This rasslin’ match is one fall and a ten-minute TV time limit!”
    Dinah whirled around to find Rucker leaning against the door to the weight room, his arms crossed over his chest. In honor of the pep rally he had on his speech suit: the boots, corduroys, houndstooth jacket, white shirt, and brown tie. A slight smile tugged at the corner of his mustache, but his eyes looked tired.
    Flustered, Dinah said nothing for a moment. Then she pointed to the soft-drink dispenser. “I suppose, seeing as how you’re a macho man and all such men have innate mechanical ability, that you can retrieve the can that seems to be stuck in this thing’s craw?”
    He nodded and walked toward her, smoothly sidestepping weight equipment, his stride easy and his body twisting in a confident, athletic way that riveted her eyes to the movements. Unanswered questions and emotion seemed to thicken the air as he stopped in front of her, his eyes intense.
    “So you need a real man,” he said smugly. The smile hinted around his mouth again, belying the awkwardness between them. “Admit it.”
    “I need a sledge hammer.” She bit her lower lip to keep from smiling back at him. “You’re a good substitute.”
    He grasped his chest dramatically. “That’s no way to get what you want. Didn’t they teach you anything in those beauty parades? Like how to be sweet and simperin’ when you need something from a man?”
    Dinah batted her eyelashes and looked up at him coyly. He provoked absurdity and silliness. She loved it and was glad they could still joke after last night’s unhappy discussion. “You big, strong, masculine toad, won’t you please help helpless, itsy-bitsy me?”
    “Of course, little lady.” He squatted beside the machine and jabbed his hand under the metal flap that