One Summer by Karen Robards Page A

looked like half its contents onto his meatloaf and mashed potatoes. Mildly revolted, Rachel nodded, then glanced away as he started to shovel the food down. His table manners were not the best she had ever seen.
    Then conscience overcame her. He had not, after all, spent the last ten years in a school for manners. And before that, considering his background, she doubted that he had had much opportunity to learn the niceties of wielding knife and fork and napkin.
    “Aren’t you going to eat?” He managed the question between mouthfuls.
    “I’m really not all that hungry.” She had taken no more than three bites of her meal. Feeling slightly self-conscious, she glanced around to see if the other diners had noticed Johnny’s assault on his food.
    There was a moment of charged silence, unbroken even by the clink of his fork against his plate or the sound of his food being chewed.
    The silence drew Rachel’s attention. She glanced at him. He was staring at her narrow-eyed, his well-loaded fork suspended in his hand. There was a tiny smear of catsup at the corner of his mouth. Her eyes focused onthat, and something in her expression must have conveyed her distaste to him because his mouth twisted violently. He put his fork down with a clatter as the tines struck the china plate, snatched up the napkin that had never been unfolded from its neat triangle, and swiped it across his face with a savagery more eloquent than an outburst of swear words would have been.
    “Am I embarrassing you, teacher?”
    Taken aback, Rachel stuttered, “N-no.”
    “You’re lying.”
    “More tea?” Glenda was beside them with a big yellow plastic pitcher beaded with moisture.
    “No, we’re done. Just give us the check, please.” Johnny managed a crooked smile for Glenda, but the glint in his eyes as they swept over his dinner companion told Rachel that he was furious.
    “Pay up at the front.” Glenda fished through the half-dozen or so checks that stuck partway out of her skirt pocket, extracted one, and placed it on the table in front of Johnny. Then she smiled at him. “Come see me when you get a chance,” she said softly. “Me and the kids live out at Appleby Estates—you remember it, don’t you? That trailer park down by the river? My husband and me—we’re split up. Guess we’ll be gettin’ a divorce. When one of us can afford to pay for it.”
    “I’m sorry to hear that,” Johnny said.
    “Yeah.”
    “Glenda! These people need tea!”
    “Gotta go,” Glenda said resignedly, and hurried away with her pitcher to answer Jane’s call.
    “Give me that,” Rachel said under her breath as Johnny picked up the check and studied it. Hostility emanated from him in waves.
    “Oh, right. Add insult to injury, why don’t you?” His voice was almost pleasant, but his eyes as they met hers were far from that.
    “Don’t be silly. You don’t have any money, and—”
    “You do?” he finished for her, too politely.
    Rachel sighed. “Look, Johnny, I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings. It’s just—I’m not a big ketchup lover, and the sight of that lovely food being smothered in the stuff kind of got to me. It was rude of me to let you see how I felt, and I apologize for that. But that’s no reason for you to be ridiculous.” The expression on his face shut her up. Clearly her words were not appeasing his anger. Perhaps he would feel humiliated if she paid the check instead of him. After all, he was a man, and men were silly about some things. Opening her purse, she fished in the side pocket and came up with a twenty-dollar bill, which she passed across the table to him in as unobtrusive a manner as possible. “All right, all right. You win. Here, you pay.”
    The way he looked at the twenty, someone might have assumed that it was a snake getting ready to bite him.
    “I pay, all right. With my money.” He stood up, taking the check with him. Thrusting a hand into his pocket, he pulled forth a couple of crumpled dollar