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phooey.” He loosened his grip reluctantly and let her return to her side of the car. “One last kiss.”
    “Mr. McClure—”
    “Ooooh, I like it when you talk prissy and formal to me.” He caught her chin in one hand, leaned forward, and planted a big, firm kiss on her mouth.
    “Recalcitrant maniac!” she blustered, nearly smiling.
    He kissed her again, twisting his mouth into hers. “Hmmm. Recalcitrant. Maniac. More. More.”
    Laughing and giddy, she pushed him away. “S-stop! Ludicrous—”
    “Uh-huh, uh-huh?” He inched toward her, waiting wickedly for more provocative language.
    “You tease … Rucker … good grief …” Dinah simply sputtered to a stop. He looked disappointed. She was gasping for breath.
    “Phooey,” he said again. He slumped back in his seat but stretched one arm along the top. His big, supple hand rested against her right shoulder, his fingertips very close to the bare skin of her neck. “You behave, bub,” he told his hand drolly, “unless she starts coaxin’ us with big words again.”
    Slightly addled and feeling as if she were a gas stove and he had turned all her burners on high, Dinah faced forward and started the car. She wondered briefly what good it did to have a high IQ if she couldn’t even figure out how to keep from adoring a lunatic who was all wrong for her.
    The local VFW contingent held its get-togethers at the huge, green community hall in the basement of Mount Pleasant’s Methodist Church. Since there were only about a dozen veterans, they and their wives tended to look pitifully lost in the giant, antiseptic room. A pair of long tables were set up at the room’s far end, Styrofoam cups neatly marking each person’s dinner spot. As she and Rucker entered, Dinah forced a smile as bright as the painfully bright overhead lights. Their footsteps tapped loudly on the old white floor covering.
    “The first time they invited me to dinner I went home afterwards and cried for an hour,” she whispered to Rucker. “They seem so forgotten in this place.”
    An absolutely ancient little woman in a print dress tottered out of the church kitchen carrying a pan of garlic bread, which she set on a small folding table neatly draped with a cheap-looking paper tablecloth. The veterans stood around holding their decorated VFWcaps. Dinah felt Rucker’s hand comfortingly stroke the back of her blue cowl-necked dress. It made intriguing sensations radiate down her spine.
    “Don’t feel sorry for them,” he said. “They’re alive and kickin’ and they got lots of pride. They’re doin’ just fine.”
    That insightful observation and the compassionate tone in his deep voice touched her deeply, and she turned her head to look at him as they approached the VFW group. “You’re secretly philanthropic,” she told him.
    “I was raised Methodist.”
    Dinah swallowed a chortle and glanced at him. The slight crinkling of the laugh lines around his eyes was the only indication that he was restraining his own laughter.
    “Well, lookee who we got here!” a frail, lanky man in a blue suit exclaimed. He came toward them, a dark wooden cane supporting his right side, and tipped his head to Dinah. “Glad to have you, Mayor.” That formality over, he ignored her to turn a delighted gaze at Rucker. “And I know who you are!”
    “A party crasher,” Rucker answered jovially. “I came to eat your spaghetti and chase your women.”
    “Whoo whee! I saw you on Johnny Carson. You looked fatter.”
    “I had a swelled head.”
    Laughing inwardly, Dinah finally managed an introduction. “Mr. Jones, I’d like you to meet the infamous Rucker McClure, chief curmudgeon and bottle washer at
The Birmingham Herald/Examiner
. Rucker, this is Notley Jones, Mount Pleasant’s retired postmaster and commander of this VFW post.”
    Rucker shook Notley’s blue-veined hand. Other people gathered around, tittering excitedly. “Mr. McClure, we’d sure be thrilled if you’d make the