Down Home Dixie (Harlequin American Romance Series #1208)

You wouldn't expect to find a confused and disoriented Union soldier rambling around the parking lot of the dentist's office, but that's exactly what Dixie Lee Smith saw in the dwindling hours of a beautiful spring Saturday afternoon in Yewville, South Carolina.As she slid behind the wheel of her car, she noted that he was tall. He was handsome. He was uncommonly pale, even for a Yankee.She turned on the car engine. And then she shot him.Looking incredulous, he braced his back against the trunk of a nearby oak tree, and slid slowly to a sitting position on the ground. A dark stain--blood?--marked his upper left chest beside the toothbrush sticking out of his pocket. The toothbrush bore the dentist's logo: Gregory Johnson, D.D.S.,Yewville, SC.How could she have shot the man? She didn't even have a gun. Still, there had been a terribly loud bang, and no one else was around. Horrified, she scrambled out of her car."Are you in pain?""No. And yes. It's not what you think," the man said, using the tree trunk to pull himself up."What do I think?" Dixie said, not quite believing she'd asked such a stupid question. Her excuse for her own present befuddlement was that she'd been pumped full of lidocaine after being talked into two fillings when all she wanted was her teeth whitened. It tended to numb her all over, lidocaine did."I only lost my balance," the soldier said. He cupped a hand around his jaw as if it hurt. "Well, I was shot, but not really. Don't worry about it. That noise scared me, that's all."He must be joking, she thought, taking in the elaborate epaulets and dashing sleeve insignia on the blue uniform. He's not making sense. On the other hand, she probably wasn't, either.Uppermost in Dixie's mind was that when some years ago her father had been administered morphine for postoperative pain, he was certain he'd spotted Senator Strom Thurmond attired in a Batman outfit reclining on a cloud outside his hospital window. He'd insisted the senator had been eating a chocolate banana on a stick like the ones they sold at the Southern Confectionery Kitchen right here in Yewville. It had taken a heap of talking to persuade Daddy that Strom Thurmond was still in Washington and not hitching rides on stratocumulus Batmobiles.So maybe this was the same kind of thing. However, did hallucinations go to the dentist? And concentrate on their jaws when they'd been shot in the chest? He said he hadn't been shot. Or did he say he had? Dixie was growing even more confused.The man lurched on wobbly legs toward a vehicle that appeared to be a cross between an ice-cream truck and the local coroner's van. He dug his car keys out of his pocket."Your car backfired," he mumbled. "You'd better get it checked."Well, that would explain the loud bang. She'd had the Mustang's carburetor adjusted yesterday."Shouldn't you see a doctor? For that chest wound of yours? There's a hospital here, eighty-eight beds and a good emergency room."The man regarded her balefully. "I need a motel where I can stay for the night. I'm not really hurt. I'm a Civil War-battle reenactor, and the blood is fake."Okay. How was I to know? "The Magnolia Motel's out on the bypass. They should be able to fix you up with a room.""I checked there on my way into town. They're full up.""Oh, must be another tour bus. Lately the Magnolia never has vacancies on weekends." The fact that the town water tower was painted like a giant peach but more closely resembled a fuzzy pink derriere had something to do with the recent increase of tourism in these parts."Are there any other hotels in town? I'm desperate."She'd like to help him out, but that uniform turned her off, as it would any respectable Southerner even so long after what was still referred to around here as the War of Northern Aggression. Or as he called it, the Civil War, though Dixie was quite sure that there had been nothing civil about it.While DixieBrowning, Pamela is the author of 'Down Home Dixie (Harlequin American Romance Series #1208)', published 2008 under ISBN 9780373752126 and ISBN 0373752121.