Southern Comforts

by JoAnn Ross

  Chelsea exchanged a quick, surprised look with Cash, who shrugged in return. “Are you claiming the house is haunted?”

  “Of course.” Seeming not at all disturbed by how her would-be autobiographer might take this little news flash, Roxanne said, “Let’s go downstairs again. You haven’t seen the ballroom. It’s truly magnificent. I’m planning the most wonderful party there, as soon as Cash and I finish the restoration.”

  Perhaps it came from seeing too many movies, but Chelsea had no difficulty at all picturing the immense, high-ceilinged room with its double hung windows, elaborate scrolled plaster detailing, and ceiling frescoes depicting southern life as it had once been. She could practically hear the music and see the men in frock coats and women in satin and lace, the women’s hoop skirts looking like colorful hollyhock blossoms as they twirled gaily around the gleaming parquet floor.

  “It’s magnificent.”

  “Isn’t it?” Roxanne’s eyes gleamed as her gaze roamed the room. “Ezekial brought the floor back from one of his trips to Italy before the war. It’s no wonder Margaret Mitchell got her inspiration for Tara after visiting here.”

  “Really?” Jo asked. The unmasked excitement in her voice made Chelsea think she was already considering ways to insert scenes from the movie into her documentary.

  “Of course,” Roxanne insisted. “Why, everyone around these parts knows that Tara was patterned after Belle Terre. Which is what’s going to make this restoration so much more meaningful.”

  Not to mention lucrative, Chelsea thought, deciding that if this story was even remotely true, Roxanne truly had stumbled on a gold mine.

  A sudden, tinny trill had Roxanne reaching into her handbag for her cellular phone. “Hello?” She covered the mouthpiece with her hand. “I’m sorry. It’s my housekeeper.” She gave them a look that said, servants, what can you do with them? “What is it LaDonna? I happen to be busy at the moment.”

  As she listened to the near hysterical housekeeper begin to stutter out the problem, Roxanne felt a cold fist of fear tightening around her heart. She forced a stiff, frozen smile toward the others.

  “If you’ll excuse me a moment.”

  Her heels tapping briskly on the scarred marble foyer, Roxanne went back outside, across the lawn, stopping behind the huge construction Dumpster the contractor had delivered the first day on the job. Although the sun was rising high in the sky and the temperatures were slated to hit another record high today, she felt as if she’d suddenly found herself buck naked in the middle of a blizzard.

  “What do you mean he won’t go away,” she rasped. “Just tell him to leave. Then shut the door.”

  “But you don’t understand,” the usually composed housekeeper said on something close to a wail. “I tried that. And he just went around to the side door. He insists on talking with you, Miz Scarbrough.” The next words confirmed Roxanne’s worst fears. “He says he has a business proposition for you.”

  As frightened as she was, Roxanne couldn’t resist a rich, ripe curse at that. Business? Blackmail was more like it.

  “Shall I call the police, Miz Scarbrough?” LaDonna Greene asked.

  “No!” She could deal with George, Roxanne assured herself. The same way she’d dealt with everything else in her past. She was right on the verge of achieving everything she’d struggled for. Everything she’d sacrificed for. She’d come too far to allow one miserable alcoholic wreck of a mistake to stop her now.

  “Tell him he’ll have to wait in the garden. I do not want that man in my house. I’m at Belle Terre. I’ll leave immediately.”

  “Yes, Miz Scarbrough.” There was a slight, hesitant pause. “It’s nearly lunchtime. Shall I serve him some iced tea and sandwiches? I was preparing the cold pesto chicken breasts for your guests, as you’d instructed this morning, but—”

  “No!” She may have to speak with the bastard, but Roxanne was damned if she was going to play hostess. “Don’t feed that man a fucking goddamn thing. Do you hear me?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Feed him? Roxanne asked herself furiously as she lowered the antenna on the phone. Only if she could prepare an arsenic salad with cyanide dressing. And serve it to him herself.

  She indulged herself with the momentary fantasy of George writhing on the floor in poison-induced agony, then pasted a smile on her face and went back into the house.

  “I’m so sorry. But a pesky little problem that needs my personal attention has come up.”

  Her smile was as brittle as glass. As were her eyes. Chelsea, observing her closely, noticed the bright spots of pink riding high on her cheekbones. But beneath that flush, she thought Roxanne’s complexion looked oddly pale. Almost ashen. And her voice held a faint edge that was not quite anger.

  Contrasts. Chelsea had witnessed Roxanne holding court at her dining room table with charm and grace. On one of her bestselling videotapes she’d seen Roxanne down on her knees in the garden, planting daffodil and tulip bulbs.

  And if the business statistics cited in a recent Wall Street Journal were even partly true, Roxanne Scarbrough the CEO was on track to someday equal Lee Ioccoca or Ross Perot in financial clout. And then, of course, Chelsea couldn’t forget the rude, arrogant prima dona who’d terrorized the staff of “Good Morning America.”

  Roxanne possessed more facets than the diamonds that had glittered icily at her lobes in the candlelight during last night’s dinner. Once again, despite last night’s mysterious warning, or perhaps because of it, Chelsea was reluctantly intrigued. Discovering the core woman beneath all the glamour and hype could be a stimulating challenge.

  “I’ve certainly seen enough to get a flavor of what you have in mind, Roxanne. Perhaps, once we get back to your house and you take care of your business, we can discuss our individual views on ghostwritten autobiographies. To see how compatible we are,” she explained, when Roxanne shot her a startled look.

  “You want to come back to my house? To discuss the book?”

  Chelsea sensed something was definitely wrong here. Why did the woman think she’d gotten on that plane yesterday and flown all the way down here from Manhattan? To discuss stabling procedures during the Civil War? War Between the States, Chelsea reminded herself.

  “We could discuss it at the inn, if you’d rather.”

  “Of course I’d prefer meeting at my home, Chelsea, where we could get to know one another in a more intimate setting,” Roxanne insisted. “It’s just that I have no idea how long this little matter will take, and I hate the thought of you having to wait.”

  “I don’t mind. Really.”

  “But I do.” Roxanne turned the full power of her smile on Cash. “I do so hate to impose on you this way, but do you think you could take Chelsea back to the inn?” She returned her gaze to Chelsea. “Then we could get together around eight? I’m having some friends in that I’d truly love for you to meet.”

  Her rich and famous friends, Chelsea decided as she turned toward Cash. “If you have something else to do—”

  “I think it sounds like a great plan. We can have lunch. And catch up on old times.”

  “What a good idea!” Roxanne actually clapped her hands together at the suggestion, surprising Chelsea, who’d thought she’d detected No Trespassing signs posted all over Cash last night.

  “You don’t have to buy me lunch.”

  “We both have to eat. And this will give me a chance to try to impress you so you might want to write a book about me someday.”

  “I can’t see that happening,” she said mildly.

  He grinned, a fatal woman-killing grin she doubted many women would be able to resist. “Never say never.”

  Their eyes met. And held.

  And in that suspended moment, Chelsea knew that staying in Raintree, working in close proximity to this man would be the most reckless thing she’d ever done. Even more rash than leaving the country club with him the night of her cousin Susan’s wedding.

  What was worse, as his wi
cked gaze moved down to her lips, Chelsea feared she might actually do it.

  Damn. As he met the green fire in her eyes—a flame that triggered something primal inside him—Cash cursed himself for allowing this woman to get under his skin so damn easily. Not that it had been any different seven years ago. The moment he’d seen her he’d wanted her with a desperation like nothing he’d ever experienced before or since. Until now.

  He imagined stripping Chelsea naked, carrying her upstairs to that dusty draped bed. He visualized Chelsea lying beneath him, her legs entwined around his waist, her body glistening with a damp sheen as he reclaimed her once and for all. He could hear the breathless little sounds she made as he took her higher and higher, he could see the startled wonder in her eyes as she climaxed, crying out just the way she had that first time, when he’d taught her exactly how high she could fly.

  He was so caught up in the sexual fantasy, it took him nearly a full minute to realize that Roxanne was speaking to him.

  “I’m sorry.” He dragged his mind and his eyes back to her. “My mind was wandering. I was thinking about extending the portico. What did you say, Roxanne?”

  “I said I found Chelsea first,” Roxanne protested lightly. “And a true southern gentleman would never steal away a lady’s biographer.”

  “Ah, but I’ve never claimed to be a gentleman.”

  “That’s for sure,” Chelsea muttered beneath her breath. But it was loud enough for Cash to hear.

  “Don’t worry, Roxanne,” he said. “I’m not going to steal Chelsea. I’m just going to feed her.”

  As soon as he heard the words coming out of his mouth, Cash knew he was lying. He was going to steal Chelsea Cassidy.

  Not from Roxanne.

  But from that blue-blooded Yankee, Nelson Webster Waring.

  The idea, as the group departed the mansion in separate cars, Chelsea now in the Ferrari, rather than Roxanne’s Mercedes, proved inordinately appealing.

  “I suppose you think you’re clever,” Chelsea muttered.

  “That thought does occur to me from time to time.”

  “I was talking about the way you managed to get me alone with you again.”

  “I didn’t do a thing. It was Roxanne who suggested it,” he reminded her.

  “Sure. After you probably paid one of her minions to put a dead fly in the champagne punch she’s planned for tonight’s little gathering, thus forcing her to race back to the city and leave us alone.”

  “Damn.” He shook his head with good-natured humor. “I should have known better than to try to put anything by you, Irish. Especially since you have an exceedingly bright head on those slender shoulders.”

  It was the first compliment she could ever recall hearing from this man that didn’t involve something sexual. “I never was all that wild about you calling me Irish.” That was a lie. The truth was that her blood had warmed a little whenever he drawled the intimate nickname. It still did. Which was why she wished he’d stop using it. “If you even dare try for Red—”

  “I wasn’t referring to the color, Chelsea. I was talking about what’s inside.” He slid her an approving sideways glance. “Although I have to admit that your hair color was the second thing I noticed about you.”

  “What was the first?”

  “Your ass.”

  Chelsea shook her head, crossed her arms, and struggled with the smile that was trying to break free on her lips. “I should have known better than to ask,” she grated, pretending a sudden interest in the scenery streaking by the window as the big black car roared down the country two-lane road.

  “You did—still do, for that matter—have a right fine ass, Chelsea darlin’,” he assured her with the easy manner of a man who considered himself a connoisseur of such things. “Then you turned around and I got a look at your face. Your crazy, crooked, wonderful face. And it was like getting a sucker punch, right in the gut.”

  Actually, Cash recalled with painful clarity, the punch had hit lower. “I told myself, Cash, ole boy, you’re a goner. Better take a deep breath because you’re about to go under for the third time.”

  “Liar.”

  She’d been the one who felt that way. She’d been the one who’d felt the power of his gaze, experienced that silent overwhelming urge to turn around, and when she’d finally surrendered, had gazed across the winter dead lawn and known that from this moment on, her life would never be the same again. The idea had been both terrifying and thrilling.

  “Why would I lie about that? Surely you felt it, too?”

  Her reaction to him had been instantaneous, intense, and totally out of proportion. Not to mention irresistible. “I was terrified.”

  “That makes two of us. I felt as if I’d been poleaxed. I’d already had more than my share of women by the time I’d met you, Chelsea. But none of them ever got beneath my skin—and in my head—like you.”

  He said it so casually, Chelsea could almost believe him. Almost. “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

  “And give you the upper hand?”

  “Control was always important to you.”

  “In some ways. Like in the sack. But believe me, darlin’, the power Lee surrendered to Grant when he handed his sword over on the steps of the Appomattox courthouse was nothing compared to what I gave up the first time I kissed you.”

  His voice was unusually gravelly, his words tinged with an intriguing combination of humor and frustration. And, she thought, a bit of leftover anger.

  “I didn’t know.”

  “That was the point.”

  They remained silent the rest of the way into Raintree, each lost in their own thoughts. Their own version of that reckless time.

  Outwardly, at least, Cash had changed. Oh, no one would ever mistake him for a lawyer or Wall Street banker, but the expensive linen suit he’d worn last night with such natural panache was a very long way from the faded jeans and black T-shirts he’d favored back in their days together at Yale.

  His hands, while not professionally manicured like Nelson’s, were no longer oil stained from hours spent repairing his motorcycle. Becoming momentarily distracted as she looked at them resting lightly on the steering wheel, Chelsea wondered if his fingertips were still callused. That thought took her wandering mind down another more perilous path, as she recalled, all too vividly, the feel of those roughened hands on her eager body.

  Although the air conditioner was blowing cool air through the dashboard vents, memories of all the things he’d done to her, all the things they’d done together, caused an unbidden heat to invade her veins.

  Caught up in old memories, Chelsea didn’t notice that he’d pulled off the road until he was parking the car. She eyed the ramshackle white building with the name, The Original Catfish Charlie’s, hand lettered in bright blue paint.

  “Is this where we’re going to have lunch?”

  He laughed at the reluctance she couldn’t quite hide. “Don’t worry, Irish. You’ve had enough culture shock for one day. I thought I’d get takeout and we’d have a picnic. It’s too nice a day to sit inside some stuffy fake southern mansion dining room. And this way we can have a chance to talk.”

  “Do you think that’s such a good idea?”

  “Eating? Or talking?”

  She thought about the note left in her room last night and decided doing either with this man could prove dangerous. “Talking.”

  He took off the bayonet-style sunglasses with his left hand and leaned toward her, slipping the right beneath her long hair. “You can tell me I’m all wet here, but I’m getting the impression that you’re probably going to accept Roxanne’s offer.”

  “I’m leaning that way,” she admitted.

  “So, if I’m restoring her beloved Tara—”

  “Belle Terre.”

  “Tara.” Cash’s smile was slow and easygoing and, she admitted, very appealing. “Down here in Gone With the Wind country, there are more antebellum homes that supposedly served as the inspiration for Mit
chell’s fictional Tara than you can shake a hickory stick at. And in far too many of them, you’ll find belles named Lady or Sister or Fancy, who dress up just like Scarlett and give tours.”

  “Although I truly hate to admit it, that kind of sounds like fun.”

  It took no effort at all to imagine carrying Chelsea up a wide staircase to bed. “You’d make a dynamite belle.”

  “For a Yankee,” they both said together. Then laughed.

  The mood lightened again. For now.

  Cash had not yet taken his hand way. His fingers began massaging her neck. “The point is that we’re both going to be collaborating with Roxanne on projects that are important to her. And this is obviously a lady who believes in a hands-on management style.”

  That much was true. When Chelsea thought about the way Roxanne was constantly putting her hands on Cash, she experienced a jolt of jealousy. “Agreed.”

  “So, that being the case, we’re bound to end up spending a lot of time together. Whether you like it or not.”

  “What about you?”

  “What about me, what?”

  “You said, whether I liked it or not. What about you?”

  “Oh.” He smiled, trailed a finger down her throat and imagined touching his tongue to the soft fragrant flesh. “I like the idea just fine.”

  She shouldn’t. She couldn’t. But, of course she did, too.

  He read the ambivalence in her eyes and knew he’d been responsible for putting it there. Cash felt a rush of purely male satisfaction.

  He’d woken up in a rotten mood this morning after spending the night dreaming of Chelsea. Hot, intensely vivid dreams that had left him rock-hard and horny as a three-peckered billy goat.

  He’d dragged himself into the bathroom, where he’d stood beneath a cold shower, refusing to flinch as the icy water pounded against his chest and ran down his stomach and legs. When the drastic recovery measures learned from Bobby Ray Mullins, coach of his high school Bulldogs football team, did little to help, Cash had not been all that surprised.

  There were certain inarguable axioms of life: like the way it always rained right after you washed your car, or how the catfish finally began serious biting—instead of nibbling away at the edges and stealing bait—just when you ran out of worms. Or how, whenever he got within puckering range of Chelsea Cassidy, all his carefully conceived plans to keep his distance went flying straight out the window. The good Lord had given him brains and a penis; unfortunately, where this woman was concerned, he’d only given him enough blood to run one at a time.