Southern Comforts

by JoAnn Ross

  Last night Chelsea had been attracted, but angry. Today she was tempted, but wary. Cash figured it would take no time at all to knock down those final parapets that would allow her to come to him. Willing and eager.

  “We’ll have a nice lunch. Talk about old times, maybe even have a few laughs. And when we’re finished, we’ll have gotten rid of the tension that could screw up our individual projects.

  “It’s going to be tricky enough working with the country’s most famous Steel Magnolia,” he told Chelsea. “No point in making things more difficult for ourselves.”

  He had, she knew, a very good point. His coaxing smile was as innocent as an angel’s. But devilment danced in his eyes. “I have one question.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Are you responsible for the note left in my room last night?”

  “What note?”

  “The note warning me about the dangers of supping with the devil.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  Watching him carefully, Chelsea decided his surprise was honest. “It’s not exactly something I’d kid about.”

  He rubbed his jaw thoughtfully. “Roxanne’s not the easiest person to get along with. Perhaps some well-meaning person just wanted to make sure you knew what you were getting into.”

  “I suppose so.” It was, after all, the logical answer. Especially since she’d seen Roxanne in full form in New York. “Of course, it also crossed my mind that the note could be referring to you.”

  He laughed at that. “I always did admire your imagination, darlin’. I may be a little rough around the edges, but you’re safe enough with me.”

  Liar. “Have lunch with me, Chelsea,” he coaxed yet again with that deep drawl that conjured up images of magnolias and moonlight and made her feel warm all over. “I promise to be on my very best behavior.”

  “All right.” She caved in, as she suspected he’d known all along she would. “It sounds like a sensible plan.”

  “Oh, I’m just full of plans, darlin’.” He dipped his head and kissed her. A brief flare of heat that ended nearly as soon as it had begun, but still left her lips tingling.

  “Now, why doesn’t that surprise me?” she murmured, watching him disappear into the building.

  Chelsea decided to trust him. This could work out, she decided as she watched the sea gulls circling over the Dumpster out back of the fish shanty. It could work out very well.

  It couldn’t have gone better. As he waited for his order of beer-fried catfish, hush puppies, cole slaw and corn muffins, Cash remembered the soft look in Chelsea’s eyes just before he kissed her, and assured himself that it wouldn’t be long before he had this woman right back where he wanted her.

  In his bed.

  And his life.

  Oh, not permanently. He was, he reminded himself firmly as he dug into his wallet and pulled out one of the crisp new twenty-dollar bills he’d gotten this morning from the automatic teller, not a forever kind of guy.

  But this time around, he wasn’t going to let her get away until he’d finally satisfied his hunger for a woman who no longer seemed impossibly out of reach.

  Chapter Eight

  Heaven help her, Roxanne thought with a sinking heart as she walked up the front sidewalk and found George Waggoner sitting on her veranda, he looked even worse than she’d feared. She was vastly relieved that she’d sent Dorothy and Jo off on a tour of the area, suggesting Jo could film some local color. She had no idea how she could have explained this.

  He stood up when he saw her coming, and jammed his hands into the back pockets of his green-and-brown camouflage pants. The first thing she noticed was that he’d put on a lot of muscle since their days together. Back then he’d been skinny as a post rail with the beginning of a beer gut. A black T-shirt fit snug over a hard, rippled body. Blue tattoos snaked up his arms.

  He obviously spent a lot of time working out. But beneath the coppery tan his skin looked oddly sallow. And the red veins crisscrossing the whites of his eyes like lines on a Georgia Department of Transportation map revealed that he hadn’t yet won the battle of the bottle.

  She stopped a few feet in front of him, which allowed her to read the words written beneath the white skull gracing the front of the T-shirt. Kill them all. The words were written in what was meant to appear to be dripping blood. And let God sort them out.

  Lovely sentiment, she thought acidly. And one he personally knew something about.

  “Hey, sugar,” he greeted her with a grin that revealed two tobacco-yellow chipped front teeth. He’d gotten the injury in a fight over her. At the time she’d believed he was defending her honor. Later, she’d decided George Waggoner didn’t know the meaning of the word. “Aren’t you just looking damn fine?”

  “You look like hell.” She spat the words at him like bullets. Her hands fisted at her sides. “How did you find me?”

  “Now that wasn’t all that difficult, honey bun. Since you do seem to be just ‘bout the most famous woman in the South. Even more famous than Margaret Mitchell, is what some folks are sayin’.”

  His bloodshot eyes took a wicked tour of her, from the top of her blond head down to her Italian-leather-clad feet. Then back up again, lingering on her breasts before returning to meet her blistering glare.

  “Damned if you aren’t a sight for these sore tired ole eyes, Cora Mae.”

  “The name’s Roxanne Scarbrough,” she said acidly. “Ms. Scarbrough, to you.”

  “I don’t know if I think much of that,” he mused, rubbing his jaw. He’d splashed on some Old Spice. Either she hadn’t noticed it, or she’d moved on to likin’ something else. Which was, of course, what his little bride always did.

  Hell, her very own stepdaddy had warned him that he was taking on more trouble than the girl was worth. That she should’ve been drowned at birth, like a sack of mongrel pups. But at the time, she’d been the most beautiful girl George had ever slept with. And she’d seemed so damn grateful to him for gettin’ her away from the man who’d popped her cherry after her mama had passed on the summer she was twelve.

  She’d been sixteen years old when they’d gotten hitched. He’d been a month shy of a year older. He had dreams of goin’ to Nashville and pickin’ his Fender guitar on the stage of the Grand Ole Opry with George Jones and Johnny Cash. She had dreams of becoming rich and famous and livin’ in a mansion just like Graceland.

  After they were married and living in the trailer at the auto-wrecking yard where he worked, he promised someday, when he made the big time, he’d buy her the fanciest damn house in the South. She told him she’d rather just buy it for herself.

  And then she was gone.

  But not before he’d killed a man for her.

  Of course, that old goat Jubal Lott deserved what he’d got, George reminded himself. And a helluva lot more. But dammit, Cora Mae should’ve been more appreciative!

  “The problem is, if you’re Miz Scarbrough, seems like that’d make me Mr. Scarbrough. And I’ve kinda grown used to my own name after all these years.” This time his grin was oily and sly. “Not that you’d understand ‘bout that, I guess.”

  Roxanne almost countered that she was surprised he wasn’t accustomed to answering by a number than a name, then shut her mouth just in time. She was not going to get into any kind of discussion with this man. She was going to hear him out. Pay him off. Then send him on his way. That was the decision she’d come to in the car on the way into town from Belle Terre. And that was the decision she intended to stick to.

  “What are you doing here, George?”

  “Can’t a man pay a little social call on his wife without havin’ to explain himself?”

  “We’re divorced. And have been for years.”

  “Mebee.” He pulled a Marlboro down from behind his ear, broke off the filter, and tossed it aside. “Mebee not.”

  Inwardly, she reeled, as if struck by a body blow. Outwardly, she didn’t so much as blink. “What the hell does that mean?”


  “It means I don’t recall ever gettin’ any divorce papers.”

  “They were sent to you.” Her icy eyes met his and held, denying him to call the lie. “And you signed them.”

  “Funny, but I don’t recollect doin’ that.” He rubbed his jaw again. Then shook his head. “No. Seems to me if a man signed papers that important, it’d stick in his mind.”

  “It was obviously stored in a part of the brain killed off by alcohol.”

  He lit the cigarette with a turquoise-and-silver Zippo lighter, rocked back on his heels, and began puffing away as he looked up at the sky. As if pondering on the matter.

  When she realized exactly how much the slimy no-account bastard was enjoying this, Roxanne could have killed him.

  “Nope,” he decided finally. “Now, I don’t want to call you a liar, Cora Mae—”

  “Roxanne.”

  He smirked. Then continued right where he’d left off. “But I know damn well I didn’t sign any divorce papers. So, the way I see it, Cora Mae Waggoner—and, I imagine, the state of Georgia sees it—your husband’s just come home.”

  Roxanne was nothing if not tenacious. “You signed them.”

  “Well, now, sugar—” he glanced down at his watch “—most of the clerks at the courthouse are probably on their lunch break. But I bet if we went there together, and talked real nice, some sweet little gal might be willing to locate a copy of our decree. So we can settle this right now.”

  They both knew exactly what they’d find.

  They both knew she’d forged his name.

  Hell, Roxanne thought darkly.

  “Looks as if we’ve got ourselves a Mexican standoff.” He didn’t even try to conceal the enjoyment he was receiving from her discomfort.

  She gritted her teeth and marched past him, nearly radiating with pent-up rage. “You may as well come in. I refuse to discuss this out on the street like common people.”

  “Never been anything common about you, Cora Mae,” George said obligingly.

  As he followed her into the flowered foyer, George’s rough laugh sent icy chills up Roxanne’s spine.

  The Ferrari’s radio was tuned to a country station. When Chelsea began humming along with Alan Jackson, Cash slid her a sideways glance.

  “I wouldn’t have taken you for a country music fan.”

  “Oh, I tune in from time to time,” she said, lifting her uncomfortably hot and heavy hair off the back of her neck. “Between the opera and the opening night at the symphony.”

  Her voice was as dry as one of the dusters that he’d had the misfortune to spend a summer drilling in the oil fields of west Texas. He’d been told that there was a lot of money to be made in black gold. And truthfully, even the roustabout pay he’d earned wasn’t bad. But falling into bed bone weary every night with that dirt imbedded into every pore just hadn’t seemed worth it. So, he’d returned to Georgia and spent the rest of his college vacations shrimping out in the Gulf Coast.

  The work was just as hard. And shrimp was just as bad smelling—perhaps worse—than Texas crude. But at least he wasn’t in danger of baking to death in the dust.

  When he didn’t respond to her sarcasm, Chelsea glanced his way. “Did it ever occur to you that you have a habit of putting people into neat, tidy little pigeonholes?”

  He didn’t deny it. As an architect, he continually took infinite pieces of minutiae, and successfully put it all together. It was mandatory that every line, every curve, every angle, all come together into a coherent, workable whole. Any deviation from the plan was asking for trouble.

  “You may have a point.” He turned off onto a winding narrow road. “But you do the same thing.”

  “I do not.”

  “Are you telling me you didn’t view me as some black-leather-jacket-wearing, motorcycle-riding rebel?”

  “You did wear a leather jacket. And ride a motorcycle.”

  “Gotta give you that one,” he said agreeably. “But contrary to the old adage, clothes don’t make the man. Putting my old jacket on your Yankee boyfriend sure as hell wouldn’t have heated up his thin blue blood.

  “Face it, darlin’, he was safe. I was dangerous. Two opposites who you kept in separate little boxes, pulling us out according to your whim. Or your need. When you wanted to feel grounded, you stayed with him. When you wanted to fly, you came to me.”

  Even discounting his arrogant claim that he could make her fly—which, dammit, he could—the description was horribly unflattering. “Surely you don’t believe that’s true?”

  “Got a better explanation?”

  Of course she did. As they drove past acres of rice fields, she tried to come up with a single argument and came up distressingly blank.

  “I thought so.”

  His smug, knowing tone made her temper flare and caused her to dig in her bag again for more antacids. If she did decide to stay in Raintree, she’d undoubtedly have to begin buying Rolaids by the case.

  “And what about you? Are you telling me that you didn’t get off on screwing the Deb of the Year?”

  “It had its moments.” Ignoring her glare, he grinned. “Like that late-night excursion to the library stacks, when you managed to disrupt western civilization from Athens to Florence.”

  The memory flooded back. His clever, wicked hands unzipping her jeans, slipping between her damp panties and her hot skin, stroking her moist flesh, bringing her to a mind-blinding orgasm within seconds.

  In an attempt to keep her knees from buckling, she’d grabbed blindly at the shelf he’d pushed her up against, sending books alphabetized from A to F tumbling to the floor.

  “Lord, I can’t believe we did that.” But they had, she remembered. And more. “What if we’d been caught?”

  “I suppose someone would have gotten an up-close and personal lesson on research techniques.”

  “It was stupid. And reckless.” And wonderful.

  “That was the point,” he said again. “It was also dangerous, which makes my other point, since I doubt if you’ve ever behaved with such lack of decorum with your Yankee.”

  Despite the passing of years, despite how far Cash had come, it did not escape her attention that one of the things that had not changed was his utter lack of regard for the other man in her life.

  “What I had…have,” she corrected, “with Nelson is different.”

  “Safe. Predictable.”

  She couldn’t deny it. She also refused to admit it.

  “Comfortable,” she corrected not quite truthfully. She and Nelson hadn’t been entirely comfortable in each other’s space for months. “Fulfilling.” Now that was a lie. “And why do you even care about my relationship with Nelson, anyway?”

  Cash knew he was in big, big trouble when even hearing the creep’s name could cause his gut to clench. “Because we’re going to be lovers. And although I suppose it really doesn’t matter in the whole scheme of things, I’d kind of like to know if you’re sleeping with me because of what I can give you. Or what your blue-blooded lover boy can’t.”

  Well, she certainly couldn’t accuse him of beating around the bush. For a southerner, Cash had always been as unflinchingly direct as the New England Yankees that had provided the sturdy rootstock of her Lowell and Whitney family trees. But if he thought they could merely pick up where they’d left off, he had another think coming.

  “We’re not going to be lovers.”

  “Of course we are.”

  His easy arrogance fueled her irritation yet again, effectively expunging an unbidden image of her and Cash rolling around in his unmade bed in his rented room that had always smelled of wood smoke, gasoline from the garage below and sex.

  “Pretty sure of yourself, aren’t you?” Another thing that seemed not to have changed in the least during their time apart.

  “No.” The single word, honestly spoken, drew her gaze back to him. “I’m that sure of us.”

  Her irritation dissolved. Her mouth went as dry as the roast turkey her mother’
s cook served every Thanksgiving. She was trying to think of something, anything, to say, when the road ended and he stopped the Ferrari in front of a house. Chelsea focused her attention in its direction as they got out of the car.

  It was two stories high, but rested on a raised basement, which essentially made it three stories. A bark-shingled, sweeping roof with three gabled windows took up the top half of the house; a screened porch with dual stairs going down to the ground took up the bottom half. Both ends were flanked with chimneys.

  “It’s darling.” The horizontal plank siding had been painted a soft white that gleamed like a pearl in the shimmering sun.

  “The wood is hand-hewn heart pine timbers from here on the property. They were pegged, instead of nailed. The basement is made of tabby—equal parts oyster shells, lime made from the shells, sand and water. It was pretty much standard around this part of the state because it’s durable and the components were more easily accessible than brick.”

  “It’s such a different style from so many of the houses I’ve seen.”

  “That’s because when most people think of the South, they tend to picture Greek Revival homes, like Belle Terre. This is a West India cottage. The original owner had owned a tobacco plantation in the islands and moved here when he was given a land grant in the 1750s from King George II. I guess he liked the house he left behind, so he duplicated it here.”

  “Has it been occupied all that time?”

  “Off and on. The previous owner passed on about ten years ago and the place has been sitting empty. I rescued it from the kudzu, and started restoring it.”

  He glanced around. “The original plantation was fifteen hundred acres.” He looked out over the lush green landscape that had grown wild during its years of abandonment. “It’s down to about a hundred. When I get the place cleared off, I’m thinking about planting peanuts. Or, maybe pecans. I’m working on a crop plan with the county extension agent.”