Southern Comforts

by JoAnn Ross

  Now, for the first time, she realized that she’d had it all wrong. The truth was that Nelson would never be able to give her what she needed. He wasn’t the kind of husband she wanted.

  Which didn’t mean, Chelsea reminded herself firmly, that Cash was.

  The apartment was hushed. The only sound was the steady ticktock of the Seth Thomas mantel clock in the foyer. Hearing muted voices coming from the bedroom, Chelsea decided that Nelson must be watching television. Which was a little strange, since at this hour of the day he could usually be found in the study, tracking his trust fund portfolio on the personal computer linked to a Wall Street brokerage firm.

  For someone who had no real responsibilities, Nelson’s schedule had always been as rigidly set as a fly in amber. Mornings were spent with the Times. After that came a game of squash with friends, which helped him keep the trim, lean figure that looked equally attractive in custom-tailored suits, a tuxedo, or casual chinos and Ralph Lauren Polo shirts.

  Lunch was at the august Knickerbocker Club, where he’d spend the early afternoon reading the Wall Street Journal. Then he’d return home to work on their investments. Dinner was usually eaten out. Then invariably, he’d be in bed before the end of the news. Alone, more often than not, Chelsea admitted, since she’d usually have to stay up to meet an article deadline.

  The door to the vast master bedroom suite was ajar. The room was dark. But not so dark that Chelsea couldn’t see Nelson pumping away at some woman, who was urging him on with an amazingly inventive stream of four-letter words, a running commentary of exactly what he was doing to her. What she wanted him to do.

  They shifted positions, allowing the woman to look over his shoulder. As their gazes met, Chelsea recognized Heather Van Pelt.

  Even as the truth of what she was seeing ricocheted around her mind, Chelsea told herself that she shouldn’t be surprised. And, since she’d already made the decision that she couldn’t marry this man, she shouldn’t be hurt.

  But she was. Surprised and hurt and angry. Without a word, she turned away and headed back down the long hall.

  “Nelson!” Heather tried to wiggle free, but he kept pounding into her. His grunts were coming faster now, and louder, signaling his approaching climax. “Goddammit, Nelson.” She slammed her hand against his shoulder. “Chelsea’s home!”

  He let loose a shout as he spilled into her, even as he was trying to pull out.

  “What the hell did you say?” His face was red, his blue eyes huge and unbelieving.

  She pushed him off her and scrambled free, searching around in the tangled paisley Pratesi sheets for her underpants. “I said Chelsea’s home. She saw us, Nelson. She saw everything.”

  “Christ.” He jumped from the bed and scooped up his discarded clothing.

  “Chelsea.” Nelson was struggling into his pants as he chased after her. “Sweetheart. Wait. We need to talk.”

  Sweetheart? Chelsea stopped in her tracks. “There’s nothing to talk about.” She felt the hot moisture filling her eyes and hated letting the son of a bitch witness her humiliation. “As they say, a picture’s worth a thousand words.”

  Nelson thrust his long aristocratic fingers through his blond hair. “I can explain.”

  “I’m sure you can.” Tears threatened. She stubbornly blinked them away. “But it won’t make any difference. Not anymore.”

  His handsome face crumpled in distraught lines. He grabbed her arm. “Chelsea, be reasonable.”

  She looked down at the male hand on her sleeve as if unable to recognize who it belonged to, wondering how it had gotten there. On the verge of humiliating herself by bursting into tears, she welcomed the anger that steamrollered over the pain.

  “You want me to be reasonable?” she screamed, momentarily forgetting the lessons learned at her mother’s knee. Ladies always matched the fingertips of their gloves before putting them away, they always crossed their legs at the ankles, and they never, ever raised their voices.

  “I think I’m being extremely reasonable, Nelson!” Her green eyes raked over him, stopping just below the belt. “Most women would be in the kitchen, getting a butcher knife to cut your fucking prick off!”

  Another rule broken. Ladies never cursed. As for the F-word, her mother had never felt the need to even mention such a taboo.

  He cringed at both her tone and her words. Desperate, he handed her a piece of blue-and-white pottery. The Chinese bowl had been a Christmas present from his Aunt Marian, Chelsea remembered.

  “Perhaps you should throw something,” he suggested helpfully. “It might make you feel better.”

  It might. If she threw it at his cheating head. “The only thing that would make me feel better would be shooting you through your miserable black heart.”

  Despite the circumstances, Chelsea found herself momentarily enjoying the image of Nelson with an enormous smoking hole in the center of his chest.

  “But since you’re definitely not worth going to prison for, I’m sure you’ll understand if I choose not to stick around and have a civil chat with you and your bimbo.”

  Plucking his hand off her sleeve, she turned and continued toward the front door, managing, somehow, to walk as sedately as a woman on the way to one of her mother’s book circle meetings.

  “You wouldn’t leave for good? Not over a single indiscretion?”

  Stopping again, she turned around. “Are you telling me that this is the first time you’ve slept with another woman?”

  Relief swept over his features. “Yes. Of course. Heather just came by to drop off some papers from your office. Research for that Val Kilmer piece.

  “Wanting to be polite, I offered her some coffee. Then one thing led to another and pretty soon she started coming on to me and, well, hell, Chelsea, I’m only human. But I promise, darling, it will never happen again.”

  First sweetheart and now darling. Chelsea decided that he must be going for some sort of record. She also knew that he was lying.

  There’d been so many hints of infidelity, beginning when he’d disappeared for hours during their vacation trip to London three months ago, she realized now. But unwilling to believe she could have made the mistake of agreeing to marry a man who was so horribly wrong for her, Chelsea had purposefully overlooked them.

  “If you actually expect me to believe that this is the first time you’ve gone to bed with another woman, you must think I’m either incredibly naive or stupid.” Her voice cracked. Chelsea drew in a painful breath. “And while I’ll reluctantly admit to being the first, Nelson, I am not stupid.”

  “It’s the truth,” he insisted, not at all convincingly. When she gave him a long hard stare that told him she wasn’t buying his pitiful story for a minute, he said, “Besides, if you’d only be honest with yourself, Chelsea, you’d have to admit that what happened was your fault.”

  “My fault?” So much for remaining calm. Her voice went up several octaves, nearly high enough to shatter the Baccarat crystal vase filled with American Beauty roses on a Chippendale table beside the door. “How the hell was you sleeping with my editorial assistant my fault?”

  “If you’d been home more, if you hadn’t gone running off to Georgia—”

  “You were the one who insisted I go to Raintree. You were the one who was pressuring me into the collaboration with Roxanne Scarbrough in the first place. You were the one who kept telling me that I’d regret passing up such a potentially profitable career opportunity.”

  “That’s true,” he admitted reluctantly. “But if you’d paid more attention to my needs when you were at home, I wouldn’t have been forced to turn to another woman. The only reason I was vulnerable to Heather’s seductive wiles was because I wasn’t being satisfied at home.”

  He nodded to himself, obviously pleased with his analysis of the situation. “You know what they say, Chelsea.”

  She folded her arms across the front of her silk blouse. “What do they say?”

  Her tone—as cold and dangerous as m
elting ice on a glacier—flew right over his handsome blond head. “That another woman can’t break up a happy home.”

  It was, Chelsea realized, probably the first true thing he’d said thus far. It was also the single statement she agreed with.

  “You’re right.” Although she knew she still had a great deal of pain and anger to deal with, at the moment, Chelsea felt a soothing calm settle over her. “Neither one of us has been happy for a long time.

  “Goodbye, Nelson.” She turned away again and resumed walking toward the door.

  “Where the hell do you think you’re going?”

  “On a treasure hunt.”

  “A treasure hunt?” He stared at her. “Where?”

  “That’s none of your business.”

  Finally, unable to resist, she swept the vase off the table, causing a dozen red roses to hit Nelson smack in the chest. With the satisfying sound of crystal shattering on the marble floor, she left the apartment, literally slamming a door on this sorry chapter of her life.

  Since she was, as she’d told Nelson, no fool, Chelsea went straight to the bank to close out their accounts. Less than thirty minutes after discovering her fiancé in bed with another woman Chelsea learned that Nelson was guilty of a great deal more than being a common, garden-variety philanderer.

  He was a crook. Having depleted his own trust fund, he had continued to run up credit card charges while hiding the bills from her. In addition, he’d raided their savings and overdrafted their joint checking account.

  She was, a stunned Chelsea discovered, flat broke. Fortunately, she was able to borrow the money for plane fare against her advance from Mary Lou, who was delighted she was agreeing to write Roxanne’s book.

  “I don’t have any choice,” Chelsea muttered. Having always taken money for granted, it was coming as a shock to discover that she suddenly didn’t have any.

  “This book will make a bundle,” Mary Lou assured her. “And meanwhile, you can live rent-free with Roxanne.”

  “I’d rather not. It seems to me, if I’m as hot a writer as you and Roxanne keep saying I am, she should be willing to pay my living expenses at the Magnolia House while I’m working on the first draft of her book.”

  “I’m sure that won’t be a problem.”

  That little item of business settled, three hours later, Chelsea was on her way back to Georgia.

  And despite her lingering anger and shock, she found it more than a little ironic that fate had her beginning a new life in a state that had literally risen from the ashes.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Later, Chelsea would decide that her first mistake was allowing Mary Lou to talk her into flying back to Savannah first class.

  Her second mistake was accepting the glass of champagne the flight attendant had offered the moment she’d settled into her seat.

  Her third, and fatal mistake, was to continue to drink the entire flight. Upon landing, a cheerful skycap helped with her luggage and managed to pour her into the back seat of a taxi.

  For this act of kindness, she tipped him nearly all the cash in her billfold. To his credit, he returned most of it, reminding her she’d need money for cab fare.

  “That is so sweet of you,” she said, nearly moved to tears by this act of pure generosity. “I never thought I’d become so dependent upon the kindness of strangers.” A tear slipped down her cheek.

  The skycap exchanged a look with the cab driver, who, accustomed to seeing the human condition in all its frailties, merely shrugged.

  “So, miss,” he said, “where would you like to go?”

  “Magnolia House.” She sniffled as she began digging around in her purse for a tissue. “In Raintree.”

  “Raintree? That’s quite a drive.”

  “Oh. Of course, you’re right.” She held out the bills the skycap had just returned to her. “Is this enough?”

  “Sure. But wouldn’t you rather call someone to come fetch you?”

  Chelsea thought about that. Roxanne would send her assistant in a New York minute. But she didn’t want to disturb Dorothy’s evening. And she definitely wasn’t up to seeing Roxanne right now. Jeb might come. If for no other reason than to live up to his idealistic role of the southern gentleman. But she had no business disrupting his life, either.

  And then, of course, there was Cash.

  Chelsea sighed. “No,” she decided. “I don’t think so.”

  “Okay. Raintree it is.”

  As he pulled away from the curb, Chelsea settled back, relieved to have that little problem taken care of. Soon they were on the road leading outside of town. She put her head against the back of the seat, watched the lush green scenery passing by the window and idly listened to the broadcast of the Atlanta-Giants game on the taxi radio. When the Braves went down to defeat in the 10th inning, the driver cursed beneath his breath and switched off the radio.

  “I’m sorry the Braves lost,” Chelsea said.

  He shot her a glance in the rearview mirror. “That’s okay. Can’t win ’em all.”

  “Tell me about it. After the way the Yankees broke my heart last season, I’m trying not to get my hopes up this year.”

  “You must be a New Yorker.”

  “I was born in Manhattan. How about you?”

  “Born and bred in Savannah. My wife, by the way, is from Raintree. It’s a real nice little town. We’ve thought about raising our kids in the country, but there’s not a lot of work out there.”

  “No. There doesn’t seem to be,” she agreed. “But, Savannah seems lovely, too.”

  “It’s a real pretty place,” he agreed. “And friendly. We get a lot of tourist business.”

  “So I was told.” A little silence settled over them. “So you’re married?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Fifteen years last month.”

  “Fifteen years.” She tried to imagine that. “Are you happy?”

  “Sure.” He shrugged.

  “Do you love your wife?”

  This time the look he gave her in the rearview mirror was decidedly uncomfortable. “I suppose so. Oh, we have our fights, like every other couple—”

  “Warings never fight,” she informed him.

  “Every couple fights.”

  “Not the Warings. It’s unseemly.” She shook her head emphatically. “They have disagreements.”

  “You a Waring?”

  “No.” She shook her head again. “I almost was,” she added as an afterthought. “But I escaped.”

  “Are we glad about that?”

  This time she nodded. “Very glad. Extremely glad. Ecstatically glad.”

  “If you’re happy, I’m happy,” he said.

  “I am.” Her voice trembled. “R-really.” She was appalled to feel the moisture trailing down her cheeks. “In fact, I’ve never been happier.”

  Chelsea stared blindly out the window again. “Wait,” she said, as she viewed the river. Suddenly, although she’d always prided herself on her independence, always insisted that she didn’t need anyone, Chelsea couldn’t bear the idea of being alone. “I’ve decided I don’t want to go to the Magnolia House, after all. Can you take me someplace else?”

  “It’s your nickel. I’ll take you wherever you want to go. So long as it isn’t out of state,” he tacked on. “I’d have to stop and call my wife and let her know I was going to be gone a while first.”

  “That is so, so sweet.” More tears. Lord, Chelsea thought on some distant level, who’d have thought she’d be a sappy drunk?

  Since she didn’t know Cash’s address, Chelsea had no idea how to find his house. She could remember its name— Rebel’s Ridge—but that proved scant help.

  Fortunately, the driver thought to call his dispatcher. Discovering that the private number was unlisted, the dispatcher looked up the number for the architectural offices of Cash Beaudine in the phone book. Since the office was closed for the weekend, the call was picked up by Cash’s answering service, who patched it through to his home after being told i
t was an emergency.

  “We got it,” the driver told Chelsea when the dispatcher radioed back with the address.

  “You’re so clever.” Her eyes began filling up again. “And sweet. Your wife is a very fortunate woman.”

  “I’ll tell her you said so.”

  Having been forewarned by the dispatcher, Cash was waiting when the taxi pulled up in front of his house. He opened the door, paid the driver and added a substantial tip. “Thanks for bringing her here safely.”

  “No problem.” He grinned, his teeth flashing in his dark face. “I think you’ve got some guy named Waring to thank.”

  “Waring the weasel,” Chelsea muttered, stumbling a little as she stepped out of the cab. “No. A worm. Waring the worm. That’s more like it.”

  Wondering what the hell had happened in New York, Cash steadied her, then deciding that there was no way she was going to be able to walk up the sloping sidewalk under her own steam, hefted her up, flung her over his shoulder and carried her into the house.

  “This is a sweet, sweet house,” she said, staring down at the gleaming pine floors. “But I wonder why I didn’t notice when I was here before that you built it upside down.”

  “It’s not upside down. You are.” He strode into the living room and plopped her down onto the couch.

  “Oh.” She glanced around. “You’re right. It’s not upside down.” She blinked. Once, twice, and then a third time. “But I think it’s spinning. Like the revolving lounge at the top of all those Hyatt hotels. But faster.”

  Despite the mascara streaks on her cheeks, Cash decided she was one of the only women he’d ever seen who could somehow manage to be gorgeous when drunk. “You’re smashed, lady.”

  “Am I?” She considered that for a moment. “I don’t think so,” she decided. “Not yet.” She flashed him a smile designed to bring a man to his knees. “I don’t suppose you have any champagne in the house?”