Fall Into Me: Hearts of the South

by Linda Winfree

  He hated when his mind worked like his father’s. F-uck. Now he was going to have to do something about it. He flexed his fingers, knuckles aching, around the wheel. He pulled in a deep breath, centering himself as if he waited for the starting pistol. “You make me nervous as hell.”

  Calvert turned his head quickly. “What?”

  “You make me nervous.” The words came out even and matter of fact, thank God. He swallowed, keeping his gaze on the road. “So I start overthinking everything and then I screw up.”

  “Why do I make you nervous?” A sideways glance revealed Calvert facing forward as well, bouncing his thumb off his knee.

  Troy Lee’s chest seized up. This was different from opening up with Angel. Is this how she felt, poised on the precipice of belief and afraid to look over? He drew in another centering inhale. “Probably because I admire you professionally. You and Sheriff Reed, you’re the reasons I came down here.”

  Calvert made an uncomfortable sound in his throat. “Are there less screwups when I’m not around?”

  “Kinda.” Troy Lee shrugged, slowing to make the right onto Ferry Road. “I’m not perfect. I’m still learning.”

  Amusement colored Calvert’s grunt. “We’re all still learning. It’s not like you master everything in a year or two. It’s new every single day.”

  Silence fell between them, broken only by the crackle of radio transmissions. After a couple of minutes, Calvert cleared his throat. “I haven’t made it easy on you. Cookie thinks we’re too much alike.”

  Troy Lee shot him a look. “Uh, no. We are not alike.”

  What appeared to be a genuine grin quirked at Calvert’s mouth. “That’s what I said.”

  “Damn straight.”

  Another silent moment passed. Calvert resumed thumping his knee. “So why did you hang in?”

  “You want me to go?”

  “No. I’m just asking. A lot of guys would have tossed it in after the Schaefer deal.”

  “My dad didn’t raise a quitter.”

  “I can understand that. Mine didn’t either.” After a pause, Calvert stretched out his legs. “My nephew’s taking a math class with your sister.”

  “Yeah, Ellis.” He shrugged. “What of it?”

  “Nothing. I mean, they’re friends, I guess, and his impression from her was that you’d gone into law enforcement because of your dad’s death.”

  The familiar grief gutted him, followed by the wave of mind-numbing anger. Yeah, he was supposed to get beyond that, but the whole damn thing was so senseless, such a damn waste of his father’s warmth and intelligence, his fucking life. Simply thinking about it pissed him off all over again. He wrestled the anger down and locked it away, keeping his voice even when he spoke again.

  “His impression would be the correct one.”

  “It’s hard, losing a parent like that.” Old sorrow lurked in Calvert’s quiet voice.

  “Yeah.” Troy Lee swallowed, more against the tightness in his throat than the slight burn in his chest. He forced a laugh, trying to clear his throat. “Maybe we do have some stuff in common.”

  “Maybe.” Calvert’s deep chuckle held real humor, a hint of male ribbing. “But don’t push your luck, kid.”

  “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  “Tell me again why I have to go.” With irritable movements, Angel tugged the black halter dress over her head and smoothed it down her hips.

  “Because I have to go.” Visible in the mirror, Troy Lee lounged, shoulders propped against the wall.

  “It’s your job. Not mine.” She cast a critical look at her reflection. The black silk made the silvery highlights in her hair shine, and the velvet rose design along the waist hid the tiny little pooch she had there now. With one hand, she adjusted her neckline. Thanks to her pregnancy, she had awesome cleavage.

  “No, but I’m yours.” He moved to stand behind her, palms warm on her bare shoulders. “Tell me why you don’t want to go.”

  She glared at him in the mirror and lifted her diamond studs, the real ones she’d bought as a celebration when the Cue Club had first started turning a profit under her ownership. “You have to ask?”

  “No. Not really.” He lifted one hand to jerk his thumb toward her closet. “Which shoes do you want out of there?”

  “Stop changing the subject.”

  “Stop trying to pick a fight with me so you’ll have an excuse not to come with me.”

  She narrowed her eyes further, bad temper spiking all under her skin. “I don’t need an excuse.”

  “Right.” His snort bordered on rude. He crossed to survey her shoe collection. “If you could find one that would hold water, you’d be laying it out and I’d be going alone.”

  Lord, she hated when he was right. Maybe seduction would work, since feminine pique hadn’t. Coming up behind him, she trailed her fingernails through the short hair at his nape. “Troy Lee…”

  “It’s not working, Angel baby. Office politics. I have to put in an appearance.” He held aloft a pair of open-toed heels, more rhinestone straps than anything else. “Hey, I like these. Very sexy.”

  “I’m not wearing those.” She snagged them from his easy hold and tossed them toward the bed. One thumped on the floor. Aggravated, she scanned the closet until she found what she was looking for and reached up to pull down the sedate pointed-toe pumps.

  “Those?” Askance, Troy Lee glanced from the shoes in her hand to the eff-me pair she’d discarded.

  “Yes. These.” She slipped into one, then the other. “I’m not wearing hooker shoes to your work’s holiday party.”

  “Hooker shoes? Hardly. Call-girl shoes, maybe. You know, classy and sexy. It’s not like anyone’s going to look at your shoes—”

  “Will there be wives and girlfriends there?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Trust me, they’ll notice.” Her stomach lifted and turned over, and she fought against a wave of nausea definitely caused by something other than early pregnancy. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt this sickly nervous about going anywhere.

  “Babe, you have nothing to worry about. You should have seen the dress Calvert’s wife wore last year. Your shoes are tame compared to that thing. It was like this really short black slip and there were these beads…” He gestured from torso to thigh and she rolled her eyes.

  “That’s different, Troy Lee.” She shook her suddenly sweaty hands. Sweet Jesus, she was going to die before this was all over.

  “Why is it different?” A tight note invaded his voice and she looked up into his too-alert gaze.

  “It just is.”

  “Shit.” He looked away, his rough exhale reeking of irritation and disgust. “We’re back to that not-as-good-as-everyone-else thing again, aren’t we?”

  “Well, on some levels it’s true.” To her absolute horror, the words wobbled. She resisted an overwhelming desire to hunch into herself the way she had in middle school.

  “The hell it is.” His irritation flared into anger. “Damn it, Angel, I don’t understand you. Give me one example of someone we’ll see tonight who’s above you?”

  Uh, maybe everyone? Glimpsing the very real ire in his blue gaze, she kept that smart little retort to herself. Instead, she smiled and shook back her hair. “I thought you didn’t want to fight tonight.”

  “I changed my mind. Some things are worth fighting about. Answer the question.”

  He wasn’t going to let this go. With an exaggerated roll of her eyes, she lifted her hands. “Oh, I don’t know… Autry Reed. She’s a lawyer.”

  “Okay. She’s a lawyer. Big deal.”

  “Well, yeah, it is. She went to Mercer.”

  “I’m not getting this, Angel.”

  “It’s not rocket science, Troy Lee.”

  “Obviously not. If it was, I’d understand.” He splayed his hand against the wall and leaned his weight on it. “Honestly, I don’t understand anyone being intimidated by Autry Reed.”<
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  “It’s not just her.” A fiery blend of anger and dread swirled over her nerves. “It’s…come on, Troy Lee. Countywide emergency personnel and their significant others?”

  “Yeah?”

  She almost growled at him in frustration. God, he was so dense to be so smart. She sank onto the end of the bed, using her fingers to mark off names and facts as a visual aid for him. “Is Tick going to be there?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. His baby just came home right before Christmas.” Confusion twisted his brows together into a snarl.

  “He graduated in the top of his class at UGA—”

  “So did I.”

  “And his wife, who works for the FBI, has a doctoral degree.”

  “I think so.”

  “Okay. Cookie’s going to be there.”

  “Um, yeah. Probably.” His perplexity didn’t clear.

  “Tori Calvert is working on her doctorate. What about Steve Monroe? Will he be around?”

  “He said he was. What—”

  “His wife Dahlia? She teaches out at the high school and wrapped up her master’s degree at Valdosta this last semester.”

  His lips parted for a second in slack surprise and he shook his head. “How do you know all this stuff?”

  “My mama does hair for half the county. She knows everything about everybody.”

  “Sweetheart, is this about education? I don’t get how—”

  “It’s about education and respectability.”

  “Baby, you went to college.”

  “Two years at the community college, Troy Lee.” She dragged a hand through her hair, mussing the layers she’d spent thirty painstaking minutes drying and smoothing and setting. “It’s not the same thing.”

  “Angel, I swear to God, I’m about to get seriously pissed off.”

  “Don’t swear. It’s a sin.”

  “So is extramarital sex and you don’t seem to have a problem sleeping with me. We’re not changing the subject.”

  She twined her hands together in her lap. “Why are you angry?”

  The swiftness of his moving stole her breath. He knelt before her, both of his long hands covering hers. “Because you don’t see what I do.”

  “You see what you want to see.”

  He ignored her. “Talk to me about respectability.”

  Her shoulders slumped on a weary exhale. “Oh, come on, Troy Lee, surely you get this part. Do you know what I did after community college?”

  “You worked days at McGee’s and waited tables at the diner at night.”

  It was her turn to stare at him in shock. “How do you know that?”

  “Mr. Hubert at the diner.” He named one of the town’s elderly residents, a World War II veteran who spent his days sipping tea and talking to anyone who’d pass the time with him. “He adores you. And you saved your money and when the Cue Club went up for sale, you wrote a business plan, secured a loan, turned it into a profitable venture when no one thought it was possible. So no, I don’t see how the hell you can be intimidated by anyone or anything, Angel Henderson.”

  “But I am,” she whispered, tears stinging her perfectly shaded and mascaraed eyes. “I don’t want to be, but I hold up the bar against who they are, what they do and there’s no comparison.”

  “You’re right, there’s not.” He seemed to breathe the words, a pure emotion glinting in his gaze as he looked up at her. “You took nothing and you made something out of it, just like Christine and those balls of clay she starts with when she’s sculpting. It takes a rare and unique talent, you know, to make something great out of nothing, and you have it.”

  She closed her eyes, trying to pull her wild feelings together. He moved, the fine cotton of his shirt rustling, and pressed his cheek to hers. “Don’t discount it, baby. Be proud of it.”

  On a trembling sigh, she lifted her lashes, finding his gorgeous blues close to hers. A shift of her head and their lips met in the mingling she cherished. He pulled back, rubbing warm hands over her bare knees. He stared at her, his eyes alight with a fierce passion, his expression serious. “I’m not going to ask you to do something that makes you sincerely uncomfortable, but I would like to have you with me tonight and I’d damn sure be proud to have you with me.”

  He rose and extended his hand, palm up. Holding his gaze, Angel sucked in a deep breath and wrestled the fear down.

  She laid her hand in his and let him draw her to her feet. His fingers tightened around hers and she moistened her lips, probably messing up the lipstick she’d painted on with painstaking care. Damn it all, if she was going to do this, she’d do it on her own terms. She kicked out of the pumps she’d never worn because they really weren’t her.

  “Get me the darn hooker shoes then.”

  His pleased laugh rumbled over her and she caught a glimpse of pride shining in his eyes as he leaned in to kiss her. “You got it, babe.”

  “They are too cute for words.” Leaning as far forward as her pregnancy would allow, Autry Reed rested her elbow on the table and her chin in her hand, a wistfully romantic expression on her face.

  “Who?” With a grateful breath, Tori slipped her shoes off, hidden by the tablecloth, and peered around, following the direction of Autry’s gaze. As crowded as the Radium Spring’s ballroom was, though, it was hard to pinpoint who Autry referred to.

  “Angel and Troy Lee.”

  Tori finally located the pair, alone at a table across the packed room. A pair of strappy sandals lay discarded next to Angel’s chair, and Troy Lee cradled one bare, slender foot against his thigh, rubbing his thumbs across her arch as they talked. His grin flashed at something Angel said, and even from a distance, the adoration on his face was apparent. A little more of Tori’s insecurity where Angel was concerned drained away.

  “They are sweet,” she concurred.

  “I’m glad too.” Autry smiled. “She deserves to have someone look at her like that, especially after what Jim did.”

  A tiny frown pulled at Tori’s brows. “Do you know her well?”

  “I know her to speak to.” Autry relaxed into her chair, rubbing a palm over the growing bulge of her second child. “Her sister Hope cuts my hair and her mother has been doing Mama’s hair for years. Your mama’s too, for that matter.”

  “She’s Miss Marie’s daughter? I didn’t know that.”

  “Yes, she’s Miss Marie’s daughter. Her oldest. I would’ve thought you’d know her. She graduated with Tick.” Autry’s soft laugh was indulgent. “I forget that you lead an isolated life, Victoria.”

  “I do not. I was like eight when Tick graduated from high school. All I remember about that is having to sit through a bunch of boring speeches and all those people being called to get their diplomas.” Her gaze tracked back to the couple across the room. “She does look happy with him.”

  “Very much so.”

  Fiddling with her engagement ring, Tori scanned the room for Mark, finally finding him near the bank of French doors that opened onto the balcony. He stood with Stanton Reed and a couple of men from the city police department, all of them deep in conversation. He still looked tired and drawn, and worry rippled through her.

  “How is he?” Matching concern laced Autry’s quiet question.

  “Better, I think. He’s not sleeping well, but that can be normal.” Thinking about Mark’s quiet wrestle with his grief for his wife and unborn child made her own heart ache. He’d mourned them for years after Jenny had vanished, but even so, facing the reality of their deaths had hit him hard. “I think for him believing something is true and knowing it’s true are two very different things. He’s hurting, but there’s a finality he didn’t have before.”

  “Sounds like a double-edged sword.”

  “Exactly. A very sharp one.”

  Across the room, Clark Dempsey stopped at Troy Lee and Angel’s table, smiling at her, slapping Troy Lee on the shoulder with a persuasive expression. Troy Lee shook his head, then grimaced and rose. He leaned down to kiss Ang
el quickly before following Clark to the stairs. Angel followed his progress, then reached for her drink. A disconcerted look flitted across her face as she glanced around the room before hiding behind taking a sip of what looked like sparkling water.

  Empathy flashed through Tori. Lord, she knew that feeling well enough—being nervously alone, out of place and step with life going on around her. Funny she’d find that little glimpse of sisterhood with Angel Henderson of all people.

  Angel reached down to slide on the sparkly high heels. She rose, smoothing her skirt, and slipped into the alcove where the restroom entrances were. Tori lifted her own sparkling water and looked around to check on Mark. He leaned against the wall, seemingly concentrating on something Coney’s police chief was saying.

  A familiar, willowy blonde detached herself from another group and headed for the restrooms with a purposeful stride. Tori frowned.

  “Isn’t that Jim Tyre’s new wife?” Autry asked.

  “Yes.” Unease lifted its head. Something about the way Rhonda moved, the set expression on her face raised red flags all over the place. Tori pushed her chair back, urgency springing to life. “Autry, I’ll be right back.”

  Angel washed and dried her hands then leaned toward the mirror to check her makeup. The vintage lighting was pretty, but not nearly bright enough. She ruffled her layers a little and sighed. They’d never get out of here tonight, not now that Clark had charmed Troy Lee into getting his guitar out of the Jeep.

  But he was having a good time, and she could…deal. She would deal.

  She straightened, drew in a calming breath, and adjusted her neckline. The door opened as she turned to go, and she found herself face-to-face with Rhonda Tyre. Angel made herself smile as she attempted to pass the other woman. “Hey, Rhonda.”

  Her eyes glittering with a feral light, Rhonda wrapped her hand around Angel’s upper arm. “What do you think you’re doing here tonight?”

  Angel glanced down at Rhonda’s cupid-pink nails against her skin. Oh no, she didn’t think so. “Let go of me.”