by Peggy Webb
Re: Boots
Wear boots with killer heels, Bea. A French maid costume wouldn’t hurt, either. I saw the cutest one in a shop on Bourbon. I’ll get it and mail it to you. It was one of THOSE shops, but I don’t care who sees me in there. It might enhance my reputation. Why is it that women who study in a field dominated by men get viewed as genderless? Or worse yet, one of the boys!!!
OMG, I can’t believe you saw Russ Hammond NAKED! Was he really HOT, Bea! He sounds like he had that bad boy edge I simply adore! If you decide to throw him back, send him down to New Orleans!
Cat
Bea started to shoot off an email to Cat saying, you can have him! But that was going too far, and besides it wasn’t even the truth - which scared Bea more than she cared to admit.
She grabbed her clothes and stepped into the bathroom so she’d be showered and dressed before Molly arrived. By the time Molly got there, Bea was on her second cup of coffee and halfway through a swashbuckling movie so old she didn’t even know the lead actor’s name. All she knew was that he looked good in tight britches and pirate’s boots.
“Bea!” Molly burst through the door like a one-women parade. “OMG, are you hiding in here because of that gorgeous man downstairs!”
Swooping across the room in a cloud of perfume, swirling skirts and bangle bracelets, she grabbed Bea in a tight hug.
“Not so loud, Molly. He’ll hear you.”
“You can’t hear yourself think down there. I never will get all these relatives straight.”
“Some of them, you don’t even want to try.” Bea marched around Molly. “I see my brother hasn’t changed you one iota. Good for you!”
“He’s just a big old teddy bear!”
“Sam?”
“Don’t look so shocked, Bea. Why shouldn’t he be as wonderful as you?” Molly plopped in the middle of the bed and patted a spot beside her. “Tell all, and don’t you dare leave out a thing.”
“This could take all morning, and they’re expecting us downstairs.”
“Bea, I’ve got to teach you the value of an entrance. If I didn’t make at least one a day, Sam would be disappointed.”
“Mr. Correct and Punctual?”
“Marriage has mellowed him.”
“Mellowed, my butt. I’d say it worked an outright miracle.”
“Not another word about Sam and me.” Molly leaned over and grabbed her hand. “I want to hear about you and that heartthrob downstairs. If I read the signs right, he’s as tied in knots over you and you are over him.”
“You really think so?”
“I know so, Bea.”
“I’m in total shock.”
“You’re not in total shock. You’re falling in love.” Molly flopped back on the bed. “OH, this is so DELICIOUS, I’m about to die!”
o0o
Russ was glad he’d decided to stay.
The house on North Wood Avenue was filled with lively people who laughed a lot and hugged a lot and talked a lot. He craned his neck, scanning the room. Where was Bea?
“I thought you might need this. Talking to this crew can make a man thirsty.” A big handsome man thrust a glass of iced tea into Russ’s hands. “I’m Samuel Adams, Bea’s brother, and I really appreciate what you did for my sister.”
“I was glad to lend a hand.”
“It seems you did more than lend a hand. You did an all-out rescue job.” Samuel laughed. “With my sister, that’s not easy.”
“She is independent.”
“Bossy is the word I’d have used.”
“That, too.”
Russ felt himself being inspected. He didn’t mind. If he’d had a sister like Bea, he’d have done the same thing.
“Do I measure up?”
Samuel’s dark eyes crinkled at the corners when he laughed. “You caught me red handed.”
“I don’t blame you. I’m sure that nothing you’ve seen about me inspires confidence.”
“I never judge a man by appearances.”
“Then you are a rarity. A wise man.”
“You might not have said that before I met Molly. Speaking of my angel…” Sam turned toward the staircase with the rapt expression of a man who adored a woman.
Molly was blond and beautiful, the kind of woman who turned heads, but it was not Sam’s wife who held Russ’s attention: it was the tall, dark-headed wildcat at her side. Bea was wearing another of those short, tight little skirts that drove him wild and a pair of black boots hat made her legs look six feet long - and every inch delicious.
“Two years ago when I first met Molly, I made the mistake of judging by appearances.” Sam was talking but Russ paid scant attention, just nodded politely and continued to feast his eyes on Bea. “My wife taught me a lesson I’ll never forget.”
At the bottom of the staircase, that little old woman who had screamed Russ out of bed pulled Bea aside and stood on tiptoe to whisper something. Bea smiled in his direction, then patted the old woman’s hand, and she went tottering back in the direction of the kitchen.
When Molly joined them, Sam lit up like a Christmas tree and slid his arm around his wife. No surprise there. What shook Russ to the core was the way Bea sashayed up and hooked her arm through his.
Even Sam looked shocked. Russ figured Bea’s brother was the kind of man who would dig into his background, his business, his financial security, his habits, his friends.
“Have you girls been enjoying your reunion?” Sam smiled indulgently at his wife and her color heightened.
“Darling, I barely escaped from this little bitty old woman who called me Bea and wanted to drag me to the kitchen for a private cooking lesson. ‘Beatrice,’ she said, ‘no Southern woman would be caught dead making sawmill gravy with lumps.’ Who is she?”
Samuel and Bea hooted with laughter.
“Aunt Rachel. Thank God you got away.” Bea grinned at Molly. “Russ found out the hard way that it doesn’t do to get her dander up.”
“That story has already made the rounds,” Samuel said. “I understand there is even a movement among the unmarried cousins to have a repeat performance.”
“I think I’ll decline,” Russ said. “I don’t like to be center stage more than once a visit.”
“Aunt Rachel is terribly sorry about what happened, Russ,” Bea told him. “She wants to make it up to you.”
“There was no harm done. In fact, I rather enjoyed it. I haven’t had that much attention since I turned a frog loose in the fourth-grade classroom.”
“Humor her. She doesn’t want to apologize. She just wants you to come into the kitchen and lick the bowl.”
“Lick the bowl?”
“Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth,” Samuel told him. “Licking the bowl is a rare privilege, especially if Aunt Rachel is making her famous divinity.”
“Her divinity?”
“Candy,” Bea explained, laughing. “Why don’t you just come with me and find out.”
Aunt Rachel was bustling around the kitchen, wearing two aprons, one a frilly organdy and the other a cotton domestic to protect her company apron. A perky red bow—the kind used on Christmas packages—perched in her sparse gray hair. In order to keep her bow from toppling off into the gravy, she had stretched a hairnet over her head, anchoring it with enough bobby pins to keep a drugstore in business for a year of two.
She waved when Russ and Bea entered the kitchen.
“Well... I said to Bea, I said, why don’t you get that nice young man out here and let me show him a thing or two? Didn’t I say that, Bea?” She never stopped talking long enough for Bea to reply, but kept looking up at Russ, craning her neck up so that she could see beyond the full beard that so fascinated her. “I said, I’ll bet that young man would like to lick the bowl. I never saw a man yet who didn’t. ‘The way to a man’s heart,’ and all that, that’s what I’ve always said. You just ask Mack. Mack can tell you. ‘The way to a man’s heart,’ just you wait and see. Mack will tell you. It works every time.”
Bea winked at Russ over the top of Aunt Rachel’s head. He smiled down at the two women. It had been a long, long time since he’d been in a real kitchen. This one was big and cozy with copper pots hanging from the ceiling and coffee perking on the stove and bread baking in the oven and pots of daisies sitting in the sunshine on the windowsill.
“Bea tells me you’re making divinity, Aunt Rachel.”
“That’s just like her, telling all my secrets.” Aunt Rachel plucked a big white apron off a hook. “Bend over,” she told Russ, “I’m going to introduce you to the joys of cooking.”
“I confess that I’m rather ignorant in that field.”
“You don’t need a degree to beat divinity. Just a good strong arm and lots of patience. That’s what I always tell Mack, lots of patience, I say.” She looped the sashes around Russ, then tied them in a tiny knot. “My, you’re a big man. There’s not enough sash to make a bow on you.”
“Bea—” Aunt Rachel turned to her niece who sat on a stool in a patch of sunshine, watching “—I’m so glad you picked out a big man this time. You never used to date anybody except those scrawny bookish types. I’ll bet they couldn’t even hold out to beat the divinity.”
“I’ll bet they couldn’t, either.” Russ gave Bea a wicked smile and followed Aunt Rachel to the kitchen counter.
He was having a wonderful time. Bea could tell by his jaunty walk and the easy way he smiled and joked with Aunt Rachel. Not for all the tea in China would she have spoiled his fun by arguing about the men she had dated. Come to think of it, they had been rather anemic looking. She’d bet they couldn’t hold out to beat the divinity, either.
Russ and Aunt Rachel had their heads together, earnestly discussing the process of stirring the candy until it was exactly the right consistency.
“Can I do anything to help, Aunt Rachel?” Bea asked.
“You just sit still over there and watch two pros at work.”
Bea did as she was told. One of the things she loved about coming back every year to her family’s reunion was the everydayness of things. Life in this big old house in Florence was filled with reassuring routines and ordinary pleasures—setting the coffee on to perk first thing in the morning, raising the shades to let the sunshine in, flicking off the night-light in the bathroom, running over to a neighbor’s house for a cup of tea. As she sat on her kitchen stool, a sense of peace stole over her. Life from this angle looked good, and it suddenly seemed full of possibilities.
She propped her hand on her chin and lost herself in observing Russ. He looked right in the kitchen, with a white apron straining over his broad chest and a big metal spoon in his hand. He was laughing, and it was a sound of such uninhibited delight that Bea wanted to capture it in a bottle and keep it forever. She could imagine herself uncapping that bottle when that old witch of a boss got her goat, listening once more to the sound of his laughter and letting the problems at work just roll off her back.
“You can lick the bowl now,” Aunt Rachel’s voice brought Bea up short. Since when had she stopped thinking of her work as an opportunity for advancement and started thinking of it as a problem?
Russ dipped his finger into the bowl and came up with a glob of white sugary candy. He poked it into his mouth and grinned.
“Hmm, no wonder it’s called divinity.” He ran his finger around the edge of the bowl and came up with another generous dollop. ‘‘Here, Bea. Try this.”
He stood in front of her, offering his finger. She bent over and slowly took his finger into her mouth. It was heaven. Not the candy, but the taste of the man. His finger pads were slightly calloused and felt rough against her tongue. There were crisp little hairs along the tops of his fingers that tickled the inside of her mouth. His skin had an overall salty taste that set all her nerve endings tingling.
“There’s more in the bowl,” Aunt Rachel said.
Bea suddenly realized she was still holding on to Russ’s finger. To make matters worse, he was staring down at her as if he’d invented her and planned to gloat over his invention until sometime next Tuesday.
She opened her mouth slowly, like a baby bird, and he withdrew his finger.
“Wasn’t that good?” he asked.
She didn’t think he was talking about the candy.
“Wonderful.”
They stared at each other, their eyes wide and aware, until Aunt Rachel plucked Russ’s sleeve, pulling him back across the kitchen to another cooking project of hers.
Bea decided she’d better rescue him or else Aunt Rachel would keep him there the rest of the morning. The funny thing was, he didn’t look as if he wanted rescuing. He was having the time of his life.
The kitchen door banged open and five of the rowdiest children in the clan catapulted into the kitchen, making the question of rescue moot. Eight-year-old Sim was tossing a football into the air, and two-year-old Ralph was tagging along behind, sucking his thumb and dragging his blanket.
“Goodness gracious, children,” Aunt Rachel said, ducking out of the way of the ball. “Take that ball outside.”
Sim, the leader, puffed out his chest and craned his neck up at Russ.
“Them’s neat boots, mister.”
“Thanks,” Russ said.
“You sure are big.”
“I guess I am.”
“I’ll betcha played ball.”
“As a matter of fact, I did.” Russ bent over the small boys, gathering three of them in his arms. “Why don’t you fellows take me outside and we’ll have a game or two?”
“Aw right!” Sim turned proudly to his cousins. “See, I told you he was a nice dude.” Then he marched toward the door, his cowlick flopping as he led the pack outside.
When Russ passed Bea’s stool, he picked her up, then set her on her feet. “How about it, Bea? Want to play with me?”
Dang, did she want to play with him? Yes, yes, yes!
“No,” she said, to be on the safe side. “I suppose I’d better stay and help Aunt Rachel.”
“Shoo. Scoot. Scat.” Aunt Rachel swished her apron at them. “Get on out of the kitchen and let me finish up in here. Go on now, before I have to take a broom and sweep you out.”
Russ’s smile was as gleeful as a child’s.
“Looks like you’re stuck with me.” He draped his arm around her shoulders as if it belonged there and led her out into the backyard.
Little children romped in the sunshine, their laughter high and spiraling, their sturdy legs pumping up and down as they tried to catch a bird and put salt on his tail. Russ felt the tug of home on his heartstrings. With Bea tucked safely under his arm and the laughter of children ringing in his ears and the smell of home cooking wafting through the screen door, he longed for home. Not just any home, but his home. A home he could call his own, a home with children and laughter and a wife who welcomed him with a kiss, a home with a dog curled in front of the fireplace and lots of books scattered on the bookshelves and tables, a home with a front porch and rocking chairs so he could sit outside in June and watch the fireflies.
It suddenly occurred to him that perhaps he’d been running scared for too long. Perhaps some things were worth taking risks for.
“Catch, mister.” Sim tossed the ball Russ’s way, and Russ became tangled in a group of squirming, screaming children.
Bea sat on a swing under a magnolia tree, marveling at his ease with children, until he swooped by and tugged her into the game. She hadn’t romped that way since she was a child. In Dallas she’d never have considered tumbling on the ground and getting grass in her hair, but in Florence, with Russ at her side, it seemed the most natural thing in the world. And besides that, it was fun.
They were both breathless when the children finally tired of the game and moved on to bigger and better things—trying to dig a crawdad hole to China.
Russ and Bea sat side by side in the swing.
“I’m glad I stayed, Bea.”
“So am I.”
He reached out and cov
ered her hand with his. “A man could get addicted to all this.”
“So could a woman.”
“How did you end up in Dallas, Bea?”
“Like most small-town girls, I longed for bright lights and big cities. I suppose I thought life would be better there, happier, fuller, richer.” She paused, looking out across the yard. “Funny how we don’t really appreciate the things we have until we’re far away from them.”
“Have you ever thought of coming back?”
She swiveled her head to look at him.
“Coming back?”
“Here. To Florence.”
“From time to time, I suppose. But my mother is happily married now, and so is Samuel. There doesn’t seem to be much point in coming back.”
They sat on the swing, holding hands and thinking of life and its many winding roads, and both of them wondered at their choices. Had they taken the right roads? Or had they turned left when they should have gone straight?
Russ was full of longings and needs that he couldn’t quite comprehend. And Bea was wishing for things she thought she couldn’t have.
And so the minutes passed by, and soon it was time to go inside for lunch.
o0o
Glory Ethel gathered the clan together in what she called her ballroom. Flushed and smiling, she rang a small silver bell. The noise in the room gradually died down.
“Every year,” she said, “the Adams clan gathers in Florence to celebrate the unity of family. And every year it seems our family grows. This year my husband, Jedidiah Rakestraw, joins us for the first time. Jed.” Smiling, she held her hand toward her husband. He came forward and linked his arm through hers.
“I’m also proud to announce that Jed’s beautiful daughter Molly won the heart of Florence’s die-hard bachelor—my son, Samuel Adams.”
There was a general hubbub of comments and laughter. Glory Ethel rang her little silver bell once more.
“The Adams family continues to grow. Rachel and Mack’s granddaughter has her fiancé with her this year, and Howard and Lucille are going to be grandparents for the fifth time.”
“Sixth,” Howard Adams corrected his sister-in-law.
“I must be getting old.” Glory Ethel laughed.