The Southern Comfort Prequel Trilogy Box Set

by Lisa Clark O'Neill

  After she’d carefully climbed onto the bed beside him, Jesse pressed his lips to her forehead. “You know, they say that when you save someone’s life, you become responsible for it.”

  “I’ve heard that.”

  “The way I see it, we kind of saved each other.”

  She was quiet for so long that Jesse tilted his head so that he could see if she’d fallen asleep. She hadn’t.

  “What are you saying? Exactly.”

  “I don’t know. Exactly. Just that we should probably stick together.”

  She laid her hand on his chest, and began rubbing in gentle circles. “Probably a good idea.”

  They were quiet for several moments. “Like, permanently.”

  The rubbing stopped. “Are you asking me to marry you?”

  Was he? That would be crazy. “Yeah, I think I am.”

  She cautiously lifted her head to peer at him. “Is this the pain medication talking?”

  “No.”

  “Maybe the near-death experience.”

  The more she questioned him, the more he was certain. “Or maybe I’m just in love with you.”

  She smiled, her tired eyes lighting with happiness. “That’s handy, considering I’m in love with you, too.”

  “So you’ll marry me.”

  “Ask me again when you’re not on any type of narcotic.”

  “I will.”

  She settled back down against him.

  “When I ask you again, am I going to like the answer?”

  He couldn’t see her smile, but he sensed it.

  “Yes.”

  Avarice

  A Southern Comfort Prequel

  Book Two

  Lisa Clark O’Neill

  With special thanks to Brian Koch for his incredible graphic design work and for being a rock; to Sandra Clark for her eagle eye and too many other things to enumerate; to my Pigeons for the laughs and support which help keep me sane; and finally to Kristina Costello and Catherine Hudson for their very helpful feedback.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Other Novels by Lisa Clark O’Neill

  The Sweetwater Trilogy:

  Mr. Write

  Admit One

  Circumstantial Evidence

  The Southern Comfort Series:

  Serendipity

  Forbidden

  Deception

  Nemesis

  Obsession

  The Southern Comfort Prequel Trilogy:

  Malice

  CHAPTER ONE

  THE room was dark when Ainsley Tidwell reluctantly cracked open one eye. Her cousin Sabrina’s face loomed above her.

  “It’s still night time,” Ainsley muttered before rolling over.

  Sabrina grabbed her shoulder and yanked her back around. “No, it isn’t. It’s just early. If we want to get down to the creek before Granny wakes up, we have to hurry.”

  Granny was their grandmother, Betty Tidwell. Mother to Ainsley’s dad and Sabrina’s mom. Ainsley had come to visit her for part of the summer, and Sabrina – who lived just down the road – had spent the first night with her, too.

  “But why do we have to go now?”

  “Because if Granny wakes up first she’ll want us to eat breakfast and brush our teeth and make sure we’re wearing sunscreen and bug repellant and whatever the hell. That takes forever, and we’ve already waited a whole year. Besides, we’re not babies anymore.”

  Ainsley’s dark eyes widened, bringing her more awake. She didn’t remember Sabrina saying things like hell last summer.

  But then, they’d only been eleven last year. This year they were heading into middle school. Practically grown up. Plus, Sabrina had an older sister and an older brother. She always seemed to know and try things a step ahead of Ainsley.

  Because her competitive nature wouldn’t allow her to be seen as a baby, Ainsley tossed back the covers. “Let me get my suit on.”

  Sabrina was already wearing her bathing suit. And Ainsley couldn’t help but notice that she’d started to get boobs. It made sense, since Sabrina’s older sister Carly was stacked, as she’d overheard a couple of the local boys saying while they snuck cigarettes behind her aunt’s general store. Paulson’s Dry Goods. It was one of the oldest businesses in one of the oldest buildings in Dahlonega, Georgia. Sabrina’s dad’s family had owned it since around the time of the gold rush, which meant way over a hundred years ago.

  Old.

  Ainsley pulled on her one piece suit, trying not to feel self-conscious, and then slid her feet into an old pair of sneakers. Her feet were bigger than Sabrina’s, because Ainsley was tall and dark and skinny – she took after her dad, although people called him rangy – whereas Sabrina was shorter and rounder and fair. But despite these differences, they considered themselves almost like twins. At least over the summer. They didn’t see each other a whole lot the rest of the year, because Ainsley lived in Savannah where her dad was a lawyer. He was usually too busy to make the drive all the way up to the North Georgia Mountains.

  Tiptoeing past their granny’s bedroom, Ainsley and Sabrina stifled giggles as they let themselves out the kitchen door. Granny’s house was another one of those old buildings – a white farmhouse with a big porch that wrapped all the way around the house, and tucked into the woods by Yahoola Creek.

  Yahoola Creek was where they were headed. Broad and shallow with a rocky bottom, it was the perfect place to cool off and to float in inner-tubes. She and Sabrina had been looking forward to this for months.

  Not that they really needed to cool off just yet, Ainsley realized as they crossed the yard. The morning air lay in cool little wisps of fog that seemed to skitter away when you got near them, and the grass was wet with dew beneath their feet. But she’d been coming here enough to know that despite the pleasant morning temperature, it could get hot as hades by midday.

  She and Sabrina approached the little shed where Granny kept her gardening stuff and her outdoor equipment. She’d told them that she’d bought new tubes and blown them up in anticipation of Ainsley’s visit.

  The shed door squeaked a little as Sabrina yanked it open. “Shhhhh.” Ainsley cast a worried glance over her shoulder. “We don’t want Granny to hear us.”

  “Are you kidding?” Sabrina said. “She’s halfway deaf. No way she’ll hear us all the way out here.”

  “She doesn’t seem deaf.”

  “I said halfway. And anyway,” Sabrina added with a note of superiority “you’re not here that much, so you wouldn’t know. Trust me. I’m here all the time.”

  That stung. Ainsley liked her home in Savannah, liked her friends and her family – even her new stepbrother, Grant, who was staying at the hotel in town with her dad and stepmom, because there wasn’t enough room at Granny’s for everybody. Her cousin Carly had spent the night, too, taking up the third bedroom. But she really loved her Granny. They’d always had a bond, as Granny called it. And it hurt that Sabrina got to see her whenever she wanted to, while Ainsley only ever got to come for a few weeks in the summer, and then sometimes on Thanksgiving or Christmas. Although probably not even that this year, since her dad had gotten remarried. He wanted to focus on bonding with the four of them, and hadn’t even wanted her to come to the mountains for the summer until Ainsley had pitched a fit. He’d relented, and here they were. And she didn’t want to waste a minute of her time worrying about stupid stuff.

  “Just hand me a tube,” she said to Sabrina, who’d gone inside the shed. Morning light streaked through the treetops now, making it bright enough to see without pulling on the chain for the overhead light.

  Sabrina passed her a green tube, while taking the hot pink one for herself. Ainsley thought her cousin probably expected her to complain about that, but the fact was that Ainsley didn’t care for pink. Too girlie. And Ainsley – much to her mother’s despair – was a tomboy to the bone.

  Sabrina, looking
as girlie as a strawberry frosted cupcake with heart-shaped sprinkles, emerged from the shed with a smile. “I’ll race ya.”

  Never one to be able to resist a challenge, Ainsley took off. Her legs were longer, but Sabrina had the advantage of knowing the path to the creek by heart. She deftly sidestepped a tree root that tripped Ainsley up, laughing as she looked back over her shoulder. Ainsley regained her balance and put on a burst of speed down the hill, putting them at the edge of the creek just about the same time.

  “Tie,” Sabrina said, winded.

  Ainsley sat the tube down for a second to rest her hands on her knees. “I totally would have beat you if I hadn’t tripped over that dumb root.”

  “Yes, but you did trip, so it doesn’t matter.”

  “You’re evil, Bree,” Ainsley told her.

  “So my siblings say.” She stepped closer, and then stuck her foot in the water, sneaker and all. They were going to get wet anyway.

  “Is it cold?”

  “Not too bad. Although I’m not sure your fancy Savannah blood will be able to handle it.”

  Ainsley rolled her eyes. “Move out of the way.”

  Ainsley placed her tube in the water and then climbed in, legs dangling over the side. The shock of the cold water seeping through her suit was enough to make her gasp, but she stifled it. Sabrina was watching her closely for any signs of distress.

  “Feels great,” Ainsley called, moving away from the shore by pushing against the rocks with her shoes.

  Sabrina flipped her cloud of curly blonde hair over her shoulder and climbed into her own tube.

  They drifted for a little while, calling out silly insults to each other that made them laugh. The water was cold, but the sun shone through the trees in golden beams that Ainsley had always thought looked like the light radiating from holy figures in paintings. She thought it was called the fingers of God, or something like that. Either way, it was pretty.

  She looked around, saw that Sabrina had drifted ahead of her, but was holding onto a boulder in the stream, waiting for Ainsley to catch up. When Ainsley drifted closer she reached out, and Sabrina clasped her hand.

  They were probably a little too old to hold hands, but Ainsley didn’t really care if anyone thought it was weird. There wasn’t anyone around to see, anyway. They were the only ones in the creek.

  “So how is it, having a new mom?” Sabrina said. It sort of burst out of her, so Ainsley thought her cousin had probably been dying to ask for some time.

  “It’s alright,” Ainsley said. “Although I don’t think of her as a new mom. I already have a mom.”

  “Yeah, but you mostly live with your dad. So she’s like, your main female role model now, or whatever.”

  Ainsley’s brows scrunched together. “I see my mom plenty.”

  When Sabrina didn’t say anything, Ainsley’s frown deepened. “Just because my mom had some… problems when I was a baby, that doesn’t mean she isn’t a good role model now.”

  “I didn’t say any different.”

  No, but her silence had implied it. Ainsley knew that her aunt thought Ainsley’s mom was an awful person, but that just wasn’t true. Her mom had made a couple bad mistakes when she was younger, but she’d gotten herself together now. Ainsley thought that having an addiction and overcoming it, admitting that you’d screwed up, actually made her a pretty good role model. But Aunt Denise – Sabrina’s mom – had never forgiven Ainsley’s mom for some of the stuff she’d done years ago.

  She wondered if her aunt found Ainsley’s new stepmom to be an improvement.

  “Your stepbrother is cute,” Sabrina said, clearly wanting to change the subject to something less problematic.

  Ainsley glanced at her in surprise. “I guess.”

  Grant, who was almost seventeen, certainly had enough girls that acted ridiculous around him. They called the house and showed up there sometimes, batting their mascaraed eyelashes and giggling like idiots. Ainsley didn’t get it. She’d never act like that around a boy.

  “Carly sure thought so.”

  “She told you that?”

  Sabrina snorted. “She doesn’t tell me anything. But I can tell. She was sticking out her chest and flipping her hair around last night at dinner, because she wanted him to notice her. She was mad when he spent most of the time talking to Ben.”

  Ben was Sabrina’s older brother, who was a year older than Grant.

  “They both play football,” Ainsley said. “They were talking about sports.”

  “Which pissed Carly off,” Sabrina said, sounding smug again. “Her boobs lost out to a pigskin.”

  Ainsley laughed, and then another big rock in the stream caused her to let go of Sabrina’s hand. “Oh great,” she called out as Sabrina shot off to the left and her own tube drifted slowly to the right. “You’re in the rapids and now I’m over here in the weeds. You’re gonna be miles ahead of me.”

  “See you at the finish line!” Sabrina called out, referring to the huge boulder that marked the place where they climbed out and then made their way back along the trail, usually to start all over again.

  Ainsley muttered to herself and then started paddling with her hands. It was too deep here to push off with her feet, unless she wanted to get out of the tube and walk. And though her butt had gotten used to the water temperature, she wasn’t sure she wanted to get all the way soaked yet. Maybe this afternoon.

  Ainsley paddled frantically, her tube turning backwards so that she couldn’t see where she was going. And of course it got hung up on something.

  “Figures.”

  Ainsley paddled with one hand, trying to turn herself so that she could see what had impeded her progress, but her hand got caught in some kind of weed.

  “Ew.” Ainsley extracted it and glanced over her shoulder. The weed was long. And blonde.

  And looked a whole lot like hair.

  The scream got stuck in her throat as Ainsley shot up out of her tube, tripping over her feet and falling face first into the creek. Her limbs became tangled, trapping her temporarily between a rock and whatever was in the water with her. But she fought her way free, and came back up, sputtering.

  Shoving her hair out of her eyes, she jerked around, looked down into the water.

  The lifeless eyes of her cousin Carly looked back.

  AINSLEY stared at the spot where she’d discovered her cousin’s body. Sunlight glinted off the surface, causing the rippling water to look as if it had been sprinkled with diamonds. The happy sound of the rushing stream seemed completely out of tune with the awful memory.

  It was difficult to believe that it had been nearly eighteen years. It seemed like yesterday.

  Partly because an event like that tended to stick with you, she knew. Like some sort of mental bubble gum. You could never quite scrape it all the way off.

  And partly because this was the first time she’d been back to Dahlonega since her grandmother’s death fifteen years ago. Granny managed to hold the family together in the wake of Carly’s murder, but just barely. And after she passed, the tension became simply too much. Granny had been the finger in the leaky dam. It was no surprise to any of them when it finally burst.

  Water under the bridge, Ainsley thought, continuing with the mental metaphor. A whole flood of it.

  But here she was again, because another cousin was in trouble. Despite all the family drama, she and Sabrina had managed to stay close. It was easier after they’d both turned eighteen and were off on their own – Ainsley to college and Sabrina, being the adventurer that she was, on a cross-country road trip. Her cousin had taken on part time jobs – waiting tables, working as a seasonal farm hand, setting up her easel on the sidewalk and sketching quick portraits – whenever she needed extra cash to indulge her wanderlust and soothe her artistic soul.

  Ainsley thought that feeding her almost pathological need to flip a giant middle finger to life by squeezing every last drop she could from it was the more likely reason, but she couldn’t say she bla
med her. Carly’s death had changed all of them in different ways. Her cousin Ben had become more serious, her aunt more bitter, her dad more withdrawn. Sabrina, as her aunt used to complain, grew reckless.

  Despite the fact that she’d returned home a couple of years ago and seemed inclined to finally settle down, Ainsley feared that Sabrina’s recklessness had finally caught up with her.

  “Where are you?” she murmured, glancing downstream toward the boulder that had always served as their finish line.

  The noise behind her – a snapping twig – caused Ainsley to turn around. Her heart kicked against her ribcage when she saw the man. Tall, broad-shouldered, messy brown hair and several days’ growth of beard covering a lean, rawboned face. But what really concerned her was the shotgun.

  She stared at it, and then raised her gaze to meet eyes of an indeterminate light shade. Those eyes raked over her, and then narrowed.

  He opened his mouth, and the voice that emerged sounded like gravel tumbling down a rocky slope.

  “You’re trespassing.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Four days earlier.

  DESPITE his outwardly collected demeanor, Ainsley could sense the fine tremor in the hands of her client as the jury filed back into the courtroom.

  She reached beneath the table, gave one of those hands a quick squeeze.

  It’ll be okay, her eyes telegraphed when he glanced her way. His answering smile seemed to express doubt in that sentiment – or maybe just the fear of holding out too much hope. She didn’t blame him. If the jury found him guilty, he faced life in prison.

  And even if they didn’t, he still faced life without his wife and the child she’d been carrying.

  He stood accused of their murders.

  But he hadn’t done it. Ainsley was as certain of that as she was of her own name. But sloppy police work and a prosecutor eager to notch his belt had taken the path of least resistance. Her client was the scapegoat served up to the outraged public, because everybody knew that in crimes of this nature, the husband or the boyfriend was usually the culprit.

  A bitter little kernel lodged in Ainsley’s throat, but she didn’t let even the tiniest hint of it show. For her client, she had to be a rock. A safe harbor in his personal storm.