The Southern Comfort Prequel Trilogy Box Set

by Lisa Clark O'Neill

  “If you want to tell me, you will. And since I can make an educated guess and assume it has something to do with your combat experience, I’m certainly not going to demand that you talk about it.”

  He replaced the piece of wood he’d been examining and then picked up another. “I told you I had a scholarship for college. Football. But I wasn’t good enough to go pro, and it didn’t interest me anyway. I had my sights set on medical school, and my test scores were good enough to get accepted. But I didn’t want to go into debt to finance it.”

  “So you joined the army.”

  “Earn my way through med school. See the world.” He stared at the piece of wood, but Ainsley thought he was seeing something else entirely.

  She started to tell him that he didn’t have to tell her any more, but she realized that brushing painful memories under the rug was what she’d too often done in the past, and it most certainly wasn’t healthy. Cal, she suspected, didn’t like to talk about his traumatic experiences any more than she did, but if he was volunteering, she would give him the respect of listening.

  Even if there was a part of her that didn’t want to hear it. Not because she was squeamish, or didn’t recognize that war took a horrible toll on everyone and everything it touched.

  Rather because she hated to think of Cal in that kind of situation. Of him suffering an obviously grievous psychological wound, even if physically he didn’t bear any disfigurement. But she was under no illusion that mental scars were any less painful.

  “I’ll spare you the details,” he said. “Suffice it to say that by the time I’d finished a couple active tours of duty, I’d seen enough blood, enough broken and shattered bones. I chose to build things instead.”

  The details, Ainsley suspected, were precisely the things he needed to share. She felt… purged, she guessed was the word, after talking to Ben today.

  But then she was no therapist. And what worked for one person wasn’t necessarily right for another.

  Besides, she’d needed to clear the air with Ben, because they had shared that history. Cal’s pain had nothing to do with her. They were practically strangers.

  He looked up at her then, and something passed between them that suggested she’d lied to herself about that.

  They may not have known each other long, but they certainly weren’t strangers. In fact, she felt oddly closer to Cal than she did to people she’d known for years.

  “I knit.”

  He didn’t even blink at the non-sequitur. “Like…” he made hand motions imitating needles. “With yarn?”

  “That’s the usual medium, yes. My grandma taught Sabrina and I when we were kids and inevitably complained of boredom. I made a potholder the summer I was ten, and gave it to my mom for Christmas. Which was ridiculous, because my mom didn’t cook. But she put this little hook on her fridge, and every time I went to visit her, the potholder was hanging there.”

  “Your parents are divorced?”

  “They got divorced when I was four. My mom had really bad sciatica pain from carrying me, and she got addicted to painkillers. She… well, let’s just say she wasn’t a very reliable parent. My dad did everything he could to help her, but she didn’t want to admit she had a problem. It wasn’t until he divorced her and she was only allowed supervised visits with me that she finally got clean. Anyway, she died several years ago. A staph infection following a routine surgery.”

  “I’m sorry. I lost my dad when I was thirteen. It sucks.”

  “It certainly does. But the point of my rambling story is that after she died, I didn’t know how to process the pain. I threw myself into work, into social activities, into anything that I thought might be able to distract me. But pain doesn’t go away, even if you try to ignore it. Eventually, I picked up some yarn and some needles, and through a great deal of trial and error, made another potholder. And then I cried for two days.”

  “There’s a reason,” he said “that the process of creating is considered cathartic.”

  She nodded. “Knitting – at least my knitting – is several steps down the creative ladder from what you do, but yes. I turn to it whenever I’m feeling stressed. I recently made my stepbrother – who lives in Alaska – a scarf with a cartoon moose face on it. It’s ridiculous, and silly, and it worked wonders as my stress-reliever during my last big case. But if you tell anyone that I work with about it, I’ll call you a dirty liar.”

  “You expecting me to come into contact with your co-workers?”

  She opened her mouth to say no, of course not, but found she didn’t want to say the words. She didn’t want to think about the probability of going back to Savannah and never seeing Cal again.

  At a loss for what to say – unfamiliar ground, to be sure – Ainsley could only shake her head. “I don’t know.”

  Cal tossed the piece of wood down without taking his eyes from hers.

  And crossed the distance between them.

  He bent over the chair, slid his hand up into her hair and angled her face toward him. When he took her mouth, it was with a tenderness that she felt powerless against.

  His lips teased hers open, his tongue sliding inside to tangle with hers. There was no demand, but nor was there any apology. He took what he wanted, but it wasn’t something she wasn’t absolutely willing to give.

  He tasted of the coffee that sat in a thermos on the end of the work table, and of something that she’d already identified as uniquely Cal. Something spicy-sweet and primal, as if everything masculine had been boiled down into a singular pheromone that existed solely in his mouth.

  Ainsley slid her fingers up his chest, careful of the bruise that was just visible in the vee of the flannel shirt he wore. The shoulders beneath her hands were hard with muscle – the kind of muscle that was earned through physical labor and not an hour a day in a fancy gym. And his own hands, where they cradled her face, bore the calluses of his occupation.

  Ainsley still didn’t understand why his stereotypical maleness worked for her, but sweet lord did it ever. If she hadn’t already been sitting, she was pretty sure that she would have simply melted into a puddle right there on the sawdust-covered floor.

  Her brain told her she was being ridiculous, but her hormones stood up and cheered.

  “I have no idea what this is,” he murmured as he pulled back, ran his gaze over her face. “This… thing between us.”

  “That makes two of us,” she told him. “You’re not even my type.”

  One corner of his mouth kicked up. “Look who’s talking. City girl.”

  “There are numerous benefits to living in an urban center,” she said in defense. “Restaurants, museums, amenities. Culture.”

  “Traffic, noise, pollution. People.”

  “Being the owner of an art gallery, I would think that you would appreciate a certain degree of sophistication.”

  “Being a defense attorney, I would think that you would appreciate that people are assholes.”

  “You’re people.”

  “Point made.”

  The verbal intermission should have given her time to regain her composure, but instead Ainsley felt like it was just another form of foreplay. And then she felt guilty, because damn it, Sabrina was still missing. She should be doing… something, other than imagining what it would be like to have sex with this man.

  Good, she thought, despite herself. Really, really good.

  “I could eat now,” she blurted. “Lunch. I could eat lunch.”

  His smile spread, slow and devastating. “I could eat, too, but we’ll save that for after you’ve gotten some food. Here.” He straightened, handed her the crutches. “Let me just clean up my tools first.”

  Ainsley’s internal temperature kicked up several degrees as she watched him walk away. Good grief. She was good with men, and conversation, and verbal repartee. Hell, she was a lawyer, as he’d pointed out. Smooth talking was what she did.

  So why the hell did this man occasionally turn her into a pile of in
coherent mush?

  Disgusted with herself for letting him get in that parting shot without at least a cutting retort, Ainsley climbed to her feet. Then she hobbled to the window and peered out at the familiar sight of her grandmother’s vegetable garden, the ground now fallow and overgrown. Beyond it was the shed where Cal had found the box of photo albums and journals, the busted window visible from this side.

  The only people who could have known about Cal’s discovery were Sabrina, and whoever Sabrina might have told. Ainsley tried to figure out who that could be, considering she hadn’t even told Ben, or Ainsley herself. Although that final call, the one that didn’t go through, could in fact have been in relation to that.

  Her mother?

  Ainsley considered that. She knew that Sabrina lamented the emotional distance between herself and Aunt Denise. A long-lost box of Carly’s possessions – particularly something as personal as her diaries – would go a long way toward earning her mother’s favor.

  But Ainsley couldn’t picture Aunt Denise crawling through the shed window. And surely she would have said something to Ben if she’d had a conversation with Sabrina a day or two prior to her disappearance.

  Unless she feared that there was something in the journals that made Carly look bad in some way. Ainsley had long realized that her aunt’s refusal to acknowledge the less… acceptable aspects of Carly’s life bordered on pathology.

  Was she so far gone down that path that she would break in to Cal’s shed? And withhold information from Ben?

  “You look pretty serious,” Cal noted as he came up beside her.

  “Would it be a problem,” she asked “if we went into town for lunch? I can probably drive myself if you’re not up for it.” One of Ben’s deputies had dropped off her car – again. It was becoming a rather embarrassing habit.

  “From the expression on your face,” he said “I gather you have more in mind than just food.”

  Ainsley nodded. “I think it’s time that I talked to my aunt.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  BEN studied the busted lock on the side door to the barn.

  “Mr. Conway says it’s been that way for years,” Deputy Bullock said, referring to the elderly man who owned the barn and the truck which had been stolen from it. “He busted it himself when he misplaced the key, and never bothered to replace it. Not much crime out this way. And he said he puts a lot more faith in his shotgun to keep the punks away than he does in any puny lock. His words.”

  Ben pinched the bridge of his nose. “The man’s ninety-two.”

  “And still a damn good shot, according to his daughter. Kelly Johnson? Owns that farm where they do the big corn maze every year? Anyway, she’s the one who discovered the truck was missing when she stopped by to check on her old man.”

  “He might be a good shot, but given the fact that his glasses are two inches thick, I’m more worried about him being able to actually see what he’s shooting at.” Jesus. But that was a concern for later. “He didn’t hear the engine turn over?”

  “He had the TV turned way up.” Bullock looked chagrined. “Because his hearing is no better than his eyesight.”

  “Don’t let me get old, Bullock,” Ben said as he opened the door.

  “No, sir.”

  Ben followed the deputy into the barn. The dirt floor showed tracks leading to the open double doors. They’d already matched the tread to the tires on the truck, and to the marks left on the road near where Cal collided with the tree. That, coupled with the paint transfer between the vehicles was enough to lead them to believe that this was indeed the truck responsible for the accident.

  A dark blue, nineteen-forties Ford pickup with round taillights. Cal hadn’t been wrong about that.

  Bullock led him to the rack which held a row of keys, many of them tarnished with age and disuse. One of the hooks was conspicuously empty.

  “You said there were no fingerprints on the key?”

  “No. None on the steering wheel, either.”

  So someone had known the keys were here – known which one worked the truck – and had either worn gloves or been careful to wipe off the key before inserting it into the ignition, and the steering wheel before sending the truck over the cliff. There’d been no sign that the driver went over with it. Obviously, they didn’t want their identity to be tied to a crime – but whether it was the crime of auto theft or something more serious, that was the question. Had they taken the truck with the intention of running Cal and Ainsley off the road, or was that a coincidence?

  Ben wasn’t one for believing overmuch in coincidence.

  “Someone had to know the truck was here,” Ben said. “And that it was in working order.”

  “His great-grandson keeps it running, apparently. He’s a mechanic over at Black Bear Auto.”

  “We’re gonna want to talk to him.”

  And Ben was going to have to figure out who knew that Cal and Ainsley had driven north of town, and how they’d come by that knowledge. They’d been at the former produce stand for maybe an hour before heading up to the road where Sabrina’s car was abandoned, which he guessed gave someone adequate time to steal the truck and locate them. Maybe they’d intended something less sinister – following them inconspicuously, for instance, to see what they were up to. Maybe they’d even intended to return the truck to the barn afterward. Maybe they’d instead taken advantage of the opportunity that presented itself.

  Either way, Ben didn’t think that this was simply a joyride gone wrong.

  “We’re treating this as attempted homicide,” he told his deputy. “So proceed accordingly when you question Conway’s great-grandson. We need a list of everyone who had knowledge of this truck’s existence and of where he kept the key.”

  “You got it.”

  Ben’s phone indicated an incoming email, and he pulled it off his belt to have a look.

  Ainsley giving her carrier permission to share her phone records had facilitated the process. The records were already available.

  There had to be something damning in the communication between Ainsley and his sister. Something that Ainsley didn’t remember, or maybe didn’t realize was important.

  Ben clipped the phone back onto his belt just as the sun emerged from behind the clouds, sending a shaft of light in through the open doors. He squinted, lifting a hand against the glare, when something shining in the dirt caught his eye.

  Ben stared at it a moment, and then squatted down to have a better look.

  It was a copper-coated BB.

  Just like the ones he’d found on the floor at the old Cross store.

  “YOU’RE sure about this?” Cal asked as he pulled Ainsley’s SUV into a space near her aunt’s general store.

  Her gaze was fixed out the window, but she nodded. “Yes. I know you think that the missing journals are connected to everything that’s been going on, and maybe that’s the case.” She finally looked his direction. “But my brain is trained to look for the counterargument, I guess. And anyway, my Grandma would tell me that it’s rude not to stop in and visit family. Even if that family isn’t particularly delighted to see you.”

  “You were pretty close to your grandma, weren’t you?”

  “Oh yes. Not that she was one to play favorites with her grandchildren. But we just clicked, you know?”

  “Yeah,” he finally said after a significant pause. “I know.”

  Ainsley leaned across and pressed her lips to his.

  “I like that you don’t sit around waiting for me to make a move.”

  “Why should I, when I have moves of my own?”

  He grinned. “I’m looking forward to seeing more of them.”

  “If you’re lucky.”

  “I don’t need luck, sweetheart. I have skills.” But he sobered as he reached out, gave her hand a squeeze. “We’re getting some food in you after this, so try not to let her ruin your appetite.”

  “I’ll be fine. Rejection isn’t quite as devastating when you’re prep
ared for it.”

  Cal wasn’t entirely sure about that, at least not when it came to family, but he nodded. “If she’s too big of a bitch, just hit her with your crutch.”

  It probably shouldn’t make him feel like a king every time he made her laugh.

  Cal had fond childhood memories of Paulson’s Dry Goods which, he saw as he held open the door for Ainsley, still had bubblegum and trinket machines alongside a mechanical gypsy in a glass case that proclaimed you could Get Your Fortune Told Here.

  Heady stuff for a kid with a pocket full of quarters.

  Seasonal offerings tempted people to buy caramel apples or witch hats decorated with black and orange feathers. Most of the merchandise, however, was geared toward tourism, an industry that continued to boom as people sought escape from the crowded environs around Atlanta, heading toward the mountains for weekend getaways. It was an industry for which Cal was thankful, as it brought significant foot traffic into his gallery. Not only was it financially beneficial, but it forced him to interact with people – preventing him from becoming that hermit Ainsley had discussed. There’d been a point in his life when he’d wanted nothing more than to find a cave or build a treehouse somewhere, never to encounter another human being.

  But even if his love for his family wouldn’t have prevented that, he’d realized it wasn’t mentally or emotionally healthy.

  And speaking of mental and emotional health…

  The look on the older woman’s face would have alerted him to her identity, even if Ainsley hadn’t said “Hello, Aunt Denise.”

  It was as if she’d done something as shocking and offensive as hiking her leg and peeing in the middle of the floor.

  Cal studied the blonde woman behind the counter, tried to place her in his memories of high school. He felt slightly embarrassed that he couldn’t, given the fact that he’d played football with her son and had sex with her daughter.

  “I’d like to talk to you, if you have a few minutes,” Ainsley added.