The Sweetest September (Home in Magnolia Bend)

by Liz Talley

  “Boy, you’re determined, aren’t you?” Shelby said, “Besides what’s wrong with online dating?”

  “Online dating isn’t real,” Abigail said.

  Shelby made a face. “I know plenty of people who’ve met online and have good relationships. One of my friends married a guy she met online. Besides, John’s a big boy. He can do what—”

  “One would think,” Abigail interrupted, abandoning the open door, moving back toward Shelby. “On the outside, he’s tough. Always has been. But inside he’s tender.”

  Just because a man had been hurt by losing someone he loved didn’t mean he was tender. And even though her own sister was a bitch extraordinaire and unlikely to care about Shelby’s happiness any more than she’d care about the local grocery bag boy, Shelby understood the need of an older sibling to look out for her younger brother. Abigail meant well, but Shelby bet she wouldn’t like the same sort of prying in her own life. “Hurt like you?”

  Abigail’s eyes widened. “We’re not talking about me. We’re talking about John and the shit he’s gone through the past year.”

  “I already know he lost his wife.” She’d only asked Annie for location and basics. His wife had been listed as deceased, nothing more.

  “It’s the how she died that’s the problem.”

  Shelby’s face must have indicated she had no clue what Abigail spoke of.

  “You don’t know how she died?”

  “I didn’t want to pry.”

  Abigail sank onto the desk chair. “His wife’s name was Rebecca. She died last year...in September.”

  The hair rose on Shelby’s nape. John had wanted to forget. That’s why he’d been at Boots.

  “She had gone into Gonzales to her mother’s and popped by the gunsmith’s to pick up John’s shotgun. She was carrying it inside their house when it accidently went off. The smith had left a round in the chamber during the test fire. John was the person who found her.”

  “Oh, God,” Shelby breathed, dropping the toast onto the plate.

  “It was a freak accident. John couldn’t have saved her even if he’d been there when it happened.”

  Shelby shook her head.

  “He found her that evening on the back stairs of Breezy Hill. Would have been traumatic to find anyone who’d died from a gunshot wound, but she wasn’t just anyone to him, was she?”

  The toast felt like a brick in her stomach. Shelby turned away from Abigail. “That’s horrible.”

  “Yes. Horrible, but now you see why I’m concerned. Maybe I shouldn’t stick my nose in—”

  “No, you shouldn’t. Look, I understand the inclination. John’s obviously been through a great deal, but, trust me when I tell you he’s not being irresponsible. We haven’t jumped into anything.” Except reckless, unprotected sex that resulted in pregnancy.

  “Even so, this whole thing, him bringing you to Thanksgiving is—” Abigail paused as if weighing her words “—quite frankly, odd. John’s the steadiest member of our family. He doesn’t do things like this. I’m sorry if my honesty offends you.”

  Shelby stared at the woman trying to figure out her brother’s life. What could Shelby say after learning about the way Rebecca Beauchamp had died? The whole idea of how hurt John was made her ache...and sent flashes of reservation through her body.

  Tread carefully, Shelby.

  “I’m sorry,” Shelby said, for lack of anything else.

  “Me, too,” Abigail said, a glimmer of appreciation flickering through the sadness in her eyes.

  For a moment they both faced each other, Shelby lost for words to capture the feelings swirling inside, Abigail studying her.

  “I’m not offended by your honesty, and I appreciate you telling me about John’s wife. I needed to know,” Shelby said finally.

  “Just be careful with him, okay?” Abigail turned and exited, softly closing the door.

  Shelby flopped back onto the unmade bed, feeling both irritated and incredibly sad.

  What had happened to John’s wife was some heavy stuff. He’d found his wife dead on the back porch steps...absolutely unthinkable.

  And Abigail thought she could protect her brother, which was touching, but there was no need to protect him from Shelby. To her, John was merely another man she couldn’t, wouldn’t, shouldn’t be interested in, because he was in love with the memory of his wife.

  Yep, Shelby really knew how to pick ’em.

  Handsome? Check.

  Enigmatic? Check.

  Committed to another woman? Check.

  And this one was dead. How did a girl compete with that?

  She didn’t want to feel anything toward the man who’d cried after having sex with her. But she knew, of course, that deep down inside under all the warning and caution signs she’d nailed over her heart, something drew her to the man...something more than the baby cradled in her womb.

  Just be careful with him. Abigail’s words were good ones to live by. Maybe if she’d had John’s sister around, she wouldn’t have believed Kurt, the lawyer at her father’s firm who had professed to love her and taken her virginity, and then went back to his wife. Or maybe she would have done a better background check on Darby Dufrene.

  Sighing, she rose, determined to ignore whatever drew her to John, and managed to choke down the rest of her toast. Then she allowed the hot water in the bath to soothe her tense muscles, relieved to note only a small streak of blood on the washcloth. After using the cream prescribed by the doctor...oh, the humility of being a woman...Shelby tried her best to pin her hair back with the three bobby pins she scrounged from the side pocket of her purse. Thankfully the Transportation Security Administration had missed them during the preflight screening. Lacking her makeup kit meant she had to employ emergency tactics with her one tube of pretty plumtastic lipstick, using it to highlight her cheekbones so she didn’t look like something John’s golden retriever barfed up.

  Finally, after fastening her David Yurman loops and sliding on her boots, she walked out, prepared to wait downstairs for John. But she ran into him coming up the steps.

  He smelled like he’d been in the fields, but it wasn’t unpleasant. Just an odd scent of sugarcane. And man.

  “Hey,” he said, expression guarded, making her wonder just how much he’d processed from yesterday’s news. He didn’t look any more at peace.

  “Hi,” Shelby said, waiting for him to turn and start back down the stairs. He didn’t budge.

  “How are you?” he asked, meaning clearly, was she still bleeding?

  “I’m good. Better than yesterday,” she said.

  He examined her, reading between the lines. “Did you get rest? Been off your feet?”

  “Yes, drill sergeant,” she said with a salute.

  “I’m worried about you traveling today. Jamison said bed rest. My truck isn’t a bed.”

  “It has a bed,” she said, trying for lightness, not wanting to spend a long hour in the car with an overly anxious John.

  “Not the same thing,” he said. Wish not granted because obviously John wasn’t the lightest of folks...and now she better understood why.

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “Maybe you should stay here.”

  She crooked an eyebrow. “You going to fold my panties?”

  “I can,” he said, a teeny smile flitting across his lips before disappearing.

  “I insist on going with you. I’ll rest all afternoon. Pinky swear.” She didn’t wait for him to respond, merely headed downstairs. Lying around Laurel Woods Bed-and-Breakfast with no TV or gossip magazines felt like punishment, which made riding into Baton Rouge to fetch her things sound as good as winning tickets to the Emmys and sitting next to Hugh Jackman. Being totally desperate for interaction was an understatement.

  And
that the handsome farmer was every bit as gorgeous as the Aussie actor was an added bonus she didn’t want to acknowledge because she didn’t want to remember the way he’d touched her...the way he’d kissed her. The memory of his taste and touch paired with the pain in his past made her weak, made her want to fix him.

  Being a sucker for broken guys isn’t cool, kiddo. Never works. Guard yourself, Shelby. You can’t fix broken like this, so take the friends-only route. Safer, better traveled and won’t leave you in a ditch.

  Abigail stood at the bottom of the stairs, wearing an old-fashioned white apron and a smear of flour on her cheek. She looked like a commercial for Duncan Hines.

  “Are you sure you’re okay to travel?” she said, looking worried. “Of course, I don’t know what’s wrong with you, but I’m concerned nevertheless.”

  “Such a worrywart,” Shelby said, trying again to lighten the mood. Jeez, these Beauchamps were a dark bunch. Shelby had grown up with the Addams family and they still weren’t as gloomy and anxious as these two.

  “Understatement of the year,” John said, swinging open the front door.

  “I’m the older sister. That’s my job,” Abigail said with obvious reference to the words she’d spoken to Shelby earlier. “Why don’t you stay for dinner tonight, John? I’m making pork roast and homemade French bread.”

  “Got to get back to the fields,” John said, and a tiny dart of disappointment snagged inside Shelby. Why? What should it matter to her that John wasn’t coming back to eat pork roast? It shouldn’t.

  She felt vulnerable because she was on her own and still slightly scared she might lose the pregnancy that had brought her to Louisiana in the first place. That was it. Had to be. She wasn’t attracted to him. Didn’t want to mean anything to him.

  Okay, she was attracted to him. The man made a chambray shirt and worn jeans look movie star sexy...so no use lying to herself about that one.

  Guard yourself, chickadee.

  Right.

  “Drive safely,” Abigail called as they crossed the wide porch with the freshly painted rocking chairs and ferns dropping dried fronds. A pair of pumpkins flanked a fancy arrangement of cornstalks, hay bales and bright mums. In the bright light of day, the Laurel Woods Bed-and-Breakfast reminded Shelby of places she’d never known...opposite of the sleek steel world she’d inhabited.

  John’s old farm truck idled in the drive. It had obviously been running the entire time John had been inside. What was up with that? Was that a thing? Just leave an unattended truck running?

  Then John jogged around and opened the passenger door for her.

  You’re not in Kansas anymore...not that she’d ever been to Kansas in the first place.

  Of course, it wasn’t like there were no well-mannered men in Seattle, but something about the easy way things were done down here—a sort of “this is the fabric of who we are”—struck her as a good, gracious way to live one’s life.

  Didn’t mean she wanted to live here. Because above all else, Shelby Mackey knew she didn’t belong in Magnolia Bend.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  JOHN SLID BEHIND the wheel, and with a quick wave at his worrisome sister standing on the porch in her apron, they bounced down the rocky drive. John winced as they hit a pothole and darted an apologetic look at Shelby.

  “Hitting a pothole is not going to cause a miscarriage. I asked your doctor friend.”

  “I know,” he said, though she could tell he hadn’t known any better than she had. Blind leading the blind.

  A few minutes’ worth of highway sped by. Cows dotted pastures and the brilliant sun stretched over the flat alluvial plain as they wound around the road chasing the Mississippi’s edge.

  John cleared his throat. “Tell me about yourself, Shelby.”

  “Huh?”

  “About your life in Seattle, parents, siblings, the students you teach.”

  “Oh, so we’re going to backtrack, huh?” she asked.

  John shrugged, drawing attention to his broad shoulders. She’d always been partial to strong, manly shoulders. Really, who wasn’t? “Well, I don’t know much about you. Might be a good idea to correct that since we’re sharing, uh, such an intimate sort of...thing.”

  There was that.

  Shelby inhaled, wishing she didn’t have to reveal the impersonal world in which she’d been raised. John obviously had a caring family. Shelby obviously had a family of cyborgs. “I grew up in Seattle.”

  “You like it there?”

  Did she like it there? Hmm. “Well, it’s lush and green from all the rain. My parents have a boat and my favorite times are on the Sound—something about the briny air. When I was young, I wanted to spend all my time at the piers eating fish baskets, sucking down ice creams and running through packs of gulls making them scatter. Other than my stint at Oregon State and the years I spent in Spain, it’s all I know.”

  John looked out at the flat land dotted with trees and the occasional bayou as if he weighed his world against the world she’d presented. “What about your folks?”

  “My father’s a successful attorney, partner in a large firm. My mother’s family owns a company for which my mother is CEO and always at the office. I have an older sister by six years who works in L.A. as an executive for Warner Bros., and my brother’s a plastic surgeon. He lives in San Diego.”

  John glanced over, eyebrows raised.

  “Yeah, and I’m just a teacher.”

  “Just a teacher is a pretty important thing,” he said in the quiet space left after such a self-deprecating statement. “My late wife, Rebecca, was a teacher, too.”

  Of course she was. Probably ironed all his T-shirts, gave blood at every drive and babysat for free, too. One of those too-good-to-touch girls Shelby had never been. “What did she teach?”

  “Preschool, but she worked with kids who had disabilities.”

  Exactly. Saint Rebecca. “That’s a tough job.”

  “She loved it, though,” he said, sliding his gaze back over to her. “I bet you do, too.”

  “Never wanted to be anything else. When all my other friends played dress-up or tea party, I’d have all my stuffed animals lined up and I’d be in front of my mini chalkboard teaching. I amused my parents greatly until I actually set education as my major.”

  John made a “huh” sound in the back of his throat. “So why Oregon State?”

  “’Cause they’re the Beavers,” she deadpanned.

  “And you don’t like the Ducks?”

  “I would have looked hideous in highlighter-yellow. And I refuse to quack at football games.”

  That made him laugh, and he looked good when he laughed. The corded muscles of his neck stretched, and his delicious mouth begged to be nibbled. Hardness melted into something most touchable.

  “Actually the campus was gorgeous,” she said. “And it took me away from home.” Far away from scandal and the colossal mistake she’d made when she was eighteen. Her parents hadn’t even cared she hadn’t made it into Stanford or the other “more academic” schools her brother and sister had attended.

  “You said you’re teaching in Seattle now?”

  “Presently I’m substituting. My plans weren’t concrete when I came back from Spain, so I didn’t interview for any permanent positions.” Because she thought she’d be planning a wedding. Like a moron, she’d thought she’d be Mrs. Darby Dufrene, wife to the junior attorney in her father’s firm. Stupid, stupid Shelby. “I’ve been staying in my parents’ guesthouse until I figure out a permanent job. Then I’ll get a place near wherever I end up teaching.”

  “So your parents are supportive about the baby?”

  “I haven’t told them yet. Only you.” Shelby glanced down at her hands.

  “Why not?”

  “Because,” she said, knowing it so
unded lame.

  “Because?”

  “What’s with the interrogation? I didn’t want to tell them yet, okay?” Because they would flip out not at the social stigma of being an unwed mother, but because Shelby had been so stupid as to get knocked up by some random dude she didn’t know...and who could be dumber than dirt. “Let’s just say I don’t have the most supportive family so I’ve put it off. Besides, I felt like you should know first.”

  “Why?”

  “Is that all you can ask? Why?”

  He glanced over at her and said nothing else.

  She exhaled. “I don’t know why I haven’t told them. I’d planned on doing it over Thanksgiving. You know eat turkey, tolerate your siblings and drop the bomb that you’re pregnant by a stranger. Could’ve been fun telling my mother she’ll be a Nonna in June, but instead I’m stuck in the home of Skeeter Burnside. By the way, who is Skeeter Burnside?”

  “Oh, you saw the sign,” John said, a flicker of amusement in his face. “He’s my uncle Skeeter. He holds the state record in the long jump and participated in the 1976 games. Has a bronze medal.”

  “Wow,” she said, not sure how much enthusiasm she should use in responding to that comment.

  They drove a few more miles in silence before he cleared his throat. “What I meant was why did you tell me first?”

  Shelby fidgeted with the seat belt. Fact was she had no clue why she hadn’t told her parents. Though they worked long hours, she lived on the family estate and could have caught them at breakfast before they left for the gym and dropped the news. But she hadn’t.

  Not to mention, she’d still not told them about the split with Darby. In fact, her mother had assumed her departure for Louisiana was another attempt to talk Darby into interviewing for Mackey and Associates. To date, she hadn’t felt strong enough to admit how badly she’d screwed up again. “I don’t know. When I lay there in that doctor’s office listening to the heartbeat, I felt so powerless and so full of...I don’t even know. Hope? A new beginning? Fresh start?”