And she wanted to touch him now.
She didn’t, although she was surprised by how unnatural it felt to restrain herself. “I’d like you to think of me in a different way. Not as somebody you have to take care of, but somebody who can pull her own weight. I know that hasn’t been true—”
“Carolina.” He touched her. Just the briefest pressure of his fingertips against her shoulder. “Of course it hasn’t been true so far. But fact is, I guess I’ve enjoyed doing things for you and watching you get better. We were friends a long time ago. It’s good to be friends again.”
“Is it? Despite all the trouble we’ve caused you?”
“Whatever trouble you’ve caused is nothing compared to what you’ve been through. Okay?” His fingertips moved up to her cheek. He stroked it gently. “Stop worrying.”
She wanted to close her eyes, to let her eyelids drift slowly shut so that she could relish the delicious feel of his fingertips against her skin. But she hadn’t been married to Champ Grayson for nothing. She knew how to control her feelings and, most of all, how to avoid expressing them.
“I’d better get dinner on the table,” she said.
He dropped his hand. “I’ll help, if you’d like.”
“I’d like.” She preceded him into the hall before she let the moment dictate a more intimate response.
Downstairs, she settled Chris in the corner of the kitchen with some of the toys Hattie had brought for him to play with. Kitten was drawing pictures in the living room, one of the activities she’d been praised for at her grandparents’ house. Carolina didn’t expect that to last long, since Kitten was an active, verbal child with little interest in sitting quietly, but she didn’t encourage her to join them. Kitten would discover on her own that here at Billy Ray’s house, she was welcome to be herself.
“What can I do?” Billy Ray asked when Carolina began to remove covered dishes from the refrigerator.
“You can toss the salad. Just leave a little portion plain for Kitten, please.”
“Italian all right for you?”
“Perfect.”
Carolina had decided on stew because she’d found a small chuck roast in Billy’s freezer, and stew was something she could work on in stages without getting tired. Now she poured it into a large saucepan to reheat and turned on the stove. “You know what, Billy? I could use some red wine. I couldn’t find it earlier. Do you have any in the house?”
The silence that followed didn’t disturb her at first She assumed he was trying to remember. But when it extended too long, she turned to see if he had heard her. He was watching her, his expression troubled.
For a moment she couldn’t figure out what she’d said to provoke that reaction. Then she knew. She shook her head. “You know, I thought we’d gotten beyond that”
He didn’t answer her directly. “I’m not much of a drinker. I don’t keep liquor on hand. Just a few beers, in case I have company.”
“I wanted wine for the stew. Not so I could slug down the entire bottle before you got home. I just thought it would improve the flavor.” She could feel her face tightening into a grimace. She forced herself to relax. Billy only knew what he’d been told about her. She couldn’t expect him to believe everything she’d told him. Not without a shred of proof.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“For the record, I rarely drink wine. It gives me a headache. I never drink beer, because I don’t like the taste. My favorite drink is a gin and tonic, heavy on the tonic and light on the gin. My limit is two, over a long evening, but my real preference is to sip plain old ginger ale with a cherry in it. I like to remain stone cold sober. Somebody at our house had to.”
“You took me by surprise.”
“Well, if my asking for liquor surprised you, I guess we’re making headway,” she said lightly, even though her heart was heavy.
“I lived with an alcoholic, Carolina. And I know the lengths my father went to for a drink. He’s been dead for years, but last summer, when I was doing some remodeling upstairs, I found a half-filled bottle of whiskey behind the paneling in his bedroom. I guess the only surprise is that it was half full. His memory got bad at the end, or that bottle would have been empty.”
She didn’t look at him. She didn’t trust herself to. “I can’t tell you if I was drinking on the night Champ died. But I can tell you I wasn’t drinking seriously on the nights leading up to that one. Or the years. I’m not an alcoholic.”
He was silent as she turned up the heat on the stove. She stirred the stew too hard and too fast, scraping the sides of a pan that had nothing sticking to them.
“I trust you,” he said at last.
“Do you?”
“I’d better. Or we’re going to have metal filings in our supper.”
She didn’t know he was behind her until she felt his hands close over her shoulders and squeeze. She set down the spoon and turned. His hands settled in the same place once she was facing him.
“You’ve told me a story anyone might have trouble with,” he said. “But I want you to know I believe you, Carolina. Maybe I’ll have a few moments of doubt here and there. That can’t be helped. But F m on your side.”
She swallowed tears and nodded. “I know.”
He paused, as if he were wrestling with himself; then he pulled her closer and kissed her hair. He released her without a word and went back to the table, where he had been tossing the salad.
She didn’t know what to say. There was nothing to say. She turned back to the stew and began to stir it again. But slowly, this time.
Kitten liked red. The crayons Hattie had brought for her had three different reds. A bright one, a dark one, and one that was almost orange. She had used every one of them, scribbling up and down on the coloring book picture of a puppy running through flowers.
She wasn’t staying in the lines. She didn’t care who told her she had to. She was going to color the whole picture so dark that the lines wouldn’t matter, anyway.
Halfway across the page the almost-orange crayon snapped in half. She giggled. She liked the noise it had made. And now there were two crayons where there had been one before.
“Four red crayons,” she sang under her breath. “Four, four, four…”
From the kitchen, over her song, she could hear the murmur of voices. She held her breath for a moment and sat perfectly still. No one was shouting. Billy Ray never seemed to shout.
Her father had shouted. She remembered that, although she didn’t really want to. Mostly he had shouted at her mother, but he’d shouted at Kitten, too, if she got in his way. Finally she had invented a game, the invisible game. If she moved around the corners of a room as quietly as a whisper, then she was practically invisible. And if her father couldn’t see her, there was no one to shout at.
At first she had been surprised when she went to live with her grandparents after her father was killed in the accident. Nobody shouted at her grandfather’s house. But it wasn’t exactly the same as here, at Billy Ray’s. Nobody shouted at her grandfather’s house, but sometimes she had almost wished they would. Sometimes silence and low voices were worse. At least when somebody shouted, you knew why they were mad at you.
She pressed down on the crayon again, scrubbing it across the page, and the crayon snapped once more.
“Five crayons,” she crooned.
The crayon’s snapping sounded a little like a shout But Kitten didn’t know why she was mad.
On his way home from work the next day, Billy Ray thought about his encounter with Carolina during the dinner preparations the previous evening. The time had come for him to make a choice. Either he believed her story and was willing to go the extra mile to help her, or he pulled back now. Because he was fast becoming immersed in her life.
Even as he thought about that choice, he knew it had already been made. If he’d had any lingering doubts, they had been allayed as he watched Carolina put the children to bed last night. As sick as she had been, as pressured by he
r situation, she had never spoken a harsh word to either of them since coming to live at his house. But now that she was regaining her strength and vitality, the full measure of her love was apparent.
The children adored her, too. They knew when they talked to Carolina that they had her full attention. They could count on her to keep them safe, but also to keep their happiness in mind. She was creative in the way she dealt with their problems, encouraging them to think of their own solutions or giving them appealing choices. And she was never afraid to show her affection.
He had watched her carefully tuck each child into bed, making sure Kitten had her panda bear and Christopher an old stuffed horse that looked as if it belonged in a landfill, and he’d realized that no matter what had happened one night last December, this woman should never be separated from her children. She was not unstable; she was not a threat in any way. The only threat to the children was the possibility that they might be taken from her.
Now that she was nearly well enough to travel, the time had come for Carolina to plan her next step. He was certain she had been giving it a lot of thought, but she hadn’t shared any decisions with him. He half expected to come home one evening and find her gone. Carolina might think that was best for all of them, but she was wrong. He was already involved; he wanted to be sure she was safe and in a good position to care for herself and the children when she left.
He slapped his palm against the steering wheel. “You’re full of shit, Billy.”
He’d never been very good at lying to himself. Sure, he wanted her to be safe and happy. But he was beginning to think that was only a part of what he wanted.
The other part was a whole lot more complicated.
He was still debating what he would say to her when he turned off Hitchcock Road to his house. He was so deep in thought that seconds passed before he noticed the cars parked in his driveway.
One of them was the sheriff’s car, and beside it was a late-model Lincoln. Exactly like the one that Judge Whittier Grayson parked in the courthouse lot.
Billy Ray’s first thought was for Carolina, his second for Kitten and Christopher. He didn’t spare his own situation more than a mutter. By taking in Carolina, he had already pitted himself against the judge. He had known that from the beginning, and he had done it with a certain amount of satisfaction. Now the die was cast. And he wasn’t even sorry.
He took the front steps two at a time and opened the door to find Carolina in the living room, perched on the blue velvet sofa with a protective arm around each of her children. He had expected to find her distressed, but he had misjudged her.
She didn’t even look up when he walked in. She was speaking calmly, her eyes riveted on Judge Grayson. “I’m well, and I’m perfectly capable of caring for the children. Thank you for your concern, but we won’t be moving back to your house. It’s time for us to manage on our own.”
By anybody’s standards, Judge Whittier Grayson was an imposing man. He was tall and gaunt, with the gray-tinged complexion of a man who had smoked heavily most of his life. But it wasn’t his physical build or his face that made him such a force to reckon with. His silvering dark hair and nondescript features were a perfect background for eyes of such a piercing blue that they seemed to consume whatever they were fixed on. Billy Ray had seen this work to his advantage in a courtroom. The judge could silence the most recalcitrant witness with nothing more than his stern gaze.
Now Billy Ray was the focus of that gaze. The judge turned and fixed him with a stare that would have made a weaker man feel like a stranger in his own home.
“It seems to me, Billy Ray, that you might have had the decency to tell me that Carolina was staying with you.” The judge’s voice was cultured, a soft Southern drawl that owed more to Georgia’s aristocracy than to Florida’s melting pot of snowbirds and crackers.
Billy Ray lifted a brow. “Whatever passes between you and Carolina has nothing to do with me, sir. She’s a responsible adult.”
“She’s certainly an adult, but stealing my grandchildren from my home is hardly the act of a responsible one.”
“The children are mine, and they are mine to take care of as I see fit,” Carolina said calmly. “I made the best decision under the circumstances. And that’s what I’ll continue to do until they’re grown and able to make decisions for themselves. Billy gave me a place to finish getting well. As he said, this has nothing to do with him.”
“Nothing, Carolina? You bring my grandchildren along while you live and consort with another man? And with your own husband hardly cold in his grave?”
She lifted her chin. “I will not debate ethics or morals with you. Billy is simply a friend who lent me a helping hand. Luckily he hasn’t been poisoned by the lies you’ve told about me.”
“Do you see?” Judge Grayson turned to Doug and lifted his shoulders in distress.
For the first time, Billy Ray glanced at his friend and wondered what Doug was making of all this. Doug didn’t respond, since the judge’s question had really been a comment. But he was staring at Carolina, as if he, too, was judging her harshly.
“If you’ve said what you came to say, perhaps now would be a good time to leave,” Billy Ray said. Tm sure Carolina’s tired, and the children are hungry.”
“I intend to leave with my grandchildren.”
Billy Ray watched Carolina’s face. Not an emotion flicked over it. “Have I misunderstood the situation? Do you have legal custody?” he asked the judge.
“No, but I intend to begin the process. And I intend to be certain she doesn’t move them out of the state while I’m fighting for it. I want those children with me now, so I can watch over them. Surely you can see that’s best?”
“I can see that until the court gives you custody, the children are Carolina’s to bring up as and where she chooses.”
“Are you my daughter-in-law’s attorney as well as her lover?”
Billy Ray shot her a questioning glance. She gave the slightest nod. “I am her attorney,” he said, switching his gaze back to the judge. “As for what else I am, let me remind you that when Carolina came here she was recovering from a serious illness. And, as you’ve pointed out, her children were with her. Give both of us credit for a little good sense.”
“Give you credit?” The judge’s laugh was devoid of mirth. “I thought you’d moved up the evolutionary scale, Billy Ray. I thought quite possibly you were going to make something of yourself, despite the sorry drunk who fathered you. Now I can see that neither you nor my daughter-in-law deserves credit for anything except hiding my grandchildren. But the game’s over, boy. I know where they are, and until the law gives them to me, I’ll be watching you both.”
He turned his penetrating gaze to Carolina. “Take them anywhere outside the limits of this county and I’ll come after you. Do you understand? I’ll know where, and I’ll know when to steal them back. And you’ll never find them again, missy. Not in a million years.”
Kitten began to cry. She was old enough to understand what was happening, even if she didn’t understand why. Carolina stroked Kitten’s hair gently, but her eyes blazed. “Get out,” she said quietly. “I won’t have you upsetting my children for another minute. Get out, and don’t come back.”
“Doug, get him out of here,” Billy Ray said, stepping forward. “Right now.”
Doug hesitated, but clearly nothing else could be done at this time. He started toward the judge, but the judge, his lapse in dignity repaired, was already on his feet The two men left together, but Billy Ray noted the way that Doug stepped back deferentially to let the judge go first.
And he noted the way that Doug refused to meet his eyes.
The silence was broken by the soft sound of Kitten’s weeping, but neither Billy Ray nor Carolina said a word until they heard the sound of cars disappearing in the distance.
“How did he find you?” Billy Ray asked, scooping up Christopher, who had finally left the sanctuary of his mother’s arms.
“
He didn’t say. I’ve been careful, but I couldn’t keep the children cooped up forever. We’ve been outside to play. Maybe someone saw us from the road.”
Billy Ray deposited the little boy in the corner with his toys. “Someone sent to find you, probably.”
“It can’t be helped now.” She smoothed Kitten’s hair back from her forehead. “It’s all right” she told the little girl. “Grandpa’s mad because we left. We knew he would be. But he won’t do anything to hurt us. He’s just upset.”
“He said he’d steal us! He said you would never find us!”
“He’s angry. But I won’t let him take you. Not ever.” Carolina kept her own anger out of her voice, but Billy Ray could see it in the way she held herself and in her eyes.
Kitten clung to her for another minute; then Carolina sent her upstairs to wipe her nose. Carolina stood, but she was staring off into space, not at Billy Ray. “I made dinner.”
“Are you in the mood to eat?”
“The children need to. You need to.”
“We have to talk.”
She finally looked at him. “I’m so sorry about the things he said. About you being my lover. About your father.” She shook her head, and her eyes filled with tears.
“Hey, I was only sorry that the first didn’t happen to be true.”
She nearly choked; then she gave him a blinding smile, even though her eyes continued to fill. “You always did think fast on your feet.”
“I always told the truth, too. Still do. If I’m going to be accused, anyway…” He smiled.
“Are you really willing to be my attorney?”
“If the son of the town drunk’s good enough for you.”
“He’s too good for me. He’s too good for everyone in this godforsaken town!”
“Hey, let’s not overdo.” But Billy Ray let her see that he was grateful for the praise. He was too old to be hurt by Yancy’s reputation, but her good opinion of him mattered. More than it should.
“Are you going to need an attorney, Carolina? Are you going to stay around long enough to need one? Or are you going to find a way to start over somewhere else?”
Southern Gentlemen Page 19