The Backup Plan

by Sherryl Woods

  “You askin’ if I can keep a secret? I’ve kept enough for you and that brother of yours, don’t you think?”

  Dinah laughed. “Yes, I suppose you have.”

  “So what’s one more?”

  “I might not go back,” Dinah said, testing the words.

  “Well, praise the Lord and hallelujah!” Maybelle said exuberantly. “That’s the best news I’ve had in years. Why you want to keep such a thing a secret?”

  Dinah regarded her sadly. “Is it good news?”

  “If it means my baby’s gonna be safe, then it’s good news to me.” She gave Dinah a penetrating look. “You don’t seem too happy about it, though. You quit or get yourself fired?”

  “I quit, but no one around here’s to know that. I don’t expect you to lie for me, but hem and haw if anyone asks, at least for now.” She gave Maybelle a stern look. “Promise?”

  “I gave you my word, didn’t I?” She hugged Dinah again. “Whatever’s going on with you, you’ll work it out. I know how you like to mull things over in that head of yours. But if there comes a time when you need someone to talk to, I’m here, same as always.”

  “Thank you. I love you.”

  “And I love you, same as all those children I gave birth to, and those grandbabies and great-grandbabies that are coming along,” Maybelle told her. “You’re family to me.”

  Tears welled up in Dinah’s eyes. She swiped at them impatiently. “Now you’ve gone and made me cry,” she teased. “I’ll have to redo my makeup before I go out in public or Mother will be totally humiliated.”

  “Since when you put on makeup?” Maybelle asked wryly. “Your mama cares way too much about stuff that don’t matter a hoot to anybody but her and those social-climbing women she spends her days with.” At Dinah’s amused look, Maybelle added, “And don’t think I wouldn’t say the same thing right to her face. I knew her when she was in diapers, too.”

  “Ah, Maybelle, you keep telling us like it is. Maybe one of these days we’ll all get our priorities sorted out.”

  Maybelle laughed. “You, maybe, but I think it’s too late for that brother of yours. He’s fallen into the same pattern as your daddy. They’re both so full of themselves it’s little wonder they can never see eye to eye on anything.” She shooed Dinah toward the door. “Now get along out of here, girl. You might be unemployed, but I’m not. This old house doesn’t clean itself and it takes me a mite longer to get around than it used to.”

  Dinah wandered upstairs, intending to freshen up and change her clothes before heading out in search of Bobby, but she found an old high-school yearbook and got distracted.

  By the time she’d closed the book, it was past lunch-time. Still wearing the same old shorts and halter top, she added a pair of sandals, ran a brush through her hair, then begged a sandwich from Maybelle. It was nearly four o’clock when she finally set off to look for Bobby. Maybe once she saw him, some magical something would click and she’d know whether or not she was home to stay. In her experience, though, life was rarely that clear-cut.

  All during the tedious meetings at Covington Plantation, Dorothy had been distracted. She couldn’t seem to shake the feeling that something was going on with her daughter. Dinah hadn’t been herself since she’d arrived home.

  Her gentle resistance to all the dinner parties was to be expected. She’d always hated that sort of fuss. But isolating herself in the house and only reluctantly talking about her work made Dorothy think that the close call Dinah had minimized months ago might have taken more of a toll than she’d led them to believe.

  Since there was never a chance to talk to Marshall about any of this—or anything else—at home, Dorothy made a detour to his office at the bank. Based on the stunned reactions of everyone she greeted there, she concluded it had been far too long since she’d paid her husband an impulsive visit. In fact, there had been little spontaneity in their lives for a very long time. It was just one worrisome aspect of their marriage lately.

  When she entered his office, Marshall was on the phone. He gave her a distracted wave and kept right on talking. She gazed around at the room she’d helped him to decorate years ago when he’d first taken over the presidency and was shocked to discover that many of her carefully selected furnishings had been replaced. The color scheme was bolder and, to her eye, far more modern and jarring than suited a sedate banking establishment. Nothing in the room spoke of the bank’s conservative tradition.

  She doubted the change had been Marshall’s idea. Her husband cared little for that sort of thing. He must have given carte blanche to someone to redecorate. She found that oddly disturbing. There had been a time when they discussed everything going on at the bank, when he relied on her opinion and taste. When had that stopped? Months ago? Years?

  Were the bright artworks and sleek leather and chrome furnishings symptomatic of the problems she’d been ignoring in their marriage? Had they grown so far apart, communicated so little, that something like this could happen without her even knowing about it? It was a minor thing, but it forced her to face the fact that she hardly knew what was going on in her husband’s life anymore.

  She looked at her husband with dismay and wondered where they’d gone wrong. They were only in their early fifties, too young to have drifted so completely apart.

  When Marshall finally hung up, he regarded her not with the delight he once would have shown, but with a trace of impatience.

  “I didn’t know you were coming by,” he said. “I have a meeting in less than ten minutes.”

  She swallowed the first bitter retort that came to mind and said briskly, “Then I’ll finish what I have to say in nine minutes. I want to talk to you about Dinah.”

  He looked startled by that. “What about her?”

  “Something’s wrong, Marshall. Haven’t you seen it?”

  He shook his head, his expression still blank. “She seems fine to me.”

  “You don’t find it odd that she’s barely left the house?”

  “What are you talking about, Dorothy? She’s left the house. She’s had lunch with me three or four times in the last week.”

  “Because you made the arrangements and told her where to go,” she said impatiently. “And she turns up for dinner because I tell her what time to be downstairs. But there’s no life in her, no spark. She stays in her room or sits in the garden and broods. It’s not like her.”

  He looked bemused. “She’s rarely home, so you can’t say if it’s like her or not these days. Hell, after all she’s been through, she’s entitled to some peace and quiet. All this commotion we’ve stirred up has probably been too much for her. After all, this entertaining we’ve been doing is a far cry from the kind of life she’s been used to the past few years. Maybe we’ve crammed in too much of it at once.”

  “That’s pretty much what she said,” Dorothy acknowledged.

  “Well, there you have it,” he said, clearly satisfied that the problem was solved. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to get ready for this meeting.”

  His dismissal was annoying. Dorothy stood and started for the door, but then she turned back. “When did you redecorate in here?”

  Marshall looked up from his papers, clearly disconcerted by the question. “A few months ago. Why?”

  “I’m just surprised you didn’t ask for my help.”

  “You’ve been tied up with your own projects,” he replied. “I had my secretary hire a decorator.”

  “And you like what they did?” she asked, not sure why any of it mattered so much.

  He looked around the room as if seeing it for the first time. He shrugged. “It’s a change.”

  “It certainly is,” she said tartly. “And not for the better.”

  Feeling thoroughly disgruntled by the whole exchange, Dorothy stalked out of his office, her back rigid, her temper barely in check. She’d started the day with one worry on her mind—her daughter. Now she had two.

  Her marriage, which she’d always accepted
as faintly staid, but solid, was anything but secure. She’d been around long enough to know that enough tiny little fissures could seriously undermine the foundation of the most fortified structure. Discovering that her marriage was riddled with such fissures was a shock.

  Unfortunately, for the moment Dinah had to be her priority. She simply had to hope that when she got around to focusing on her own life, it wouldn’t be too late.

  Cord Beaufort lazily swatted at the fly circling his bottle of now-lukewarm beer. It was the end of a steamy, grueling day, a day that had tested his patience and sent his nerves into more of an uproar than the last time he’d engaged in far more pleasurable, rambunctious sex.

  He’d met with the board of directors for Covington Plantation and to a man—and woman—they were the most impossible, exasperating group of self-important human beings he’d ever had the misfortune to work for. They wanted to micromanage everything and not one of them had the expertise for it.

  Worse, he’d had to wear a suit and tie, even though the temperature was pushing ninety. If there was one thing he hated more than placating a bunch of wealthy, egotistical bosses, it was wearing a suit and pretending not to be bored to tears while they yammered on and on. Things that should have been decided in less than an hour had taken the whole damn day.

  Stretched out in a well-used Pawleys Island hammock strung between two ancient live oaks, he now wore comfortable jeans and nothing else. He was trying his best not to move a muscle until a breeze stirred, which probably wouldn’t happen until November. He was not feeling especially optimistic at the moment.

  The sound of a car bouncing along the dirt lane leading to his house did nothing to improve his mood. He wasn’t feeling any more sociable than he was optimistic. He’d left all the ruts in the damn road as a way of discouraging visitors. Most people had long since got ten the message.

  When the car finally came into view, he tried to place it and couldn’t. The sight of a pair of long, shapely, bare legs emerging from the front seat, however, did improve his outlook marginally. Only one woman in all of South Carolina had legs like that. And she pretty much hated his guts. He couldn’t say he blamed her.

  If all the rumors he’d been hearing were right and Dinah Davis had decided to come home and appear on his doorstep it could only mean one thing. She was here to redeem the idiotic offer his brother Bobby had made to her years ago. Bobby, much as Cord loved him, was a damned fool. Who’d want a woman whenever she felt like it, even if that woman was as drop-dead gorgeous as Dinah Davis?

  Cord watched her as she exited her car, wondering if her uppity mama knew she was going around town in a pair of shorts that left little to the imagination, and a halter top that wasn’t exactly on the approved fashion list for a one-time Charleston debutante who never strayed from the straight and narrow. Right now she looked more like somebody he wouldn’t mind taking a tumble with, which would flat-out horrify her mama.

  Then again, maybe Dinah’s choice of attire explained why Mrs. Davis had been on such a royal tear at the board meeting today. A rebellious daughter, even one who was thirty-one or so and internationally famous, could unsettle an uptight woman.

  “Well, well,” he murmured as Dinah lifted her chin with a familiar touch of defiance and started in his direction. “Just look at what the cat dragged in.”

  Bright patches of color immediately flooded her cheeks and her devastating, dark blue eyes flashed with irritation, but her good breeding quickly kicked in. She was, after all, on his turf. An uninvited guest with manners, Cord thought with amusement as he awaited her response.

  “Good evening, Cordell,” she said, her voice as sweet as syrup, yet unmistakably insincere. “I see your manners haven’t improved with age.”

  “Not much,” he agreed, refusing to take offense. “Time’s been kind to you, though. You’re as pretty as Miss Scarlett and twice as tough, judging from what I’ve seen of you on TV.”

  “I’m amazed you watch network news,” she said. “I thought the cartoon channel would be more to your liking.”

  “Sugar, I’m a man. Surfing channels is in my nature. Even I slow down when I see a hometown girl lighting up the screen in my living room, while bombs blow things up behind her.”

  “Yes, I imagine it gives you something to fantasize about on one of your lonely nights,” she said, her voice cool with disdain.

  “I am never lonely except by choice.” Lately, though, he was making that choice more and more. Women, gorgeous and fascinating though they could surely be, were proving to be more trouble than they were worth.

  Dinah gave him a withering look signaling that she found his claim laughable.

  “As pleasant as it is chatting with you,” she said in that same syrupy voice that was all about properly bred, South Carolina manners, “I’m here to see Bobby. Is he around?”

  Cord took a long, slow sip of beer and an insolent, long, slow head-to-toe survey of her before replying. “Nope.”

  She regarded him with unmistakable impatience. “Expected back?”

  Cord saw no reason to help her out when he disapproved so heartily of her apparent mission. “Eventually.”

  “Which means exactly what?”

  He grinned. Riling Dinah had always been a snap. It was a pure pleasure to see that hadn’t changed. “I thought I was clear enough. He’ll be back when he gets back. You know how it goes with us lazy, good-for-nothing Beauforts. We’re not much on timetables.”

  Dinah sighed heavily, which had a fascinating effect on the rise and fall of her barely clad breasts. Cord wondered if she had any notion of the raw sensuality she projected or just how close he was to summoning the energy to drag her straight into his arms and give her the kiss she was half-begging for. Probably not or she’d have hightailed it out of here, instead of pestering him for answers he would not give her. He intended to protect Bobby from his own foolishness.

  “Is Bobby due back tonight? Tomorrow? Next week?” she asked, her tone impatient.

  “Could be next week,” he said, then shrugged. “Maybe not.”

  “Has anyone ever told you how impossible you are?”

  “Before you?” he asked.

  She scowled.

  Cord grinned. “Now that you mention it, I believe your mama said something very similar to me just this afternoon.”

  Her eyes widened, pleasing Cord with the fact that he could still surprise her. Shocking Dinah had been one of his primary delights back when she and Bobby had been dating. It had been a long time since he’d taken such pleasure in stirring a woman’s temper or her dismay.

  “Where on earth did you see my mother?” she inquired.

  Her tone suggested he surely must have done something illegal to have such an encounter with an upper-crust paragon. If Dinah weren’t so cute up there on her high horse, he might be insulted that she couldn’t imagine any circumstance under which he and Dorothy Rawlings Davis would cross paths.

  “Out and about,” he replied mildly. “Charleston is, after all, a small town in many ways. In fact, I do believe that was why you were so anxious to leave.”

  “I left to attend college and pursue a career,” she said, her voice tight as her cool gaze raked over him. “Maybe that’s something you should consider doing.”

  He held up his beer and gestured around him. “Why leave? If you ask me, it doesn’t get much better than this—a roof over my head, a little money in the bank, a cool drink and up until a few minutes ago plenty of peace and quiet.”

  “Thank heaven your brother doesn’t share your total lack of ambition,” she said.

  Her uppity little tone of voice was starting to get on his nerves. He frowned at the comparison in which he came out wanting. He could have told her a few things about what he’d been up to, but why bother? She enjoyed thinking of him as a low-life. Why take that plea sure away from her when she’d just gotten back to town? It would be so much more fun for him watching her eat those words later.

  “Please tell
Bobby I’m home and looking forward to seeing him,” she said. “You can remember a simple message, can’t you?”

  “If I put my mind to it,” Cord agreed. Not that he in tended to. Dinah Davis would eat his brother alive. Bobby didn’t need the aggravation. Of course, the last time he’d tried thinking for his brother and interfering in his so-called romance with Dinah, there had been hell to pay.

  “Well, try real hard,” she said.

  Then she sashayed back to her car, providing him with a fantastic view of her very fine derriere. Cord shook his head. Too bad she was so aggravating. Otherwise, he might enjoy tangling with her himself. In stead, he’d just content himself with keeping Bobby out of her clutches.

  3

  “I don’t know how Bobby and Cordell could possibly come from the same gene pool,” Dinah told her friend Maggie as they sipped iced tea on the veranda of Maggie’s converted gatehouse a few blocks from the harbor in the historic downtown section of Charleston. “Bobby is sweet and kind and smart and ambitious. Cordell is…” For a woman who made her living with words, she couldn’t find any to describe just what a low-down scoundrel she thought he was.

  “Handsome, smart, sexy as sin,” Maggie supplied.

  Dinah regarded her with amazement. “Are you crazy?”

  “Don’t tell me you didn’t notice,” Maggie teased. “That’s why you’re all tongue-tied and pink-cheeked. What was he wearing? Jeans and nothing else, am I right?” She fanned herself in an exaggerated gesture designed to make a point. “He’s the only man I know who can turn denim into a proper fashion statement.” Her grin spread. “Or should I say improper?”

  “I didn’t notice,” Dinah claimed piously.

  “Like hell, you didn’t. You’re a female, aren’t you? All women notice Cordell’s…” She paused significantly, then added, “Attributes.”

  “Magnolia Forsythe! A lady does not utter such a comment about a gentleman.”

  Maggie grinned at the direct quotation uttered all too frequently by their prim principal throughout their grammar school days. “According to you, Cordell is no gentleman. Give it up, girl. You’ve been gone a long time and probably hiding out in caves for much of it. The only reason you’re so upset with Cord is because he made you sit up and take notice of what a real man looks like.”