Southern Lights

by Danielle Steel

  Henry surfaced again half an hour later, and walked her in to dinner.

  She had been given an escort card at the door, with her seat and table number.

  “Ooops,” Henry said, as he glanced at hers. “You’re in Siberia. To be expected. My mother must have helped them with the seating.” They were both laughing, because she had expected it too.

  “Bless her heart,” Alexa added, and they laughed even harder.

  “Precisely. She’s ignoring me tonight because I refused to bring a woman. I can always tell her I brought you.” Alexa was happy to be with him. He was great company and very attentive when he took her to her seat, and then left her for his own at the other side of the tent. Savannah wasn’t at Alexa’s table either. Before he left her, he had warned her that many dignitaries would be there that night, probably the President, the Queen of England, and almost surely the Pope. He was as much fun as he had been as a child, and she had always loved him, although she loved Travis too. Travis had been a much quieter child, but Henry had always been funny and outrageous.

  The people at Alexa’s table seemed perfectly pleasant. There were four older couples, most of them her mother’s age, and she was seated next to a Catholic priest, who was very interesting and nice to talk to as they chatted. But contrary to her mother’s hope for her, she was not about to meet Prince Charming tonight. She hadn’t expected to anyway, and didn’t care.

  Henry came to visit her several times throughout the evening. She caught glimpses of Savannah and Turner now and then in the distance, and when the music started after dinner, Henry led her onto the floor for a dance. The entire wedding reception was in an incredibly enormous tent.

  “Do you suppose they got it at the county fair?” Henry asked her as they started dancing, and she giggled. The tent looked like ten thousand miles of white satin. They had had two dances when Tom spotted them and cut in. The music had just changed to a fox-trot and Tom glided her gracefully around the floor. It was a strange feeling for Alexa to be dancing with him, but she decided to be a good sport and ignore it. They had just made a turn when they crashed heavily into a man walking across the dance floor, probably to get to the bar. Tom ignored him at first and then realized he knew him. He kept Alexa’s hand in his own, but pulled her a few feet with him so he could say hello to the man and not lose her. He looked vaguely familiar to Alexa, but she had no idea who he was. He was about fifty years old, tall and distinguished, with salt-and-pepper hair, and he smiled when he saw Tom, and then even more broadly when he saw Alexa.

  “What are you doing here?” he said with a smile, and she assumed he had mistaken her for someone else. Hopefully not Luisa. “I’m sorry?”

  “I’ve been watching you on the news for the last month. That was quite a case you won, counselor. Congratulations!” She was amazed that he had recognized her here, and both embarrassed and pleased to be complimented on the case. She had been worried for a minute that his smile of acknowledgment and delight had been aimed at her cleavage, not her brain. This was better.

  Tom introduced them then. And it was her turn to be surprised. “Senator Edward Baldwin,” Tom said formally, and Alexa realized why he looked familiar. He had the same heavy Charleston drawl as everyone else there, and was senator from South Carolina. One of the dignitaries Henry had promised, if not the Pope.

  Alexa smiled at him. “It’s an honor to meet you, Senator.” They shook hands, he nodded, and headed for the bar, and she and Tom continued dancing and commenting on what a beautiful wedding it was. They both knew it must have cost Scarlette’s parents a million dollars, but they could cleary afford it. Alexa liked the fact that Scarlette was so unassuming and that all she wanted to do was be a nurse, and have babies in a few years. There was nothing showy or pretentious about Travis’s bride. Alexa approved, and so did Tom. Luisa was thrilled with the wedding and the obvious expense. And the rehearsal dinner had gone off well. Luisa had pulled out all the stops, not to be outdone by the parents of the bride, but she was anyway.

  Tom danced another dance with Alexa, a slow waltz in honor of the old folks, which reminded her of their wedding in New York. And then he took her back to her table. There was too much noise to really have a serious conversation, and she was grateful for that. He had a wistful look in his eye and was drinking a lot of champagne. She thanked him for the dances, and went back to chatting with the priest.

  It was two hours later, as she was thinking of making a discreet escape back to the hotel on her own, when Senator Baldwin appeared out of nowhere and sat down in the seat the priest had vacated.

  “Is anyone sitting here?” he asked, looking worried.

  “Just the Pope,” Alexa said casually, and he laughed out loud. “I was told by my stepson he was going to be here, but it was just a priest from the local church. He left.”

  “I was fascinated by your case,” he launched back into the subject. “How did you keep it out of the hands of the feds with all those states involved?”

  “I refused to give it up.” She smiled at him. “And my DA put up a good fight. We got the first four cases, so it didn’t seem fair to lose it to the feds after we did all the work. They kept a pretty close eye on us, but they let us keep it to the end.”

  “That was quite a victory for you,” he said, looking impressed again.

  “Not really. We had an airtight case, with DNA matches with every victim. Are you an attorney, Senator?”

  “Used to be. I’ve been in politics for twenty-five years.” She knew that about him too. “I was a prosecutor for about two years when I started. I didn’t have the stomach for it, or the talent. I like politics better than the law.”

  “What you do is a lot harder,” she said admiringly. She wasn’t impressed by his position, but thought he was smart. He obviously thought the same of her.

  “What brings you to Charleston?” he asked with interest, and she hesitated for only a fraction of a second, and then answered.

  “I used to be married to the father of the groom, a long time ago.” He smiled when he heard it and nodded.

  “That’s great that you stayed close. My ex-wife and I have been divorced for twenty years. We spend all our holidays together. I’m crazy about her husband. Great man. Much better husband for her than I was. I’ve been married to the Senate for twenty years. She married him and had three more kids. We have two. It makes for wonderful holidays together.” She didn’t tell the senator that her relationship with Tom and Luisa was not that way at all, and Luisa was not her best friend. Luisa would have had a stroke if Alexa showed up for Christmas. Alexa just laughed and nodded, it was simpler. He asked her for a dance then, to be polite.

  She asked if he was from Charleston. And he said from Beaufort, which she knew was nearby, and a pretty place. He was pure South Carolina through and through, was undoubtedly related to a dozen generals, and probably had a mother in the United Daughters of the Confederacy, like Tom’s.

  They danced for a few minutes. He was an elegant dancer who was easy to follow, and was surprisingly tall once she was in his arms. And then he totally startled her with a confession, and said that he didn’t enjoy spending time in the South. He said he spent most of his time in Washington, D.C., and preferred it. “I don’t have a lot of patience with all the local gossip, all the grande old dames waving the Confederate flag, and everyone being ‘nasty nice’ about everyone else while smiling and putting the knife in their back. It’s a little complicated for me. Washington is a lot simpler.” That wasn’t always simple either, Alexa knew. But what he said was exactly how she felt and would never have dared to say, especially here, or to him, about the South.

  “I have to admit,” she confessed in return, “I’ve had thoughts in the same vein.” And as she said it, Luisa danced past them in her bright red dress with her tiara askew. When she saw who Alexa was dancing with, she looked like she was going to have a tantrum, but there was nothing she could do about it as her partner led her away on the floor. “I loved it
when I lived here, but then it all kind of blew up in my face. I went back to New York, very sour about the South. I just came back to Charleston for the first time in ten years a few months ago.”

  “It’s nice of you to come back. We don’t always treat northerners well.” They certainly hadn’t, but she didn’t say it. And she was amazed that he had, and was so honest.

  “Was your wife from the South?” Alexa asked politely, and he laughed.

  “Certainly not. She’s from Los Angeles and hates the South with a passion. That was one of the reasons why she left me. Once I got into politics, she knew I’d have to spend time here, so she bailed out. Now she and her husband live in New York. She’s a writer and he’s a producer.” They sounded like interesting people, and so was he. She hadn’t met a handsome prince that night, as her mother had hoped, for her to fall in love with. But instead she had met an interesting senator to talk to. He teased Alexa then. “If you tell anyone what I just said about the South, I’ll lose my seat and blame it on you.” She put a finger to her lips, and they both laughed, and then he took her back to her table.

  Henry came and kept her company again after a while, and eventually she found Savannah and told her she was leaving. A wild rock band had just started playing, and she knew that she and Turner would want to stay for hours. Alexa was ready to go home. It had been fun, but she’d had enough. They cut the wedding cake finally a few minutes later, and then she left. She congratulated Travis and Scarlette again, kissed Henry, and caught a glimpse of Tom as she left. He was at the bar, alone, looking unhappy and very drunk. Luisa was dancing wildly to the rock band, with her tiara over one ear and a wild look on her face. Alexa hadn’t seen Tom go near her all night.

  Alexa didn’t say goodbye to him when she left. She didn’t want to deal with him if he was drunk, that was more than she wanted to take on. So she got in one of the cabs waiting outside the tent and went back to the hotel. It was after midnight, which was late enough for her. And at the hotel, she took off the peach dress and put on her comfortable nightgown.

  “Goodbye, pretty dress,” she said, putting it on the hanger. “See you again never.” She knew she wouldn’t be wearing a dress like that again in this lifetime. Or not for a hell of a long time, if ever. She never went to parties like this. It had been an amazing wedding and she’d had fun talking to Henry, the senator, and the priest, and even dancing, which she hadn’t done in years.

  She heard Savannah come in around three-thirty, and smiled as she slipped into bed beside her.

  “Have fun?” Alexa muttered with her eyes closed.

  “I loved it, it was terrific. Thank you for coming,” Savannah said, and kissed her mother’s shoulder. Alexa smiled and went back to sleep.

  Chapter 20

  “I feel like Cinderella after the ball,” Alexa admitted to Jack the following week when he stopped by her office to give her some files.

  “After the wedding in Charleston?” he asked as he sat down.

  “No, after the Quentin case. I’m back to real life and human-sized cases. It’s a little tough after all that excitement.” He laughed.

  “We’ll try to find you another serial killer sometime soon.” But he felt the same way. They dealt with a lot of routine cases, not just big ones. And most of the time it was tedious work.

  He had just left her office when the phone rang on her desk, and she picked it up herself. Her secretary was out to lunch. There was a deep voice on the other end that she didn’t recognize.

  “Counselor?”

  “Yes, Alexa Hamilton here,” she said officially.

  “Senator Baldwin,” he said, equally so, and then laughed.

  “Are you showing off, Senator? You outrank me.” It was a bold thing to say to him since she hardly knew him, but she knew he had a sense of humor.

  “Absolutely, and yes, I do. I’m in New York for two days and wondered if you’d like to have lunch.” He was as straightforward as any northerner and didn’t beat around the bush.

  “That would be fun,” she said, smiling.

  “Are you very busy these days?” he asked her.

  “Not busy enough. I’m buried in paperwork.”

  “How disappointing.” He suggested a time and place for lunch the next day, sounded rushed and hung up. She was startled by the call, but he might be a good man to know, and he was certainly interesting to talk to. She had no idea why he had called her. He hadn’t flirted with her at the party, and she liked him. He seemed like a bright, amusing person.

  She had a minor court appearance the next day, and took a cab uptown to the restaurant he had suggested. It was a chic, busy Italian bistro with good food, that she’d been to before, but not in a long time. He was waiting at a table when she arrived, looking at some papers, and slipped them back into his briefcase. He had a town car and driver waiting outside.

  They talked about everything from politics to law to his children, who were twenty-one and twenty-five. His twenty-one-year-old daughter was at UCLA and loving it, and his twenty-five-year-old son was in London, with the Royal Shakespeare Company. He had recently graduated from NYU, at the Tisch School of the Arts. He said his daughter wanted to be a doctor, everyone else in the family was literary or artistic, including their mother, who he said was somewhat eccentric but great fun. He spoke of her like a sister. Alexa hadn’t reached that point yet with Tom, and probably never would. But at least they had finally reached a good place. Tom had come to say goodbye to her and Savannah the day after the wedding. He looked depressed and hungover, and she felt sorry for him. But not sorry enough to want him back.

  Alexa said that she and her daughter were leaving for three weeks in Europe right after the sentencing in the Quentin case on July 10th. It was still two weeks away.

  “I’m going over too,” Edward Baldwin said easily. “I use my ex-wife’s house in the South of France, in Ramatuelle. It’s near Saint-Tropez, but not as crowded. I’m going to Umbria after that. I’ve rented a villa. Where will you be with your daughter?” He was interested in her and friendly, but she didn’t have the feeling that he was pursuing her, and she liked that. Maybe they could be friends.

  “Paris, London, Florence, and maybe something in the South, like Cannes or Antibes. I haven’t been in a long time, but this is a graduation present for my daughter and we had kind of a tough spring. I had to send her away for four months during the trial and before. She was getting threatening letters, from the defendant. He was doing it to unnerve me apparently, I learned later, and it did.”

  “How awful.”

  “Yeah. It was pretty scary. That’s how she wound up in Charleston with her father. I had nowhere else to send her.”

  “Have you stayed close since the divorce?” He had assumed she had the same kind of relationship with her ex that he did. Alexa laughed and shook her head.

  “We didn’t speak for ten years. And he hardly saw his daughter, until February. But the last four months changed all that, so I guess it was a blessing for us all, except his wife.” She decided to give it to him in a nutshell. “Simply put, he got dumped by his wife, who abandoned him and their two boys. He married me, everybody was happy, and his first wife came back seven years later, I got dumped, and he went back to her. And his mother helped. I’m not from the South, his first wife is. All very simple. So I came back to New York, became a lawyer, and lived happily ever after. I have one daughter from that marriage, and two stepsons I love and just saw again for the first time in ten years, one of whom was the groom at the wedding. And my ex has a very cute ten-year-old who was the vehicle wife number one used to get him back.”

  “Let me guess,” Edward Baldwin said with a look of disapproval. He didn’t like the story, although she told it lightly and with a touch of humor, but he could see the hurt in her eyes. “And now they hate each other, and he wants you back.”

  “Something like that.” Alexa nodded. “I’m not interested. It’s all over for me.”

  “It sounds like a bad
southern novel,” Edward Baldwin commented. His divorce had been simple and clean. His wife left him, but he didn’t blame her, and they were still friends. She had done it nicely. “Do you hate him?” He looked curious as he asked. He wouldn’t have blamed her if she did. Hearing the story, he disliked him. He despised men like that.

  Alexa didn’t hesitate this time. “No. Not now. Something healed it for me when I went back there, and saw him, and how weak and pathetic he really is. He betrayed me, but ultimately he betrayed himself, and now he would betray her. I don’t hate him now. I feel sorry for him. But I was pretty angry for a long time. Ten years. That’s too long to carry a grudge. It’s heavy lifting.” She had discovered that the hard way, and realized it when she finally set it down.

  “You never remarried?” She laughed at the question and shook her head.

  “Nope. I was too hurt. And too busy with my work and my daughter. I’m happy like this. I don’t need more than that.”

  “Everybody needs more than that. I do too. I just don’t have time. I’m too busy taking political junkets to Taiwan and Vietnam, keeping my constituents happy, and playing the political game in Washington. It’s fun. But it doesn’t leave time for much else.” They both knew that wasn’t true either. There were lots of married senators—most of them, in fact. For whatever reason, he didn’t want to be married again either. They had that in common. They were both afraid of something, getting hurt or commitment. And he didn’t have the excuse of a nasty ex-wife who had screwed him over, since he said they were good friends and got along. He was obviously alone by choice. He had said in the course of lunch that he was fifty-two years old. And had been divorced for twenty. That was a man who either liked to play a lot or was afraid of getting tied down. Either way, Alexa thought he’d make a fine friend.

  Eventually, he paid the check, and she thanked him for lunch. She hailed a cab to go back to work, and said goodbye to him in front of the restaurant. She had given him her card, and was surprised when he called her on her cell that afternoon.