Heart of Dixie (Moreover #1)

by Ruthie Henrick

  I snagged an edge of the bed sheet and used it to blot the rest of the moisture from her cheeks. “Color me confused, but it’s just a bo—” Jesus, she nearly had me saying it, too. “It’s a casket, Dixie. To bury a man you didn’t particularly care for.” An understatement, and ancient history, but the waterworks had slowed to a trickle; no use getting her all worked up again. “If you’re not up to it, we can put it off to another day. When is his funeral, anyway?”

  “Tuesday. Late morning, and then I fly out on the red-eye. God, I hate the red-eye.” She rose and busied herself by yanking up the covers to make the bed. I rose to locate my shoes, just in case I was leaving.

  She gathered the decorative pillows from the floor where I threw them the night before and gave one a punch. “The casket store—is that what it’s called, really? A store?—is closed on weekends, and Monday is out of the question, which means I’ve already put this off to the last day. That’s incredibly rude and insensitive.”

  I paused from checking under the dresser. “Are you kidding? Short notice maybe, but not rude.” Ah, found the shoes. I sat on the floor to tie them since she was still pulling up the covers. “Why is Monday out of the question?”

  She gaped at me as though I was a few cards short of a deck. “Have you ever bought a new pair of shoes the day of a party and then realized they pinched your toes but there was no time to exchange them? They were the perfect shoe for the dress you planned to wear, so you ended up wearing them even though they didn’t fit right?”

  She lost me back at pinched toes. “Are we buying new shoes today, too?”

  “Of course not! It’s why we’re not waiting until Monday.” She pounded the decorative shams with her fists, then straightened and rubbed the creases out of her rumpled dress. It didn’t make a difference.

  I unfolded from the floor and brushed my hands against my jeans. “Okay, looks like we’re going to the city today.” My mind was still whirling about the shoes, but apparently, we were buying a casket.

  And nobody gave a damn whether my pillows were plump, but Dixie may as well give up trying to flatten her wrinkles. It would take something like a steamroller to make that crumpled dress presentable.

  “My God, I thought that salesman would never stop badgering us!” Dixie hissed through the side of her mouth as we left the showroom. “And why did he insist on showing us so many hideous choices?” She stepped through the doorway ahead of me, paused and waited for me to join her. “Whatever gave him the idea I’d want one of those ugly, cheap coffins for Cooter?”

  “Maybe it was that you asked to see the plain pine boxes when we first arrived.”

  She waved my comment away like a pesky fly. “Pfft! The man had no sense of humor.”

  “Well, Cooter would appreciate the casket you chose.” I took her elbow as we crossed the parking lot. Her four-inch heels were rickety on the blacktop. Yesterday’s fashion disaster was gone, replaced by something sleeveless, snug, and short when she insisted on a quick stop at the lodge for a change of clothes. I insisted I wait in the truck. “How about you? Are you happy with your selection?”

  Her brow furrowed, then immediately smoothed out. “Of course. What’s not to like? Rich mahogany, exquisite satin lining, bronze hardware. It’s beautiful.”

  And the culmination of one of the most peculiar days of my life.

  The light that glowed yellow on the dashboard when I fired up the truck alerted me to an immediate concern. “One stop, Dixie. Then we can head back home.”

  She lifted a brow. “What’s up?”

  “We need fuel.”

  She simply nodded. She’d been especially quiet since her rant about the sales clerk. I pulled into a nearby gas station and hopped out and around to the passenger side to fill up.

  She put on one hell of a show when she opened the door and slithered off the truck seat. Regrettably, she gave her hem a tug back into place as soon as her feet landed on the concrete. “Do you want something from inside?”

  Hunger gnawed a hole through my stomach. Maybe I could talk her into dinner. Without . . . dessert. Or with. Her snug skirt hugged her ass as her long strides carried her into the attached market. Yeah, who was I kidding? Definitely with.

  Once she was inside, I followed her movements through the plate glass as she collected junk food and soft drinks, all the while chatting into her cell phone. She returned as I finished gassing up. “I got a dill pickle.”

  I allowed a smirk, but thought better about making a crude joke about her choice. “I thought maybe we could grab something to eat once we got back to town. Ruby has a mean chicken fried steak.” If she felt like cooking it. I held Dixie’s purchases while she shimmied back in.

  She waited to respond until I climbed in the truck, fired it up. Busy merging back into traffic, it would have been easy to miss the tentative way her eyes glanced off me, not meeting my gaze. I noticed. “Sorry, but not tonight. I’m meeting Beth. I kind of blew her off yesterday, and we have a lot of catching up to do.”

  I got a little apology smile before she seemed to withdraw into herself—like a frightened turtle shrinking into its protective shell. Problem was, I couldn’t tell if she was protecting herself or me. “Sure. Maybe tomorrow.” Maybe it was the plans she made with Beth, or maybe it was her recent phone conversation that brought on Dixie’s sudden reserve, but one thing was for certain—dessert was off the menu.

  The rolling highway hummed beneath our tires. Dixie stared out her side window as stands of pines gave way to farmhouses, barns with empty silos, and a patchwork of ripening fields. Her snack purchase lay unopened on her lap.

  “I forgot how pretty it is here.” Her voice had gone quiet so I reached across to turn down the radio, studied her slumped in the seat for a quick moment and waited for her to continue.

  “I didn’t want to take care of Cooter’s funeral arrangements. I swore I’d never come back.”

  She seemed defeated. I reached across the console and tucked her small hand in mine. We passed the town limits—Gus had his golf cart parked on the shoulder, paint brush in hand as he repaired the vandalized sign—and approached the edge of Moreover. I slowed the truck as we entered Main Street. “But you did come back. That showed guts.”

  She frowned. Whether at the sight of Gus or my words, I couldn’t tell. “It didn’t show guts. It showed stupidity.”

  “Nobody can make you do something you don’t want to do.”

  “That sounds like one of those speeches they give to ledge jumpers.”

  I laughed. “I meant you. I’ve never been able to get you to do anything you didn’t want to do. It was usually the other way around.

  She went quiet again, staring out the window, and I followed her gaze. Ah, fireflies. She’d always liked the fireflies. “My mama made me come.”

  I laughed again. “No, she didn’t.”

  She shrugged. “She suggested it strongly.”

  “Didn’t mean you had to come.” I rounded the next block; the lodge was just ahead.

  Finally, she turned to face me. “You think you know everything, don’t you?”

  I let my lips spread in a teasing grin. “Not everything.” I waited a beat while she gave me a squinty-eyed glare . . . and then chuckled. “I still don’t know what color panties you’re wearing.”

  Her eyes widened to chocolate discs. “I can’t believe you! We’re discussing my father’s eternal rest and you’re worried about what’s under my clothes?”

  I pulled into the lot and parked. Shrugged and slid another grin her way. “It’s only one of the things I’m worried about lately.”

  I didn’t want to be the kid I was long ago. I didn’t want her to be the kid she had been, either. We were both long past that. But there was no way around it; the possibilities I saw when I looked into her face scared me. The time we spent together in the past day, her in my arms again, and the simple moments together—all brought back memories I generally saved for moments of weakness. Too much Dixie and I
’d start dreaming about babies and white picket fences. And she’d be thousands of miles away.

  “What about seeing me again?” She turned playful and hit a nerve. “Aren’t you worried about that?”

  Jesus. My eyes flew to the nearest cabin and then to her purse, and the image of taking Dixie inside and stripping her naked flooded my mind. The key to one of these rooms was concealed somewhere in that bag of hers. It needed to stay buried until I was long gone. Ninety-six hours—less than that now—was all the time we had left, and I wouldn’t mind spending it all naked and buried deep in her softness. But I had to let her go on Tuesday. I let my smile flatten out. “Worried? Yeah, princess, I am. With every fiber in my being.”

  It was hard to tell whether Deke was disappointed or relieved that I wouldn’t join him again for dinner. My guess was a little of both. There was chemistry between us, no doubt. But there hadn’t been a question of that since the first time we kissed.

  It happened the night I fled to Deke’s with tears of devastation streaming down my face and a renewed determination to escape Moreover as soon as I turned eighteen. It didn’t surprise me that I could count on my best friend the night my relationship with my daddy hit rock bottom. Deke let me in, wrapped his arms around me, and let me cry on his shoulder.

  The jolt of lust that followed stunned us both.

  The following months were both the happiest and scariest of my life. My relationship with Deke appeared no different to an outsider—we agreed we didn’t want to antagonize Cooter—but we snuck away to somewhere private whenever we could manage it. The only person we trusted with our secret was Beth.

  I shaded my eyes with my hand as I followed Deke’s progress across the gravel lot and away from me as he headed back toward town. It was still early enough to meet up with Beth, maybe haul my stuff over to her house, but her call while we stopped for gas put our little slumber party on hold for yet another day. Seemed her co-worker was ill and she was called to fill in at work.

  The thought of spending the remainder of the day alone in one small room held no appeal. Bypassing the tiny cottage, I climbed into my rental sedan and nosed toward town myself. A stroll along the pretty storefront covered blocks of Main Street seemed a good idea after riding in Deke’s truck for the past couple of hours. And perhaps I’d clear my mind of the images our conversation evoked.

  I was remembering too much of our past, when we were just kids and free to wander and explore. His voice, his touch, were triggers that had my body responding with enthusiasm and hope. But hope for what?

  The look of him was different now. Puberty offered gangly and awkward limbs, a mop of dark hair dropping over his forehead, and intense, light eyes that seemed to bore into my soul. As a teenager, the promise of cute lurked underneath the typical flares of acne. And what about now? He was freakin’ hot. And so much more than just a pretty face and corded muscle. The man was passionate about the welfare of his fellow citizens. Which meant I was right to leave—to leave him—so he could continue to live up to his potential.

  That played hell on a girl’s intentions, though. And I still meant to leave Moreover once my daddy was buried and I had a chance to dance on his grave.

  The miniature scale of this town was the characteristic that drew me to it most as a child, even if it was what drove me away as a teenager. For an adolescent balking at the reins of authority, I found it confining that everyone knew my name and remembered my birthday. What I appreciated most as a returning adult was the abundance of on-street parking. I found a space painted with diagonal lines two blocks down from the diner.

  Moss-lined baskets of colorful blossoms hanging from old-fashioned streetlamps and a variety of window displays as I made my way along the wide sidewalk all helped to distract me—from the reason I was here, from the mistakes I was probably making, and from what I still needed to accomplish before I departed. And as I window shopped, from thoughts of my mama, as well.

  I did a good job of avoiding Olivia Westerbrooke, having moved halfway across the country to escape mommy dearest and her wealthy politician husband. But she still managed to pop in my head from time to time. After my earlier discussion with Deke, she was firmly planted.

  A multitude of power tools paraded across the wide expanse of smudged window glass at Huntley’s Hardware and caught my attention, solely because they were all so foreign to me. I stood in the welcome shade of the canvas awning to examine the colorful display. The light tinkle of a metallic chime interrupted my quiet inspection as the glass entry door opened at my right and an older gentleman exited empty-handed and hastened away.

  “Hey, little miss.”

  The deep male voice came from behind me and I whipped my head around. My gaze landed on the postman, trekking resolutely along the walk as if his shoulders didn’t sag beneath the weight of the bulging satchel slung over his dented shoulder. He halted, prepared to open the door beside me. Mitch Davis had been the mail carrier for as long as I could remember, but surely . . .

  I lifted my sunglasses onto my head. “Do you remember me?” As much as I thought I’d keep a low profile while exploring my hometown, not draw attention, I couldn’t resist asking.

  He reached into his pocket and drew out a roll of brightly colored Life Savers, offered me one. I pinched off the end candy, orange, with a reminiscent grin. “Thank you.” He nodded and took the next one, red, and popped it in his mouth.

  “My job to remember names and addresses. And little girls who sneak through my yard in the middle of the night.” The roll went back in his pocket and he jerked a shoulder to give his bulky bag a shift. A smallish package slipped over the edge and fell to the ground.

  His house had been situated on the unfenced property adjoining Deke’s. Chances were good he witnessed me lurking in the hedge that separated their yards more than once. I stooped to pick up the parcel and handed it to him as heat that I couldn’t blame on the afternoon sun rose to my cheeks.

  “Ah, don’t you fret none, little girl. No harm done, I s’pose.” My eyes snapped up to meet his wide, friendly grin and the wink that accompanied it. “You’re home to see to your dad.”

  He hadn’t phrased his words as a question, but I imagined he had his finger on the pulse of the community. I nodded. “His funeral is on Tuesday.”

  Mitch reached up to tip the bill of his uniform cap. “My respects, Miss Dixie. George was regarded in Moreover. If there’s anything you need around here, all you need to do is holler.”

  My forehead tightened as my eyebrows drew together. Surely I misunderstood. I was becoming accustomed to the bizarre concept of people referring to my dad by his given name, but regarded? Certainly Mitch only meant to offer support after my loss.

  “Thank you?”

  With a silent nod, he shouldered his way through the plate glass door. I let my eyes follow him as he headed straight for the tall, gorgeous, familiar man waiting at the cashier counter. Deke.

  My heart dropped. Could I not catch a break? It hit below the belt to avoid him after I agreed to spend the next few days with him. And I used Beth as an excuse to ditch him tonight, to keep my hands and other needy parts of my anatomy from latching on—to his anatomy—and never letting go. I made a quick sweep of the area. I needed a place to duck into.

  That quaint bookstore was just down the street. It seemed just the place to hide . . . er, kill a little time until the coast was clear. If I got there quickly enough, I could avoid Deke altogether. Because right now the night was looming long, and he looked really good standing in the hardware store with his soft cotton T-shirt stretched over what I knew were warm, smooth pecs.

  Chin tucked to my chest, I lowered my sunglasses to cover my eyes and scuttled past the few pedestrians moving toward me. Jaywalking to cross the street, I scurried down the block. The barrels of colorful blossoms out front combined with the light post baskets dripping bright flowers street side gave the impression of entering a small, peaceful garden. I climbed the few deep steps leading to th
e antique wooden entry door, gave the black iron handle a tug, and slipped through the neatly trimmed ivy archway bordering the doorway.

  With my sunglasses hanging from my hand, it took a moment to adjust to the dim overhead lighting after the brightness of the sunny afternoon. My heels clicked on the polished hardwood as I stepped further into the room, away from the window.

  “Good afternoon.”

  The voice came from the back of the shop, from where a woman I hadn’t noticed when I first walked in was typing at a computer. An enormously pregnant woman. “Good after—” Perfect. Of all the gin joints . . . I had to walk into the one occupied by my high school nemesis. Didn’t anybody leave Moreover?

  I lifted my chin and stepped between a pair of brightly patterned club chairs and closer to where Queen Colleen, Deke’s sister, was seated behind a desk. Head cheerleader—though there were only three—student body President, and tsarina of the bitch squad. I should have chosen to lie low at the dog groomer’s next door. I resisted rubbing my hands down the fabric of my skirt. “Colleen McAllister. I didn’t realize this was your place.” Her eyes lifted from the monitor and followed my vague wave indicating the interior—the neatly labeled racks of hardbacks; the rows upon rows of paperbacks; the children’s section in the far corner.

  Her gaze shifted back to look at me. “Nichols. It’s been Colleen Nichols for a few years now. And yes, it’s mine.” The last was said with a sigh and a frown before she tilted her head to the side. “I heard you were back in town for George’s funeral. I’m sorry for your loss.”

  Like everyone else I’d happened across since I arrived, she seemed sincere. My brow furrowed even as I nodded my thanks, yet her comment bounced around in my brain along with all the other condolences I’d received. What did everyone know about Cooter that I didn’t? Had he changed so much?