by Peggy Webb
The Dixie Virgin Chronicles: Belinda
Book One
Peggy Webb
Copyright 2013 by Peggy Webb, second edition
Copyright © 1991 by Peggy Webb, first edition
Cover Design Copyright, 2013 by Kim Van Meter
Smashwords Edition
Prologue
The only thing Belinda had ever wanted was a little house all her own with geraniums on the front porch. What she had ended up with was a pink slip from the Pets and Paws Beauty Clinic telling her they didn’t need her anymore to help trim shaggy poodles and clip surly cats.
This kind of crisis called for some support from the troops. Belinda sat down the battered little desk in her tacky furnished apartment, dragged out her laptop, opened her email and sent off a distress signal.
From: Belinda ([email protected])
To: Janet, Molly, Bea, Clemmie, Joanna, Catherine
Re: In Deep DooDoo
I got canned. It wasn’t my fault. Really. I just told that old bat, Martha Crockett, that if she wanted her cat to have pink fur, she’d better find somebody else to do the job. A cat’s life is hard enough without standing outside a mouse hole looking like a wad of cotton candy. My boss nearly died laughing – I heard him – but then he fired me on the spot. Mainly, because Martha Crockett is his best customer – she’s got six cats – and was standing there having a hissy fit.
Now, Janet, before you and Catherine go off the deep end and start telling me to get my butt in college, let me remind you that a woman like me is not college material. You’re the ones who have the brains in this group. Oops, sorry, Bea. Didn’t mean to leave you out of the brainy bunch.
Now what?
Xoxoxoxo
Belinda
From: Joanna ([email protected])
To: Belinda, Janet, Bea, Clemmie, Joanna, Catherine
Re: Fun!
You tell ‘em, Belinda! Oh, I wish I could have seen the look on that old biddy’s face. Come to Madrid! I mean it. I’ll tell Kirk to send you a ticket. I’m dating a bull fighter!!! The nuns here at Santa Maria Magdalena Colegio y Conservatorio de Arte y Musica are about to die. So is my long-suffering guardian (Poor Kirk!). I’ll find one for you! A bull fighter – not a nun. LOL! I know you like TALL. These gorgeous Spaniards tend to be short, but OH MY!
Big Hugs!!!!
Joanna
From: Janet ([email protected])
To: Belinda, Molly, Bea, Joanna, Catherine, Clemmie
Re: OH MY GOD
That’s exactly what I’m going to tell you, Belinda. I’ll help you get a scholarship. And Joanna, what the heck does OH MY mean! If it means what I think it does, let me remind you that you can catch diseases, and smart, independent, amazing women like us do not give away for free what a man ought to have to earn with a wedding ring. Am I clear on that? Belinda, call me. I can lend you some money to help you get by till we can get you in school.
XO
Janet
From: Catherine ([email protected])
To: Belinda, Janet, Molly, Bea, Clemmie, Joanna
Re: I VOTE FOR SCHOOL
Janet’s right, Joanna, on both counts. Though I would have added feisty to our list of assets. Belinda, hang in there, sweetie. You’re a gutsy, beautiful, wonderful woman, and you’re going to come out on top. Meantime, call me. I can give you a few bucks to tide you over. Gotta run now. OMG, I LOVE this class on large breed animals!
XOXOX
Catherine
From: Bea ([email protected])
To: Belinda, Molly, Joanna, Janet, Clemmie, Catherine
Re: Hang onto that Virginia, girls!
I’ll do the lending. Janet, good God, medical school is costing you an arm and a leg. Catherine, that goes for vet school, too. I don’t want to hear any more about $$$ from anybody except me. I’m no Donald Trump, but I get a regular paycheck, and I’m working my butt off. Before you know it, I’ll own this advertising firm! Shoot, I might own all of Dallas!
Listen, Belinda, why don’t you go stay with Mother a while. She’d love it! How far is Augusta from Florence, anyhow? Dang, GPS had got me so spoiled I can’t even read a map anymore.
BTW, girls, you don’t have to worry about me losing my much-vaunted purity. If anybody’s coveting my Virginia, I’ll be the last to know. So far, I haven’t gotten close enough for anybody to touch it with a ten foot pole!
Hugs,
Bea
From: Clemmie ([email protected])
To: Belinda, Molly, Janet, Joanna, Bea, Catherine
Re: Peppertown or Bust!
Belinda, you’ve got to come to Peppertown, and that’s all there is to it. I’ve got plenty of room in this big old boarding house, and all the regulars would LOVE you! It would be such fun to see you again. Gracious, I can’t remember the last time we were all together. It seems like only yesterday we were little girls in pigtails at Camp Piomingo, huddled in our bunks while Molly scared us with ghost stories, Janet taught Belinda and me to swim, and Bea organized us into the best little group at summer camp.
You even wrote rules, didn’t you, Bea? Whatever happened to them?
Anyhow, Belinda, jump on the first bus. It won’t come all the way to Peppertown. We’re just a wide place in the road. Go to Fulton or Tupelo. I’ll pick you up.
Hugs,
Clemmie
From: Molly ([email protected])
To: Belinda, Clemmie, Bea, Janet, Joanna, Catherine
Re: THE RULES
OMG, the rules! I remember every one of them. 1. Say your prayers. You never know when the camp counselor is watching, nevermind God. 2. Ask for extra biscuits and stuff them in your pockets. The food here sucks. 3. Don’t act scared of anything even if you’re about to pee your pants. 4. Whatever you do, when the boys from Camp Geronimo come over to visit, hang onto your Virginia! We all signed and then put The Dixie Virgins underneath.
Let me tell you something, girls. Paris is not an easy city to hang onto your Virginia. Especially when you’re parading around naked in a sheet. Unfortunately, it’s all in the name of art! Oh, Belinda, I wish you could come to Paris! Call Daddy. You still have my home number, don’t you? I know he’d get a ticket for you. He’s the sweetest man ever born! We’d have such fun! Do come!
Much love,
Molly
From: Belinda ([email protected])
To: Molly, Janet, Bea, Catherine, Clemmie, Joanna
Re: Thanks!
I feel so much better!!! Let me think a while. Keep you posted.
Xoxoxox
Belinda
She was tempted to race off to Mississippi where Clemmie, the perennial caretaker, would fuss over her, or to head to Alabama and hole up with Bea’s mom. But it seemed that would just be postponing the problem.
Forget school. An old fashioned girl like her who didn’t know half the words other folks did and still said things like just peachy and gosh almighty would be laughed off the campus. And she wasn’t about to travel abroad, even if she had the money. She couldn’t even drive, for Pete’s sake. She wasn’t about to fly!
Sure, she’d always been traveling from one place to another, by bus mostly and all because she’d listened to the empty promises of men. The first one had been her daddy.
The next town is going to be better, kids. Just you wait and see.
The next town was never better, only farther away. She and her two sisters had remained ever hopeful, though, hanging on their daddy’s words and believing.
The believing got harder after her mother left. Looking back, Belinda guessed her mother just couldn’t stand the suspense anymore, never knowing exactly where she would be from one
year to the next.
Lately Belinda had begun to feel like her mother. She just couldn’t stand the suspense anymore.
The reason she was in Augusta was Charlie Crocket. He’d said if she’d follow him to Georgia and help out with the rent till he got his feet on the ground, they’d get married. Well, she’d followed him, and he hadn’t lasted in Georgia till the sun got hot.
She knew from the first time she met him that Charlie needed a little straightening out, but she’d thought all it if would take was a bit of patience and understanding. She’d sure guessed wrong about Charlie.
Before him there had been Matt Hankins. He was a beautiful man full of beautiful promises. Just when she’d been ready to pick out the wedding dress, he’d up and joined the army.
Belinda crumpled the pink slip and threw it into the wastebasket; then she took her purse off the couch and counted her money.
She was through being a traveling woman; she was done with suspense. What she was going to do was get on a bus and go as far as her money would take her.
She didn’t know where that would be, but she did know one thing. When she got there, she was going to be a new woman—and in complete charge of her life.
Chapter One
Reeve Lawrence lifted his head, listening. The house was too quiet. He shoved his chair back from his desk and headed for the door.
“Quincy. Quincy!”
Quincy appeared in his doorway, drying her wet hands on her apron.
“You don’t have to holler, Mr. Reeve. I’m not deaf.” Her rubber-soled shoes squeaked as they bore her massive weight into his study. When she was inside, she craned her neck to look up at him, and shook a finger in his face. “You got no business gettin’ yourself all worked up, settin’ in here bellowin’ like a wounded bull. What’s the matter with you?” She studied the dark circles under his eyes and the lines of fatigue around his mouth. Quincy had been taking care of Reeve since he was in diapers, and she wasn’t about to shirk her duty now.
Her face softened as she reached up to pat his face and smooth down his collar. “You want to have a stroke and die? Then where would your poor motherless children be?”
“Where are the children?”
“Out in the yard—running a lemonade stand.”
“My children are running a lemonade stand?”
“That’s what I said.”
“Betsy and Mark are out in the street like two little urchins, peddling lemonade to strangers?”
“I don’t know about urchins, but I know about you.” Quincy planted her hands on her hips and faced him down. “You’ve turned mean since Miss Sunny died. She’s dead, and there’s nothin’ me or you either one can do about it.”
Reeve didn’t deny that he’d turned mean since his wife’s death. He’d also turned cold, but thank God Quincy didn’t point that out. She was getting too bossy in her old age. He probably should let her retire, but she was the only one of his household staff who had remained faithful since Sunny had been gone.
Sometimes he thought of Sunny’s death in that way: he pictured her merely gone on an extended journey somewhere—say to the Greek Islands—laughing and tanned in her gold bikini. It was easier than thinking of her in a crumpled car, broken and lifeless.
“You all right, Mr. Reeve?”
Quincy’s soft inquiry brought him back to the matter at hand. He put one hand on her shoulder, and gave her a sad smile.
“I know I’ve been asking too much of you, taking care of my house and my children, too.”
“The angels are no trouble at all.”
“They are rambunctious hellions, and you’ve worn yourself to a rag trying to watch after them since Miss Phepps departed.”
Quincy snorted. “She didn’t depart. She hightailed it out of here like the devil was after her.”
“I admit her departure was hasty.”
“All the highfalutin’ women you call nannies have been hasty leavin’ here. There’s no pleasin’ you where the children are concerned.”
Quincy was right again. Eight nannies had come and gone since Sunny’s death, less than two years ago. He’d sent three of them packing, but the other five had left on their own. Miss Phepps, the last one, had called him a dictator. That was mild compared to what the others had called him. The redoubtable Miss Grimes had called him a cold heartless bastard.
“You’re damned right I’m hard to please. My children are my life.” Reeve ran his hand through his hair, a habit he’d developed lately. “Look, Quincy, I’m sorry I’m such a bear. Go back to your work and don’t worry about the children. I’ll watch after them.”
He strode from the den, a tall muscular man with haunted dark eyes. To the casual observer, he was still a commanding presence, a man whose very walk denoted wealth and power. But to Quincy he was a sad, shattered man, a man in need of a woman’s loving touch.
She clucked her tongue as she watched him go.
“It’s not the children I worry about, Mr. Reeve. It’s you.”
o0o
Reeve’s children were sitting on the grassy sloping bank at the edge of their front yard, their faces shiny with sweat and hope. A pitcher of lemonade and six paper cups sat beside them on a child-sized folding card table. On the table was an empty shoe box and a sign printed in red crayon on the side of a grocery bag—Lemmonaid, 3 sents.
“Daddy!” Six-year-old Betsy left her position beside the box and catapulted into his arms. “Did you come to buy some lemonade?”
He’d come to take them back into the house where they’d be safe, but with Betsy’s hot little face nuzzling his neck, he didn’t have the heart to say so.
“That’s exactly why I’m here, sweetheart.” He sank to the grassy slope, holding Betsy and reaching out to tousle his seven-year-old son’s blond hair. “Will you pour me a glass?”
Betsy hopped off his lap and became serious and important as she poured his lemonade. Reeve was equally solemn as he accepted the cup.
“That will be three cents, Daddy,” said Mark, obviously the business manager in the lemonade venture. Reeve passed three pennies to his son and watched as Mark carefully counted them into the empty shoe box. “You’re our first customer, Daddy,” he added, proud of himself.
Reeve had piles of work on both his desks, the one at home and the one at the office of Lawrence Enterprises. He had two trips coming up, San Francisco and France, and no nanny.
What his mind told him to do was hustle his children inside to the safekeeping of Quincy so he could get on with his business. What his heart told him was a different story.
He spent the afternoon in the front yard with his children. He and Betsy and Mark discussed whether holes had bottoms and whether lady-bugs were really ladies and whether angels flew like birds or like jet airplanes.
Except for his neighbor from down the street who passed by walking her dog, Reeve was his children’s only customer. When the children got anxious over their business lull, he put three cents in their shoe box and asked for another glass of lemonade.
By late afternoon, there was only one glass left. He had decided to buy their last bit of lemonade and take Betsy and Mark into the house when he saw a woman coming up the street, walking almost sideways under the weight of her cardboard suitcase.
She was dusty and disheveled, as if she’d been walking a long way. He stood up, for there was a dignity about her that made it impossible for him to sit sprawled on the grass, observing her.
When she was two houses away, she stopped on the side of the street, opened her suitcase and pulled out a pair of bright red spike-heeled shoes. Then she sat on the curb and unlaced her sneakers. Her hair fell in a silky curtain over the side of her face, and the setting sun burnished it gold.
Sunny’s hair had been gold. For a moment he was whirled backward in time, seeing his wife as she bent over her shoes, getting ready for the theater.
Suddenly the woman stood up, and she was not Sunny at all. She was a stranger wearing a cheap rayon d
ress with a spray of artificial flowers at the shoulder, striding toward him in outrageous red spike-heeled shoes.
“I’m just dying for a something to wet my whistle,” she said when she was even with him.
He was too astonished to speak. His children didn’t suffer the same malady.
“Would you like to buy a glass of lemonade?” Mark said.
“Well, now. I don’t mind if I do.” The woman fished around in her purse, a large carpetbag affair that was almost as big as her suitcase.
She passed three pennies to Mark, her face as shiny and bright as her red enameled fingernails. There was something heartbreakingly innocent about her smile. As Reeve watched the woman squat beside Betsy, he realized that he hadn’t seen a smile that guileless on a woman in a long, long time.
“Well, now,” the woman said to his daughter, “if you’re not just the prettiest little thing I’ve ever seen. What’s your name, honey?”
“Betsy. What’s yours?”
“Belinda...” The woman paused, biting her red lips. “Belinda Diamond,’’ she proclaimed in a voice just a bit too loud. Then she glared up at Reeve as if she expected to be contradicted.
There was something very wise about her dark eyes, as if she were a battle-weary soldier who was coming home with her dignity and her brave red fingernails intact. Reeve was intrigued.
“I’m Reeve Lawrence, Miss Diamond, and these are my children, Betsy and Mark.”
Her handshake was spontaneous and strong. She tossed her head when she smiled at him, and the sun shot sparks in her hair.
“It’s a pleasure to make some new friends in Tupelo.” She spoke with careful formality, as if she’d invented the words for the occasion.
“I see you’re traveling.”
“Just got here this very minute. Left Augusta on the bus early this morning, just me and my suitcase.”