Southern Comforts

“How about the year 2002?”

“I do so hate it when you’re flippant, Chelsea.”

Chelsea sighed. All her life she’d been inexorably maneuvered into an alliance between the Lowell and Waring families. Recalling all too well the acrimonious fights that had shattered her parents’ marriage, Chelsea had feared repeating their mistakes. But whenever she tried to explain her concerns, Nelson would calmly point out that since Warings never fought, she had nothing to worry about. Even knowing that was true, Chelsea was still not ready to take the risk of making their relationship permanent.

“Nelson agrees we should wait. If nothing else, there’s my trust fund to consider.”

“I don’t know what was in your great-grandmother’s mind when she came up with that ridiculous restriction. However, it’s not as if you really need the money since Nelson is certainly well off in his own right. And the longer you wait to start your family, the more difficult it will be to bear children.”

Chelsea decided this was no time to point out that Rose Kennedy was forty-two when the youngest of her eight children had been born.

“I’m not ready to have children, Mother,” she repeated what she’d already said so many times before. Although her mother didn’t appear to have a maternal bone in her body, lately she’d begun to display a very strong sense of dynasty. “Right now it’s all I can do to juggle my career.”

“Well, of course you’d hire a nanny,” Deidre said. “If you insist on continuing your work, a child needn’t interfere with your writing. Or your life.”

“I have no intention of handing my child, when I do have one, over to some stranger.”

Having grown up in the rarified world of nannies and housekeepers and private schools, Chelsea had vowed to create a better, warmer world for her own children. She was looking forward to baking cookies, volunteering at school carnivals and attending Little League games. Just not now.

Deidre arched a perfectly shaped blond brow. “I suppose that criticism is directed at me?”

“No.” Chelsea took a deep breath. Why was it that conversations with her mother always turned out like this, she wondered miserably. “Of course not. I only meant that I wanted to be a more hands-on kind of mom.”

“That’s what you say now.” Deidre gave her daughter a knowing look across the table. “The first time you change a diaper or go hours without sleep because of a teething baby, you may change your mind.”

The idea of Deidre Lowell dirtying her manicured hands by changing a diaper made Chelsea smile. “I guess that’s a risk I’m going to have to take.”

“Again, I’m not surprised. You always have been a risk-taker, Chelsea.” She put her napkin down onto the table and stood up, prepared to leave. “Just like your father.”

As before, she did not make it sound like a compliment. Having apologized enough for one day, Chelsea took it as one.

After a week of uncharacteristic vacillation—during which time she changed her mind at least a dozen times, although she still had misgivings about the proposal—Chelsea decided to take Roxanne Scarbrough up on her offer to visit Raintree, Georgia.

Since Raintree was too small for its own airfield, Chelsea was required to land in Savannah. From the air, the riverside city looked like an island, surrounded by pine forests and salt marshes. As the plane touched down on the runway, Chelsea, who’d never considered herself at all psychic, started to shake inside, like a tuning fork trembling at a discordant chord.

As promised, Roxanne’s assistant was waiting for her as she exited the jetway.

“Hello, Ms. Cassidy,” Dorothy Landis greeted her with a welcoming smile. “It’s good to see you again.”

“Hi. It’s good to be here.” That wasn’t exactly the truth, but Chelsea was trying to keep an open mind.

“Ms. Scarbrough is so pleased you decided to take her up on her offer to visit us. She’s personally prepared the guest suite for your arrival.”

Being forced into meeting with the doyenne of decorating was one thing. Spending even one night under the same roof with the unpleasant woman was decidedly less than appealing.

“I’d planned to check into a hotel,” Chelsea hedged as they made their way through the passengers crowding the terminal.

When Mary Lou had assured her all the arrangements had been made, she’d conveniently withheld this vital bit of information. Chelsea decided she and her agent were going to have to have a little chat when she returned to New York.

The friendliness momentarily disappeared from the assistant’s eyes, leaving behind the hard edge Chelsea had witnessed in the greenroom. “That’s certainly not necessary. Besides, Ms. Scarbrough insists you stay with her.”

“Then I’m afraid Ms. Scarbrough’s going to be disappointed.”

Dorothy gave her a long, thoughtful look. Then, apparently recognizing tenacity when she saw it, shrugged her acquiescence.

“Raintree has a lovely old inn. We’ll stop there on the way to the house.” That matter settled, Roxanne’s assistant turned to more practical concerns. “Let’s retrieve your luggage, then we can be on our way.”

“We can skip the baggage claim.”

“Surely you brought more than this single bag. And your—uh—purse.”

Chelsea almost laughed at the disparaging look Dorothy gave her well-worn leather duffel bag. The same bag her mother had once declared to resemble a pregnant sow. “It’s all I need. Since I’m not going to be here all that long.” Chelsea figured it would probably take twenty-four hours, tops, to confirm that there was no way she would be able to work with Roxanne Scarbrough.

“Oh, dear.” Dorothy’s pale hazel eyes held little seeds of worry. “Ms. Scarbrough was expecting you to stay at least the week.”

“It appears this is Ms. Scarbrough’s day for disappointments.”

Dorothy gave her a judicial sideways glance. “Do you know, I believe we may have misjudged you,” she murmured. “I’m getting the impression that you’re a great deal tougher than you appeared the morning we met in New York.”

“Unlike your employer, appearing on national television isn’t exactly a normal, everyday occurrence for me.”

“Ms. Scarbrough certainly has a great deal of media experience,” Dorothy agreed mildly. “In fact, a television crew is in Raintree, taping a documentary on her career.”

An autobiography and a documentary. Chelsea couldn’t decide whether to be appalled or impressed that the woman whose sole claim to fame was arranging flowers and setting luxurious lifestyle standards no mortal woman could possibly hope to achieve could have been put on such a lofty pop culture pedestal.

The setting sun stained the sky over Savannah the hue of a ripe plum. The air was perfumed with the scent of flowers and a hint of salt drifting in from the marshes surrounding the city, and the sea, which was twelve miles down the winding Savannah River. The lovely old houses with their great verandas and lacy railings and fences reminded her of New Orleans.

“This is truly lovely,” Chelsea said as they drove through the city.

“It is, isn’t it?” Dorothy said. “There’s a local saying that Savannah is a lady who keeps her treasures polished for the pleasure of her guests.

“The city was originally established in 1733, by James Oglethorpe, to practice agrarian equality. The idea was that the goods the settlers produced would be sent back to enrich the British Empire.

“He laid the city out in squares, on the Renaissance ideal of balance and proportion. It was the loveliest city in the South. And one of the few that managed to save its grand old homes from General Sherman.

“You know, of course, that Sherman virtually destroyed Atlanta on that sixty-mile-wide path of destruction to the sea.”

“Even we native New Yorkers have seen Gone With the Wind,” Chelsea said with a smile.

“Hollywood couldn’t even begin to describe the horror that no-account Yankee wrought on our people,” Dorothy muttered bitterly, as if the Civil War had just ended yesterday. “By the time he reached Savannah, it was obvious diplomacy was in order. A delegation of businessmen rode out to meet him and offered him one of the finest houses in the city as his headquarters.

“Fortunately, the general accepted the offer and moved in. Which saved Savannah from the fate of Atlanta.

“During the 1950s the city fell into decay,” Dorothy continued her travel guide spiel. “Wrecking crews were demolishing the mansions for their handmade Savannah gray bricks to build suburban homes, destroying what Sherman had left standing a hundred years earlier.

“Finally, civic pride rose to the rescue. And now Savannah’s inner city is one of the largest national historic districts in the nation. The people repolished the lady’s jewels and tourism is booming.”

They left the city, driving past the mysterious marshlands, along the Savannah River through a backcountry bursting with tropical lushness. Dorothy pointed out fields of tobacco, rice, soybeans and peanuts.

They’d been driving for about thirty minutes when they came to a small community of unhurried, shady streets. The green-and-white sign at the town limits welcomed visitors to Raintree, Georgia, est. 1758. Population 368. Gateway to the Gold Coast.

Although Chelsea thought that the slogan might be overstating the town’s importance, she could not fault its beauty.

The buildings lining the main street were draped in a dreamy embrace of oak and moss, surrounded by an explosion of fiery pink azaleas. White-pillared gas lamps with round white glass globes were beginning to flicker on.

They passed the commercial center, two blocks of stucco-covered brick buildings with wide awnings that made the town look as if time had stopped there. A pair of old men in bib overalls played checkers in front of a store, as Chelsea suspected old men had been doing in that location since the town was established in the 1750s. In the window, signs advertising a sale on six-packs of Dr Pepper and a new three-day checkout period for the latest videocassettes provided a faintly jarring note to the languorous scene.

In the heart of the town—surrounded by a wide square of diagonal parking spaces—a courthouse glistened as white as new snow. A carillon of chimes pealed out the hour on the towering clock. It was, Chelsea noted with a glance down at her watch, ten minutes late.

“That’s Colonel Bedford Mallory,” Dorothy said, pointing out a marble statue of a confederate soldier astride a horse. “He’s a local boy who distinguished himself under General Johnston at the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain. Every Confederate Memorial Day, the ladies of the Raintree Garden Club decorate the statue. They also decorate the graves of both confederate and union soldiers in the cemetery.”

Once again, Chelsea had the strangest feeling she’d stepped back in time. “Do you have any industry in Raintree?”

“Industry? Like a carpet mill? Or furniture factory?” When Chelsea nodded, Dorothy shook her head. “No. Although we’re on the river, we never really became an industrial center. It’s still mostly agricultural, although more and more of the farmland is being sold off to build homes for people who work in Savannah, but want to escape the hustle and bustle of the city for the small-town life.”

Chelsea decided not to mention that being accustomed to Manhattan, Savannah had seemed far from bustling. “Well, Raintree certainly looks like a tranquil town.”

So tranquil, Chelsea mused, that if she did decide to stay, it might be difficult to get into the proper mood to work on her novel. If she’d ever seen a place less likely to harbor thoughts of murder and mayhem, it was this one.

“It’s quiet,” Dorothy agreed, “but like all small towns, it does have its hidden depths. And its secrets.”

“I love secrets,” Chelsea confessed cheerfully as Dorothy pulled the car up in front of a lovely two-story building. The red bricks had faded over the years to a soft pink, but the shutters framing the windows were a bright fresh white. The windows glistened, brilliant red azaleas and creamy magnolias overflowed clay pots on the wide and inviting front porch.

“Oh, this is wonderful!” Chelsea said as she entered the cozy lobby that reminded her more of a private home than a hotel. The scent of fresh-cut flowers perfumed the air.

“Welcome to the Magnolia House,” the man behind the hand-hewn counter greeted her. He looked around thirty, with friendly blue eyes and tousled blond hair. His soft drawl gave evidence of local roots.

After introducing himself as Jeb Townely, her host, he filled out the paperwork quickly, then carried her bags up to her second-floor room.

“I hope you’ll be comfortable here,” he said as he opened the door. More flowers bloomed in vases on a small cherry writing desk and atop the dresser. There was a tray with two glasses, a bottle of mineral water and a tin of cookies on the table. The bed was canopied, and like the rest of the furniture, appeared to be a genuine antique.

“I think I may just stay forever.” Chelsea could feel the tensions of her day melt away as she drank in the cozy ambiance of the room.

“I know the feeling.” His smile deepened to reveal the dimples on either cheek. “Magnolia House has been in my family for nearly two hundred years. After three failed peanut crops in a row, I decided the green thumb possessed by all the other Townelys just passed me by. So, I opened the house up as an inn, and—” he rapped his knuckles on the desk “—so far, so good.”

“I don’t know a thing about the hotel business, except for having stayed in too many over the past few years. But I think you’ve done a marvelous job.”

“That’s real nice of you to say, Miz Cassidy.” He handed her the key. “If you need anything else, I’ll do my best to oblige. Just dial the operator. Anytime day or night.”

“Don’t tell me you operate the switchboard, too?”

“No. I hired a nice widow lady who likes a chance to talk to people,” he said. “But, since I live here, I’m usually around.”

“Doesn’t that make for a twenty-four-hour day?”

“Sometimes. But I like making people comfortable. Besides, although my daddy couldn’t teach me farming, he did manage to drive home the lesson that no southern gentleman worth his salt shirks his responsibility.”

“Didn’t the Tarleton twins say much the same thing? At the barbecue at Twelve Oaks? Right before they went rushing off to get themselves killed in the war?”

“Chivalry is not always as easy as handing out battle site maps and delivering ice to rooms,” he allowed with another friendly grin that had Chelsea thinking he might have been a bust at growing peanuts, but Jeb Townely was a natural-born innkeeper. “You all take care now,” he said as he left. “And, Dorothy, tell your mama hey for me.”

“I’ll do that.”

Chelsea thought she detected a lack of enthusiasm in Dorothy’s tone at the mention of her mother, but knowing that she was expected at Roxanne’s for dinner, she didn’t dwell on it.

Chelsea took less than five minutes to hang up tomorrow’s suit and freshen up. Then they were on their way again.

Roxanne’s Tudor house was set in the center of a rolling green lawn that could have doubled as a putting green. Pear trees sported fluffy spring blossoms, daffodils lined the sidewalks in a blaze of saffron and gold and the dogwoods were beginning to bloom. Chelsea remembered Roxanne saying something to Joan Lundon about a new house she’d bought.

“I’m amazed anyone would be willing to give this up,” she murmured.

“Ms. Scarbrough has always enjoyed a challenge. And Belle Terre certainly is that. Personally, I think she’d be better off taking a page out of Sherman’s book, torching the place and starting over.”

“But that wouldn’t play well in a documentary.”

Chelsea’s dry tone earned a faint smile. “I suspected I was going to like you,” Dorothy said.

As she got out of the car, instead of the traffic and siren sounds she was accustomed to, Chelsea heard mockingbirds and wrens flitting from branch to branch in the maples flanking the driveway.

The muscle that had formed a steel band around her forehead loosened. Perhaps Mary Lou was right. Perhaps a change was just what she needed. And where else better to recharge her internal batteries than in a friendly southern town that defined serene?

Chapter Five

If the outside of Roxanne Scarbrough’s home reminded Chelsea of an English manor house, the foyer was reminiscent of Monet’s gardens at Giverny. Flowers bloomed everywhere, on the floor, the walls, and along the molding at the top of the high foyer ceilings.

Although she hated to give the unpleasant lifestyle expert credit for anything, Chelsea had to admit that she was very, very good at creating a picturesque and inviting stage for herself.

“Ms. Scarbrough always has drinks in the front parlor before dining with guests,” Dorothy informed her as she led the way across the sea of pink marble scattered with antique Aubusson rugs.

The room was small. And decidedly feminine, more boudoir than parlor, which was why the man standing beside the fireplace seemed so rivetingly male. He was turned toward Roxanne, engaged in conversation, allowing Chelsea to view only a rugged profile. He held a glass of amber liquor; the cut crystal looked dangerously fragile in his long dark fingers.

When Roxanne murmured something that made him throw back his head and laugh, the rich dark sound stirred deeply hidden, but strikingly familiar chords inside Chelsea.

“Well, we finally made it,” Dorothy announced their presence, her matter-of-fact tone sounding like a strident, off-key note in the lush intimacy of the scene.

Both Roxanne and the man turned toward the door. As his too familiar, darkly mocking eyes locked with her wide, disbelieving ones, Chelsea drew in a sharp, unwilling breath.

For an unmeasurable time—it could have been seconds, or an eternity—they just looked at one another across the lushly romantic room. He lifted his glass in a mock salute.

“Hello, Irish.” His smile was more challenge than greeting.

The name was one he’d sometimes called her on those rare light, almost comfortable moments, after the hunger had been temporarily satiated. But there was nothing comfortable or light about her feelings as she heard it now.

He knew! The words ricocheted in her head as she glared back at him. From the wicked gleam in his eyes, she guessed he’d known she was going to be here, and was enjoying this moment considerably.

Her temper rose. Although it took Herculean effort, she managed to force it down, turning her anger from heat to ice. “Hello, Cash.”

The voice she heard coming out of her mouth could have belonged to her mother. Although Deidre Whitney Lowell would eat her quilted Chanel handbag before ever permitting herself to be openly rude, she could, with a brief, dismissing glance or a murmured statement, make her target all too aware of her extreme displeasure.

Having been on the receiving end of that chilly disapproval more times than she could count, Chelsea knew it well. Well enough to have no difficulty imitating it now.

Roxanne’s suddenly sharp gaze swung from Cash to Chelsea, then back to Cash again. “I had no idea that you two were acquainted.” She did not sound overly thrilled by the discovery.

“Chelsea and I are old college friends,” Cash revealed. Although he was talking to Roxanne, his gaze stayed on Chelsea’s face. “From Yale.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?” There was a challenging, almost petulant edge to the older woman’s voice. “When I first mentioned that Ms. Cassidy was my biographer?”

“We were discussing Belle Terre at the time.” His gaze, as it moved to Roxanne, was as mild and unruffled as his tone. “I didn’t see any point in getting sidetracked with inconsequential issues.”

So now she was an inconsequential issue? Even though she told herself that he wasn’t important enough to be able to hurt her, Chelsea’s chin came up. “I thought you were living in California.”

“I was.” He began moving toward her, striding across the tulips blooming on the needlepoint carpet underfoot. She’d forgotten how tall he was. How strong. And how his body possessed a lethal sort of grace that had always reminded her of a panther.

Accustomed to his former uniform of jeans and a T-shirt, she’d thought it had been his clothes that had given him the look of a rebel. But now, taking in the sight of him, clad in a casual, loosely constructed, yet obviously expensive cream linen jacket, ivory cotton shirt and oatmeal-hued slacks, she could still feel a dangerous energy radiating from him. Like the hum of the ground beneath your feet right before lightning strikes.

Her quick glance took note of a gold Rolex watch he certainly hadn’t been able to afford when she’d known him. He’d traded his scuffed leather boots in on a soft gleaming pair of silvery lizard cowboy boots that managed to scream wealth and independence all at the same time.

He stopped inches away from her, the tips of his boots nearly touching the toes of her hot pink high heels. When she didn’t offer the hand that was hanging stiffly at her side, he reached down, unclenched her fist, and laced their fingers together with a casual air that seemed as natural to him as breathing.

Cash Beaudine had always been an intensely physical man. And not just in bed. Whenever he spoke, he’d gesture, using those strong dark hands so capable of causing havoc to every nerve ending in her body, to emphasize his words. During their few conversations, she could recall, all too well, how he constantly ran his fingers across her shoulders, down her arms, played with the ends of her hair, stroked the back of his hand up her face.

“I’ve spent the years since graduation in San Francisco.” His thumb stroked intimate circles of heat against the sensitive flesh of her palm. “Now I’ve come back home.”

Chelsea’s stomach clenched at the unwelcome news. They’d be having snowball fights in Raintree’s town square before she’d take on a project that would have her staying in the same town with this man.

“I hadn’t realized this was your home.”

“I thought you were old friends.” Roxanne was watching them carefully, as if aware of the undercurrents humming between them.

“We were acquaintances,” Chelsea retorted, retrieving her hand with a jerk. She didn’t know which of them she was more furious with: Cash for toying with her emotions, or herself for letting him get under her skin.

He flashed the sexy, wicked smile she remembered all too well. “Friendly acquaintances.”

His voice deepened on the correction, causing another significant pause to settle over the room.

Just when she thought she was going to explode from the tension building up inside her, a petite young woman came dashing into the parlor on a whirl of filmy black-and-brown gauze skirts.

“I’m sorry I’m late! I’ve been on the phone with my money people, Roxanne. They love the stuff we’ve shot so far....” Her voice drifted off as she viewed Chelsea.

“Oh, hi. You must be Chelsea Cassidy.” Her light brown eyes, barely visible beneath bangs longer than the rest of her short-cropped sable hair were sparked with intelligence. Her smile was friendly and open. “I’m a fan. I love your writing. It’s so energetic. And fresh.”

She held out her hand. Her nails, Chelsea noticed irrelevantly, had been chewed to the quick. “Jo McGovern. I’m filming a documentary on Roxanne’s restoration of Belle Terre.”

“I’ve heard about it. It’s nice to meet you.” Chelsea managed a sincere smile. “And thanks for the kind words about my work.”

“I meant them. Roxanne says you’re going to be writing her autobiography, so I guess that means we’ll be working together. Sort of.”

Before Chelsea could answer that she hadn’t yet come to any decision, Roxanne deftly broke into the conversation.

“Would you care for a drink, Chelsea?”

“No, thank you,” Chelsea said quickly. Cash had already upset her equilibrium. The one thing she didn’t need was any alcohol.