Down Home Carolina Christmas (12 page)

But as a self-appointed expert in the art of lonerism, she had to admit that being by herself got tiresome after a while. It was lots more fun to be half of a couple.

L
UKE AND
C
ARRIE
pushed back and forth on the porch swing on a Saturday afternoon, eye-feasting on the spectacle of the fall leaves, which had finally begun to turn. The air was crisp and cool, making a jacket a necessity, and Carrie sat with her head pillowed on Luke's shoulder, giving the swing a gentle push every now and then with her toe. Shasta, visiting for the afternoon so they could take her for a run in the woods, dozed nearby.

“I can't tell you the difference in Tiffany since you started coaching her,” Luke said enthusiastically. “She's in a hundred percent better mood.”

“I'm glad. I feel sorry for Tiffany. She seems so upset about everything and everybody.”

“Especially herself,” Luke agreed.

“I expect she'd feel better if she was with Peyton more often.”

“They'll get together during the hiatus coming up next month. I'm afraid he's going to hit the roof when he notices how much weight she's gained.”

This riled Carrie so much that she sat up straight. “If Peyton Kirk can't comprehend what a sweet person Tiffany is, he doesn't deserve her.”

“I agree, Carrie,” Luke said, pulling her back down beside him. “It's just that I don't want Tiffany to be hurt, that's all.”

“Of course you don't. Neither do I.” She hesitated for a moment before posing a question. “Is that how people in Hollywood think, Luke? Only paying attention to superficial things about a person?”

“Not everyone,” he said quietly. He appeared thoughtful. “Now you, Miss Carrie. You're anything but superficial.”

“Well, I'm not from Hollywood,” she reminded him.

“I'm really glad of that.” He stood. “What do you say we take a walk. You've promised to show me the Smith family cemetery.”

She shrugged. “Okay. It's yonder down the highway a bit, toward Memaw's.”

At the prospect of a walk, Shasta woke up. She danced ahead of them on her leash, down the alley of pecan trees as they set out. “When are you going to tell your sister about us?” Luke asked as they ambled alongside the road.

“You do ask impertinent questions, don't you, Luke Mason?” Carrie couldn't really excuse her reticence, since it wasn't as if she and Dixie never saw each other. In fact, two days ago when Dixie had asked her what was new, Carrie had merely shrugged and changed the subject.

“Isn't it time to go public?” Luke said, smiling down at her.

The truth was that Carrie wanted to hug their relationship close before it became common knowledge.

“Dixie will insist on hearing all about our first date,” she said. “She'll be all over me like a pit bull on a poodle. She'll demand to know what you said, what I said, and she won't be satisfied until I tell her—well, everything.”

Luke laughed. “You mean you'll have to come clean about our scandalous romp in the attic.”

“I hope not,” Carrie said with the utmost shuddering sincerity.

“Are you embarrassed that we have a wonderful sex life?” Luke asked, all innocence. For emphasis he slid his hand down and pinched her bottom.

She darted out of reach, walking backward so she faced him. “I'm not embarrassed about anything we do,” she said. “It's just that I don't relish being the anxious subject of a third-degree from my sister or anyone else.”

“You don't have to spill everything,” Luke said. “Like how you're insatiable.”

“Or how you are,” she said, keeping out of his arm's reach.

“Like how you really get going the second time or so, all that moaning and writhing around so that the sheets get in a tangle.”

“Luke,” she said warningly, but the gates of the small private cemetery were straight ahead, and when he made a grab for her, she bent and unhooked Shasta's leash. “Beat you to Isaiah's monument!” Carrie shouted as she and the dog raced for the open gate.

Luke was right behind her. “I don't know Isaiah's monument,” he said, picking up speed.

She didn't answer but swerved between the graves, past the big magnolia tree, between the hedges and across a small open artesian well trickling into a stone trough.

She tagged the obelisk in the center of the cemetery as she had so many times before when she and Dixie used to play games here while their parents weeded and watered and trimmed.

“I win,” she said as Luke stopped just short of her and balanced his hands on his hips. “You're beautiful, Carrie,” he said, the compliment unexpected. “Beautiful as well as kind and good.”

“I feel beautiful when I'm with you,” she said helplessly, gazing deep into his eyes and seeing her own reflection in their blue depths.

He moved closer and kissed her, a heartfelt and tender kiss, and her pulse surged for all the world like the current just before the lights went out during an electric storm. He had that effect on her even after so many nights together; her stage of arousal always seemed to hover around READY, and one touch, one kiss could bounce it into high alert.

After he kissed her, he let her go. “I'd like you to introduce me to all these people,” he said, his gesture passing the graves so neatly lined up inside the fenced enclosure.

“Well,” she said with difficulty, straightening her jacket and smoothing her hair even though her heart was still doing a drumroll. “The obelisk was erected for Isaiah Smith, my ancestor who moved here before the American Revolution. We've never figured out where he's buried because the graveyard wasn't started until some years later.”

“And his family?”

“We don't know much about them other than what we've found in the Allentown Church records. Isaiah had five children, and two of them survived to maturity, a boy and a girl. Amadea Smith married a Ganey, and I have a lot of Ganey cousins. Voncille was a Ganey before she married Skeeter. And then there're the Beckeys, and the Finsters, and some Granthums, of course, though I don't claim kin to all of them. Hoyt Granthum and I aren't any relation unless it was way back so far that neither of us could trace the connection.”

Carrie guided Luke down the rows, Shasta trotting alongside as she pointed out the graves of her great-grandmother's twin sons, who died when they were only a year old. And her aunt Sissy's grave, newly planted with a rosebush because she'd loved roses so much. Her parents' graves were there, tucked away in a far corner, the shiny granite marker carved with entwined hearts.

“And that's Miss Alma on the other side of Daddy. She was his first wife, who died ten years after they married, and he mourned her all his life. He always said he wanted to be buried between the two best women he ever knew.”

Carrie wiped away a tear, and Luke curved his arm around her shoulders. “That's nice, Carrie. That he would feel that way.”

“Mama always said she understood. Miss Alma was her sixth-grade teacher.”

“Everyone in your family calls your daddy's first wife Miss Alma?”

“Daddy called her that the whole time he was married to her, and everyone else started doing it, including Mama and us kids after we were born, even though she was dead by that time. Except for my brother, of course. He was Miss Alma's son, and he called her Mama, despite the fact that my mom tried her best to be his mother.”

“Tell me about this brother.”

“I hardly remember him. Rabun left home really young and never came back. He didn't have any intention of keeping in touch, though Mama and Daddy tried. It broke Daddy's heart that his only son did him that way. Last time he heard from him, Daddy got the idea that Rabun was unhappy. I don't know why exactly. That's all Daddy would tell us.”

They had been moving slowly along the path, and Carrie sat on the bench that her grandfather had built to circle the oak tree. Luke joined her, taking her hand and tracing her fingers thoughtfully with one of his.

“If I'd been your brother, I wouldn't have left this family for anything in the world,” he said, serious now. “To throw away what all of you have together—never.”

“Well, Rabun was different, that's all. A rebel from the time he was born. A hell-raiser who was never satisfied with anything in his life. I hate to think of his wandering somewhere all alone, but that's how he wanted it.”

“I wish I had your roots,” Luke said impulsively. “Your sense of being connected to the land, the town, the people.”

“You're a famous movie star, Luke. You have no need of—of those trappings,” Carrie said. “Trappings that really do trap you. Tie you down.” She'd never questioned how she lived before these movie people had arrived, but now she sometimes speculated on what the rest of the world might be like. When Tiffany spoke so blithely about jetting off to Paris with her boyfriend or traveling to Bangkok on her honeymoon, it did cause a person to think.

Luke sighed and settled down with his head in Carrie's lap. Leaves rustled overhead, and a curious squirrel ran down the tree trunk and sniffed the air. Shasta barked once and the squirrel retreated to a branch above them, where he scolded them mercilessly for their intrusion into his space. In the distance, the sun was sinking low, setting the treetops on fire.

“It's so peaceful here,” Luke said.

Carrie had to restrain her laughter. “If you're aiming for peaceful, I guess a graveyard is the right place,” she said with a straight face.

“You're a calm person, Carrie.”

“Some say I'm downright boring.”

“Who?” Luke demanded. “I'll tell them otherwise.”

She remembered last night, when Luke had chased her around the house while she was wearing nothing but a bath towel, when even Killer had run for cover under the old claw-foot bathtub, and how Luke had caught her out on the back porch and made love to her on the swing, which had bounced, wobbled and creaked in protest. Their sexual escapades were anything but monotonous.

He sat up. “Let's go back to your house,” he said.

That familiar ache was beginning somewhere below her stomach, and desire curled upward as she studied Luke's solemn face. “We are alone,” she said, her sweeping gesture embracing the gravestones, the artesian well, the silent trees. “The dog doesn't count.”

“Not alone enough,” he said, and she read something in his expression that gave her pause. It was a depth of emotion that she had never divined in any of her other suitors, and even though her heart leaped at the thought of what he might be feeling, her brain cautioned her not to get her hopes up.

She was an ordinary woman from an ordinary town. No matter how much she might wish otherwise, Luke would be leaving when his work here was done. Leaving Yewville. Leaving her.

Leaving her with nothing more than her memories, which might be more burdensome than she could bear.

“Shasta!” she called, and the dog came running. “Time to head back.” She snapped the leash on Shasta's collar and turned away from Luke, shivering in the cool breeze.

I
N BED THAT NIGHT
, Carrie rested in Luke's arms after making love with him with the full harvest moon shining in the window. Carrie had brought the feather comforter down from the attic and air-fluffed it in the dryer with a bag of homegrown lemon verbena to freshen it, and the scent drifted up from the folds of bed linens, tickling her nose.

The radio next to the bed played classical music from the PBS station in Columbia. Killer slept with his long ears draped across his face, his nose wriggling from time to time in bunny dreams.

“What's wrong?” Luke asked when he woke and found her staring into the moonlight.

She turned over and slid a leg across his. “Can't sleep.”

He stroked her hair, something she always liked him to do. It soothed her, made her feel warm and wanted and welcome.

“You can tell me,” he coaxed. “Is it about Tiffany? About our filming at the garage taking so long?”

She hesitated for a moment. “I keep thinking about when you'll have to leave, Luke.”

He stiffened, and she chided herself for being so forthright. It would have been better to brush aside his questions rather than to appear clinging or overly needy. Nothing annoyed men more from what she could tell.

“I know,” was all he said.

I know what? I know you're thinking about it? I know because I'm worried about it, too? What?

He rolled over on his side, his eyes luminous in the moonlight. “I haven't told you yet that I'm going away during the hiatus. I should have mentioned it before this.”

Her heart felt as if it had stopped in her chest, and all the breath left her lungs. “I—well, this is a surprise. I knew Tiffany and Peyton were going off together, but I expected that you'd be here.” She'd planned it all out in her head: Luke would stay with her every night. Most days they'd drive somewhere interesting, like the state park, where they could rent a rowboat and head out on the lake; or they'd watch a bunch of videos on the TV while Luke commented on acting technique and she persuaded him to make slow sweet love to her in between films.