Peach Pies and Alibis (14 page)

Ella Mae grinned. “That’s a serious dose of fortune cookie philosophy. And speaking
of stopping to smell the roses, what are you doing tonight?”

“Remember Jessup from the shooting range?”

“The guy with the wad of chewing tobacco?” Ella Mae grimaced. “Don’t tell me…”

“Lord have mercy, no!” Reba exclaimed. “He’s got an older brother. Wayne’s a fine-lookin’
man who promised me a big steak dinner and a good bottle of wine if I can outshoot
him at fifty yards.”

Ella Mae laughed. “I feel sorry for this Wayne guy. I hope he keeps plenty of cash
in his wallet.”

“Don’t you fret, darlin’. I’ll make losin’ worth his while.” Reba gave Ella Mae a
saucy wink and left the pie shop.

Ella Mae spent that evening and many more like it in the library at Partridge Hill.
She drank wine and read while Chewy ran in and out of the room or kept company with
Reba or her mother, who showered him with treats and attention.

Ella Mae quickly became obsessed with the fantastical
tales and illustrations of the magical men and women she’d always believed were the
stuff of legend. Fairy tales, tall tales, myths, fables, folklore—they all turned
out to contain fragments of truth. The real versions of these stories were recorded
in the leather tomes and parchment scrolls in her mother’s library, and they were
utterly fascinating.

The first story she read was about a girl with golden locks who’d been raised by bears.
In this adaptation, thieves kill the girl’s parents as they traveled through a forest,
and a female bear discovers the tiny child shivering in the cold and carries her home
to the den. Ella Mae then read an unusual interpretation penned by the British poet
in the early eighteen hundreds. He described the main character not as a naïve and
curious girl but a foul-mouthed, ugly hag. It took many years and many versions for
the girl to be known as a precocious child named Goldilocks.

The truth was a combination of both. When the magical, golden-haired girl was with
the bears, she was young and beautiful, but whenever she entered the world of men,
she became old again. Speaking in the only tongue she knew, the growling language
of the bears, she’d enter their villages and beg for a bowl of porridge. The people
thought she was crazy. They drove her from their streets by throwing stones at her.
One day, she was struck on the head by a rock and died before she could return to
the safety of the den. The bears woke to find her gone.

To her horror, Ella Mae found that most of the versions of the traditional tales she’d
heard since childhood were filled with similar tragedies. The magical beings, her
ancestors, were often treated very badly. Over the centuries, her kind had been ostracized,
persecuted, and hunted as witches. As a result, they learned to conceal their gifts.
They hid in plain sight among the normal humans and survived because they abided by
a list of rules Ella Mae had yet to discover.

One September afternoon, with the last of the summer
heat clinging to Havenwood, Ella Mae decided she needed a night free of research.

“No more books,” she told Chewy and lifted him into her bike basket. “We’re going
to have a picnic, a swim, and then we’ll watch the lightning bugs dance through the
trees. How does that sound?”

Chewy barked, his tail thumping in anticipation. Standing on his front paws, he tried
to climb out of the basket, his nose quivering feverishly as he detected the scent
of fried chicken.

“I’ll give you some as soon as we get there. Promise.”

Ella Mae pedaled slowly. With the heavy, cloying air pressing down, she couldn’t wait
to hit the downhill stretch, to let the wind pry the damp strands of hair off her
sticky cheeks. It was nearly six o’clock and yet the sun still beat down on her. The
entire town seemed parched and wilted, and though a cold front was due to arrive any
day now, it seemed impossible to believe that fall would ever arrive.

At the sandy bank alongside the swimming hole, Ella Mae laid out a picnic supper on
a large, flat rock. She gave Chewy some of Reba’s buttermilk fried chicken but shooed
him away when he began to sniff her container of Caprese salad. Too full to eat the
strawberries she’d brought for dessert, Ella Mae stepped out of her white denim cutoffs
and drew her lavender T-shirt over her head. After straightening a twisted strap on
her silver tankini, she glanced around the placid swimming hole and smiled.

“Come on, boy!” she called out to Chewy, racing into the water with a laugh.

The terrier didn’t need any encouragement. With a yip of delight, he launched himself
after her, his feet paddling ferociously as he strove to catch up.

Ella Mae caught hold of a stray twig that had fallen from one of the many trees leaning
over the swimming hole, and
tossed it onto a spit of dry land. Chewy pivoted in the water and swam to fetch it.
They played catch for a while and then Chewy settled down on the picnic blanket to
rest. Ella Mae lay back in the refreshingly cool water, stretching out her arms and
legs until her body looked like a star. Closing her eyes, she floated for several
minutes, her hair fanning around her head as she bobbed in the subtle current.

For the first time in weeks, she felt utterly relaxed. In this place, she was able
to empty her mind of the harvest, the strange and convoluted history of her people,
and the fact that her inaugural catering job was coming up in a few days. Concentrating
instead on the gurgling and lapping noises of the water, she focused on the soothing
melody as the sun began to sink behind the hills and the shadows stretched and lengthened
around the swimming hole.

In her trancelike state, it took Ella Mae several moments to realize that the barking
she heard from the ridge of trees near the picnic blankets didn’t sound like Chewy.
It was the deep bark of a much bigger dog.

Slightly disoriented, Ella Mae began to tread water, turning this way and that as
she looked around for her terrier.

“Chewy!” she shouted. “Chewy! Where are you, boy?”

Two sets of dog barks erupted from a break in the trees where a path wound up through
the woods and to where the blackberry bushes grew in a wild tangle of thorny branches.

Ella Mae had left her bike in the cover of those bushes, a few feet from Skipper Drive.
The road wasn’t a busy one, but she didn’t want Chewy anywhere near it. And who was
the other dog? Was he a threat to her little Jack Russell?

“Chewy!” she yelled again, swimming toward the sandy bank.

Suddenly, she heard a splash from behind her. It wasn’t loud, but she could tell that
something had just entered the water from the rocks jutting out over the center of
the swimming
hole. Whatever it was, the thing was big enough to have sent waves rippling wildly
along the surface.

Ella Mae felt terribly vulnerable. Quickening her pace, she’d almost reached dry land
when a hand clamped around her ankle. She screamed.

“Whoa, whoa!” a man said with laughter in his voice. “It’s just me!”

Swinging around, Ella Mae lost her balance on the slick stones underfoot. She fell
back into the shallows with an angry, unintelligible shout.

Hugh snaked his arms under her thighs and upper back and raised her to the surface
in a single, effortless motion.

“I didn’t mean to scare you. I’m sorry.” The corners of his mouth twitched with amusement.

Ella Mae slapped him on the chest. “I could kill you! I thought you were some monster
who wanted to tear me into pieces!” Too angry to move, she glared at Hugh, but it
was difficult to hold on to her ire with him cradling her so tenderly. Water trickled
down his jawline and dripped from his chin. Droplets shone on his wide shoulders and
along his muscular arms. The last rays of the setting sun cast a golden sheen over
his skin and tinged his dark, wet locks with filaments of copper. He looked her over
with his bright blue eyes, surveying her tight, silver swimsuit and her tanned limbs.

“You’re beautiful,” he whispered.

Ella Mae was unaccustomed to being touched by a man other than Sloan. She knew she
should wriggle out of Hugh’s arms, but it felt so right to be nestled against him.
It didn’t matter that she was still legally married or that Hugh was a captive of
Loralyn’s power—no one else existed beyond this moment, beyond this circle of cool
water.

Glancing up at the outcrop from which Hugh had jumped, Ella Mae realized that there
was so much she didn’t know about this man. She wanted him and he wanted her, but
that
wasn’t enough. And yet, considering all that she’d had to digest over the past few
weeks, she didn’t want to think tonight. She didn’t want to analyze her feelings or
worry about the future. She wanted only to lose herself with Hugh, to surrender to
his eyes and lips and hands in the indigo twilight.

“Why do we keep ending up like this?” she asked. She’d meant to sound playful, but
the huskiness of her voice betrayed her desire. “This close to each other.”

He drew her even nearer, so that her hip rested against his waist and her face was
inches from his. “You’re my mermaid,” he answered, running his thumb and forefinger
down the length of a lock of her hair. “Silver and beautiful as moonlight.”

The image reminded Ella Mae of Loralyn.

I’m not a mermaid. Or a siren,
she thought, feeling her hatred for Loralyn taint the moment.

Hugh must have noticed the shift in mood, for he released her legs, letting them sink
gently to the bottom. He kept hold of her shoulders though, refusing to let her pull
away. She was glad of that. Her anger was meant for Loralyn, not Hugh.

“I’ve been in love with you for as long as I can remember, but you’ve never been free,”
she said. “Loralyn’s always been in the picture, hasn’t she?”

He dropped his gaze, and Ella Mae was tempted to kiss his sweep of long, damp lashes.
“I know that she doesn’t really care about me. She never did. I’m just someone she
reaches for in between husbands, but I couldn’t see that about her—or about myself—until
you showed up earlier this summer.” He looked at her, and in his eyes she saw a reflection
of her own yearning.

They were silent for a few seconds, and then Hugh spoke again. “I’m not looking for
a fling. I want something real. Something life changing.” His fingertips traced Ella
Mae’s
cheek and then traveled down the curve of her neck. “All those years ago, the most
amazing girl of all was right in front of me. For some reason, I couldn’t see that.
I couldn’t see
you
. And then you left. You got married. It was too late to win you.”

Ella Mae’s heart was booming like thunder inside her chest. “But I’m back now,” she
said. “To stay.”

His eyes turned glum. “But you’re not free.”

“I will be. In just a few months.” She brought her lips close enough to breathe her
next words into his ear. “And I’m worth waiting for.”

Hugh’s arms slid around her waist and tightened. “I know you are.” His fingers dug
into the flesh of her lower back and she felt his need in his touch. It pulsed through
her like a second heartbeat. “I’ve watched you at the pie shop,” he said. “I see how
hard you work and how great you are with people. How you cherish your family. I see
the way your smile lights up a room, and every time you laugh, I hear music.” He traced
a pattern on her skin, an infinity symbol stretching from one hip to the center of
her back and out to the other hip. “Are you worth waiting for? Hell, yes. You are.”

“Then prove it, Hugh Dylan.” Ella Mae pulled back in order to look him full in the
face. “If we both want this, if we both
really
want to be together, then nothing should stand in our way. Prove it by kissing me.
Kiss me like you’ll never let me go.”

She expected him to mention that the last time they’d kissed the heat between them
had become too intense, causing genuine pain, but he didn’t say a word. He closed
his eyes and put his mouth on hers.

Ella Mae waited for the tingling feeling to start, but it didn’t. There was no sensation
of being burned. No crackles of electricity. There was only Hugh. His mouth, his tongue,
his hands moving up the slope of her back, pressing her closer and then closer still.

Their kiss was slow and tender at first and then rapidly became deeper and greedier.
As she clung to Hugh, Ella Mae felt as if her body were floating again, adrift on
currents of heat and need. Kissing Sloan had never felt like this. This kiss was like
being pulled underwater. It was like drowning in a dream, and Ella Mae sensed that
Hugh Dylan was not like other men. But was he one of her kind? Is that why they’d
hurt each other when they kissed before?

As if reading her mind, Hugh gently broke away. “I don’t know why this isn’t like
the time at the pie shop, but I am so glad to be able to touch you without…”

She put a finger to his lips. “Nothing from before matters. We have lots of things
to figure out and that’s okay. I just need to know that you’re willing to do whatever
it takes to make this work.”