Simple Gone South (Crimson Romance) (11 page)

“I do.” And if it had been Louisa who had delivered this, Lucy would have sent it right back with her. Brantley knew what he was doing when he sent Mr. Reed. “Thank you for bringing it over.”

It was only when Mr. Reed smiled wider and nodded to the bag that Lucy realized he was waiting for her to open it. There was nothing to do but remove the silver ribbon and white paper. She absolutely was not accepting jewelry from Brantley. From the shape of the box it could be a bracelet, necklace, or watch—all inappropriate.

But it was none of that. It was a silver dessert fork, Francis I by Reed and Barton. The handle of that fork had a whole jungle of fruit and flowers on it—more than enough to decorate a parade float.

“That wasn’t what he really wanted,” Mr. Reed said.

“No?” Maybe he favored his forks decorated with corn on the cob and link sausages.

Mr. Reed laughed a big booming laugh. “I tried to put him onto a nice bracelet or maybe some pearls, but he said he had to have a fork.”

I just need one fork. One. Little. Fork. One.
Oh, he was hilarious.

“But you said it wasn’t what he wanted.”

“Well, not
exactly
what he wanted. He was sure enough he wanted to get you a silver fork like the special set at the club. I had to tell him it was Tiffany and that he couldn’t get it here. I told him he could order it online, but he wouldn’t have that, said to give him something close. That family has always been good about buying local. I return the favor by carrying all my insurance, business and personal, with Kincaid Agency. We all take care of each other. It’s what makes this town special, don’t you think?”

“I do.” Lucy picked up the fork and held it like a weapon. Perhaps she would stab Brantley with it when he got back
in about a week
. She wondered if there was flatware decorated with poisonous plants straight out of the Duchess of Northumberland’s garden.

“I told him if you have your heart set on Chrysanthemum by Tiffany, this really is not the same.”

“Excuse me? My heart set on Chrysanthemum? I don’t understand.”

He beamed at her. “We’ll take good care of you, Lucy. We take good care of all our brides, but I will see to you personally,” he leaned in and said companionably.

“Bride?” she said with some alarm. “Mr. Reed, I am not a bride. Not even close.”

“Oh, sure, Lucy.” Mr. Reed winked at her. “I get it. Can’t let things like this get out until the right time. I understand. I admit that I thought a fork was a peculiar gift for a man to send his sweetheart, but then I thought, of course, he wouldn’t be needing a ring. They have so many family pieces, some quite old.” He glanced at her hand to make sure that hadn’t already happened. “Alden brought in all of Caroline’s jewelry to be cleaned and reappraised not long before he died. She has some lovely things. You will be very happy. And if it needs sizing, you come see me.”

Hell and double hell! Triple hell!

“Mr. Reed, I will not be getting a ring of Miss Caroline’s or otherwise. Brantley and I are not—”

“Of course! Of course!” He gestured to the fork. “Now when—and
if
—the time comes, if you don’t like Francis I, you can trade this little fork right in. But here’s the thing with Francis I. You can get everything. Ice cream forks, strawberry forks, butter picks, jelly servers, petit four servers—you name it. There’s even a corn on the cob butterer. You don’t find that with all your patterns. I’d like to see somebody come up with a cheese grater in Chrysanthemum, but I can get you one in Francis I.”

Lucy opened her mouth to speak, though she had no idea what she would say. At her elbow, her cell phone rang.

Mr. Reed patted her arm. “I’ll just go and let you get that but I hope to see you soon!”

She gave Mr. Reed a little finger wave and glanced at the caller ID. Oh, yes. This was a call she would take.

“Brantley Kincaid, stop peeing on my leg!”

His warm caramel and butterscotch laugh filled her with a certain kind of longing—the impossible kind filled with
if only
and
if it were different.

“Lucy Mead, I would never. That wouldn’t be a gentlemanly thing to do at all. And let me tell you, baby, here in San Francisco they are impressed with how gentlemanly I am.”

“I am sure they are. I’m sure they’re impressed with just about everything about you, but I am not. You left your dog on my porch without asking me and now you have sent Mr. Reed over here with a silver fork. He thinks we’re engaged!”

“I cannot do anything about what Asa Reed thinks but I am sorry about Eller,” he said with no trace of remorse. “I should not have left her without consulting you. I will never go to San Francisco and leave her with you without asking again.”

“I took her to the pound.”

“You did not.”

“I could have. I might yet.”

“Sure you will.”

“When are you coming back? Or are you?” Probably Rita May was out there with him.

“Of course I’m coming back. Maybe sooner than I thought, since you care.”

“I don’t care. Except Miss Caroline has me decorating the carriage house for you and I need to know how long I have. She wants it done by the time you get back.”

“I swear that woman has been trying to get control of my environment for ten years. I guess she’s finally accomplished it.”

“That’s what happens when you move into someone else’s house for free. Anyway, she put
me
in charge of it.”

Lucy backed up and sat down on the stool. She hated to admit it, but it was fun sparring with him since he was two thousand miles away and couldn’t touch her.

“I want you to give me that gong in your living room. I need it.”

“I am not giving you my gong. Now answer me. When are you coming back?”

“When I’m done.”

“Which will be?”

“About a week. Give or take. Hey, I’ve got a great idea. Why don’t you come where I am? We could pick out some curtains and kiss some more. Plus, these people are not fun.”

“I am not coming there. We are not going to kiss. And the correct phrase is
window treatments.
Or
draperies
.”

“I’m not saying that. A man starts saying
window treatments
, and the next thing you know he’ll be figure skating and painting ceramics.”

“I am going to hang up now,” Lucy said.

“I called you fourteen times yesterday and sent you twenty-three text messages.”

“I am aware. I deleted them without reading them. If you have anything to say about what you want your surroundings to look like, you’d better tell me right now because I am not talking to you again.”

He sighed. “Okay. I want my workout equipment in that room downstairs where Tolly had her bedroom.”

“A home gym. Miss Caroline is going to love that.”

“Spring it on her before I get back, if you please. Plus, I don’t need a bedspread. I went to a store and told the woman there I liked a comfortable bed and she hooked me up with some stuff. It cost enough to feed a third world country for a year. I’m going to have to use it for the rest of my life, and after. I’m going to have my coffin lined with it. Who knew sheets and stuff cost so much?”

“Me. I knew. Most people know.”

The conversation continued in a similar vein, and Lucy had hung up before she realized she had not properly addressed that he was trying to make people think they were a couple.

She was considering calling him back when the front door opened and in walked Sandy from the bakeshop with a chocolate cake.

“Lucy!” she said as she rushed to the counter. “Look what Brantley Kincaid sent you! He is so precious. What a precious thing to do. It is perfectly fresh too. I don’t know why I let him talk me into putting everything else off and making your cake immediately. But I did. I guess I am just an old soft romantic. And he says it isn’t your birthday, even. You are a lucky girl!” Sandy looked at her cell phone. “Oops, gotta go! My pecan pies are nearly done, and I can’t trust anyone else not to let them burn. Enjoy!”

And Sandy was gone without ever having given Lucy a chance to speak. She looked at the enemy cake, with its creamy piled-high swirled frosting. She should take it straight to the dumpster—but what a waste. On her way home she would take it to the carriage house for the painters. For now, she would exile it to the top of the filing cabinet in her office. Out of sight, out of mind, not on her thighs.

She couldn’t help but glance at the front door. What next? Or maybe that was the end of it.

Marcia Tate, owner of the Blossom Shop, was what was next—with gifts and painful memories.

She breezed in carrying a bouquet of pink sweetheart roses and a carved Jack-O-Lantern.

“Delivery for
you
, Lucy!” Lucy liked Marcia but she was the nosiest person in the downtown merchant association. And she didn’t have to sound so surprised, never mind that Lucy had never gotten flowers before.

Lucy sniffed the roses and tried to ignore the Jack-O-Lantern. “I didn’t know you made deliveries yourself, Marcia.”

“I don’t.” She placed her burdens on the counter. “These were special circumstances.” She looked pointedly at the Jack-O-Lantern. “I’m to tell you that I carve Jack-O-Lanterns all the time—that they’re my biggest seller in October. I pointed out that this is November but he wanted it anyway.” She shrugged her shoulders.

There was no point in pretending to be coy about who
he
was. “Have you ever carved a Jack-O-Lantern?” Lucy asked. “Apart from that one?”

“Of course. I have kids. I
was
a kid.”

“I mean for a customer?”

“No. Do you want to tell me the story behind it?”

“No.” Lucy laughed.

“Will you?” Marcia coaxed.

“No.”

“Can’t blame me for being curious. When I asked what he wanted on the card, he said he didn’t need a card, that you’d know who was sending you presents.” She pointed to the roses. “He wanted tulips. I had to remind him that tulips are not in season and this isn’t Nashville or San Francisco.”

“I’m sure you did a fine job of that, Marcia. I’m sure he’ll keep his flower seasons straight from here on out.”

“So . . .” Marcia leaned on the counter. “That Brantley. He’s a charmer. Always was. Didn’t the two of you date some back in the day?”

Lucy frowned and shook her head as if puzzled, but she knew exactly what Marcia was referring to. “What day would that be, Marcia?”

“I seem to remember him taking you to one of those summer dancing school cotillions at the country club. I was a little older than you, but I was there. Maybe the last time I went.”

Lucy frowned some more as if she was trying to puzzle it out and then let a light dawn on her face. “Oh!” She brushed her hand in the air as if she were clearing away a spider web. “It
was
summer cotillion. My first summer here. Aunt Annelle had sent me to cotillion class, and I didn’t have anyone to invite. I asked Brantley to go with me as a friend. I’d been palling around with him and Missy all summer.”

Annelle would not have allowed fifteen-year-old Lucy to go to the dance with just any eighteen-year-old, but this was Brantley Kincaid: quarterback, acolyte, and professional charmer. It hadn’t hurt that he was the son of Eva and Charles Kincaid and grandson of Caroline and Judge Alden Brantley.

It hadn’t been a real date, though she had wanted so desperately for it to be. She would have never had the nerve to invite Brantley if Missy hadn’t prompted her, no matter how much she had wanted to. Missy had no idea of Lucy’s feelings for Brantley. She only wanted Lucy to go to the dance and had pointed out that Brantley wasn’t dating anyone. Once she had resolved to invite him, Lucy decided she was just going to ask, with no caveats or disclaimers. She would simply ask him to the dance the same way dozens of other girls were asking dozens of other boys. And Brantley would simply say yes or no. End of story. If he said no, she would not die. Her parents would return to the country and take her away in less than a month and he would be leaving for Vandy soon thereafter. She would not have to live with the humiliation for long.

But all her resolve melted away when the moment came to invite him. She had stammered and led with saying that Missy had suggested it, that she knew it wasn’t a real date, but since they were friends, it might be fun, and on and on and on until he laughed that sweet caramel laugh, laid an index finger on her cheek, and told her of course he would take her.

She’d been ecstatic. It had been so easy to forget how she’d issued the invitation. Annelle had taken her to Birmingham to shop for a dress for her pudgy little body and it had turned out, for once, to be a dress that made her feel pretty. She spent days daydreaming about how he would see her in a whole different light and end the night with sweet kisses and proclamations.

And truly, the night had started off like her fantasies. If at eighteen Brantley had been gorgeous in his khaki shorts and golf shirts, he was dazzling in a tuxedo. And he’d brought a nosegay instead of a wrist corsage like most of the other girls had. With her white dress and bouquet of orchids and calla lilies, she’d felt like a bride. He was attentive, funny, and seemed to be happy to be there.

And the dancing had been wonderful. She moved so easily in his arms; she had credited the lessons she’d had all summer until she and Missy had swapped partners. It was Brantley who had made her a good dancer. She’d never danced with such ease before or since—well, except for that night in the bar in Savannah and more recently at the Follies party.

But later that night it had all come crashing down. She was returning from the restroom to where Brantley was waiting a discreet distance away when she saw them. To this day, she did not know the name of the girl he had been talking to but she was wearing a blue dress, an indication that, like Brantley and Missy, she had just graduated from high school and this would be her last cotillion. The moment she saw her, Lucy felt childish in the white dress that the younger girls were required to wear.

“Are you dating Lucy Mead?” the girl had asked.

“No,” Brantley said. “Lucy’s a great kid but we’re just friends.”