Southern Comforts (23 page)

“I promised you dinner.”

The long hot kiss had left Chelsea feeling unnaturally dizzy, as if she'd just taken a ride on an out-of-control carousel. “I don't need dinner.”

“Ah, but I do.” He trailed the back of his hand up her throat, her cheek. “I skipped lunch today and I'm starved. And you should eat something, too.” His slow, wicked smile promised untold delights yet to come. “You're going to need to keep your strength up.”

She tossed her head at that, causing the tousled curls to bounce like springs. “I've always been known for my stamina.”

He remembered. Which had always been part of his problem, Cash considered. He'd remembered too many things about Chelsea. Too well. And for too long.

He folded his arms and grinned down at her. “So have I.”

Chelsea had never been one to back down from a challenge. Either spoken, or unspoken. “Well, we'll just have to see who the better man—or woman—turns out to be.”

“I think I've just felt the sting of a velvet gauntlet across my cheek.” Laughter danced in his dark eyes.

“That's very perceptive of you.”

“Thank you.” He played idly with a gold earring. “Did I also mention that I'm not accustomed to losing?”

“What a coincidence,” she said sweetly. “Since I'm not, either.”

“That could make for an interesting night.”

“My thoughts, exactly.” She scooped up her satin evening bag and linked her hand through his arm. “Ready to go? I'm suddenly very hungry.”

As they entered the elevator, which was already crowded
with a trio of six-foot-tall teenage girls made up to look like featured players in a rock video, and a clutch of silver-haired ladies clutching Fifth Avenue shopping bags, she looked up at Cash and murmured, so only he would hear, “And by the way, in answer to your earlier question, I'm not wearing anything under this dress.”

He gave her a long look. “Nothing?”

“Nothing at all. Except—”

“I knew it,” he leaped in, vastly relieved. The thought of sitting across a dinner table, knowing that she was naked beneath the snug red material would have definitely proven distracting.

“I did dust on a little scented powder.”

The sexually provocative image inspired by her words was all it took to send the blood roaring back into his groin. He bent his head and brushed his lips against her earlobe.

“That's hittin' below the belt, darlin'.”

She smiled up at him, smug in her little victory. “Precisely.”

It was going to be, Cash thought with a blend of frustration, anticipation and humor, a very long evening.

And an even longer night.

R
oxanne lay back in the tub, soaking out Vern's latest ravishment. Since he was in the process of getting a divorce from wife number nine, who, premarital agreement notwithstanding, was trying her best to get her hooks into his fortune, he'd insisted on keeping their affair a secret. Which suited her just fine. For now.

He'd left a half hour earlier, but not before leaving her bathed in his orgasms. For a man in his sixties he was hung like a stallion and had the stamina of a man half his age.

He was remarkable. And, of course, the fact that he was filthy rich certainly made him even more appealing. Appealing enough, she thought now, as she lifted a long leg out of the bubbles and ran a sponge from ankle to thigh, to marry. She wouldn't mind being Mrs. Vernon Gibbons. Even if she was forced to sign one of those nasty prenuptial agreements, just having his name tacked onto hers would give her enormous financial clout.

After all, how far would Ivana have gotten if she hadn't been Mrs. Donald Trump? Without the high-profile, jet-set existence that had put the couple on the cover of
People
time after time, she would have been just another blond has-been foreign skier with an accent.

But even after the divorce, she'd come out smelling like a rose, with enough money to keep her comfortable, a high-profile image that resulted in ghostwritten novels, talk show appearances, and an advice column, of all things.

Oh yes, there would definitely be some advantages to marrying Vernon Gibbons. Of course, Roxanne decided, as she switched to the other leg, like so many other business decisions, there would also be a downside. Vern was not a sophisticated man. In fact, she'd heard rumors of him using a Louisville slugger to break the legs of wife number four's karate instructor when the man had made the mistake of taking the concept of private lessons from the gymnasium into the bedroom.

Her planned seduction of Cash Beaudine would have to be abandoned. Which was a shame, since every erotic instinct Roxanne possessed told her that the sexy architect would be a masterful, passionate lover.

As was Vernon, of course, she reminded herself. Lowering her leg to the water, she squeezed the sponge, causing the cooling perfumed water to stream over her breasts.

He was a perfect match for her. Sexually and financially. The King of Discount and the Diva of Domesticity. It had a nice ring. Together they could rule the merchandising world. If there was one thing Roxanne enjoyed even more than hot sex, it was money. And Vernon definitely had enough of that to keep her happy for a very long time.

She was smiling as she left the tub and wrapped a thick fluffy towel around her slightly sore body.

Her smile faded as she walked into the adjoining bedroom and viewed the man sprawled in the flowered wing chair.

“What the fuck are you doing here?”

George lifted the Waterford iced tea glass filled with
bourbon in a salute. “Is that any way to greet your husband?”

Hell.
How could she have forgotten about George? He was the one obstacle to her cleverly conceived plan. She had no doubt that the moment she announced her engagement to Vern, George would challenge their divorce, embroiling her in a decades-old murder.

Equally unpalatable was the idea he might remain quiet until after the wedding, then demand a share of her new husband's fortune to keep her secret. That, she decided, was more likely.

Bile rose in her throat. She pushed it back down and forced her whirling mind to calm. She could handle this, she assured herself. There was too much at stake to let a loser like George Waggoner screw up her life.

“What do you want, George?” she repeated in a voice far calmer than she felt.

He gave her a long look that caused goose bumps to rise on her arms. He'd obviously been drinking all day. He smelled like a distillery and looked like a skid row bum.

“Actually, sugar, I've been thinking that since you seem to be bumpin' uglies with old man Gibbons—”

“I am not—”

“Shut up.” His voice was quiet. But his order was backed up by the knife he pulled out of his boot. “Like I said, since you've been giving it away to that old buck, and probably to Beaudine—”

“That's not true. I haven't—”

“I said, shut the fuck up!” He was on his feet, the deadly knife in his hand. There was a murderous gleam in his feral eyes, reminding her all too well of another time he'd looked this same way. But then his weapon of choice had been a carpenter's claw hammer.

He nodded when she did as instructed. “That's better.” When he ran the flat end of the blade up her cheek, Roxanne could literally feel the blood flow from her face. “You know, it's the damndest thing,” he mused.

His breath reeked of whiskey, almost making her gag. Roxanne drew in a deep breath. “What?”

“Most women get uglier when they get older. You're better looking than you were when you were a girl.” He trailed the knife blade around her jaw, and down her throat. When it experimentally touched the tip at the hollow where her blood was pounding wildly, she struggled against swallowing.

“Yes, indeedy.” He took hold of the top of the towel in his left hand and with one vicious downward swipe, yanked it away. “I figger it's time I took my husbandly rights.”

He drew the knife across the crest of her breast, allowing the razor-sharp edge of the blade to touch just deeply enough to draw blood. Little beads of red dotted her flesh.

She thought her knees were going to cave out from under her. If he wanted her to beg, she would. After all she'd done in the past, begging was a small price to pay to stay alive.

“Please, George.”

“Please, what, sugar?” he asked absently, as he turned the knife back to the flat edge and drew it slowly, tauntingly down her torso, over her rib cage, beyond her navel, and lower still. “Are you asking me to fuck you? Like you ask that hairy old gorilla?”

She'd
rather
go to bed with a gorilla. But, she didn't want to die, either.

“Yes.” The surrender came on a long, ragged note. “Please, George. I want you.”

“You want me to fuck you.”

“Yes.” She'd forgotten how, toward the end, when he'd begun to drink heavily, he'd been unable to get an erection
unless she talked dirty. And finally, even that hadn't been enough, she remembered, her hand unconsciously going to her cheek, where she could still feel the faint edge of the bone he'd broken with his fists. “I want you to fuck me, George.”

“Hard.”

“Hard.”

“In the ass,” he prompted.

“Yes.” She briefly closed her eyes. She'd survived worse. She
would
get through this, she vowed. “In the ass.”

She opened her eyes just in time to witness an evil yellow grin that sent a frisson of shivers up her spine. “Sugar, I thought you'd never ask.”

 

They had dinner on the mezzanine. Unusual for the city, the lighting was subdued, the noise level almost hushed. It was, Cash and Chelsea both agreed, perfect.

“You never told me,” she remembered, “how things turned out at the house.”

“Not too bad.” He'd been excited about his afternoon earlier. His success had paled compared to his plans for this evening. “There was some hand-carved ceiling molding that should look great in the parlor. And I got a front door that's got to be seen to be believed. It was carved in France for some winery. It's solid oak, twelve inches thick, covered with vines and bas-relief clusters of grapes.”

“Roxanne should be pleased. It sounds exquisite.”

“It is. But not half as exquisite as you.”

For some reason the compliment, and the masculine admiration gleaming in his eyes made Chelsea strangely nervous. She dragged her gaze away, garnering her scattered composure. Down on the lobby floor, she watched a famous British rock star arrive with his sizable entourage.

“That really is one dynamite dress.” Surrounded by the
sea of black favored by the other diners, she stood out like a defiant flame.

“I know redheads aren't supposed to wear red,” she murmured, parroting what her mother and Nelson had been telling her for years. “But it's always given me confidence.”

“Did you feel you needed confidence tonight?”

In the old days, they wouldn't have been having this discussion. She realized she'd have to get used to the idea of him being so forthright. She also realized that she'd never be able to hide anything from those knowing dark eyes that seemed capable of looking all the way into her soul.

“I suppose so.” She began fiddling nervously with the cutlery. “After all, it's been a very long time, and although the chemistry between us is still as strong as ever, stronger, actually—”

“Chelsea.” He reached across the table and covered her hand with his. “Relax. It's okay.”

“What is it about you that makes me stutter and stammer? And babble. Lord, I never babble. Not ever, not even when I was a teenager. Why, anyone can tell you that…” Her voice drifted off and she managed a faint, sheepish grin. “See what I mean?”

“I think it's probably the same thing about you—about us together—that makes me feel like a fourteen-year-old virgin again.”

“Really?” Her initial response was relief that she was not alone in these tumultuous feelings. Her second thought, and the one that came crashing on the heels of the first, was that he was far more sexually experienced. “You lost your virginity at fourteen?”

“Fifteen. It was sort of a birthday present.” Despite the circumstances of his upbringing, the memory earned a reluctant smile.

“And so much more original than a baseball glove,” she
said dryly. No wonder he'd been so skillful when she'd known him. He'd already had years and years of practice. “I suppose you're going to tell me that your father, in some sort of southern male rite of bonding, took you down to the local whorehouse for a boy's night out?”

“Actually, you're half right. It
was
at a whorehouse on the outskirts of town. But my father didn't have to take me. I was already there.”

“You went there on your own? At fifteen? Surely you had some friends along for support?” She could imagine, with some effort, a group of teenage boys pooling their paper boy money and getting the grand idea to hire a prostitute. Especially in Raintree, where inhibitions seemed to melt away in the steamy southern climate.

He decided to be straight with her now. Her reaction, whatever it turned out to be, wouldn't change how tonight would end. But it would definitely set the tone for their future.

“I worked there, Chelsea. From the time I was thirteen until I went to college. And sometimes, during vacations after that.”

She was momentarily speechless.

“I told you how my dad died when I was a kid.”

She nodded and covered his hand with hers.

“We were sharecroppers. The owner of the farm came to the burial and told my mom he was real sorry about the accident, but she was going to have to leave, because there was no way a widow and a skinny kid would be able to keep the farm going.”

“That's hateful!”

“It was the way things were back then. And he was right about us not being able to run the place by ourselves. Even when my dad was alive, we lived hand to mouth. I remember one really bad winter, after that summer's crop had got
ten destroyed in a tropical storm, we were reduced to eating robins.”

His eyes turned reminiscent; his smile was grim. “There were these gall berries growing wild by the house. When they fermented, the robins ate them and got dead drunk. We could almost pick them off the branches. Dad and I gathered up all those drunk birds, crushed their heads, and mama fried the breasts in lard, mixed them with some rice and baked them into robin jambalaya.

“Mama was Scots-Irish, from the Blue Ridge country in the hills. The country that was in the movie,
Deliverance?
”

Chelsea nodded her familiarity with the movie and the lush green, wild scenery.

“She was used to the hardscrabble life, so it never seemed to bother her that we didn't have two plug nickels to rub together.

“She took in washing and ironing, which didn't help her reputation in town, since that was work normally only done by black women. I used to take the wicker baskets of clothes back to those big houses in Raintree for her. At first I couldn't believe people lived like that. Then, I went through a stage when I was angry at what I considered the injustice of it all.”

“That's not surprising,” she murmured, thinking of how he'd carried that anger with him to Yale.

“I suppose not. But it sure wasn't very constructive, either. I got in a lot of fights in those days.” He stared out at some middle ground, giving Chelsea the feeling he was seeing himself as he'd once been.

“Anyway, after we were evicted, we moved to a boarding house in town and she got some work as a maid, but then she got sick, so I did what I could to help out. I had the usual kid jobs, paper route, mowed lawns, that sort of stuff, but it didn't even make enough to pay for her prescriptions.

“So one day, I was stealing some aspirin from the Rexall Drugstore—we couldn't afford the pain pills the doctor had prescribed—when the owner of the whorehouse, who'd come in for some hair dye, saw me put the bottle in my jacket pocket. She waited until I got outside, gave me a lecture, then offered me a job sweeping up and running errands after school and on weekends.

“Then, once a month, I'd hitchhike up to the mountains, where my mama's people were from, and use the money I'd earned to buy whiskey.”

“I don't understand.”

“One of the things folks brought with them from the old country was the recipe for making Scotch whiskey. It was one of the few ways a poor mountain farmer could raise cash. And, of course, his wife used it in the home remedies she made and sold. One summer I spent a couple of weeks working on one of those stills and discovered that not only is it illegal and dangerous, moonshining's just about the hardest work a man or woman can do.