Alicia Pace - Simple Gone South

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.”

In that moment, for the first time, Lucy understood the meaning of a broken heart.

“Just thought I’d ask. I am not one to move in on somebody else’s territory. Some of us are going out to my parents’ lake house after the dance.” The girl gave him a look that meant business. “Why don’t you come after you take Lucy home?”

Brantley laughed. “Maybe I will. I’d have to go home and get my swimsuit.”

“Maybe you won’t need a suit,” the girl said and the two of them laughed together.

The bottom fell out of Lucy’s world. What a baby she had been to think he could want her. This girl could give him what Lucy could not even consider. Even if she was ready to have sex, she was too fat to take her clothes off.

Grateful for the potted plant that had concealed her from them, Lucy fled back to the rest room and hid in a stall until her breathing evened out and her face cooled down. More than anything, she wanted to go home, but there were rules for this dance. No one left early without a good reason and advance permission—unless the undertaker was picking you up.

Right now, that didn’t sound like a bad alternative.

When she came out again, Brantley was standing alone and he smiled at her like she was the one he’d been waiting for all his life.

Like he’d smiled at her in Savannah, at the Follies, and two days ago.

Marcia brought her back to the present. “Yes. That would have been my last cotillion. I remember now. I was excited not to have to wear a white dress. I had that dark purple organza. My mother wouldn’t let me have black sequins.”

“I had forgotten that Brantley took me. It was nothing.”

“Wasn’t it right after that that his mother and grandfather were killed?”

“Yes,” Lucy said. “Three days later.” The next time she had seen him, it was at Christ Episcopal Church before the funeral. He had accepted her condolence hug but he’d been hollow eyed and empty.

“So . . .” Marcia had a sly look about her. “Jack-O-Lanterns and roses in November from Brantley Kincaid. What could that mean?”

“It means Brantley and I are going to work on a project together. Strictly professional.”

“Oh.” Marcia looked disappointed and somewhat skeptical. “Any chance you will tell me what that project is?”

“None. You’ll know pretty soon.”

In about a week. Give or take.

Lucy loved book club . . . usually. It didn’t even matter to her that she was the only one who ever read the book and they never got around to talking about it. There had been a time when Tolly always read the book too, but those days were over. In the space of one year, Tolly had taken in an orphaned teenager, married Merritt High football coach Nathan Scott, moved her new family into a big rambling house, and sent Kirby off to college.

No matter. Book club had never been about books; it was a time for wine, food, and gossip with her three best friends.

Tonight she dreaded it. Not only was she bone tired from decorating Brantley’s carriage house, she was pretty sure she was in for the grilling of her life—though she had told them all repeatedly that there was nothing going on between Brantley and her. After swearing them to secrecy, she had even told Lanie and Tolly what Missy already knew—that she and Brantley would be restoring the Brantley Building together.

The rumor that she and Brantley were a couple had ripped though town like a rabid dog out for blood. No doubt, between Mr. Reed and Marcia, the news had made it to the state line by now. Even Miss Caroline had given her a couple of knowing smiles and last night Charles Kincaid had shown up at her door to check the antifreeze in her car. “I know you’re busy getting that place squared away for my boy,” he’d said. “They’re giving a freeze warning tonight, and I thought I’d make sure you’re good to go.”

And it had gotten cold, so cold that she let Eller in her bed and caught herself almost wishing the rumor was true.

She blamed it on Brantley’s bed. Just that afternoon, after the painters finished, she had hung drapes and unpacked his bed linens. He had not been kidding. No doubt he had gone to a very high end bedding store. When she’d finished making the queen size bed, it was piled high with duvet, blankets, throws, and pillows—many, many pillows—in a decadent combination of chocolate silk, caramel cashmere, and champagne Egyptian cotton. When she thought she’d seen it all, she found the feather bed for the top of the mattress. She had teased him unmercifully about the self indulgence of that bed, and he’d admitted he was a little embarrassed about the number of pillows, but they were necessary for the “sink effect.”

And, yes, she had talked to him; she had talked to him every night. She’d had to; she had decorating questions to ask. It couldn’t be helped.

That was a lie. He didn’t care what she did to that carriage house but she kept answering that phone because she was weak, weak, weak! She was just so tired of being mad. And she had to find a way to work with him. Maybe it was for the best that they had been talking.

However, the phone was one thing. She would get hold of herself before he came home. There would be no touching, no time spent alone stretched out on the sofa, and definitely no kissing.

Of course, she was assuming he still wanted those things, which he probably didn’t. She parked in the driveway of Tolly’s new house and laid her head on the steering wheel. If only she could forget how he tasted. If only she could get that bed out of her mind.

And she had to. She could not risk it again.

She should get out of the car. She was late. She had dropped Eller by home and walked her but there had been no time to change out of the silk dress she’d worn to meet with the sales rep for imported tile. The guy had been young, Italian, and extremely good looking—if you were the kind to like dark coloring instead of warm sweet butterscotch and caramel. Hell and double hell. She should have said yes to dinner with him. Yet, here she sat.

Tap, tap, tap came the knocking on her window and Lucy jumped a foot off the seat.

Oh. Only Nathan. She opened the door and got out.

“You okay?” he asked. “I saw you sitting there with your head down.”

“Tired,” she said. “I’ve been working a lot.”

“I heard that.” He nodded. “And now it’s freezing cold. But it’s supposed to warm up at the first of the week and stay nice through Thanksgiving.”

“Where are you off to?”

He held up a stack of DVDs. “I’m going to meet Harris and Luke at Harris and Missy’s house. After the kids settle down, they’re going to watch game film with me.”

“I thought that was over for a while,” Lucy said as she moved toward the house. The Merritt Bobcats had gone to the regional championship but had lost in the finals last week.

“It’s never over,” Nathan said as he got into his truck. “Tell Brantley I said hello.”

Not him too!

Wearily, Lucy dragged herself up the steps of the wide porch of Tolly and Nathan’s brick Tudor style house. Built in the 1930s, the house was perfect for them with big rooms and plenty of bedrooms to accommodate the friends Kirby brought home from college. Lucy had decorated the house, all but the nursery. “We aren’t nearly ready,” Tolly had said. “Who knows what we’ll want by the time Kirby graduates?” Both Nathan and Tolly were one hundred percent committed to seeing the boy they’d taken as their own through his college football and academic career.

Lucy picked up the brass knocker and let it fall. Seconds later, the door swung open.

“Come in.” Tolly, ever elegant and classy, stepped aside. “Missy and Lanie are practically passed out in front of the fireplace in the library. They both had bad baby nights last night. Lulu was cranky and John Luke woke up at three o’clock ready to party.”

“Good. Maybe they won’t interrogate me.”

“Don’t count on it,” Tolly said as she took Lucy’s coat. “Believe me, as the most recent victim of the book club ‘need to know,’ you have my sympathy.”

“Sympathy won’t stop you from joining in,” Lucy said as she followed Tolly down the hall.

“At least I’ll ply you with liquor first.” Tolly went straight to the bar and poured glasses of wine as Lucy let herself down on the sofa that faced the one where Missy and Lanie sat dozing. Lucy and Tolly had planned the arrangement of this room just for book club with twin sofas flanking the fireplace and a large coffee table in between for food and drinks. Tonight the table was laden with individual tomato pies, tiny crab cakes, artichoke and asparagus salad, and chocolate chip cookies.

“Somebody’s been busy,” Lucy said, accepting her wine.

“Not me.” Tolly set down glasses in front of Missy and Lanie before she settled in next to Lucy. “You know me. I hire that done.” She took a sip of her wine and cast an eye toward the other sofa. “Should we wake them?”

“If we must,” Lucy said. She could handle Tolly. Lanie too. But Missy? No one could handle Missy.