Ain't She Sweet?

  She was going to die right here, dissolve into a steaming pool of lust. Her legs inched apart. Her breasts ached; her panties were wet. “If you don’t stop that…”

  “Oh, I’m not gonna stop.”

  He began kissing her again. Not married kisses, but deep, sloppy make-out kisses with spit and tongue. Her panty hose disappeared. Her panties. He was sweating under his shirt. The windows had fogged up. He grabbed one of her ankles, propped her foot on the dashboard, pushed his finger inside her. She moaned. He dipped his head. Feasted on her. Sent her thundering to her orgasm.

  For a horny teenage boy, he knew his way around a woman’s body, and the second time he sent her crashing with the heel of his hand. When she recovered, she drew her foot down from the dashboard and gazed over at him. He was breathing hard.

  And he didn’t even have his pants unzipped.

  She made no move to change that. Instead, she pulled her skirt down. What a bitch she was. A tease.

  The door locks snapped open, and his voice was hoarse. “Let’s get some fresh air.”

  After what he’d just done for her—what she hadn’t done for him—she should be agreeable. “It’s too cold.”

  “You can have my sports coat. Believe me, I don’t need it.”

  “I guess.”

  He leaned across her and pulled a flashlight from the glove compartment.

  “You Boy Scouts,” she said, doing her best to sound bored.

  He climbed out. She had no panty hose, no panties. She slipped her bare feet into her shoes and waited like the good Southern girl she wasn’t for him to open her door. As he did, she gazed directly at his bulging crotch. Poor baby.

  He draped his jacket around her shoulders and took her arm. She was wearing heels and the ground was soft, so she balanced her weight on the balls of her feet. He drew her toward the woods. She smelled pine and the dankness of the lake.

  He switched on the flashlight and played it over the trunks of the trees. “It’s around here somewhere.”

  Under her skirt, the cool air tickled her bare bottom. If she kept on like this, she’d develop a reputation. Slutty Winnie Davis.

  “Wait here.”

  He moved off without her, flashlight in hand, inspecting the tree trunks like some horny forest ranger. Finally, he found what he wanted. “Over here.”

  He’d stopped at the base of a big oak. She waddled over—high heels, short skirt, bare bottom, all-around bimbo.

  He dropped the flashlight to his side, illuminating the toe of one of his loafers. “I don’t see anything,” she said.

  He raised his arm and shined the light on the trunk in front of him.

  She saw it then, the dim outline of a heart carved into the bark. The letters had grown gray and weathered by time, but they were still legible:

  She reached out and traced the R with her finger.

  “We heard a rumor that these oaks could live for a thousand years,” he said, “and we believed it. Sugar Beth said that as long as our initials were in this tree, we’d love each other forever.”

  “Forever’s a long time.”

  “Not so long.” He smiled and drew out his pocketknife. With the flashlight in one hand and his knife in the other, he chipped away the S and the B and incised a deep W in their place. Then he turned the C into a D. The crooked letters of her freshly carved name stood out in the old wood. What a goof he was. She no longer cared about the initials two teenagers had gouged in a tree sixteen years ago, but he did, and that was nice.

  He slipped his knife back into his pocket and caressed her cheek. “I’m not sorry for all those ugly things I said to you last week. Not one of them is true anymore, but they were true once, and I’m glad I said them.”

  “You should have said them fourteen years ago.”

  “I was afraid. You always seemed so fragile.”

  “Not too fragile to figure out how to trap you. I didn’t have much self-respect.”

  “We were kids.”

  “I was needy and desperate, not a nice thing to remember.”

  “I remember that you were the sweetest girl I’d ever known.”

  She turned her face into his hand and kissed the palm. “A woman shouldn’t idolize the man she marries.”

  That made him smile. “We sure don’t have that problem now.” With no warning, he took her hands and said the most astonishing thing. “Winnie Davis, will you marry me? I’d get down on one knee, but I don’t want you fussin’ at me for getting mud on my good slacks.”

  She laughed. “You’re proposing to me?”

  “I am. Of my own free will.”

  Blossoms of happiness unfurled inside her, and her smile took over her face. “Do I have to give you an answer right now?”

  “I’d appreciate it.”

  “You’re just doing this so I’ll let you go all the way, aren’t you?”

  “Partly. You set me on fire, love.”

  She laughed again, looped her arms around his neck, and the flashlight fell to the ground as she kissed him.

  He slipped his hands under her skirt and cradled her bottom. “I love you, sweetheart. You’re everything to me. Please tell me you believe that.”

  “Convince me.”

  “Can I convince you naked, or do I have to write a poem or something?”

  “Naked will do for right now, but a poem would be nice in the future.”

  He laughed, let her go, and headed back to the car where he retrieved a blanket. As he returned to her, she said, “You’ve done this before, haven’t you?”

  “Not like this. Not ever like this.”

  At that moment, standing in the damp leaves and matted pine needles with the smell of the lake in her nostrils, she felt the full force of his love for her. The elephant had disappeared; the ghosts had gone off to haunt someone else. They had a love that could be counted on. A love that wouldn’t disappear at the sight of a less-than-perfect meal or fade away under the onslaught of a cranky mood. A love that could even handle a good fight.

  She reached for the zipper of her skirt, then stopped. “Sometimes I don’t feel like making love. Sometimes I just want to be by myself, to take a bath and read a magazine.”

  “All right.” The corners of his mouth curled. “But please tell me this isn’t one of those times.”

  She smiled and let her skirt fall.

  “And if I do marry you, my lord? You’ll let me go my own road? You’ll not come near me unless I wish it? You’ll not fly into rages with me, nor tyrannize over me?”

  “I swear it,” he said.

  She came to him, her eyes full of tender laughter. “Oh, my love, I know you better than you know yourself!”

  GEORGETTE HEYER, Devil’s Cub

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Winnie waited until they reached town before she told him. “You’re not going to like this.”

  “Honey, there’s not a single thing you could say to me tonight that I wouldn’t like.”

  “I can’t go home with you yet.”

  He hit the brake. “Okay. You found the one thing.”

  “I know it sounds crazy, but I need to stay with Sugar Beth for a while longer.”

  “Crazy doesn’t begin to describe it.” He pulled to the side of the road, turned off the ignition, and draped his arm over the back of her seat. She extracted a leaf fragment from his hair, just above his temple. He kissed her fingers, but he didn’t look happy. “Sugar Beth is poison, Winnie.”

  She trailed the backs of her fingers along his jaw. “She’s changed.”

  “That’s what everybody keeps saying, but I’m here to tell you that you’re wrong.”

  She rested her head against his arm. “We fight all the time, and I’ve said more rotten things to her in two days than I’ve said to everyone else in a lifetime. But she’s not going to be around much longer, and this may be the only chance I have to figure things out with her.”

  He massaged the back of her neck with his thumb. “Honey, she doesn’t have y
our best interests at heart.”

  “That’s not entirely true.”

  “Believe me, it is.” He withdrew his arm, tapped the steering wheel. “I wasn’t going to say anything about this, but…She came on to me last night.”

  She smiled. “I know. I was there.”

  “What?”

  “Colin and I were standing on the stairs. We heard the whole thing. Sugar Beth set you up.”

  “You and Colin stood there and listened to her throw herself at me?”

  “We were weak. And we had a vested interest in the outcome.”

  “I don’t believe this.” He smacked the steering wheel with the heel of his hand. “She set me up?”

  “She’s a devil, all right.”

  “I don’t like that admiration I hear in your voice.”

  “She’s aggressive, but she’s not mean-spirited—not the way she used to be. And she’s great with Gigi. I want to know her better.”

  “You don’t have to stay at the carriage house for that. You can meet her for lunch, for God’s sake. Go shopping together.”

  “It wouldn’t be the same. It needs to be just Sugar Beth and me, sink or swim, nobody else around.” She kissed the corner of his mouth. “I have to do this.”

  “For how long?” he said begrudgingly.

  “I’m not sure.”

  “What about us? Our marriage?”

  “That’s lookin’ real good to me right now.” She dabbled with his bottom lip. “Would you mind so much if we dated for a while?”

  “Dated?”

  “For a while.”

  “You want to date?”

  “Just for a little while.”

  “Damned right I’d mind.”

  “Then we’re going to have a fight about it, and as much as the idea appeals to me, can we wait until tomorrow to do it?”

  “You want to fight with me?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  He shook his head. “I know that someday I’ll understand this, but right now I’m too wrung out from trying to satisfy your insatiable lust.”

  “Get used to it.”

  He laughed, started the car, and drove her back to the carriage house where he walked her to the front door and kissed her good night like a perfect Southern gentleman. With a pair of blue panties tucked in his pocket.

  Sugar Beth didn’t see Colin again until Wednesday morning. As she left for the bookstore, she spotted him pushing a wheelbarrow loaded with stone toward the tree line behind Frenchman’s Bride. Gordon trotted off to join him, and Sugar Beth frowned. Colin should be writing.

  When it was time for her lunch break, she carried her bag of taco chips and a Coke across the street to Yesterday’s Treasures. The store had reopened for business the day before, and there’d been a steady stream of customers ever since, including the same busload of senior citizens who’d visited the bookstore a few hours earlier. She still couldn’t get used to the idea of Parrish being a tourist destination.

  She greeted Donna, Winnie’s assistant, then headed for the back of the store where she found Winnie sitting at her desk looking starry-eyed and sleepy. Sugar Beth pulled up a straight-backed chair, propped her feet on the desk, and opened the taco chips. “I heard you sneak in again in the middle of the night. Why don’t you just move back home?”

  “I’m not done torturing you.” Winnie yawned, then smiled. “Ryan and I had a huge fight last night.”

  “Ah, well, that explains the look of bliss.”

  “We never used to fight.” She smiled as she reached across the desk to swipe some chips. “Fighting’s wonderful.”

  “Each to his own. Although the two of you are such big pansies, I can’t imagine it gets too dangerous.”

  “We yell,” she said defensively. “Or at least he did last night. He really wants me to come home. He’s trying to be understanding, but he’s getting frustrated.”

  “Not from lack of sex, that’s for sure.”

  Winnie actually giggled. “I never thought we’d have so much passion.”

  “You are a lot weirder than me.”

  Twenty minutes later, when Sugar Beth returned to work, Jewel passed over an envelope. “This came for madam while she was out.”

  Sugar Beth opened it and found a round-trip air ticket to Houston. She gazed at the date. The ticket was for tomorrow, her day off, a flight leaving in the morning and returning that same night. She pulled out a separate sheet of paper and found a confirmation number for a rental car.

  She bit her bottom lip and gazed across the street at Yesterday’s Treasures. It could have been Winnie who’d done this, but she was too preoccupied now to have thought of it. Sugar Beth pressed the envelope to her breast. Colin.

  Less than twenty-four hours later, Sugar Beth stood in the doorway of the second-floor lounge at Brookdale and gazed at Delilah bent over a jigsaw puzzle. Her gray hair fell straight and smooth to just below her ears, and a headband printed with ladybugs held it back from her chubby face. Today she wore the pink jumper Sugar Beth had brought her several months ago, along with a lavender T-shirt. For a moment Sugar Beth simply gazed at her, then she spoke softly. “Hey, sweetheart.”

  Delilah stiffened. Her head came up slowly, her eyes already filled with hope. “My Sugar Beth?”

  A moment later they were in each other’s arms, with Delilah saying her name over and over again.

  For the next half hour, she couldn’t seem to stop talking. “I didn’t think you’d ever come…You said you wasn’t mad, but…And then I gave Henry my extra muffin…Dr. Brent filled my tooth…And Shirley knows you’re only allowed to smoke outside…” As she spoke, she held Sugar Beth’s hand, and she continued to hold it as they took a walk across the grounds. She chose Taco Bell for lunch, and afterward they went on a shopping expedition that finished off Sugar Beth’s paycheck. She didn’t let herself dwell on the fact that she had only six more weeks until the next payment was due.

  Delilah’s anxiety finally set in, and she wanted to go back to Brookdale. “Meesie gets worried if I’m gone too long.” Meesie Baker was Delilah’s favorite aide.

  “I think it’s harder on you bein’ so far away than it is on her,” Meesie said later when Sugar Beth caught her alone. “She misses you, but she’s doin’ fine.”

  Sugar Beth stroked Delilah’s hair as they said good-bye. “I’ll call you on Sunday. And I’ll think about you every day.”

  “I know you will, my Sugar Beth. Because you love me so much.”

  “You got that right, ace,” she replied, which made Delilah giggle.

  On the flight back, Sugar Beth gazed out the window and fought the lump in her throat. How many people were lucky enough to have someone in their lives who loved them so unconditionally?

  As she drove home in the dark, she tried to figure out how she could thank Colin. In the end, she took the coward’s way out and wrote him a note. Her first three attempts revealed too much and ended up in the wastebasket, but the version she stuck in his mailbox as she left for work on Friday morning did the job without the sentiment.

  Dear Colin,

  I saw Delilah yesterday. Thank you. Being with her meant everything to me, and I take back nearly every bad thing I’ve said about you.

  Gratefully,

  Sugar Beth

  (Please do not mark for spelling and punctuation.)

  Colin crumpled the letter in his fist and tossed it on the ground next to the wheelbarrow. He didn’t want her gratitude, damn it, he wanted her company, her smiles. He wanted her body—he couldn’t deny that—but also her quirky point of view, that irreverent humor, those sideways glances she gave him when she didn’t think he was looking.

  He threw down his shovel. Ever since Sunday, he’d been tense and irritable. He couldn’t write, couldn’t sleep. No big mystery why. Guilt wasn’t a comfortable companion, and it was time he did something about it.

  The phone call came at three o’clock on Saturday afternoon, an hour before the bookstore closed. “Gemima’s
Books,” Sugar Beth said.

  “If you want to see your dog alive again, be at Rowan Oak at five o’clock. And come alone.”

  “Rowan Oak?”

  “If you call the police, the dog’s…dog meat.”

  “I dumped you!”

  But he’d already hung up.

  She wouldn’t do it. She wouldn’t let him manipulate her. But not long after the store closed, she found herself on the highway heading toward William Faulkner’s legendary home in Oxford. Colin had made it possible for her to see Delilah, and she owed him this. Still, she wished he didn’t have to make everything so hard.

  The house and grounds closed to the public at four o’clock, but someone obviously had important connections because a burgundy Lexus sat in the otherwise empty parking lot and the wooden gate was open. Having grown up in northeastern Mississippi, Sugar Beth had been to Rowan Oak many times—with a Girl Scout troop, church youth groups, the Seawillows, and during senior year, in a big yellow bus with Mr. Byrne’s English classes. William Faulkner had bought the decrepit Greek Revival plantation in the early 1930s. At the time the house had no indoor plumbing or electricity, and Faulkner’s wife was rumored to have spent her days sitting on the stoop crying while her husband began making the house livable. Until his death in 1962, Faulkner had lived here, gotten drunk here, frightened his children with stories of a ghost he invented, and written the novels that had eventually won him the Nobel Prize for literature. In the early 1970s, his daughter had sold the house and grounds to the University of Mississippi, and since then, visitors from all over the world had come to see the state’s most famous literary landmark.

  She approached the two-story white frame house through the imposing avenue of cedars that had been planted during the nineteenth century. Long before she reached the end of the old brick walk, she saw Colin leaning against one of the house’s square columns with Gordon lying at his feet.