Sweet Tea and Sympathy

  “Kids can be really mean,” Margot said sympathetically.

  “Oh, it’s not the kids. The adults are the ones callin’ her Dr. Frankenstein,” Marianne said. “Admit it, you enjoy provokin’ them.”

  “Fine, I’m provokin’ them, but they deserve it.”

  “Do your parents ever feel bad? Naming you Frankie when, you know, you work with dead bodies?”

  “Well, technically, I’m named Frances for my grandma on my mom’s side. It was a happy accident.”

  Margot pursed her lips. “Was it? Happy?”

  Marianne snorted and Frankie gave Margot’s arm a friendly smack.

  “Triple the McCready stubbornness, hmm?” Margot laughed as Marianne rolled her big blue eyes. Conversation paused as Sierra delivered mason jars filled with an orange-red liquid on ice, the potato skins, and what appeared to be nachos covered in pulled pork.

  “What’s this?” Margot asked as Frankie handed her a jar. She sniffed the drink, which smelled pleasantly of peaches and mint. She took a sip and puckered her mouth at the sharp bite of alcohol. “Well, it’s still less dangerous than Leslie’s coffee.”

  “This, darlin’ cousin, is a Georgia Peach—locally made moonshine, peach schnapps, and a couple of other secret ingredients,” Marianne said as Margot took a longer pull on her jar. The second sip went down much smoother than the first and Margot smiled at the pleasant burn of liquor spreading to her belly. “You might want to take it slow. I know it tastes amazin’, but moonshine will mess you up quick if you’ve never tangled with it before.”

  “Oh, I’m sure I’ll be fine as long as I eat something,” Margot said, forking a possum egg onto her plate. She grimaced at the sheer amount of heavy carbs and pork in front of her, but gamely took a bite. It was delicious, which meant it was terrible for her. “So, Marianne, tell me about yourself. Frankie says you have children?”

  “I’m sure she politely described them as ‘children’ and not ‘hyperactive demon monkeys,’ ” Marianne said with a snort.

  “Actually, for once, I restrained myself,” Frankie said. “I didn’t wanna scare her.”

  “Well, you’ll meet Nate and Aiden soon enough and decide for yourself. And my husband, Carl. He’s been pretty busy lately. His towin’ traffic always spikes during the last weeks of tourist season. Too many people who have no business drivin’ big vehicles over hills those vehicles weren’t designed for in the first place.”

  “Carl and Marianne are disgustingly happy together,” Frankie said. “Honestly, you’d think after twenty years they’d run out of hormones or something.”

  “Twenty years?” Margot exclaimed over the rim of her jar. “What, did you hook up when you were twelve?”

  “Sixteen. We’re high school sweethearts. And remember, I’m a couple of years older than you,” Marianne said, shrugging, with a happy little quirk to her full lips. “Classic story of boy meets girl at a family barbecue, boy dates girl, girl runs away to a faraway college because she’s afraid of bein’ trapped in her tiny town, girl graduates and finds job in big city only to return to tiny town for the summer and realize that she’s actually miserable in the big city and missin’ the boy something awful, girl abandons life in city to marry boy, gets immediately knocked up, and joins the PTA.”

  “I keep telling you that’s not a classic ‘boy meets girl’ story,” Frankie chided, sipping her own cocktail.

  Margot grimaced. “A family barbecue?”

  “Oh, we aren’t related,” Marianne assured her. “He’s a friend of Duffy’s and got dragged along on the promise of free food. Carl’s family didn’t have much growing up, so a bellyful of pulled pork was a strong attraction for a teenage boy.”

  “And you don’t work for the funeral home?”

  Marianne shook her head. “I work for the law office here in town. It’s better for me and my relationship with my mother.”

  “There’s only one law office in town?”

  “Marianne’s only a couple of credits away from being a lawyer,” Frankie said. “She does most of George Pritchett’s work for him while he naps.”

  “I’m a paralegal. And I really enjoy being a paralegal. I realized after working at a prestigious law firm and applying to law schools that I didn’t really enjoy the long hours or the stress.”

  “I will keep that in mind,” Margot said. “There may be some legal action still pending from the flamingo incident.”

  Frankie raised her jar and pointed at her. “One day, we will get the full story from you, Margot, and on that day, the teasin’ will be legendary.”

  Margot nodded and clinked her jar against Frankie’s. Her cousin grinned happily at her and inhaled nachos with gusto. Margot relaxed against the table. This was easier than she’d expected it to be, and certainly a lot more fun. She’d had girlfriends in the city she’d met for decompression drinks. But they hadn’t returned her calls or e-mails before she left Chicago. And her dynamics with other young, upwardly mobile professional women had been biting and competitive. Every brunch felt like a poker game, a contest to see who could subtly drop word of their most recent triumph while keeping their disappointments close to the vest.

  Margot had come home from those outings feeling exhausted and uneasy rather than relaxed. How different might her life have been if she’d grown up close with Marianne and Frankie? Would she have been able to count on them for a sympathetic ear and easy camaraderie? Or would her mother have even allowed that? Linda had never valued social connections unless they paid off in some material way—invitations to important events or exclusive clubs. Margot doubted very much that Linda would have let her run “thick as thieves” with her cousins. Her mother would have found some excuse as to why Margot didn’t have time to spend with them, or assure her in private that her cousins really didn’t like her in the first place. So really, it might have been worse, knowing the relationship she could have had with them but being kept from it by her mother’s resentments.

  Singularly depressed, Margot finished off her jar and signaled Sierra for another.

  “Hey, there’s Duffy,” Marianne said. Margot turned to see that her cousin had cleaned up for the occasion, wearing jeans and a freshly pressed blue dress shirt. He’d even made an attempt to slick back his curly hair. Margot was about to raise her arm to greet him, but Marianne caught her wrist and pressed it gently to the tabletop.

  “Hold on a minute,” Frankie said softly, neither she nor Marianne peeling their eyes away from Duffy to look at Margot.

  “What is happening?” Margot asked, watching as a short blonde with naturally narrowed green cat’s eyes sauntered up to Duffy and hooked her fingers into his belt loops.

  “Wait for it . . .” Frankie whispered.

  At first, Duffy didn’t seem to want anything to do with the blonde, leaning away from her with the only frown Margot had ever seen on his face. The blonde tilted her head and walked her fingers up Duffy’s chest while giving him this knowing grin that, frankly, made Margot’s skin crawl.

  “Wait for it . . .” Marianne said.

  Duffy rolled his eyes and his face broke into a smile as the blonde dragged him out of the bar. Marianne groaned and pulled a twenty out of her pocket, handing it to a smirking Frankie.

  “Again, I ask, what is happening?”

  “My brother does not learn.” Marianne sighed.

  “It’s human nature,” Frankie told Margot. “That was Lana, Duffy’s ex-wife.”

  “They seemed . . .” Margot paused to search for a word that didn’t translate to attached at the tongue. “Friendly.”

  “That’s because Duffy, as much as I love him, forgets that Lana is a bein’ of pure evil with a Hellmouth between her thighs,” Marianne grumbled, biting into a possum egg. “Every time she’s been dumped and needs a self-esteem pick-me-up, Duffy lets her crawl into his bed.”

  “Is the Hellmouth why he divorced her?” Margot asked, grinning at Sierra as she delivered a fresh mason jar. “Because that is illustrat
ive.”

  “No, she divorced him, bless her heart,” Marianne said.

  “Um, that didn’t sound like you were wishing any form of happiness on your former sister-in-law,” Margot said.

  “I wasn’t,” Marianne said. “But I’m just Southern enough and polite enough to say ‘bless her heart’ instead of ‘screw that knock-kneed bitch.’ ”

  “The sweeter you bless somebody, the more you hate them. But nobody can get mad at you, because you’re just being a good Christian lady,” Frankie said, her eyes wide and guileless.

  Margot shuddered. “I’m just glad women in Chicago didn’t know about this.”

  “Anyway, Duffy held out hope that despite her sleepin’ with two of his friends, concurrently, they could save the marriage,” Frankie said, shrugging. “She was convinced that his best friend, Paul Dabney, was gonna marry her and take her to that big old house in Southern Oaks. So she dumped Duffy right quick and let Paul know she was available.”

  “And because Paul is and always has been an insufferable jackass,” Marianne interjected, “he decided Lana wasn’t all that interestin’ when she wasn’t married to Duffy. I’m only thankful that Duffy wised up enough not to let her back in the house.”

  “Sure, wise enough not to let her move back in. Wise enough not to prop her ego up with no-strings-attached rebound sex? Not so much,” Frankie noted.

  Marianne drawled, “I live in hope.”

  MARGOT WAS DRUNK.

  She’d taken care, most of her life, to avoid this condition. Her mother’s reminders of Stan’s “bad habits” left little appeal to sloppy drunkenness. Plus, drinking equaled loose lips and poor judgment and the kind of talk that could sink careers and social standing. She held a club soda as a prop at parties to keep her wits about her while her mother’s circle schemed. And now, here she was with unsteady feet and a head that felt floaty. She was sprawled against the edge of the table and laughing at stories that weren’t really that funny, though at this point, she thought her cousins were downright delightful. She still felt together enough to try to straighten her posture every few minutes and appear sober, only to slump back against the table.

  Margot didn’t know why she’d avoided it for so long, really; it was kind of awesome. She felt awesome. Her cousins were awesome. This bar was awesome. Lake Sackett was awesome.

  “Back in a minute,” Margot said, carefully placing her wedge-clad feet on the concrete floor and putting one in front of the other in a manner that screamed “tragic first-time moonshine consumer.”

  “Don’t break the seal!” Frankie called after her. “It’s science!”

  Margot teetered down the barely lit corridor toward the bathroom doors marked BUCKS and DOES. She was glancing over her shoulder, waving at Frankie and hoping she remembered deer genders correctly, when she collided with a warm, solid object.

  “Oh! I’m so sorry,” she exclaimed as two strong hands shot out to steady her on her wobbly legs.

  “You again.”

  Her head shot up at the source of the gruff voice, so quickly it made her dizzy. Sandy hair, thick dark-blond beard, big sad brown eyes. It was the troubled lumberjack. He wasn’t wearing his serial killer utility coat, but he was right there in front of her, keeping her from falling off her shoes.

  Margot stared up at him. All the hurt in the world was contained in those eyes. And she wanted to hug him. She normally didn’t go for beards with broken wings, but something in this man made her want to reach out and tell him that everything was going to be okay.

  No, wait, she was actually reaching out to him. Physically. With her hands.

  Not good.

  And he didn’t seem very pleased about it, either. He pulled back and frowned at her as she stretched her fingers toward his face.

  She rose up on her toes to press a featherlight kiss to his cheek. He froze, his hands contracting at her arms. “It’s going to be okay,” she whispered, kissing his cheek again.

  All the tension in his frame seemed to melt, curving his body around hers. She bobbed a bit, bracing herself against a nice solid chest. And her incorrigible hands were sliding down his T-shirt to a narrow waist. His hands contracted again, pulling her closer. She felt her cheek dragged against his whiskers as she pulled back and then the softness of his lips brushing her jaw.

  Fireworks. Electricity. Heat blossoming from her belly and rolling heavy between her thighs. Every explosive and magical sensation she’d been promised by romance novels and Julia Roberts movies swelled inside her in one dizzying rush.

  He braced her elbows in his hands as he felt her drop, pulling his face toward hers. With a confidence born of already having hit rock bottom, she pressed her mouth against his. He froze up again, but this time he relaxed against her just a little faster, pulling her against him, moaning into her mouth, tentatively sliding his tongue across the seam of her lips. He didn’t taste like booze or even smoke. He tasted like Dr Pepper. She fucking loved Dr Pepper.

  Her errant fingertips slid up his side, stroking over corded muscle hidden by soft cotton, making him jerk and bark out a rusty-sounding laugh when she reached his ribs. She grinned against his mouth.

  Ticklish. She could work with that.

  His hand slid to the small of her back, securing her against him. She combed her fingers through his thick hair and found it softer than she expected. No product. Some people were just lucky.

  Except, he wasn’t lucky. He was clearly hurting—at least, he had been until she came along with her lips and her wandering hands that seemed to make him somewhat happier. She was over-freaking-joyed to have provoked that rusty barking laugh. Sure, she was still sort of miserable about her current work-life-family-chaos imbalance, but helping someone else escape for just a few moments? That was a heady thing.

  Her hands slid from his hair to his earlobes, rubbing lightly at the spot some ladies’ magazine had described as a happy acupressure point. But for the haunted lumberjack, the earlobes seemed to be another ticklish spot because he huffed out another laugh into her mouth. He turned his head, the scratchy-soft texture of his beard tickling her palm as he pressed a kiss to the center of her palm . . . which did nothing for the stability of her knees.

  He eased her arm around his neck and slanted his mouth across hers. His own hands—huge, by the way, enormous—splayed across her waist, his fingers resting just above the curve of her ass. His tongue lapped delicately against hers, as if he wasn’t sure he had the right. And she welcomed him with firm, excited strokes of her own.

  Never breaking from her mouth, he urged her toward the emergency exit, a stumbling, awkward waltz out into the cooling Georgia night. Her shoes snagged on the gravel of the bar’s parking lot and he caught her, pinning her against him and almost carrying her toward what she hoped was his truck.

  This was insane. Margot had never done anything like this before, enthusiastic petting with a total stranger in a parking lot. She’d been too well supervised during her student years and too professionally paranoid as a young adult. She didn’t do messy or complicated or awkward. But she knew if she stopped now, she would die. All the nerve and spine she’d managed to build in the last few days would be sapped out of her, and she would be a complete mess again. This was crazy. But so far, crazy had worked for her.

  He fumbled in his pocket and clicked the key fob to unlock his truck. He opened the passenger door and slid into the cab, pulling her with him. There was a second row of seats, and for a moment, Margot considered dragging him back there. Sure, there were things she couldn’t do, considering her “delicate condition,” but she was a creative girl with a Cosmo subscription. She could improvise. He guided her into his lap, so she straddled his thighs and pressed his lips to hers and the front seat felt just fine. Her hair fell in a gold curtain around their faces as she wrapped her arms around his neck.

  “Are you sure you’re okay with this?” he asked, his breath puffing in cola-flavored whispers over her lips.

  She nodded, stro
king her fingers along his throat, ringing her fingertips around the hollow. She spread those hands over his chest, caressing down his flat belly.

  Okay, she was just petting him now, to a ridiculous degree.

  Margot bit down gently on his bottom lip and he groaned, rolling his hips up. He was warm and solid against her, rubbing with just enough insistence to make her legs weak.

  She’d done that to him. And she was sinfully proud of it. This was so much more than polite, no-strings frottage with a reasonably qualified partner, sought out when she needed to scratch an itch. This was raw, throbbing need and the heady fog of bad decisions.

  His fingers curved around her waist and almost met in the middle, guiding her down against him as he rolled up. She moaned, not remotely ashamed when her back instinctively arched and thrust her breasts in his face. He nuzzled his forehead against the smooth warm skin above her neckline. Warm—she was so warm and stupidly pleased with herself that absolutely everything seemed possible.

  He kept one hand at the small of her back, anchoring her to him while he reached down to recline the seat. She let loose a little squeak as they dropped back, sighing as her sensitive skin collided with his shirt. But his hot fingers at the base of her spine kept her from pulling away from him.

  “You have really big hands,” she mumbled against his lips as those long fingers cupped her ass through her dress. She moaned softly as he kneaded the flesh, moving up along her back, teasing the tension from her muscles.

  “I do?”

  She nodded, enjoying the way her lips brushed over his bristly upper lip. “You know what they say about men with big hands. They have big . . . gloves.”

  He laughed, the vibrations of that sound echoing through his chest to hers, and she moaned. And she’d made that happen. She grinned against his mouth, that wicked pride warming her through to her thighs.

  He skimmed those big hands up her arms to the straps of her dress, and then her phone buzzed in her purse.

  She tried to pull away from him, but his mouth followed her like a magnet. He grumbled softly as she leaned over and pulled her phone out.