Cheri on Top

J.J. found a box of matches on the mantel and lit the paper, standing to watch last Wednesday’s Bugle go up in flames. “So, you getting settled in?” he hollered to her. “Has Gladys got you everything you need?” J.J. kept himself busy by fetching two kitchen chairs and pulling them up to the fire. He refused to gawk at the lower half of her body like some kind of lecher.

  “Pretty much.”

  “She tells me you’re sorting through years of accounting reports. Finding anything interesting?”

  Cheri walked back into the room with one of Viv’s distinctive coffee mugs in her hand. She handed it to him and sat in the chair opposite.

  “It’s a mess, J.J. I told Granddaddy that Purnell doesn’t have a clue what he’s doing, but he wouldn’t even listen to me. In fact…” She pulled the bulky sweater tight around her midsection and crossed her legs. “I think the guy might even be criminally negligent.” Cheri turned away from the fire and made eye contact with J.J. She looked almost apologetic. “I used to do some forensic accounting down in Florida. I’ve seen this before.”

  J.J. nodded politely and bit his tongue. He knew that about her, of course. He’d kept track of most everything related to Cheri over the years. He knew she’d worked her ass off at that big, fancy corporation, and got herself promoted several times. He knew that she walked away from a vice president offer to go into real estate. He also knew that she had a habit of hooking up with dudes who looked like models and acted like morons. Maybe someday, when everything was sorted out between the two of them, she’d open up about all those years they’d been apart. J.J. had often wondered what she regretted, what she would have done differently, if given the chance.

  Cheri frowned at him. “What?”

  He must have been staring too intently. He needed to chill out. “Just thinking about Purnell, is all. I’ve been on Garland for years about him, but he always says he can’t force him out because the guy’s got nothing else. He says losing his job would kill the old codger.”

  Cheri shrugged. “If the gin doesn’t do it first.”

  J.J. smiled sadly. “So are you going to fire him?”

  “No. She shook her head. “I have no interest in firing people before my office is even painted.”

  He laughed.

  “Besides,” she said, “the records are such a disaster that I can’t even get a clear picture of what’s going on. I think I need to keep digging. When I do know, I plan to put together a report for Granddaddy. I’ll give you a copy, too.”

  “I’d be much obliged.”

  They sat quietly for a moment, the wood popping and crackling as it began releasing heat. Since the exchange was going so smoothly—the kind of talk any two professional associates might have—J.J. tried his best not to sneak a prurient peek at Cheri. But it was impossible. He watched her tug her sweater tighter. He saw how her brow furrowed and her mouth was pulled tight in seriousness. None of that could hide the fact that Cheri was so beautiful she seemed lit up from the inside. Her warm skin and rich auburn hair burned brighter and hotter than anything J.J. had ever laid eyes on. He’d always seen her that way.

  Cheri’s gaze shot his way and she narrowed an eye in suspicion.

  J.J. smiled at her. “Do you remember that day we all scared the livin’ shit out of Viv, hanging around on her front porch after doing belly flops all day in the mud pit over behind Cee-Dee Creswell’s smokehouse?”

  Cheri’s eyes opened as wide as her smile. “Oh, God, yes. Viv scrubbed me to within an inch of my life that night. Candy got her butt whopped.”

  “Turner did, too.”

  “But it was so worth it,” Cheri said, giggling. “The look on Viv’s face when she opened the door and saw us all on the porch swing, hair all stiff—”

  “Nothing but the whites of our eyeballs showing.”

  Cheri shook her head and chuckled. “How old were we? About ten or so? Remember how she made us hose down her porch and sidewalk?”

  J.J. nodded. “I’m still scarred by it.”

  Cheri turned her body to face J.J., tipping her head and grinning even bigger. “You remember our armpit serenade cruises?”

  J.J. laughed. “Hell, yes. It was as close to culture as Bigler ever got.” He looked at Cheri’s happy face, and the memory flooded through him like it was yesterday. They were sixteen that summer, and Turner would pick him up and they’d drive out here in the middle of the night, and Cheri and Candy would already have the rowboat ready. The four of them would pile in and head out to the middle of the lake, where he and Turner would take off their shirts, stick their hands under their armpits, and begin their duet. The racket carried across the lake. Some people’s porch lights would go on.

  “My favorite was always ‘Islands in the Stream,’” Cheri said.

  “Yep, that got the loons worked up somethin’ awful.”

  “I laughed so hard once, I fell out of the boat.”

  “I think the twelve-pack of Bud Light probably had something to do with that, Cheri.”

  She looked at him sideways. “We had a lot of fun.”

  “That we did.”

  Their eyes locked for just an instant, and J.J. felt a knot form in his throat. He wanted to tell her everything, just like Turner recommended. But he couldn’t. It was not his place to destroy the sisters’ relationship. But he couldn’t remain silent, either. Turner had been dead-on right about that.

  “I owe you an apology,” J.J. said, his voice nearly a whisper.

  Cheri pulled away and blinked at him.

  “Don’t look so shocked,” he said, chuckling. “I was an ass when you first got here, and I’m sorry.”

  Her lips parted. She cocked her head. She couldn’t manage to say anything.

  “It’s a long story.”

  She nodded. “I just bet.”

  “Look, Cheri—”

  “Cherise. And if you can’t manage that small request, then I’m going to go around calling you Jefferson Jackson on a daily basis, like I did from seventh to ninth grades. How would you like that?”

  He nodded, remembering that he’d liked it just fine back then and wouldn’t mind it now, either. “You could come up with something a lot worse these days, I suppose.”

  “No shit.”

  They laughed together, but after a raucous few seconds, the sound died away, leaving the nearly empty cottage ringing with silence. J.J. felt an awkwardness creeping between them, which was the last thing he wanted. He couldn’t let this moment pass.

  “Listen, Cherise—”

  She held up her palm. “I know you expected to be publisher, J.J. I know that Granddaddy goin’ off and deciding to bring me up here must have surprised the hell out of you and really pissed you off. It was your job, and rightly so. I get it. But relax—I don’t plan to stay more than a month, just enough to sort out the financial picture for Granddaddy, and then you can have your job back.”

  J.J. took a sip of his tea so he could carefully plan his response. Garland had told him about their little negotiation, of course, but he’d seemed confident that Cheri would decide to stay on after the one-month mark. J.J. knew it was up to him to set the stage for that. It was now or never.

  “You didn’t think I’d amount to much,” he said softly. “That night before you left town for college, you told me that I was a small-town boy with small plans.” He looked up at her and grinned. “So I set out to prove you wrong.”

  “Seriously?” Cheri leaned her elbows on her knees and grinned.

  “At first, oh, yeah. Then in my second year at Chapel Hill, it was like my brain caught fire, and I discovered I was into ideas for their own sake. Did you know I spent my junior year in Italy on a history fellowship?”

  Cheri’s lips parted. “No. I didn’t.”

  J.J. figured as much—Tanyalee would conveniently forget to share any of the good stuff about him. “After I graduated, I backpacked for a year all over Central and South America, then went to work for a news service in New York.”

  “City???
? Cheri’s eyes were huge now. She propped her jaw in her palm.

  “Yeah. But after a year or so of the subway and the noise and the rotten air and living in an apartment the size of an outhouse, I came on home and started working for Garland. I’ve been here ever since.”

  Cheri nodded thoughtfully and let her gaze wander toward the fire. “J.J.?”

  “Yeah?”

  “What the hell happened with Tanyalee?”

  J.J. couldn’t help it. The bluntness of the question—and the sheer enormity of it—made him laugh.

  “I don’t think it’s all that funny,” Cheri snapped, sitting up straight and tugging on her sweater again.

  “Neither do I, let me assure you.”

  Cheri crossed her arms tight under her chest, then recrossed her legs. J.J. heard loud and clear what the body language was telling him. Keep your distance. Watch what you say. Don’t you dare lie to me.

  “Let me start with what I will not share with you,” J.J. said.

  Cheri rolled her eyes like she was expecting a load of horseshit.

  He paid her no mind. “I will not tell you the details of what went on between Tanyalee and me in the privacy of our marriage. I don’t believe that’s right.”

  Cheri shifted around on the old kitchen chair. “That’s very noble of you. Go on,” she said.

  “What I will tell you is this: I did not cheat on her. I did not steal a dime from her. I did not leave because she had a miscarriage. And I never should have married her in the first place.”

  Cheri blew air from between her lips. “Should have thought of that before you slept with her.”

  J.J. steeled himself. It was bad enough to know the truth in his own heart, but to say it out loud—to Cheri, no less—was going to take some balls.

  “As soon as I settled in and started working for Garland, Tanyalee was all over me. She hit on me nonstop for a couple years, and one night I caved. A couple months later…”

  Cheri’s eyes flashed at him. She was fighting back tears. He didn’t need to finish that sentence, obviously. Cheri knew exactly what happened a couple months later, because she was part of it. J.J. was in her house and in her bed and Cheri had just started undoing his belt when his cell phone rang.

  God, how it sickened him to remember what happened next. Cheri had slipped her slim fingers into his pocket and removed the phone. It was Tanyalee calling. J.J. would never forget the shock and confusion he saw on Cheri’s face as she hit the speaker button and placed the phone on J.J.’s stomach.

  He looked at her now, took a deep breath, and decided to continue. “The first thing I did when I got back to Bigler was demand an in vitro paternity test. The baby was mine. And, as you recall, there was a wedding.”

  Cheri rocketed up from the chair and ran out to the kitchen. Clearly, she wanted to get as far away from him as possible. J.J. watched her lean on the rounded edge of the old farm sink and drop her head. He stayed quiet, figuring she’d come back when, and if, she was ready. It took a full minute for her to turn around, and when she did, J.J. instinctively jumped to his feet—Cheri was as sad and lonely as he’d ever seen a person.

  “Stay there.” She straight-armed her palm toward him. He could see her arm shake. “I gotta say some things.”

  J.J. nodded, his hands hanging uselessly at his sides, his heart aching for her.

  “You got my sister pregnant,” she said, giggling nervously. “You know, it may sound crazy but I might have been able to get over that … with time … a lot of time.” She stopped and shook her head.

  “Cheri—”

  “I only spoke to Tanyalee occasionally, you know. She called when you two got engaged, of course, all happy and sparkly and clueless that you’d been with me when she called about the baby.”

  I wouldn’t be so sure about that, sweetheart.

  “Then later she called to give me the details on the wedding. She also called me to tell me about the miscarriage, and soon after, that you’d filed for divorce.”

  J.J. said nothing.

  “Tanyalee made you sound like an absolute monster. You can’t imagine how hysterical she was, telling me all the horrible things you’d done to her.”

  J.J. laughed bitterly. “Oh, I can imagine it just fine.”

  Cheri took a deep breath. “Tanyalee said you were bonking several of the Biltmore tour guides the whole time you were together.”

  “I was faithful to her.”

  “She told me you emptied her trust fund.”

  “If her money got itself gone, it sure as hell wasn’t my doing.”

  “She said you threw her shit out into the rain! Now I realize she meant here! On this property! Which doesn’t even belong to you!”

  “Okay, now that I did do. So shoot me.”

  Cheri rubbed her face with both hands, like she was clearing something away from her eyes. Then she sighed like she was pushing out every last molecule of air in her body. “Tanyalee came to see me the other day. She told me that after the divorce, you told her I’d been calling while y’all were married, trying to get you to leave her.”

  The roaring in J.J.’s ears felt like it would shatter his skull. What the fuck was Tanyalee up to? Was she that insanely jealous of Cheri?

  “I did not say that, of course.”

  “And she said she lost the baby because she … the stress of—” Cheri choked back a sob. “She said she always suspected we were plotting against her, and the stress made her lose the—”

  “Hell no, Cheri! Fuck, no!”

  Cheri stood stone-still, her breath going too fast. The sweater had fallen away and J.J. could see her tummy quiver under the thin little tank top she wore. She was fighting to keep calm, and doing a far better job than he was, apparently.

  J.J. took a step toward her. “No, Cheri. Listen to me, please. She did not lose the baby because of you, or me, or anyone else, or anything that anyone else did or said. That’s a low-down, nasty lie with only one purpose—to hurt you, to hurt you bad. I am so sorry she did that. You didn’t deserve it.”

  Cheri’s brows knitted together and her mouth tightened. He watched her ball her fists at her sides. “What exactly are you saying, J.J.?”

  He took another step closer. “You’ll have to ask Tanyalee what happened. You just need to know with absolute certainty that you aren’t to blame for anything.”

  Cheri’s nostrils flared. Her knees shook under the thin pajama pants. “She told me something else.” Cheri stopped, and her rich amber eyes began searching J.J.’s face. “Tanyalee said that you’d never stopped loving me, that you’d always been hung up on me and still are. Was that another lie?”

  Her question landed with a thud in the empty room, and J.J.’s mind went blank. Nada. Zilch. Zero. He could think of no way to answer her without all hell breaking loose in his heart and his world. But if he lied, he’d be no better than the likes of Tanyalee.

  “Oh, just forget it, J.J.”

  “Wait.”

  “You should probably go.” Cheri headed toward the front door and reached for the handle.

  It was exactly like a few days ago out at Paw Paw Lake. The instant J.J. grabbed her wrist, a wild heat ripped through his brain and body, blinding him to all else but Cheri and what he wanted—needed—now that she’d come back to him.

  “Damn, Cheri.”

  He pulled her hand from the door and gently turned her arm so that it pressed against the small of her back. J.J stepped into her, molding his body against hers. He held her like that for a moment, fully in his grasp, her eyes locked on his, her lips open as if to dare him to do it, to make it happen, to make it become the only choice either of them had—the only choice they’d ever had.

  He must not have moved fast enough for Cheri, because she reached up with her free hand and grabbed a hunk of hair at the back of his head, then yanked him down.

  Wet, hot, slick, full of lightning and yearning, the kiss was the one thing, the only thing, that kept them tethered to the earth.
As his lips danced with hers, J.J. dropped hold of her wrist and slid his arms up and around her body, lifting and pulling her into him so hard that he worried he might hurt her. That thought evaporated as Cheri’s hands gripped the sides of his face, then raced down his throat, then kneaded his chest, all while her mouth moved on his with a ferocious hunger.

  They moaned in unison and grabbed at each other like they had to convince themselves the moment was real.

  “Cheri, baby.”

  Suddenly, her legs were around his waist and her thighs gripped him tighter than a tick on a hound. He slapped his hands on her ass and squeezed, all while managing to turn them both and take a few steps toward the hallway, and the bedroom that lay beyond, just inside the gates of what he knew would be heaven.

  Chapter 14

  Wim pounded on the door long and loud enough that even a deaf old fart should be able to hear the racket. As he slipped the key in the lock, he hoped to God the drunken bastard hadn’t kicked the bucket. Losing the blackmail payments—even as sporadic as they’d been of late—would put a dent in his cash flow, just when he was in danger of losing his shirt with the lake project.

  “Lawson?” Wim shoved at the door only to have it catch on some kind of chain. “What the fuck? Purnell! Open the goddamned door!”

  Nothing. As much as Wim hated to scuff his new Gucci tassel loafers, he wasn’t left with much of a choice. He drew back his right foot and kicked the center bottom of the door.

  It hurt like shit, but the chain broke away from the wood frame. He hobbled into the small foyer, shut the door behind him, and wandered into the barely lit living room. He gasped at what greeted him.

  Dammit to hell! Purnell Lawson was dead, sprawled out on the chair with one arm flung out to the side and booze soaking into the carpet again. Wim figured he couldn’t have been gone long since his skin still had a pinkish cast to it. As much as it pained him to have to deal with hip-hop Halliday, he pulled out his cell phone and began to dial the sheriff’s office.

  “Schnorrf!”

  Wim nearly pissed himself. The sound Lawson just made must have been some kind of snort in his sleep. With a sigh, Wim slipped his phone back into his pants pocket and tapped his loafer against Lawon’s pants leg. “Git up! I thought you were dead!”