Southern Comforts

Cash liked Melanie Tyler. A lot. And for more than great sex, although, he admitted readily, compatibility in bed was always a plus. He’d met her at the Magnolia House, an inn where her movie company was staying while filming a sprawling Civil War epic. Within fifteen minutes of meeting the actress in the lobby bar, they’d been tangling the sheets in her room. The affair had been going on for a month now and both accepted that her time in Georgia was at an end.

Melanie treated sex as a man did. She enjoyed it for what it was, took what she wanted, gave what she could, and when it came time to move on, she did. With no regrets.

“Oh, hell.” She leaped from the bed as if burned.

“What’s the matter?”

“I almost forgot. Marty called yesterday.” Marty, Cash knew, was her agent. “That writer who interviewed me for Vanity Fair is going to be on Good Morning America today.”

Cash leaned back against the headboard and enjoyed the view of Melanie fiddling with the television dial. The remote had disappeared early last night amidst the sheets. As much as he genuinely liked her, Cash could not imagine this free-spirited sex goddess living in the White House.

“You’re not really going to marry that stuffed-shirt senator, are you?”

“That’s for me to know and you to guess, sweetheart.” She returned to the bed and snuggled up beside him as they waited through the segment where Roxanne Scarbrough was demonstrating how to prepare a proper southern Easter brunch.

The lifestyle demonstration ended. A commercial for a new, improved detergent was followed by another pushing the wonders of quilted toilet paper.

“How would you like to sleep in the Lincoln bedroom?” Melanie asked.

“I suppose it depends. Would I be sleeping there alone?”

She laughed. “Don’t be silly.”

Across the room, on the nineteen-inch television screen hidden away in an antique armoire, the commercials faded away.

When the camera focused in on a close-up of Charlie Gibson introducing the magazine writer, Cash knew he’d lost Melanie. Her sudden alertness reminded him of the way Blue, his old German shorthaired pointer, had reacted upon sniffing out a covey of quail. Looping his arm around her smooth, nude shoulders, he settled down to watch the interview.

From what Melanie had told him about the importance of this interview, Cash realized he’d formed a mental image of some hardened, thin-lipped, cynical Yankee journalist who’d seen it all and didn’t like much of what she’d seen.

As the camera shifted to the young woman seated across from Charlie, Cash experienced a white-hot jolt of recognition.

Although she was as beautiful as ever, Cash thought Chelsea looked tired. And if she’d chosen those obviously expensive sedate clothes to appear older and more sophisticated, she’d failed. Because the subdued colors only called attention to the gleaming copper penny hue of her long straight hair.

Her bright eyes—the color of new money—were wide and warm; her mouth smiled easily. The way she answered Charlie’s questions with brief, but thoughtful answers, revealed she’d matured. She’d also revealed a vulnerable, intelligent side of Melanie that even Cash, who prided himself on being able to read women, hadn’t discovered.

“I didn’t know you had a degree in economics from Johns Hopkins.”

“When I first started out in Hollywood, being smart wasn’t sexy.” Melanie didn’t take her eyes from the screen. “Hush. I want to hear what she’s saying.”

So did he. Chelsea Cassidy’s voice was still as smooth as heated honey. He could have listened to it all morning.

All too soon, the interview was over. When Cash found himself wishing they’d thought to tape it, so he could listen to those dulcet tones again, he decided that lack of sleep and too much champagne at last night’s wrap party for Melanie’s film must have killed off a few too many brain cells.

“Well, what did you think?”

“She was pretty good.”

She hadn’t known him long, but her next words proved that she’d come to know him well. “Christ, Cash, trust your hormones to leap to attention at the sight of a beautiful woman. I was talking about what Chelsea Cassidy had to say. About me.”

It was not Cash’s style to ignore one woman for another. Since he’d first lost his virginity in an upstairs bedroom of Fancy Porter’s whorehouse, Cash had prided himself on being an attentive, thoughtful lover. Fancy had taught him a lot of things that long hot summer of his fifteenth year. But the two most valuable lessons had been that a slow hand was worth a dozen quick fucks and treating a woman as if she were the only female in the world invariably paid off big time.

Concentrating on the woman who’d warmed his bed so well and so often these past weeks, Cash pulled Melanie closer. “You’re a lot better than damn good, sugar.”

“Well, I know that.” She pouted prettily and brushed some dark hair back from his forehead. “And, by the way, I think Chelsea is married. Or, if not married, seriously involved. While we were doing the interview, she got a call from some guy she was living with. Nelson somebody.”

So she’d actually gone and done it, Cash thought with a burst of cold, angry derision. She’d actually married that arrogant, pompous jerk.

“Not that I imagine a little detail like marriage vows would much matter to you,” Melanie said.

“I never sleep with married women.”

It was true. These days, anyway. Well, almost true, Cash amended as Lilabeth Yarborough came to mind. But hell, Lilabeth’s husband had left the former high school cheerleader and their three kids to seek his fortune on the NASCAR racing circuit, and although they’d never actually gotten around to signing the papers to make the divorce legal, Billy Yarborough hadn’t been back to Raintree for two and a half years.

“Besides, why would I want her?” He nibbled seductively at Melanie’s earlobe. “When I have you?”

“Damn. I don’t know what’s wrong with my mind today.” She was out of bed again like a rocket, scooping up last night’s discarded clothes which made a path from the doorway to the bed. “I’m sorry, Cash. But I’m booked on the ten-thirty flight back to L.A.”

Cash drove her the thirty miles into Savannah. After watching her disappear down the jetway he stopped at a newsstand in the terminal and bought a copy of Vanity Fair.

Over the intervening years, he’d managed to convince himself that those crazy six months with Chelsea had been nothing more than a particularly virulent attack of lust. He’d gotten over it. And her. He survived the uptown Yankee girl in the same way he might have survived some rare fever that having run its course, never returned.

As he sat in his Ferrari in the terminal parking lot, flipping through the glossy magazine to the article, Cash assured himself that he was only moderately interested in seeing if Chelsea had turned into as good a writer as she was a talker.

He hadn’t bought the magazine because he was interested in her personally. Because he wasn’t.

Not even a little bit.

The hell he wasn’t.

Casa Grande, Arizona

In a Motel 6 off Interstate 10, George Waggoner lay in bed, drinking from a can of Budweiser in an attempt to take the edge off the blinding hangover he was suffering.

Since the cut-rate motel didn’t feature dirty cable movies, he’d been forced to settle for network fare. As he made his way through the six-pack, he was only vaguely aware of the early morning newscast. He’d been in this motel room for most of the six weeks since his release from prison.

The money he’d managed to stash away during seven years in the pen was almost gone, eaten up by rent, cigarettes, booze and the occasional hooker. It was time to come up with a new plan.

Which was difficult to do when his eyes felt as if they were bleeding and some shitass maniac was breaking rocks inside his head.

And then he saw her.

George blinked and rubbed his hand over his aching eyes, at first thinking she was some sort of hallucination left over from last night’s binge. Like those bats in The Lost Weekend he’d watched on late-night television.

But no. The image flickering on the snowy television picture was unmistakable. Oh, she’d changed her hair. Her clothes may not be Kmart blue light specials anymore and her accent was a helluva lot more fluid than he remembered. But having known her intimately, George wasn’t fooled. Not one damn bit.

“Roxanne Scarbrough.” He barked a tobacco-roughened laugh as he watched her pour some unpronounceable French liqueur into a white bowl. “Where the hell did she come up with a name like that?”

Tossing back the rest of the beer, he climbed out of the too soft bed, retrieved his unwashed jeans from the floor, and yanked them on over his briefs. A black

Harley-Davidson T-shirt followed. Then his boots.

Since the motel wasn’t the kind to put out fancy writing paper for its guests, he went next door to the 7-Eleven, bought a tablet, a package of envelopes, a stamp and another six-pack. Then, on impulse, having already decided that his luck had just taken a decided turn for the better, he spent ten bucks on Powerball lotto tickets.

Not that he needed them, George told himself as he walked back to his single room. Because, hot damn if he hadn’t just hit his own personal jackpot!

He opened the tablet to the first page and began to write.

“Dear Cora Mae...”

Chapter Two

New York

While Chelsea knew her Good Morning America interview had gone well, the old feeling of dissatisfaction that haunted her too often these days returned as she arrived home.

“You were terrific,” Nelson assured her. “You were clever, intelligent and beautiful.” He touched a fingertip to the pearl gleaming at her earlobe. “In fact, you radiated a cool sex that reminded me a lot of Diane Sawyer.”

Chelsea viewed the gleam in his eyes and guessed what was coming.

“You know,” he suggested, rubbing his chin thoughtfully, “I just had an idea.”

“No.”

“No, what?”

“No, I do not want to become a television personality.”

“Why not? The money would be more than you’ll ever make at the magazine.”

“In the first place, I’m a print journalist—”

“At a time when papers and magazines are folding all over the country.”

She may be willing to let him choose her wardrobe. But her career was an entirely different matter. “I love writing, Nelson. And I’m good at it.”

“I’ll bet Diane Sawyer writes her own copy.”

Chelsea shrugged and tried to ignore the headache that was threatening behind her eyes. “It’s a moot point. Since I have no intention of even trying to break into an already overcrowded television market.”

“If it’s good enough for Barbara Walters—”

“When you go on television, suddenly how you look becomes every bit as important, sometimes even more so, than what you’re saying. And while we’re talking about Diane Sawyer, I read she received more viewer mail about cutting her hair than any story she’d ever done. You know I’m no good at things like clothes and jewelry and the latest hairstyle, Nelson.”

“Granted, you weren’t gifted with a plethora of style sense.” His blue gaze swept over her, approving of what he saw. “But that’s what you have me for, darling. Together, we’d make one terrific team.”

Looking at him looking at her gave Chelsea a very good idea of how Eliza Doolittle must have felt while undergoing Henry Higgins’s intense scrutiny.

“I never thought I’d find myself wishing for the old days.”

He arched a brow. “Old days?”

“Back when we were in college, and used to fight over the idea of my having a career.”

Like everyone else in his family, Nelson Webster Waring didn’t work. No Waring had worked for wages since great-great-grandfather Warren Waring, an old-fashioned robber baron, had made a fortune in railroads and western mining claims.

“Warings never fight. We have discussions.” He smiled. “And in defense of my behavior, most young men are horribly chauvinistic. Some of us are fortunate enough to have a clever woman who insists on dragging us from our caves into the modern world.”

Chelsea sighed and cast a quick, surreptitious glance at her watch. She was running late. As always, these days. “Could we discuss this later?” she suggested, even as she knew that on this issue, she would never budge. “I have a meeting at the office in thirty minutes.”

“How about over lunch at the Pool Room?” he suggested, knowing the Four Seasons restaurant to be one of her favorites.

“I’m flying to Toronto to interview Sandra Bullock this afternoon,” she reminded him. There were rumors of a romance with a recent costar she wanted to check out. More than that, she was interested in how the actress appeared to remain so centered as she rode the comet her acting career had become.

There had been a time when Chelsea would have braced herself for his complaint that she was working too hard. Strangely, since they’d gotten back together after an eighteen-month separation—during which time she’d concentrated on establishing her career while he’d seemed determined to date every deb in the city—she’d heard not a negative word about the hours she spent away from home.

“I’ll bet Diane Sawyer flies first-class,” he pointed out.

Giving him points for tenacity, Chelsea laughed. “Good try. But the flight’s not that long. And, since I’ll be writing the entire time, I wouldn’t notice the difference anyway.”

She scooped up the duffel bag she used as a purse. And, more important, with her hectic schedule, as an office in a bag. She kept it filled with pencils, notepads, a mini tape recorder for interviews, a toothbrush, makeup, tampons, and an extra pair of panty hose. So long as she kept the bag with her, she could be on a plane to anywhere within minutes. Chelsea would have felt naked without it.

She gave him a quick kiss. “Wish me luck.”

“You know I do.”

Although his tone was pleasant and matched his winning smile, Chelsea knew that the subject was far from closed. Once again she had a fleeting wish for those days when the only thing they argued about was whether she would work.

More and more lately, it seemed that not only was Nelson determined to act as her advisor and manager, he was also even more ambitious when it came to her career than she was.

As she sat in the back of the cab crawling through the crush of morning traffic, Chelsea decided that one of their problems was that Nelson had no career of his own to focus on. Perhaps, if she broached the subject carefully, she could make him see that by going to work, he’d be more personally fulfilled.

Today was Thursday. They had a long weekend ahead of them after she returned from Toronto. Plenty of time for an overdue, calm discussion. About her work, his lack of work, and where, exactly, their relationship was going.

Perhaps, she thought with a renewed burst of her typical enthusiasm, Sunday morning she’d make Nelson French toast. The fancy kind, with Grand Marnier, that Roxanne Scarbrough had demonstrated for Joan Lundon on the show.

Not to soften him up. But to show him how much she cared. How much she wanted things to work out.

Feeling reassured, Chelsea pulled a notepad out of her bag and began composing a list of questions for her interview with the woman Hollywood insiders were touting as the new Julia Roberts.

* * *

“I have your tickets,” Heather Van Pelt said, handing Chelsea an envelope as she exited the editorial meeting. “Your boarding pass is attached—you’re on the aisle, in the first row of first class. A driver and car will be waiting for you as soon as you clear customs, and I’ve upgraded your room at the Four Seasons to a suite.

“I thought it would give you more room to work,” she continued as she easily kept up with Chelsea’s dash toward the bank of elevators. The meeting had run long; if Chelsea didn’t leave now, she’d miss her plane.

“Did you clear the extra expenses with accounting?” Chelsea asked as she dug through her bag and pulled out the roll of antacids she was never without these days. Although the magazine had generous travel allowances, she wasn’t accustomed to a suite for overnight turnaround trips like this one.

“Of course.” Heather’s smile was calm and self-confident, befitting a young woman who’d grown up in the lap of luxury in Greenwich, Connecticut. “At first they weren’t all that enthusiastic about the idea. But I can be very convincing when I put my mind to it.”

Chelsea had not a single doubt of that. From what she’d seen, Heather’s talent for persuasion rivaled Chelsea’s mother’s. Since being hired after her graduation last June from Bennington, she’d made herself indispensable, even volunteering for personal errands, which made Chelsea feel a bit guilty. But not so guilty that she’d turn down any assistance that came her way.

“You really are a wonder,” she said with honest appreciation. “If things go well, I may actually manage to get another chapter done on my novel.” She’d been slogging away at the suspense story centered around the murder of a thoroughly unlikable movie star for the past two years; trying to squeeze time in between her hectic work schedule and her on-again, off-again, and now on again relationship with Nelson.

“That’s what I was thinking,” Heather said with another of those smiles that was as smooth as her sleek blond hair.

Although the job of editorial assistant paid starvation wages, Heather always managed to look as if she’d stepped right out of the pages of Town and Country magazine. Once, after Liz Smith had shown up at the office for a lunch date with Chelsea, the gossip columnist had declared that the new editorial assistant was Vanity Fair’s answer to Princess Di.

The difference, Chelsea had considered at the time, was that Heather Van Pelt possessed far more self-confidence than the most celebrated member of Britain’s royal family. She was also more ambitious. Chelsea knew Heather wanted her job. Since she didn’t have any intention of giving it up anytime soon, such single-minded zeal didn’t disturb her. Especially when it resulted in upgraded plane tickets and hotel reservations.

Raintree

Amidst the Camelot environs of her lushly wooded landscape, Roxanne Scarbrough sat in the library of her Tudor-style home leafing through the mail her assistant Dorothy Landis had left on her Louis Quatorze desk. On the corner of the desk, an electric fan was ineffectually attempting to stir the moisture-laden air.

Roxanne was not happy. Trust the air conditioner to choose today of all days to give out! The temperature outside was unseasonably warm for April. Although it was not yet noon, a thick, wet heat had seeped into the house through the window screens, permeating everything, making her sweat.

No. Ladies never sweat, she reminded herself with a brisk mental shake. As moisture beaded on her forehead and between the cleft of her breasts, she remembered telling Oprah about her southern grandmother’s stern edict that horses sweat, men perspired and ladies glistened.

Of course, beloved old Maw Maw, with her infinite wealth of southern aphorisms, was, like so much of Roxanne’s outwardly perfect life, a fictional invention. Still, the stories she’d spun during that afternoon taping had added a charming southern warmth to the interview.

The bundled-up Yankee audience, still shivering from the Chicago blizzard raging outside Harpo Studios, had, as always, eaten it up, and her clipping service subsequently reported that the “glisten” quote had appeared in sixty-five papers around the country over the next week.

It wasn’t always easy being Roxanne Scarbrough. But, she considered with a self-satisfied smile, no one did it better.

The breeze from the fan stirred the fragrance of potpourri she’d created from pink freesia and Lady Banks roses growing in the formal gardens.

When she’d first planted the garden, several members of the Raintree garden club had warned her against including the old-fashioned rosebushes. Local legend prevailed that when a Lady Banks got old enough to shade your grave, you’d die. Not the least bit superstitious, Roxanne had ignored the caution. But knowing a good story when she heard one, she’d included the myth in her latest lifestyle book, Strolling Through Grandmother’s Southern Garden.

She skimmed a fax she’d received this morning from her agent regarding Chelsea Cassidy. Although at first glance, she’d considered the writer to be a definite lightweight, the deft way she’d handled her interview and the Vanity Fair article Roxanne had read on the flight back from New York proved that appearances were definitely deceiving.

Roxanne had no concerns about the writer rejecting the proposal her agent was going to make. People did not say no to Roxanne Scarbrough.

Especially men, she considered with a slow smile ripe with feminine intent as she glanced over at the mantel clock. She should have left a half hour ago for her luncheon engagement. Not that she was in any particular hurry. It was, after all, a lady’s prerogative to keep a gentleman waiting.

However, in this case, it would be a blessed relief to leave the house. The stifling humidity clogged Roxanne’s lungs, making her feel as if she were trying to breathe underwater. Her dress—a silk wash of watercolor flowers with a dangerously plunging neckline, selected specifically for today’s lunch with Cash Beaudine—already seemed too hot and heavy against her heated skin.

Deciding to open one more piece of mail, she picked up a sterling silver letter opener in the Francis I pattern she claimed she’d inherited from her unfortunately deceased mother, and slit open a cheap dimestore envelope marked Personal that had been forwarded from the staff of Good Morning America. Obviously another piece of fan mail. Considering the inferior stationery, this was a person in dire need of lifestyle training.

The paper was badly ink stained, as if the letter had been written with one of those horrid plastic ballpoint pens one saw everywhere these days. As her eyes skimmed down the wrinkled page, Roxanne’s heart clenched. The scrawled handwriting was all too familiar.

“Dear Cora Mae...”

She pressed a beringed hand against the front of her silk dress and wondered if she could be having a heart attack. Black spots danced like whirling demons in front of her eyes.

Belying the fictitious Maw Maw’s now famous axiom, it was, indeed, sweat that puddled beneath Roxanne’s armpits and slithered wetly down her sides.

* * *

Cash was suffocating. The restaurant Roxanne Scarbrough had chosen for their luncheon meeting was one of those precious southern tearooms that had sprung up in plantation mansions all over the state, catering to a female clientele who preferred to pretend that William Tecumseh Sherman—or, as he was known around these parts, “that low-down Yankee pyromaniac”—had never set a booted foot in Confederate Georgia. Decorated in shades of peach and mint green, it boasted translucent china, sterling cutlery, glittering crystal, hanging plants and lace-covered windows. He’d been at the tearoom for nearly an hour. During which time Roxanne had pulled out all the stops in her attempt to convince him that he was the only man in Georgia, indeed, on the planet, capable of restoring her antebellum plantation house.

Located just outside Raintree, on the road to Savannah, if the woman could be believed, the mansion was a combination of Twelve Oaks and Tara, with a little Xanadu’s pleasure palace thrown in for good measure. To demonstrate she’d done her homework, she’d also brought along an attaché case of engineering reports, proclaiming the home to be structurally sound.

Roxanne tried tempting him with fame, assuring him that the project would end up featured in yet another of her bestselling books.

“You’ve no idea how many people buy these books,” she stressed over salads of spinach, bay shrimp, watercress and artichoke hearts. There was not a single offering of red meat on the menu. “People with quality who need my guidance when it comes to creating a stylish ambiance.”

She shared a conspiratorial smile. “And just think, when they read that you’re the man I’ve selected to create my dream home, why, your phone will be ringing off the hook.”

There’d been a time, not so long ago, when Cash might have found the idea enticing. But no longer. Not after his years in San Francisco.

“As attractive an idea as that might be,” he said mildly, “I currently have about as much work as I can handle.” His own smile did not reach his eyes. “Some people, it appears, have heard of me without the media hype.”

“Well, of course they have,” Roxanne said quickly. Switching gears with an alacrity that Cash found impressive, she appealed again to his ego. “But if you were to work for me—”

“With,” he interjected.

She arched a perfectly shaped eyebrow. “Excuse me?”

“If I were to agree to do the job, which I’m not saying I am,” he drawled, “I’d be working with you, not for you. It would be a joint project, based on your vision, but I’d insist on input on all decisions.”

“Oh.” Cash was not all that surprised by the way she managed to frown without causing a single line in her forehead or her lips. Southern women had such frowns down to a science. “I’m not accustomed to collaborating.”

“I can understand that.” He braced both elbows on the table and eyed her over his linked fingers. “However, remodeling a house is not exactly the same as baking petit fours or creating gilded mistletoe Christmas wreaths. It’s a major construction project, often more difficult than the original work. It also requires the art of compromise between architect and home owner.”

“Compromise.” Her sigh caused her breasts to rise and fall beneath the flowered silk dress. Cash watched her mulling the idea over and decided it was not something she was accustomed to doing. “I could live with that,” she decided after a long pause. “So long as I had the last word.”

“Unless it involved structural integrity.” The words were no sooner out of his mouth than he realized she’d obviously take them as encouragement. “Then the decision would be mine.”

“Agreed.” She sat back in the velvet chair and crossed her legs with a satisfied swish of silk on silk. “So, when would you like to look at the house?”

“I haven’t said I’d take the job,” Cash reminded her.

“If you’d just look at Belle Terre, you might be more amenable. It’s horribly run down at the moment. I swear, it looks as if Sherman’s entire army had just finished sacking it. But I’m sure an artistic man such as yourself—” her voice lowered, thickening to molasses

“—will be able to see its true potential.”

She was definitely not a lady accustomed to hearing the word no. Cash had known women a lot like Roxanne Scarbrough in San Francisco, but most of them had been society wives, married to wealthy, usually much older men. Men more interested in making money than paying attention to their blond and bored trophy wives.

Which was where he’d come in. The same women who’d married for money and ended up being corporate widows, were often desperate for male companionship. Being male and available, Cash had done his best to oblige them.

Until one night when he’d been forced to climb out the bedroom window of a Pacific Heights mansion because his current lover’s stockbroker husband had arrived home early.

Shortly after that, realizing he was in danger of becoming a cliché, he’d resigned his partnership at the Montgomery Street firm and returned home to that very same place he’d worked like hell to escape.

Growing up on the wrong side of the tracks, he’d found Raintree creatively and personally stifling. Every conversation began with the opening line, “Who are your people?”

The answer to that had routinely kept him barred from country club dances and fraternity mixers. In a part of the country where family roots tended to predate the Revolution, having a sharecropper for a daddy and a mama who’d come from a Blue Ridge family known primarily for the high quality of their bootleg whiskey, kept him out of the social register.

His daddy had died when Cash was thirteen. Although his mother had done her best to look after them, money had become even harder to come by, which is how he’d ended up doing odd jobs at Fancy’s whorehouse on the outskirts of town.

It was there Cash had received a first-class education on how to sexually please a woman. Such insight had allowed him to coax more than his share of fascinated, daring debs into the backseat of his black Trans Am. The same belles whose fathers would have bolted the door and gotten out the shotgun if they knew a renegade like him was sniffing around their precious baby daughters.

Chelsea Cassidy had been one of those girls. He’d been thinking a lot about her since seeing her on that television program. Oh, Chelsea’s roots were deep in the rocky soil of New England, instead of the rich loam of the South, but she’d grown up pampered and privileged, and sexually repressed. It had, of course, taken no time at all to break down her sexual barriers. But the social parapets had proven a different story. Their entire relationship, if it could have even been called a relationship, had been a clandestine one, consisting of quick, frantic couplings like the one in the broom closet of the country club, or more leisurely lovemaking in his cramped rented room.

But she’d never—not once—allowed herself to be seen in public with her secret lover. And when the time came to choose a lifelong partner, it sounded as if she’d actually ended up with that self-centered prig she’d been unofficially engaged to since childhood.

“Mr. Beaudine?”