“Of course.”
“We all thought you were a pansy.”
“Did you now?”
“And stuck-up.”
“I was. Still am, for that matter. I take pride in it.”
She wondered if he was married. If not, the single women of Parrish must be lining up at the door with coconut cakes and casseroles. She moved toward the fireplace and tried to look assertive. “I’m sure it’s just entertaining the knickers off you to block my driveway, but the fun’s gone on long enough.”
“As it happens, I’m still enjoying myself.”
He didn’t look as though he knew how to enjoy anything, except maybe conquering India. As she gazed at his immaculately tailored clothes, she wondered who’d done the dirty work of setting the posts in concrete on such short notice. “Don’t you think it might be embarrassing when I call the police?”
“Not at all. It’s my land.”
“And I thought you were such an authority on Parrish. My father deeded the carriage house to my aunt in the 1950s.”
“The house, yes. But not the driveway. That’s still part of Frenchman’s Bride.”
She snapped upright. “That’s not true.”
“I have an exceptionally fine lawyer, and he pays attention to things like property boundaries.” He rose from the chair. “You’re more than welcome to look at the survey yourself. I’ll send over a copy.”
Could her father have been that stupid? Of course he could have. Griffin Carey had been meticulous when it came to matters involving his window factory but notoriously lax regarding home and family. How careful could a man be who kept his wife and his mistress in the same town?
“What do you want, Mr. Byrne? Obviously not my apology, so you might as well spell it out.”
“Why, retribution, of course. What did you think I wanted?”
His softly spoken words sent a shiver down her spine. She resisted a longing glance toward the glass of scotch he’d just set down, but she hadn’t had a drink in nearly five years, and she wasn’t starting up again tonight. “Well, now, isn’t this going to be all kinds of entertaining. Exactly where do you expect me to park?”
“I couldn’t care less. Maybe one of your old friends will help you out.”
This was the perfect moment to throw a temper tantrum, but she’d forgotten how. Instead, she sauntered toward him, putting a little sway in her hips even though her bones felt a hundred years old. “See now, here’s where you’re not thinking straight. I’ve already lost three husbands and one set of parents, so if you want real retribution, you’ll have to dig deeper than a measly driveway.”
“Playing the pity card, are we?”
That’s exactly what it had sounded like, and she wanted to bite her tongue. Instead, she flipped up the collar of her jacket and headed for the door. “Fuck you, Mr. Byrne. And fuck your pity.”
She’d barely taken three steps before she caught a whiff of expensive cologne. Her heart bumped against her ribs as he caught her arm and spun her around.
“How about this for retribution, then?”
The cold, hard expression on his face reminded her of Darren Tharp’s right before he’d smacked her to kingdom come, but Colin Byrne had another kind of violence in mind. Before she could react, his dark head swooped, and he covered her mouth in a brutal, punishing kiss.
Kisses…So many of them. Her adoring mother’s cheek-smooches. Aunt Tallulah’s pursed dry-lipped ones. Those sex-drenched teenage kisses with Ryan. Darren had been a main-event man and a lousy kisser. Then there’d been Cy’s sloppy drunken kisses and her own gin-soaked ones in response. After that, the kisses of a string of men she barely remembered, except that all of them had tasted like despair. Salvation had arrived in the form of Emmett’s kisses, ones of kindness, need, fear, and, at the end, resignation.
The last kiss she’d received had come from his daughter, Delilah, who’d thrown her arms around Sugar Beth’s neck and left a wet track on her cheek. I love you more than anybody in the whole world, my Sugar Beth.
All those kisses, and she couldn’t remember a single one that had felt like this. Cold. Calculated. Designed to humiliate.
Byrne took his time administering justice. He cradled her jaw, not hurting, but forcing her mouth open just enough so he could attack with his tongue. She didn’t respond, didn’t fight him.
He didn’t care.
She wasn’t surprised when his hand went to her breast. She even expected it.
Another clinical exploration, as if no real person lived under her skin, merely flesh and bone without a soul.
He held her breast in one of his big hands and rubbed the slope with his thumb. As he brushed her nipple, a pang of longing pierced her. Not desire—she was too empty for that, and this was about revenge, not sex. Instead, she experienced a bone-deep longing for simple kindness, an ironic wish for someone who’d doled it out so sparingly herself.
She’d learned a lot about street fighting during her marriage to a stuntman, and she thought about biting him or bringing her knee up, but that wouldn’t be fair. He deserved his retribution.
He finally drew back, and the scent of the scotch he’d been drinking fell softly across her cheek. “You said I stuck my tongue in your mouth and felt your breast.” His jade eyes cut through her. “Isn’t that the lie you told your mother, Sugar Beth? Isn’t that how you chopped me up and sent me packing?”
“Exactly that way,” she said quietly.
He ran his thumb over her bottom lip. Coming from another man, it would have been a gesture of tenderness, but this was the mark of a conqueror. She owed him contrition, but all she had left these days was a little dignity, and she’d die before she let a single tear fall.
He lowered his arm. “Not a lie now.”
She reached deep down into the reservoir of strength that had almost, but not quite, run dry and somehow managed to dig up what she needed to lift her hand and touch his cheek. “All this time I’ve hated feeling like a liar. Thanks, Mr. Byrne. You’ve cleansed my soul.”
Colin felt her palm cool against his skin and realized she was getting the last word. The knowledge stunned him. This should have been his victory. Both of them knew it. Yet she was trying to snatch it away.
He gazed at the mouth he’d just crushed. She hadn’t tasted anything like he’d expected—not that he’d expected anything, since he hadn’t planned his attack. Still, he’d subconsciously braced himself for the slyness, the pettiness, the monstrous ego that had defined her. Who’s the fairest in the land? Me! Me! Me! Instead, he’d discovered something else—something gritty, determined, and insolent. At least the last was familiar.
She dropped her hand and pointed her index finger at him, a pistol straight through his self-respect. Just before she pulled the trigger, she flashed a wisdom-of-the-courtesans smile. “See you around, Mr. Byrne.”
Bang. And she was gone.
He stood there without moving. The scent of her—spice, sex, obstinacy—lingered in the air even after the front door shut. That ugly kiss should have put an end to it. Instead, it had started things up all over again.
At eighteen, she was the most beautiful creature anyone in Parrish had ever seen. Watching her saunter up the sidewalk to the front doors of Parrish High was watching sexual artistry in motion: those endless legs, the sway of her hips, bounce of her breasts, dazzle of her long blond hair.
The boys stumbled over themselves watching her while the music from their boom boxes played the sound track to her life. Billy Ocean pleading with her to get out of his dreams and into his car. Bon Jovi taking one look, then living on a prayer. Cutting Crew more than eager just to die in her arms tonight. Guns n’ Roses, Poison, Whitesnake—all the great hair bands—somehow she’d brought them to their knees and made them beg for the crumbs of her affection.
Sugar Beth was still beautiful. Those man-killer light blue eyes and perfectly symmetrical features would follow her to the grave, and that cloud of blond hair should be fanned
out on a satin pillow in a Playboy spread. But the dewy freshness had disappeared. She’d looked older than thirty-three and tougher. She was thinner, too. He’d seen the tendons in the long sweep of her neck, and her wrists looked almost frail. But that dangerous sexuality hadn’t changed. At eighteen, it had been new and indiscriminate. Now it was well honed and much more lethal. The bloom might be off the rose, but the thorns had grown poison tips.
He retrieved his drink and settled in his chair, more depressed by their encounter than he wanted to be. As he gazed around at the luxurious house that his money had bought him, he remembered the sneers of his Irish bricklayer father when Colin had been forced to return to England after he’d been fired from his teaching job.
“Comin’ home in disgrace, are you, then? So much for you and your mum’s fancy ways, boyo. Now you’ll be doin’ honest work like the rest of us.”
For that alone, Colin would never forgive Sugar Beth Carey.
He lifted his glass, but even the taste of ten-year-old scotch couldn’t erase the single-minded defiance he’d seen in Sugar Beth’s eyes. Despite that assault he’d delivered in the disguise of a kiss, she still believed she had the upper hand. He set his glass aside and contemplated exactly how he would disabuse her of that notion.
“Have I done wrong? So many prim persons stared as though they could not believe their eyes!”
GEORGETTE HEYER, The Grand Sophy
CHAPTER THREE
Sugar Beth finished the potato chips that made up her breakfast and gazed across the kitchen at Gordon, who lurked in the door, looking hostile. “Get over it, will you? It’s not my fault Emmett loved me more than you.”
He experimented with his psychotic Christopher Walken expression, but bassets were at a disadvantage when it came to projecting menace. “Pathetic.”
He looked offended.
“All right, punk.” She rose from the table, crossed the living room, and opened the front door. As he trotted past, he tried to bump her, but she knew his tricks and she sidestepped, then followed him out into another chilly, drizzly February morning. Since this was Mississippi, it could be eighty by next week. She prayed she’d be long gone by then.
As Gordon began to sniff around, she gazed over at Frenchman’s Bride. She’d been trying not to think about last night’s encounter with Colin Byrne. At least she hadn’t crumbled until she’d reached the carriage house. Old guilt clung to her like cobwebs. She should have tried harder to make amends, but apparently, she hadn’t grown up as much as she wanted to think.
Why, of all people, did he have to be the one who bought Frenchman’s Bride? If he’d ever spoken to the press about moving back to Parrish, she’d missed it. But then he seemed to shun publicity, and there hadn’t been that many interviews. Even his jacket photo was distant and grainy, or she’d have been better prepared for the dangerous man she’d encountered.
She made her way toward the boxwood hedge that separated their properties and pushed aside the bottom branches. “Right through here, devil dog.”
For once, he didn’t give her trouble.
“Make Mommy proud,” she called out.
He took a few moments sniffing around, then found a satisfactory spot in the middle of the lawn to do his business.
“Nice doggie.”
Despite what she’d told Byrne, she’d read Last Whistle-stop on the Nowhere Line right along with the rest of the country. How could she have ignored the story of people she’d heard about all her life? The black and white families, rich and poor, who’d populated Parrish during the 1940s and 1950s, had included her own grandparents, Tallulah, Leeann’s great-uncle, and, of course, Lincoln Ash.
The public’s appetite for atmospheric Southern nonfiction had been whetted by John Berendt’s runaway best-seller, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. But while Midnight had dealt with murder and scandal among the wealthy aristocracy of old Savannah, Last Whistle-stop had mined gold from small-town life. Colin Byrne’s story of a Mississippi town recovering from a segregationist legacy had been filled with the eccentric characters and domestic dramas readers loved, along with a strong dose of Southern folklore. Other books had tried to do the same thing, but Byrne’s fondness for the town, combined with his wry observations as an outsider, had put Last Whistle-stop in a league of its own.
She realized Gordon was trotting toward the house, not one bit intimidated by its grandeur. “Come back here.”
Of course he ignored her.
“I mean it, Gordon. I have to go into town, and if you don’t come here right now, I’m leaving without you.”
She couldn’t be sure, but she thought he blew her a raspberry.
“You know you’ll try to nip me if I come after you.” He never went so far as to actually hurt her, but he liked to keep her on her toes.
She watched him trot up the steps to the veranda. “Fine. Do me a favor, and don’t bother to come home.” Contrary to the habits of the rest of his breed, Gordon refused to roam. He liked torturing her too much to hit the open road. She stomped back toward the carriage house. What did it say about a person when even her dog hated her?
She grabbed her purse, stuck an old straw cowboy hat on her head, and set out to search the depot for the painting. But as she tramped down the drive to her car, she found a ticket for unlawful overnight parking tucked under her windshield wiper. Terrific. She shoved it beneath the visor and headed for town.
Purlie’s Auto Shop was still doing business, but an office supply store sat in the space once occupied by Spring Fancy Millinery. Diddie had taken her there every year to buy an Easter bonnet, right up until sixth grade, when Sugar Beth had rebelled.
Diddie’s nostrils fluttered like butterfly wings when she was displeased. “You ungrateful child. Exactly how is our Dear Lord supposed to know it’s Resurrection Day if He sees you sittin’ there in church bareheaded like some heathen? Answer me that, Miss Sugar Baby?”
Sugar Beth had fluttered her nostrils right back. “Do you really think Jesus Christ is goin’ to stay in his grave just because I’m not wearin’ a hat?”
Diddie had laughed and gone to find her cigarettes.
A longing for her loving, imperfect mother welled up inside her so strong that it hurt, but her feelings toward her father were all bitter. “He’s not my real father, is he, Diddie? Somebody else got you pregnant, and then Daddy married you.”
“Sugar Beth Carey, you hush your mouth. Just because your father is a reprobate doesn’t mean I am, too. Now I don’t ever want to hear you say anything like that again.”
The fact that Sugar Beth’s silver-blue eyes perfectly mirrored her father’s made it impossible to hold on for long to the fantasy of Diddie having a secret lover.
She supposed her parents’ marriage had been inevitable, but they couldn’t have been more ill-suited. Diddie was the extravagantly beautiful, fun-loving daughter of a local storekeeper. Griffin was the heir to the Carey Window Factory. Short, homely, and intellectually brilliant, Griffin was smitten by Parrish’s reigning belle, while Diddie was secretly contemptuous of the boy she considered an “ugly little toad.” At the same time, she coveted everything a union with him would bring her.
Griffin must have known that Diddie was incapable of giving him the adoration he craved, but he’d married her anyway, then punished her for not loving him by openly living with another woman. Diddie retaliated by appearing not to care. Eventually, Griffin raised the stakes by turning his back on the person Diddie most loved…their daughter.
Despite their mutual hatred, they never considered divorce. Griffin was the town’s economic leader, Diddie its social and political one. Each refused to give up what the other offered, and the marriage ground on, dragging a confused little girl in its destructive wake.
Sugar Beth passed a McDonald’s, spruced up since her high school days, and a travel agency sporting one of the downtown area’s new maroon and green awnings. She turned on Valley. The one-block street, which was anchored at the end
by the abandoned railroad depot, had escaped the town’s revitalization efforts, and she parked her car on a crumbling patch of blacktop. As she gazed at the dilapidated redbrick building, she saw the place where Colin Byrne had stood for his fuzzy author photo.
Shingles had blown off the depot’s roof, and ancient graffiti covered the splintered plywood boarding up the windows. Cans and broken bottles littered the weeds by the tracks. Why had Tallulah thought it was so important to preserve this old ruin? But her aunt had been obsessed with local history, the same as Sugar Beth’s father, and apparently she hadn’t seen the wisdom of bulldozing the place.
As Sugar Beth got out of the car, she thought of the letter lying crumpled in the bottom of her purse:
Dear Sugar Beth,
I’m leaving you the carriage house, the depot, and, of course, the painting because you’re my only living relative and, regardless of your behavior, blood is thicker than water. The depot is a disgrace, but, by the time I purchased it, I lacked the energy and the funds for repairs. The fact that it was allowed to deteriorate so badly does not speak well of this town. I’m certain you’d like to sell it, but I doubt you’ll have any luck finding a buyer. Even the Parrish Community Advancement Association lacks proper respect for history.
The carriage house is a registered national landmark. Keep Lincoln’s studio as it is. Otherwise, everything goes to the University. As for the painting…You’ll either find it or you won’t.
Cordially,
Tallulah Shelborne Carey
P.S. No matter what your mother told you, Lincoln Ash loved me.
Tallulah’s insistence that she was the great love of Lincoln Ash’s life had driven Diddie wild. Tallulah said Ash had promised to come back to Parrish for her as soon as his one-man show in Manhattan was over, but he’d been hit by a bus the day before it closed. Diddie told everyone the painting was a figment of Tallulah’s imagination, but Griffin said it wasn’t. “Tallulah has that painting, all right. I’ve seen it.” But when Diddie pressed him for details, he’d just laughed.