Welcome to Serenity

by Sherryl Woods

  Tom could see the wisdom in that. Of course, backing off meant losing time, when he only had a finite amount of time to convince Jeanette that they had something special. A part of him didn’t want to waste a minute of that.

  “How long?” he asked Ronnie.

  Ron chuckled at his obvious impatience. “As long as it takes.”

  “Does it have to start right this second? I’m supposed to pick her up for lunch in a couple of hours.”

  “Up to you,” Ronnie told him. “But canceling could be a good thing.”

  Tom shook his head. “And you had to work this hard to get Dana Sue?”

  “Harder,” Ronnie said. “I had a whole lot to make up for and, believe me, she didn’t make it easy. I assure you that I have some firsthand experience with the value of patience and persistence.”

  “Patience and persistence?” Tom echoed thoughtfully. Persistence he could handle. Patience? Not his strong suit. “I’ll give it some thought.”

  “Hope you don’t mind me interfering,” Ronnie said. “And if the situation starts getting to you, you can always call me or Cal and schedule a football game to work off some frustration. Nothing like a little sweat and a few beers to take the edge off.”

  “Yeah, nothing like it,” Tom agreed. Unless it was some energetic sex with the woman who’d gotten under his skin.

  * * *

  Mary Vaughn was surprisingly nervous about her upcoming dinner with Sonny. A lot was riding on how this evening went. If they couldn’t come up with a really good plan, it was going to be hard for her to keep saying no to Rory Sue’s pleas to go to Aspen for the holidays. The only thing worse than having her daughter gone would be having her underfoot and moping around the house as if her life was ruined and it was all her mother’s fault.

  She’d taken to heart Sonny’s comment about her penchant for getting caught up with business and showing up late. Determined to prove she could be on time, she’d canceled her appointment and was waiting at Sullivan’s fifteen minutes early. It gave her a great deal of satisfaction to see the shock on his face when he walked in and saw she was already seated.

  He leaned down and dropped a casual peck on her cheek. “Well, this is a pleasant surprise,” he said. “Did your appointment cancel?”

  She bristled at the suggestion that she wouldn’t have been on time otherwise, then shrugged ruefully. “I canceled it myself. I wanted to prove something to you.”

  “Darlin’, there’s nothing you need to prove to me. You are who you are. I accepted that a long time ago.”

  She listened closely for any undercurrent of nastiness in his tone, but he sounded more amused or resigned than anything.

  “Well, I’m turning over a new leaf,” she swore to him. “I’m going to be more considerate of other people’s time.”

  Sonny didn’t look entirely convinced. Instead, he glanced around in search of the waitress. “You want a drink, Mary Vaughn? Maybe some wine?”

  “Just a glass,” she said. “They have a nice red zinfandel.”

  When the waitress arrived, he ordered that, then a beer for himself. Mary Vaughn shook her head. No matter how hard she’d tried to cultivate his taste for wine, Sonny had always preferred beer. In a way it was admirable that he stuck to what he liked, rather than setting out to impress people by buying fancy wines the way she did. Though she’d tried her share of beer way back, just like all the other kids, she’d cut herself off years ago. Her aversion to it had come from having a father who indulged in way too much of it.

  She studied Sonny closely as he chatted with the waitress, the daughter of one of his salesmen. He was tanned, fine lines fanned out from the corners of his dark blue eyes, and his light brown hair had more threads of silver in it than the last time she’d seen him. He was wearing navy blue slacks, a pale blue silk-blend shirt with the sleeves rolled up and a designer tie that had been loosened. She recognized the tie because she’d helped Rory Sue pick it out last Christmas. She wondered if he’d chosen it deliberately because of that, or if he even remembered where it came from. Either way, he looked good. Better than he had during the last year of their marriage when the tension had left him looking harried and unhappy most of the time. She’d recognized his unhappiness way too late.

  “Give us a few minutes,” he told the waitress. “We haven’t even looked at the menu yet.” He turned to Mary Vaughn. “Or are you in a hurry?”

  “I’m in no rush,” she said, finally letting herself relax. She’d been half-afraid that he was going to insist that she get to the point so he could bolt back to the dealership. She smiled at him. “You look good, Sonny. Rested. Are you playing a lot of golf?”

  “A couple of times a week,” he said. He looked her over. “How about you? Still working too hard?”

  “Most of the time, especially with Rory Sue gone.”

  “New man in your life?” he asked.

  She shook her head.

  “I thought there might be something brewing with you and the new town manager,” he said. “At least that was the hot rumor at Wharton’s a couple of weeks back.”

  “Bad information,” she said succinctly. “What about you? Have you been dating?”

  He chuckled. “Aren’t we a pair? Asking all these civilized questions about each other’s love life. Who would have thought we’d ever get to that point?”

  She met his gaze. “We were friends before we were anything else,” she reminded him, then added wistfully, “Sometimes I miss that more than anything, the way we used to talk for hours about everything going on in our lives.”

  He regarded her with surprise. “You do?”

  She nodded. “Weird, isn’t it?”

  He covered her hand with his. “Not so weird. I miss that, too, Mary Vaughn. Only trouble is, there’s a whole lot of baggage that goes along with that. Most of the time it’s hard to see past the way things ended.”

  “I know,” she admitted. Because there was nothing to be gained by looking back, she said, “What are we going to do about Christmas?”

  “Celebrate it?” he asked, looking bewildered.

  She shook her head, exasperated. “Why did I think you’d be any help with this?”

  “Come on, Mary Vaughn. I’m no good at planning this kind of thing. You were always in charge of the holidays. I just went along for the ride. What do you think it’s going to take to make Rory Sue happy? I could finally give her that new convertible she’s been wanting.”

  “Absolutely not,” Mary Vaughn said at once. “This isn’t about buying her off. We’d agreed that you’d give her the convertible when she graduates from college. The car she has will do just fine until then.”

  He shrugged, but didn’t argue. “Then I’m at a loss.”

  “I know what she wants more than anything,” Mary Vaughn ventured at last. “She wants us to be together the way we used to be.”

  Sonny frowned. “What the devil are you suggesting, Mary Vaughn? That we get married again just to make our daughter happy even if it makes us miserable?”

  She flushed at his immediate and insulting reaction. “No, of course not,” she said defensively. “I’m just saying that maybe we could all put aside our differences and do things together for the holidays.”

  His expression relaxed. “What kind of things?”

  She thought of the committee’s plan to go hunting for the town tree. “We could go out and chop down a Christmas tree together,” she suggested. “Remember how much Rory Sue always loved that? She said it was the best part of Christmas.”

  “I suppose,” he said doubtfully. “You think that’ll do it?”

  “No, of course not,” she said impatiently. “But it’s a start. Maybe we can go to Charleston shopping one day. The stores will be all decorated and festive.”

  “And crowded,” Sonny p
redicted direly.

  “Oh, stop being such a grouch. That’s part of the fun. We can stop at Lydia’s Bakery on the way home and have hot chocolate and sugar cookies the way we used to when Rory Sue was little.” She gave him a wistful look. “Don’t you wish she was still young enough to want to see Santa? Sometimes I take out all those pictures we have of her back then. She was the prettiest little girl in the whole wide world, wasn’t she?”

  “She was,” Sonny agreed. “Still is, for that matter.”

  Since he was starting to sound more nostalgic and agreeable, she smiled at him. “If you’ll go along with the shopping trip, you can carry all the packages and I’ll pay for them. How’s that for fair?”

  He shook his head. “You have a strange notion about what’s fair, you know that, don’t you?” he said, but there was a hint of tolerant amusement in his eyes. “Any other big ideas?”

  She thought back to the holiday celebrations in the past and what had made them special. “We should go to church together on Christmas Eve, have a big Christmas dinner at my place, then go caroling over at the nursing home the way we used to. Would that interfere with anything you have planned?”

  “No,” he admitted, though he didn’t seem all that enthralled by the plan. “You including my dad in this?”

  “Of course. Rory Sue would expect him to be with us. With your mom gone and your brothers scattered across the country, it’ll be good for him to have a real family Christmas again, too. Don’t you think so?”

  “I suppose,” Sonny said. He gave her a skeptical look. “And you honestly think that a few days of faking it will make Rory Sue happy?”

  “We don’t have to fake it,” she said. “We used to have fun together, Sonny. I can remember when we laughed all the time. Surely we can make an effort to get along for a few days.”

  “I don’t know, Mary Vaughn,” he said, looking worried. “What if it gives Rory Sue the wrong idea? You know how she is. Every time I see her she asks me when I’m going to give you another chance. What if she thinks I’m doing that and gets her hopes up?”

  “I’ll make sure she knows this is something we’re doing to make sure she has a good Christmas,” Mary Vaughn promised. “Maybe we should plan an open house, too. That was one of our traditions.” Suddenly she was filled with nostalgia. “I loved those, the house smelling like pine and cookies, lights glittering inside and out, and everyone we knew stopping by. I miss that.”

  He regarded her with surprise. “Why’d you stop doing it?”

  “It wouldn’t have been the same without you there,” she admitted. Moreover, she’d been scared to death that no one would come, that most of the people who’d chosen sides after the divorce had taken Sonny’s. A lot of people had thought that she was the one who’d ended their marriage and Sonny had let them believe that. She supposed it had been his gallant way of letting her save face. Ironically, though, it had turned a lot of people who adored Sonny against her. She wondered if it would have been any different if they’d known the truth—that he was the one who’d walked out.

  She looked up to see Sonny studying her with a frown.

  “Mary Vaughn, you’re happy, aren’t you?”

  “Well, of course I am,” she lied. Because she didn’t want to dwell on the depressingly lonely state of her life, she beamed at him. “I am starved, though. Let’s order. I’m thinking about the pork chops. What about you?”

  “Pork chops sound good,” he said, though he sounded oddly distracted. “I’ll get Becky back over here.” He waved to their waitress, then placed the order. “I’ll have another beer, too.” He glanced at Mary Vaughn’s half-full glass of wine. “You want another one?”

  She shook her head and decided to skip all pretenses for once. “Actually, you can bring me a beer, too.”

  Sonny stared at her when Becky moved off. “You want a beer?”

  She nodded, then leaned forward. “Can I tell you a secret?”

  “Sure,” he said, looking intrigued.

  “I never have liked wine.”

  He regarded her with astonishment. “Then why on earth have you always made such a production about drinking it?”

  She shrugged. “Because I thought I should,” she admitted. “I thought it made me seem more sophisticated and worldly.”

  Sonny shook his head. “Sugar, you’ve always been the most sophisticated woman I know. It didn’t take wine to make you seem that way.” His expression turned thoughtful. “It was because of your daddy, wasn’t it? He drank beer, and you never wanted to do anything to make anyone think the two of you were alike.”

  Her eyes misted over at his insight. “Damn you, Sonny Lewis,” she whispered in a choked voice. “You always did know me better than anyone.”

  She stood up and hurried toward the ladies’ room before anyone could catch her bawling her eyes out.

  She spent ten minutes composing herself and repairing the damage from her tears. When she walked out of the restroom, Sonny was standing right there waiting for her.

  “Another minute and I was coming in after you,” he said. “You okay? I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  “What upset me wasn’t what you said,” she told him candidly. “It was you knowing what goes on inside me.” She met his gaze. “I miss that, Sonny. I honest to God do.”

  For an instant, he seemed to go perfectly still. Then he warned, “You shouldn’t say things like that, sugar. You’ll turn my head.”

  “Would that be so awful?” she asked before she could stop herself.

  He took her hand in his and gave it a squeeze. “You know the answer to that,” he chided lightly, but when she looked into his eyes, what she saw was regret.

  Seeing that filled her with sorrow that she’d once been so careless with this man’s heart. It also made her resolve to do everything in her power to make amends. It might be too late for their marriage, but maybe they could somehow salvage the friendship that they’d shared.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Jeanette had been just going through the motions at the spa for nearly a week. She’d been irritable for days, snapping at her friends and barely civil with her clients. The worst part of her uncharacteristic mood was that she had no idea what had started it. She was usually the most even-tempered person she knew.

  She was on the patio at the spa, wrapped in a sweater to ward off the chill in the air, staring morosely into a glass of tea she didn’t really want, when Maddie, Helen and Dana Sue descended on her.

  “Uh-oh,” she murmured, regarding the threesome worriedly. “Am I in trouble?”

  “You tell us,” Maddie said. “You haven’t been yourself all week. Today you insulted Emily Blanton.”

  Jeanette stared at Maddie in horror. “No, I didn’t.” She tried to remember the conversation she’d had with Emily. Nothing even remotely insulting stuck out. “Honestly, Maddie, I’m sure I didn’t.”

  “You told her it didn’t make a bit of difference which product she bought,” Maddie said, her lips twitching with amusement.

  “That’s not an insult,” Jeanette said, looking to the others for support. “Is it?”

  Dana Sue giggled. “It is when the implication is that absolutely nothing could help her.”

  “And naturally that is exactly the way she took it,” Maddie said, breaking into a full-fledged grin.

  Helen regarded Jeanette with sympathy. “Of course, the truth is probably your best defense. Nothing is going to help that woman’s skin. She spent the last fifty years baking herself in the sun and now she’s hoping some cream will enact a miracle.”

  “But Emily is a sweetheart,” Jeanette said. “I would never intentionally hurt her feelings.” She buried her face in her hands. “I don’t know what’s happening to me. I really don’t.”

  “When was the last time you saw Tom
?” Dana Sue inquired, her expression innocent.

  “A week ago today,” Jeanette said, not sure what her friend was driving at. “At the Christmas festival committee meeting. We were supposed to have lunch, but Teresa called and canceled.”

  “And you haven’t seen him or spoken to him since then?” Dana Sue persisted.

  Jeanette shook her head.

  “Well, there you go,” Maddie said. “Tom’s got you all confused and twisted up inside.”

  “I am not twisted up inside about Tom McDonald,” Jeanette protested, annoyed by the suggestion that any man, especially Tom, could affect her mood. “I can’t be.”

  Helen regarded her with a mystified look. “Why can’t you be?”

  “I just can’t be, that’s all,” she said stubbornly.

  “We’ve all been there,” Helen said. “Even me. It’s nothing to be embarrassed about.”

  “I’m not embarrassed and I am not twisted into knots just because some man hasn’t called me,” Jeanette retorted.

  “Okay, let’s back up,” Maddie suggested. “Why would it be such a big deal if Tom is getting to you? From what we’ve seen, he’s a great guy.” She turned to the others. “Right?”

  “Absolutely,” Dana Sue said. “Ronnie likes him, too. Thinks he’s a stand-up guy.”

  “So does Cal,” Maddie added.

  “Well, there you go,” Helen said. “A Sweet Magnolias’ and friends’ stamp of approval!”

  “Isn’t my opinion the one that counts?” Jeanette inquired testily.

  “Well, of course,” Maddie said. “But you need to explain what the problem is so we’ll understand. You know we’ll provide backup.”

  Jeanette really didn’t think she had any obligation to explain herself, but because these were her friends, she tried. “In a nutshell, it’s because I’ll wind up taking a backseat to his career. The second he gets a chance at a better job in a bigger city, he’ll be gone. Obviously he’s finally seen the light and agrees with me that it’s pointless to start something with absolutely no future.” She frowned, then added, “Then, of course, there’s the little fact that his mother hates my guts.”