Forgiving Jackson

by Alicia Hunter Pace

  She looked at him like she knew all the answers to the midterm. Poor thing. She didn’t stand a chance.

  “Do you care about Christian?” she asked.

  What kind of question was that? “Christian Hambrick? From Firefly Hall? Sure. I care about her. Not in a romantic way. She’s Beau’s age and four years is a lot when you’re kids. But our parents were friends and I’ve known her all her life.”

  Emory wound one of her curls around her finger and pushed it behind her ear. “So you never took Christian to the rose arbor?” She was laughing at him—not overtly, but he knew when he was being laughed at. He didn’t like it worth a damn.

  “No! Of course not.”

  “Do you want a scone? Gwen made them so they’re really good.” And when she got up and breezed by him he caught her scent. Oranges. Mint. Vanilla. His stomach turned over. He’d read that a smell could bring back a memory faster than anything else. Was it possible she’d used the same soap, sparkle lotion, and stuff all these years? Probably not. But he took another whiff and the picture came together—the white baby curls, a little longer back then, the sweet mouth that he had decided he wanted a taste of. Hell’s bells and damnation. He even remembered her dress—well, the color, anyway. Blue, like those big round eyes. So, yeah. She had been one of his rose arbor girls—but not one of his let me show you my room girls. She’d been way too sweet and innocent for that. He didn’t seduce. He let himself be seduced. That hadn’t changed.

  She held a plate of scones before him and looked at him with a question in her eyes. She shook the plate a little. “They’re blueberry.” Blueberries, blue eyes, blue dresses, blue days.

  “Sure.” He was pretty sure his voice came out normal. He took a scone and took a bite. “I did not take Christian to the rose arbor and I didn’t take you.” He didn’t even feel guilty for saying it. She had a lie coming.

  “So you say.” She handed him a little linen napkin and bit into her scone before sitting down. “But you do care for Christian and what happens to Firefly Hall?”

  “Sure. I want her to do well. Is something wrong with Christian?”

  “No, but there will be if you close down Around the Bend.”

  What the hell? “What? Are you blackmailing me? If I close down Around the Bend, are you threatening to put out the word that Christian uses rat meat in her breakfast casserole? Or maybe you’re just going to go ahead and beat her up.”

  At that, he dissolved into laughter. He couldn’t help it. Christian Hambrick was 5'10" in her bare feet and had been the best basketball player Beauford High School had ever seen; she had gone on to play for Pat Summitt at UT. The thought of this little puff of a thing beating her up was too funny to ignore.

  “You’re pretty when you laugh,” she said.

  “I’m pretty when I don’t!” And he laughed harder, but it wasn’t feel-good laughter. It might even be bordering on hysterical laughter. He bit the inside of his cheek and shook it off.

  “I guess that’s over,” Emory said and all of a sudden she looked very serious. “Eighty-seven percent of Firefly Hall’s business is directly related to events held at Beauford Bend.”

  “You’re making that up.” He reached for another scone. Sugar made him sluggish but so what? He didn’t have to push his body to the limit for three hours tonight in front of twenty thousand people. Or tomorrow, the next day, or ever.

  “I am not.” She opened her laptop, stroked a few keys, and spun it around. “I asked Christian to track Firefly Hall guests and their reasons for staying there. She sends it to me to analyze.”

  “Damn, Emory. You have a spreadsheet—with numbers and everything.” Probably manufactured.

  “And it’s color-coded. Green is for miscellaneous. People pass through and show up for no reason. Or they have family in the area. That’s the smallest percentage. Next is orange. That is directly related to the artisans in town. Most of that is made up of people who come here to shop or pick up something they’ve ordered. Occasionally, a master craftsman will come to town to do a demonstration or seminar. They’re also included in this category.”

  “I would have thought shoppers alone would keep Firefly Hall busy.” Beauford was forever being touted in travel literature as one of the best artisan boutique towns in the country. In high season, the streets overflowed.

  Emory shook her head. “For the most part, people coming from any distance stay in Nashville. We may have some of the best craftsmen anywhere, but the same people who are interested in leather goods don’t necessarily care about furniture, blown glass, or jewelry. They come, they buy, they go back to Nashville for music and fine dining. And it only takes a day for those who do want to poke around and look at everything.

  Unfortunately, that made sense. But Christian and Firefly Hall were not his responsibility. Were they?

  Emory scooted her chair around closer to him in order to manipulate the touchpad. That smell again! “You’ll see the blue is by far the star of the show. Those people stayed with Christian because of something going on here.”

  “This is only for three months,” he pointed out.

  She pushed the computer closer to him. “Scroll down. I have two years’ worth of data. Trust me. If you close down Around the Bend, Firefly Hall won’t be far behind.”

  He scrolled through page after page, searching for clues that this was a sham, that she had put it all together in an hour. But no. Sometimes she wrote out the name of the month; sometimes she used a number. Sometimes she abbreviated names and functions, other times not. True, she could have thought of all that to make it look authentic, but that was doubtful.

  “Why do you only have two years’ worth?” he asked, mostly to give himself time to think.

  “I’ve only been here two years.”

  “I guess Aunt Amelia didn’t keep a lot of records.”

  She nodded. “Amelia was more concerned with the creative aspect. There were good records up to a point and then—”

  She stopped and looked at her hands. They both knew when those good records had stopped. When his mother burned to death in a fire that was his fault.

  He took a deep breath. “Look, Emory. This is my home.”

  “You have three others.”

  “No. I have one home. I have three other houses, two of which I haven’t seen in nearly a year. But that’s beside the point. I’m sorry Firefly Hall is dependent on Around the Bend but it’s not my job to be a host for a parasite.”

  Any softness Emory might have felt at almost mentioning his mother left the building. “Firefly Hall is not a parasite. We’re dependent on each other! We are not set up here to house people overnight. Where do you think our clients would stay?”

  “When I was growing up, Firefly Hall was still a private residence and we did all right.”

  “No, you did not. The only reason you made any profit at all was because of all the free labor. You had events for locals and people within driving distance. The girls who came for charm school boarded with people in town and it was a nightmare to orchestrate. It had gotten to the point where people didn’t want to do it anymore and the charm school would have died if Christian’s mother hadn’t finally moved to Florida and agreed to let her open the B&B. Now, we have people who come from all over.”

  There was truth to what she said. And after he had become successful, until recently, Around the Bend had run in the red every year and he had picked up the slack. Finally, Amelia could have the business she wanted with the best dishes, finest linens, and all the help she needed. It had been her playground and he didn’t regret indulging her for one second. She had worked herself to death for him and his brothers. She had made them all take music lessons and, when Jackson had showed promise, had gotten him better and better teachers. He still wasn’t sure how she had afforded it. And even if she’d been a little disappointed that he had no interest in becoming a concert pianist, she’d gotten him a guitar anyway.

  He would have bought her a palace if she�
�d wanted it. But she hadn’t. All she’d wanted was to “give the world a little elegance” and she’d wanted to do it at Beauford Bend.

  He’d been surprised the first time Around the Bend showed a profit but he’d marked it up to luck or maybe that Amelia had finally reached the point where she didn’t need another crystal Champagne flute or golf cart. Now, he realized that time correlated to when Amelia had hired Emory.

  Good. That meant Emory was good at her job and wouldn’t have trouble getting another one.

  “I’m sure Christian will find a way to succeed,” Jackson said, though he wasn’t as sure as he sounded.

  “Even if she could, what about the businesses in town?”

  “What about them? You just sat here and told me people day-trip in to buy all that stained glass and handmade paper and whatever else they’ve got going on down there these days.”

  “They do.” She nodded, closed out her spreadsheet, and brought up what looked like a diagram of downtown Beauford. “But we still go hand in hand. Just yesterday, Neyland MacKenzie sold nearly a thousand dollars worth of jewelry because the bride getting married at Beauford Bend forgot her bridesmaids’ gifts. And I mentioned how Noel from Piece By Piece is teaching the quilting classes here. She’s not even charging us because she knows those women will come into her shop and spend thousands while they’re here.”

  Had she heard nothing he said? “Except they aren’t coming here, Emory. They’re going to have to do their quilting at Firefly Hall or maybe the fire hall. I don’t care as long as I don’t have to see a quilting bee!”

  “They want to study the Beauford Bend quilts—quilts made by your ancestors. Do you have any idea of the value of that collection?”

  “Hell, yes, I know. I ought to. I spent a fortune buying back what had been sold to keep this questionable roof over our heads, and another fortune to restore some that were too torn up to sell. Same thing goes for a bunch of lacy doilies, pillows, and old samplers.”

  “Which is why a needlework guild spends a week here every spring. Naturally, they shop at the Eye of the Needle and String.”

  “What? I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

  “In addition to finished pieces, Eye of the Needle sells embroidery supplies like silk thread, linen fabric, and really nice tools. String is more about knitting, crochet, and weaving.”

  “You cannot tell me those stores are dependent on a gaggle of women coming around this house to look at some old pillows and stuff. And if they are, they have made some very bad business decisions that I will not lose one second of sleep over.”

  “No. They’re not dependent on us. But”—she hit a key on her laptop and a handful of buildings on the diagram turned bright yellow—“these places are and we on them. They grew up because of Around the Bend. Beauford Catering. Eat Cake. Larry’s Limo Service. Photographs and Memories. Enchanted Garden Floral Designs. They do a little business outside of Around the Bend and Firefly Hall but not enough to keep them going. And there are many more that would be iffy without us.” She hit another key and about twenty of the buildings turned blue. “These would suffer. Some would make it without us, others not. These are people with families. They have homes with mortgages that they entered into in good faith.”

  Jackson wanted to throw up. He wanted to tell her she was lying but he knew she wasn’t.

  “I’ll give them money. I’ve got money. More than I’ll ever spend. I’ll give Christian money. The quilt people. I’ll pay for them to go to—well, wherever there are a lot of quilts. Quilt World. Let them take the knitters with them. Hell. I will pay you a million dollars if you’ll take them there and keep them there!”

  As Emory’s eyes grew larger and larger, Jackson realized that his reasonable, modulated voice had grown decibel by decibel until he was screaming—screaming like a little girl who’d seen a snake.

  They were silent for a moment. Then she reached out and placed one of her little hands on his wrist over his braided leather bracelet.

  “Jackson, honey. You cannot support an entire town for the rest of your life.”

  “You’d be surprised.” Not only had he made an obscene amount of money, he had invested well. He’d destroyed what had once been a happy family and he would be damned if he would ever see his brothers want for a single thing.

  “These people don’t want your money. Neither do I. They just want to do the work they love and make a living at it, just like you do.”

  But he couldn’t do his work anymore—didn’t want to. The price was too high.

  “Why didn’t you try to make your case right after Amelia’s funeral when I first told you to start closing down the business?” Jackson asked.

  Emory shook her head. “You didn’t tell me until you practically had one foot out the door, and neither one of us was in any state of mind for a debate.”

  He couldn’t argue with that.

  “Look, you’ve been through a lot these last few weeks—” she said, and would have gone on.

  “No.” Without intending to, he pressed a finger to her lips to silence her. Her mouth was soft and her skin was warm.

  She kept talking anyway, her lips whispering against his fingers. “I get that you want to be alone. I understand more than you know—just wanting to get to a place where there isn’t anybody else.”

  He drew his hand away and opened his mouth to tell her that she had no idea but there was something in her eyes that told him she did know. On another day he might have asked her what had happened but if she told him a secret, she might expect one in return.

  She left her hand on his wrist. He didn’t like what that was buying her.

  “Truth is, you’ll be leaving soon,” Emory said.

  “You don’t know what I’m going to do.” How could she, when he didn’t?

  “I do.” She nodded. “You think you want to hole up here and lick your wounds. And maybe you will for a while. But in the end, you’ll go back out there. What’s going on here won’t matter one bit to you. I can’t let you ruin all these people’s lives.”

  “In reality, you can’t stop me. And you can’t know I’m going ‘back out there,’ as you say.”

  “True, on both counts. But you can’t put a talent like yours in a Mason jar. And you don’t want to blunder through here like a two-year-old knocking down his brother’s Lego fort.”

  “I do.” He nodded. “I want to step on the Lego fort. I want it gone.”

  “Then go ahead.” She pulled the laptop toward her. “I’ll email the quilters right now. Then I’ll call Christian and Noel.”

  She began to type.

  “Wait,” he said, though he hadn’t known he was going to speak. “Let me see the calendar.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Emory’s hands shook as she brought up the Around the Bend calendar. If he called her bluff now, what would she do? Where would she go?

  “I want to see the rest of June, plus July and August. No more. No less.”

  She brought it up and swung it around toward him.

  She expected him to have another come apart once he saw how solidly they were booked. But he just closed his eyes and shook his head. “Wedding. Engagement party. Three—no four—tours. Wedding. Sweet sixteen birthday. Wedding. Wedding. Anniversary. Mother/daughter luncheon. And the always charming charm school.”

  “You’ll see that I’ve blocked off the days around the Fourth of July for the benefit concert you do for the Vanderbilt burn unit every year.” It was actually the Camille Beauford Memorial Concert but something told her not to mention his little sister’s name. “Amelia said you used to have a party for the performers and sometimes invite them to stay here. I know you haven’t done that recently but she always made sure it was available if you wanted to and I did the same.”

  He acted as if she hadn’t spoken and continued to mutter. “Fifty-year school reunion. Belmont Panhellenic Picnic. What’s that? Never mind. I don’t care. Wedding, tour, wedding. You don’t let a
ny grass grow under your feet, do you?”

  She shrugged.

  “I’m not even going to remind you again that I told you not to book anything else.”

  “You just did. And thank you for not reminding me.”

  He looked at the ceiling. “I must be crazy. I must be absolutely off my rocker. There’s not another man alive who would make this offer.”

  Offer? Was it possible she had bought some time in her safe place? Any was better than none. But she needed to continue to appear confident.

  “Stop sitting there congratulating yourself and tell me the offer.”

  “Why do you act like you’re holding all the cards?” he demanded. “You have no control.”

  “I know. I’m at your mercy.”

  “If I let you carry on through August, can you guarantee my privacy? Will you swear to keep them out of my way and away from my stuff?”

  Relief settled over her. She’d worry about the fall later. “Yes. I can. They’ll never know you’re on the place.”

  “All right.” He spread his hands in surrender. “But hear me, Emory, and hear me well. I don’t even want to know what you’ve got booked after August. I don’t want to hear about any parties to kick off football season, scarecrow-making competitions, or jack-o’-lantern-themed weddings. No taffy pulls, hayrides, or Amish-impersonating costume parties. Because they are not going to happen—not on my property. As of September first, you are out of here.”

  “But what about Christian and the others?” What about me?

  “I’m getting to that. I suggest you move Around the Bend to Firefly Hall. I’ll give you the rights to the business name and all the client contacts. You can have all the extra dishes, napkins, and little geegaws that were bought in the name of the business. I’ll even pay your salary until you’re up and going.”