Southern Gentlemen

by Jennifer Blake

  “Oh, Rip, you’ve come so close to winning.”

  Her eyes were so dark, so liquid with dread that he felt his insides twist in pain and desire. He shook his head as much to dislodge that weakness as in negation. “The people, the media, the whole thing last night—it was all for you. They didn’t care two cents about me, and they’ll care even less when I’m history.”

  She settled back on her heels. Without looking at him, she said, “You’ve got it all figured out, haven’t you.”

  “I think so.” The urge to fling her over his shoulder and take her into the house, make love to her on the hard floor of Blest until they had splinters in uncomfortable places, was so strong he could barely force words past the clamped ache in his throat.

  “For your information,” she said, her eyes sparkling with anger, “I might have made love to you once out of gratitude and compassion if I had thought of it, which I didn’t. But promise or no promise, I would never tie myself to you for life for such a stupid reason. I’m sorry if that makes me less ladylike and honorable than you seem to think, but I consider it makes me less of an idiot. There’s nothing on God’s green earth that would force me to marry you, including all your threats, if I didn’t want to be your wife. And just so you’ll understand exactly what I mean, here’s something for you. For what good it will do you!”

  Scrambling to her feet, she dug an engraved envelope from her skirt pocket. She flung it in his lap, then swung around and walked away.

  Rip knew what it was the minute he saw his name in calligraphy across the front. Still, he ripped it open, tore out the card.

  The damn invitation. Who would ever have dreamed?

  It was the last thing he expected, the very last thing he wanted. Tearing it in half, he threw the pieces as far as they would go and watched them flutter down to lie scattered in the grass.

  Then it struck him like a blow to the heart.

  Anna had known about the invitation before she had made love to him, before she had spoken a word about how she felt. She had already known she was home free.

  He surged to his feet and ran after her, catching her in ten good strides. Swinging her around, he demanded through his teeth, “Why? Give it to me again, the part about wanting to be my wife.”

  “Go to hell,” she said, each syllable precise and deliciously prissy, and her eyes blazing.

  “There was something about love. Yours for me.”

  “In your dreams.”

  She tried to twist free of his grasp, but he wasn’t allowing it. Closing his hands on her upper arms, he said, “You want to marry me. You were going to sacrifice yourself, after all, because that was the fastest way to go about it. Isn’t that it?”

  She stared at him, her lips set in a firm line. With tremendous effort, he resisted the impulse to kiss her senseless, opening her mouth one way or another. Giving her a small shake, he said, “Ask me again. See what I say this time.”

  “If you were half the gentleman you should be, you wouldn’t even think of making me do such a thing,” she said in accusation.

  She was right. Which proved exactly what he had known all along. He was hopeless. Folding her in his arms, he sighed, then breathed in the sweet scent of her. “Do I have to get down on my knees?”

  Her answer was muffled, though the shake of her head was plain enough.

  “Wait until I can find candy and flowers?”

  She drew back a little. “What for?”

  “I’m trying to get this right,” he explained, aggrieved, “but I need cooperation. You’re supposed to be all flattered and fluttery.”

  “That’s if I don’t know what I want,” she informed him with a jaundiced, upward glance.

  “And what do you want?” he asked, his hands straying down her back, holding her against him.

  “A man, not a gentleman, or at least one not quite so noble.”

  “That’s easy,” he said in choked gratitude.

  “Yes, and no. You were always a natural, you know, always had the right instincts. Being a gentleman takes more than clothes and manners.”

  “Anna, no, I…”

  “Trust me on this, I know what I’m talking about.” Her smile twitched and he felt it just above his heart. She added, “Other than that, I want the same thing you want.”

  “I somehow doubt it. As I told you once before, I want you. Any way I can get you.”

  “You never told me that exactly. Why didn’t you?” It was a complaint.

  “I thought it,” he said with some difficulty. “Isn’t that enough?”

  “No. Are you going to say the words now or not?”

  He chuckled, a low sound of surrender. “I love you, Anna. Marry me, and live with me at Blest. I can promise plaster dust in your hair and paint between your toes, and a bevy of restoration experts looking over your shoulder every time you take a bath. And me. I’ll be there, holding you, loving you, always and forever. We’11 name our first boy Tom and our first girl Tildy for your mother, and maybe one day she’ll forget and forgive the fact that I lived and her son didn’t, that I am the trash who dared love her daughter all my life, and tried to marry her for spite, because living without her was no life at all.”

  Anna nestled close, holding tight as she nuzzled into his neck. “That was much better.”

  “And?” He couldn’t keep the anxiety out of his voice.

  “Don’t be silly,” she murmured. “I asked you first, didn’t I?”

  His first impulse was the best, after all. He bent and picked her up. Swinging around, he carried her up the steps of Blest and kicked the door shut behind him.

  BILLY RAY WAINWRIGHT

  by Emilie Richards

  With thanks to Jennifer Blake for her gracious

  encouragement when I was an unpublished writer

  with four kids in tow.

  1

  The north Florida air was as thick and wet as the sweat pouring down the backs of the men tearing up the asphalt on Route 194. On a hill one mile outside of Moss Bend, Billy Ray Wainwright waited at the head of the line of stalled motorists, too depleted by the May heat to feel more than a trace of impatience. The air conditioner on his Taurus had gone to its final reward that morning, and so far he hadn’t had time to do anything except mourn its passing.

  The male road crew, stripped to their waists and glistening in the late afternoon sun, worked with the enthusiasm and speed of men mired in a tar pit. The flagger, a buxom young woman in shorts, halter top and feed store cap, let a dozen cars and half a dozen pickups sail down the hill in the opposite lane before waving him past.

  “What do you think you’re looking at, Billy Ray?” she yelled as he stuck his head out the window and favored her with a lazy grin.

  “Just the prettiest sight in River County, Gracie.”

  “Save your sweet-talking for the judge, counselor.” She grinned back as she motioned him forward. Gracie Burnette was happily married and the mother of the cutest baby boy for a hundred miles. Billy Ray had successfully defended her husband when a neighbor had accused him of stealing his bird dog.

  Of course, it hadn’t hurt that the dog had grown tired of a bitch in heat in the next county and found his way home on the day of the hearing.

  Billy Ray Wainwright, defender of dognappers, barroom brawlers and alligator poachers. Billy Ray Wainwright, who had served as editor in chief for the University of Miami Law Review, ranked first in his law school class and turned down an associate position in that city’s most prestigious law firm so that he could come back to the Florida Panhandle and take over his father’s defunct law office.

  Don Quixote had nothing on Billy Ray Wainwright.

  “You come for supper someday soon, you hear?” Gracie yelled as he passed.

  He waved and finished the hill, a meandering slope that was as undemanding as River County itself. The views of live oaks and pines were pleasantly rural, but the only impression he registered was of roasting flesh and overwhelming thirst. When he c
rested the hill and started down the other side, he gratefully pulled into the first parking lot on his right and turned off his engine.

  An old frame building with air conditioners jutting from every window sat at the back of the lot. Once upon a time the wood siding had been painted the blue of a robin’s egg, but the Florida sun had faded it to the washed-out hue of a cloudy sky. As a kid Billy Ray had spent a lot of hours at the Blue Bayou Tavern. To his knowledge there wasn’t a real bayou for hundreds of miles, and the creek that sometimes trickled behind the tavern was mud brown. But folks in River County liked to tweak the truth. It was easier than trying to change things, and a whole lot more colorful.

  The gravel in the parking lot crunched under the soles of his new loafers, and once he had stepped inside the tavern, discarded peanut shells took up the chorus. He was blasted with frosty air and the wail of Willie Nelson, and six feet into the room he was hammered with greetings.

  “Hey, Billy Ray, how’s it going?” As he walked by, an attractive middle-aged brunette in jeans and a skintight Blue Bayou T-shirt leaned over to kiss his cheek.

  “Not a thing to complain about, Maggie.” He slung his arm over her shoulder and gave her a quick hug. Maggie Deveraux was the owner, and in the years before Billy Ray’s father transformed himself into a hopeless drunk, Maggie had been Yancy Wainwright’s lover.

  “Doug’s over in the corner.” She hiked her thumb over her shoulder, and through a haze of cigarette smoke Billy Ray saw the khaki-colored uniform of the county sheriff, Doug Fletcher. “He told me you were meeting him.”

  “You ought to charge him rent for that table.”

  “Can’t hurt the place to have the sheriff put down roots in a corner. Fewer fights—”

  “Except for the ones he starts.”

  Maggie winked as she started across the room. “Those? I don’t pay no mind if Doug’s involved. I just call ’em disagreements.”

  Billy Ray ambled toward the corner, exchanging greetings along the way. Considering that it wasn’t quite five o’clock, the bar was crowded, but it was a Friday night—and payday. And no one in Moss Bend paid attention to clocks, anyway.

  By the time he made it across the room, Doug Fletcher was leaning back in his chair, his arms crossed over his chest and his long legs extended across the floor as if he were just daring someone to trip over them.

  “About time you got over here.” Doug waved a hand in the general direction of the seat across from him. “You friends with every dumb-ass redneck in the county, Billy Ray?”

  Billy Ray lowered himself to the chair and loosened his tie. “Even you. And that’s a stretch.”

  Doug held up his hand to get Maggie’s attention. “You want the usual?”

  “She’s probably already bringing it.”

  “That’s right. As far as Maggie’s concerned, you piss holy water, don’t you?”

  Billy Ray favored him with a grin. “Why not? She’s the closest thing to a mother I ever had.”

  “I don’t know about that. My old lady fussed over you all the time. Little Billy Ray Wainwright could do no wrong.”

  “Your mama always was a good judge of character.”

  “My mama always was a pushover for a pretty face. You still got a pretty face, Billy Ray. How come you don’t have it between the legs of some big-breasted woman these days?”

  “That your tactful way of asking about my love life?”

  Doug grinned. When he wasn’t smiling he might pass for a pit bull, but Doug’s grin altered his face. Like Billy Ray, he was thirty, tall and wide-shouldered, although the resemblance stopped there. Billy Ray’s hair was light brown, his eyes were blue, and his features sharp and well-defined, from the straight slope of his nose to the square thrust of his chin. Doug was beetle-browed and pug-nosed, and his curly dark hair was beginning to part company with a forehead that had been too high to begin with.

  “The way I hear it,” Doug said, “you’ve got half the single women in Moss Bend panting over you, but you’re not giving a one of them what she wants most.”

  Billy Ray leaned back in his chair and folded his arms. He still didn’t know why Doug had insisted he meet him at the Blue Bayou, but clearly it was going to take some time to find out. “Just half?”

  “You like living alone, taking cold showers?”

  “Not as much as I like explaining my personal life to a no ‘count county sheriff.”

  Doug barked an appreciative laugh. “I’ve got your best interests in mind, son.”

  Billy Ray realized he was still thirsty, and Maggie had not approached with the soft drink she knew he preferred. He was mulling over that strange turn of events as he looked up to see where she’d disappeared to. Immediately he noticed that the roar of the jukebox had halted and the room had grown suspiciously quiet, an ominous “calm before the storm” occurrence in a dive like the Blue Bayou.

  His gaze snapped back to the man in front of him. “What’s going on? Damn it to hell, Doug, you remembered, didn’t you?”

  “Me? I never forget a thing. And neither does Maggie.

  As if on cue, Maggie appeared behind the bar with a cake as wide as Doug’s grin. A blazing forest of candles lit the tavern gloom. Exactly thirty, he guessed.

  “Happy birthday, Billy Ray,” Doug shouted as the crowd of patrons started to sing in off-key harmony. “And you’d better wish for a woman when you blow out those candles, ‘cause I’m sure getting tired of being the one to make a fuss over you.”

  “Kitten, do you remember what I told you?” Carolina Grayson squatted on the floor in front of her five-year-old daughter and rested trembling hands on the little girl’s shoulders. “Do you remember everything?”

  Kitten was wearing one of the hand-smocked dresses that her grandmother, Gloria Grayson, had bought for her. Her lace-trimmed ankle socks were pristine, despite an entire day of wearing them, and the straps of both shoes were buckled exactly three punches from the end. The only thing to mar the perfect picture was the frown on her freckled face.

  “We have to be quiet,” Kitten recited. “We can’t let anyone know we’re leaving.”

  “That’s right. We have to tiptoe.” Carolina managed a smile. “Just the way you do when you sneak into my room at night to check on me.”

  “I don’t.”

  She did, but this was no time to argue about it Kitten did a number of things that most little girls didn’t have to. At five, she was more mature than most teenagers.

  “I’ll carry Chris,” Carolina said. “All you have to do is take care of yourself.”

  “But you’re not supposed to lift him. You’re sick.”

  “I’m fine. Really. And once we’re in the car, all I have to do is drive. Okay? Promise me you’ll try as hard as you can?”

  Kitten gave a reluctant nod.

  Carolina got to her feet. The room spun, and for a moment she was afraid she was going to pass out. But as she stood still and forced herself to breathe slowly, the dizziness passed. “Okay,” she said in a low voice. “Pick out one toy, your favorite, to carry with you. Once we’re settled, Grandma and Grandpa will send everything else.”

  “No they won’t.”

  There was no time to argue about that, either, and besides, Kitten was undoubtedly right.

  “I’ll take Boom Boom,” Kitten said. Boom was the stuffed panda that Kitten had slept with every night since infancy.

  “I packed Boom. He’s already in the car.”

  “Then I’ll take Lizzie.”

  Lizzie was a fashion doll, the last toy that Kitten’s father had given her before his death. Carolina tried not to think about what the doll meant to her daughter. “That’s a good idea. She’ll be easy to carry. I packed Chris’s blankie, his dump truck…”

  “Did you pack his stuffed horse?”

  “Sweetheart, Grandpa threw the horse away because it got dirty, remember?”

  “I got it out of the trash can. It’s under his bed, in the bottom of that box with his sweate
rs. I let him play with it when nobody else is around.”

  Carolina stared at her young daughter. Tears sprang to her eyes. For a moment she didn’t know what to say.

  One step at a time. Someday soon Kitten would have a chance to be a little girl again.

  “Will you get the horse while I get Chris?” Carolina asked softly. “Then we have to go. We have a long walk ahead of us.”

  “I’ll get it. I can carry it. I don’t mind.”

  Carolina bent and kissed the soft blond hair curling over Kitten’s forehead.

  By the time he left the Blue Bayou, Billy Ray’s head was spinning. Normally he didn’t drink, and when he did, he limited himself to one beer, which he could nurse until it had gone flat. Tonight he’d had two to wash down the birthday cake, the catfish sandwich and the heaping platter of fries that Maggie had hand-cut just for him. But he was still a mile from drunk. Mostly he was deaf from too much country music and camaraderie, and black and blue from a long series of slaps on the back.

  Doug joined him in the parking lot, a toothpick jutting from the corner of his lips. Nadine, Doug’s wife, had come and gone an hour ago. In fact, it seemed as if most of Moss Bend had put in an appearance sometime during the evening. “Got any plans for the rest of the night? It’s not over yet.” Doug gave a broad wink.

  Billy Ray ignored the innuendo. “I’ve got to check out the garage for Joel. Cal’s off on vacation somewhere. Then I’m going home.”

  “Too bad there’s nobody at home waiting for you.”

  “Got a three-legged tomcat who lives in the barn. You probably told him it was my birthday, too.”

  “I can send somebody over to check Joel’s place. You don’t have to bother.”

  Billy Ray’s grandfather owned the most successful garage in town, successful enough to need a watchman on the premises at night. Joel Wainwright serviced the sheriff department’s fleet as well as half the cars in the county. At seventy-five, and after two heart attacks, he no longer did much of the repair work himself, but he was still a presence. His mechanics had a healthy respect for the old man’s temper, and their work was as good as his had been.