by Annie Jones
Riley opened his mouth, determined to guide the conversation back to the question of his meeting the family, but Greenhow cut him off.
“That’s why you are sitting here today, Mr. Walker, instead of one of a dozen other men who have the inclination, the insight, and wherewithal to make this happen.”
Riley leaned back in his chair. If the hog slop got any deeper in here, he’d need wading boots just to get out the door. “Get to your point, Mr. Greenhow.”
“My point, Mr. Walker, is that you are being handed an opportunity that a lot of men struggle all their lives to try to achieve but never can quite get their fingers on.”
Including Greenhow himself, Riley’s gut feeling told him. Perhaps Greenhow saw him as a means to an end, making himself the go-to guy in the deal-of-the-decade as far as this town was concerned. The lawyer clearly harbored no respect or affection for John Frederick’s daughter, and Riley had to wonder if the lawyer meant to use him to get back at her for whatever wrong he thought she’d done. Riley also had no doubt that if he refused this dream deal, this slick attorney would find another way to get to Dixie Fulton-Leigh.
Riley imagined someone trying a back-end sneak like this to take advantage of Wendy, who could one day conceivably be in the same position as Miss Fulton-Leigh. How would he feel if someone had no problem running roughshod over Wendy, or his mother...or his sister, to fulfill his own agenda? His stomach knotted and his muscles tightened. Anger and outrage swelled up in him, just as they had when Carol suggested they trash his sister in order to make him look better. No real man would stand by and let either of these things happen.
John Frederick Fulton-Leigh could not watch out for his only child now, but Riley could. He could do what was best for both Wendy and Dixie in one decisive move. Only he stood between slimy Howard Greenhow and the woman he had never met but who suddenly represented all the women he loved rolled into one.
He stood and stuck out his hand. “Let’s go ahead with it, Mr. Greenhow. How quickly can you get me a contract?”
* * *
“Could you hurry it along a little, maybe?”
The pharmacist peered down at Dixie from behind the raised wooden counter with a look that could have frozen fire.
“Please?” Dixie folded her hands together and tried to look demure and deferential when what she really felt was crabby and cantankerous. What had begun as a mad dash to run an urgent errand during her fifteen-minute lunch hour had slowed to a dead crawl, with time running out.
“Sorry, but it can’t be helped. Since your Aunt Sis didn’t drop off Miss Lettie’s medicine bottle, I have to look up the prescription, fill it, make a label, pretty much start from scratch. And there’s three other folks called in ahead of you. You’ll just have to wait your turn.”
Dixie gritted her teeth at Noni Philpot’s scolding schoolmarm tone. Noni was the sourest-faced woman you’d ever want to catch sight of, with a disposition that made her always- dour expression seem downright pleasant by comparison. And she treated just about everyone who came through the doors of her understocked, overpriced drugstore like she wished they’d just up and take their business elsewhere. Of course, in their tiny town, there was no elsewhere to go.
Dixie sighed.
Whap! No telling what Noni had slapped against the counter, but it sure did work for making Dixie want to get out of there, even more than anything the surly woman could have said.
“I’ll just be over at the lunch counter.” Dixie pointed like maybe Noni had forgotten where that counter was after only owning the place and working here each and every day for the last ten years. “You can just call me when it’s ready.”
More whacking and rattling sounds answered her.
“Okay, then.” Dixie smiled, gave a wave, took a step backward.
Whap, whap, whap, whap.
She made a beeline for the counter, then plopped herself right down on one of the stools. Rushed, worried, and now falling further behind in her schedule.
For one fleeting instant she thought she’d bust out crying all over the “Sights to See in Mississippi” paper placemat in front of her. That darned combination of exhaustion and self- pity had crept up on her again.
Everything had changed so fast. A few weeks ago her life consisted of the best hotels in the South, a lavish expense account, closing big deals for the company, and only coming back to Fulton’s Dominion for holidays and a few weekends scattered through any given month.
At least she could take comfort that all that nonsense was behind her. She’d finally have a chance to settle down, to make a home for herself, maybe even find someone to love and have a family with. Daddy’s passing had brought her need for those things keenly into focus and deepened the ache inside her for all she had lost, all she’d never had.
“Be back to get your order in a minute, hon.” The waitress clunked down a glass of ice water with a paper-covered straw.
Dixie blinked, taking a moment to realize where she was and how she had come to be there. She slid a plastic-coated menu from behind one gleaming, silver napkin holder and flicked it open. “Well, since it looks like I’m going to be here awhile, I guess no one could fault me for grabbing a little something to eat.”
“I’m not supposed to talk to strangers, ma’am.”
“Actually, I wasn’t...” She spun ‘round on the stool, stopping short when she caught a glimpse of who had spoken to her. “Well, hello there.”
The sweetest pair of big green eyes batted up at her. “Aren’t you just a baby doll?”
Instantly enchanted, Dixie laid her menu down and leaned forward over the empty stool next to her. “Hope you don’t mind my saying it, but I do believe that accent of yours is bigger than you are.”
“I’m not supposed to talk to strangers,” the little dark- haired girl drawled out again.
“You’re not here all by yourself, are you?” Dixie glanced around. No one at the counter. No one at the register. “That is, there is someone who brought you in here, right? Maybe just went to the rest room or something like that?”
“I’m not supposed to—”
“Yes, I know, talk to strangers.” Was that the only sentence this child knew? Dixie darted her gaze here and there over every visible place in the small store.
Who would leave a young child unattended like this? Even in a small town like Fulton’s Dominion, people just didn’t do that. They watched the national news here just the same as they did in Jackson and larger cities. Things happened to children left alone. Everybody knew that.
The child set her leg to swinging, the untied laces of one of her precious pink tennis shoes flapping back and forth against her white tights.
Dixie touched her mother’s pearl necklace, which she always wore, as if trying to draw on some inherent maternal guidance. Someone would come strolling up to claim the child any moment now. She was sure of it.
Her eyes glued to Dixie, the girl took her large paper cup and almost went blue in the face trying to draw one of the fountain’s famous extra-thick milkshakes up through a pencil- thin straw.
Dixie had to hold herself back from taking that straw away from the girl and handing her a spoon. If she wasn’t supposed to talk to strangers, she most certainly would not accept better dining suggestions from one, would she?
The girl gulped, but anyone could tell it was mostly air. She paused and looked down into her cup.
Who was she? Obviously, Dixie did not recognize every child in town, but one old enough to be left sitting alone in the drugstore would most likely recognize her.
“You know what I think?” She reached toward the child, but did not quite actually touch her arm.
“I’m not supposed—”
“I think you’re not a real little girl, are you?”
The big eyes blinked at her, the cup sort of sagged in her two small hands until it rested on the hammock created in her lap by her corduroy jumper.
“I think you’re one of those robot toys I’ve
heard about that says back whatever you say to it.” She cocked her head first one way and then the other. “What do people do? Press that bow in your hair to record a message?”
The girl giggled, her adorably pudgy fingers touching the bow in question.
“Or do you come with preprogrammed sayings, like—” Dixie raised the pitch of her voice and tried to copy the child’s striking accent—”‘Help! This milkshake is so thick it’s making my eyes cross to sup it up through this straw!’“
The girl giggled even more, her eyes shining.
Dixie wished she could nab that little bit of a thing and pull her close in a hug and hold her ‘til she knew beyond a shadow of doubt that everything was okay. Instead, she kept on at her game, hoping to reach that point where the girl would trust her enough to tell her why such a young thing was sitting in a drugstore all alone. “Of course, I know you can say that one
thing about not talking to strangers. But in this town, everybody knows me and my whole family. And I’m thinking if you were from here you would, too.”
The girl turned and plunked her cup down on the counter. She sat there looking straight ahead, her jaw thrust forward, her arms folded like the locked gates of Fort Knox.
“You done with that, sweetie?” The waitress came by.
The child didn’t move or speak.
“I think she might be waiting for it to melt a little so she can drink it better,” Dixie volunteered.
She glanced up at the blond waitress and tried to pull the woman’s name out of her muddled memory. Noni Philpot was too cheap to spring for nametags because her sunny disposition kept chasing off the workers as fast as she could get the things made up.
The stocky blonde fished a nub of a pencil out from her apron pocket and tapped it on a fresh, fat order pad. “You made up your mind, Miss Fulton-Leigh?”
“I...um...”
“Fulton-Leigh?” The girl’s whole face brightened. “Is that your name?”
Dixie gasped, so delighted at the unexpected breakthrough that she couldn’t help teasing. “You can say something else besides ‘I’m not supposed to talk to strangers!’ Or has the fry cook become a ventriloquist?”
“I can talk to you now,” the child announced. “Because I know who you are.”
“I thought so.” Dixie nodded, feeling just a bit like a minor celebrity. “I told you, everyone in town knows who I am—”
“You’re the lady who made my grandma’s green sofa.”
Dixie started to correct that misconception, but didn’t have the chance.
“My daddy is going to start making sofas, too,” the child rushed on, her face flushed with excitement.
“He is?” At that, Dixie forgot about the correction and tried to remember if she’d authorized any new hires at the factory.
“Uh-huh.” Both her legs began to swing back and forth out of sync and she bounced in place on the lunch counter stool. “That’s why we’re moving here.”
“You are?” Dixie and the waitress exchanged looks. This story did not add up and Dixie had a very bad feeling about it. “And just where is your daddy now?”
“He’s at the lawyer’s.”
“Lawyer’s?” She took a deep breath, as if she could draw some calming curative from the smell of old grease on the grill and the musty dankness of the old building. “Making sofas and going to lawyers? That doesn’t connect, sweetie. Just like your daddy leaving you here--”
“My daddy didn’t leave me here,” the child rushed to cut in. “The lady from the lawyer’s office brung me—”
“Brought me.” Dixie hardly realized she’d made the correction.
“Brought me,” the child echoed without so much as a hiccup in the flow of her story. “She brought me here to get a treat while Daddy talked to the lawyer.”
“Now that is true, Miss Fulton-Leigh. One a them secretaries from Greenhow, Greenhow, whose-it, and what-have-you did come in and pay for this little gal’s shake.”
“Greenhow?” Dixie stared blankly ahead.
“That’s who my daddy is talking to.” She nodded with such enthusiasm her hair kept bobbing after she’d tipped her chin up and hurried on with her explanation. “Daddy says he’s maybe going to be a chair holder at the furniture building store.”
“He does?” What could that Howard Greenhow be up to? He’d warned her that she was not finished dealing with him, but Dixie had imagined it just an idle threat, a parting shot by a powerless antagonist. Now she wasn’t so sure. “Did your father tell you anything else about this? Did he say how he planned to buy into my company because last time I checked it wasn’t for sale.”
“I don’t know.” Wendy gave an overplayed shrug. “Daddy came over here to visit once and talked to the man who made the sofas—”
“Did he say what that man’s name was?”
“Fulton-Leigh, same as yours, ma’am. Is that your daddy?”
“Yes, it is. It was.” Dixie cast her gaze down. How much more of a mess could her father have left behind for her to clean up?
“And then my daddy said that he was going to be a chair holder we were moving here because he was going to ver-si-fy his vest-a-mints so he could spend more time taking care of me. He said the lawyer thought he could help Daddy do that and if he did we’d move here and he’d help make the sofas.”
“I don’t like the sound of this.” Dixie put her hand to the back of her neck, surprised by the cold clamminess of her skin under her thick hair. “I don’t like the sound of this, at all.”
“It’s okay.” Wendy reached out and patted Dixie’s other hand. “He’ll make real good sofas, ma’am. My daddy can do anything.”
Dixie looked down at that tender face, so filled with pride and confidence in a hero of a father who would always be there for her. Oh, to be that trusting again. She swallowed hard and pushed aside the lovely notion. “Well, it looks like my daddy could also do anything. Only not always in a good way. Guess I have to pay a little visit to Mr. Greenhow. It was nice talking with you...what did you say your name was?”
“Wendy.”
“Wendy.” Dixie bowed her head in greeting and took the small hand in hers for one quick shake. “It was nice to meet you, Wendy. But I’ve got to run.” Still holding the girl’s hand, Dixie called in the general direction of the pharmacist’s counter, “Noni, someone will be in to get Miss Lettie’s pills sometime later today.”
“Send anyone but that crackpot grandfather of yours.”
“I know. I know.” Dixie bent low and touched a finger to Wendy’s chin. “You stay put and keep right on not talking to strangers, you hear me? And you’ll be all right here until someone comes for—”
“Daddy!”
In a flutter of dark hair and waving hands, Wendy leapt off the stool and scurried toward the drugstore’s glass front door.
Dixie set off after her. The clipped cadence of her heels fell in right behind the swish-swoosh-swish of Wendy’s corduroy jumper and the quiet rhythmic clacking of the tips of her untied shoelace dancing over the dingy floor with her every step.
An electronic ding like a doorbell signaled that someone had, indeed, walked into the store.
Dixie’s heartbeat thrummed in her ears, which only added to the crush of thoughts, sounds, and emotions closing in on her. If anything the child said held true, Dixie’s quarrel would be with Greenhow. But she would still have to deal with Wendy’s daddy and that likely would not be pleasant. Best to see to that first.
She stepped forward, giving a shake of her head to toss her hair into place and to give her a moment to fix a smile on her face and—
“Oh, my word, it’s you.” A deep masculine voice softened by surprise and Southern intonation met her ears before her eyes adjusted enough to see anything but the glaring sunlight glinting off the glass door.
Dixie dropped her gaze, half-turning her head away “I beg your pardon? Have we—?”
A pair of black cowboy boots stepped into her downcast line of visi
on.
She blinked then moved her gaze slowly upward, wary of the blinding light and the disadvantage it put her at. Boots, jeans, sport coat, pristine white shirt, silk tie...expensive silk tie. What kind of man wore a tie like that with jeans and cowboy boots? She had to see for herself.
She raised her eyes. “No! Not you? You are the man trying to buy into my family company? You?”
“Your company? You are Dixie Fulton-Leigh?” He laughed and bent to scoop up his daughter. He lifted the petite child effortlessly up until her head lay on his broad shoulder. Cocking his head, he gave Dixie a lazy, knowing grin that would have brought a weaker woman to her knees. “Well, well, Princess Prissypants, who’d have thought it? Looks like you and I are going to be partners.”
Chapter Seven
“Partners? In a pig’s eye!” She did not lower her voice or the angle of her chin, taking what seemed like center stage of their unfolding little drama right there in the front of the small town drug store.
“Actually, Miss Fulton-Leigh, partners in the family business.” Riley laughed.
How could anyone not get a good chuckle out of the fact that he had pressed ahead so quickly with this deal was his noble aim to rescue Fulton-Leigh’s poor, beleaguered daughter? Riley shook his head and smiled at the one woman on the planet he was pretty sure did not need, nor would accept, his help.
“My family’s business.” To her credit, it came more like a gentle, determined reproach than the hard challenge it might have been.
“My family’s, too, now.” He cupped his hand over Wendy’s head and stroked her soft, fine hair.
With no more than a flash of her eyes and a tilt of her head Dixie contradicted his claim, but she kept her lips pressed tightly shut.
“Listen, Miss Fulton-Leigh, twice now we’ve gotten off to what seems like a...difficult start.” He settled Wendy down on the floor again, but kept one hand on her shoulder to keep her close. “Since we’re dealing with something a little more important than a parking space this time, why don’t we go over to your office, settle in, and talk this out like two reasonable, mature business people?”
