“Of course! Of course!” He gestured to the fork. “Now when—and if—the time comes, if you don’t like Francis I, you can trade this little fork right in. But here’s the thing with Francis I. You can get everything. Ice cream forks, strawberry forks, butter picks, jelly servers, petit four servers—you name it. There’s even a corn on the cob butterer. You don’t find that with all your patterns. I’d like to see somebody come up with a cheese grater in Chrysanthemum, but I can get you one in Francis I.”
Lucy opened her mouth to speak, though she had no idea what she would say. At her elbow, her cell phone rang.
Mr. Reed patted her arm. “I’ll just go and let you get that but I hope to see you soon!”
She gave Mr. Reed a little finger wave and glanced at the caller ID. Oh, yes. This was a call she would take.
Chapter Nine
“Brantley Kincaid, stop peeing on my leg!”
His warm caramel and butterscotch laugh filled her with a certain kind of longing—the impossible kind filled with if only and if it were different.
“Lucy Mead, I would never. That wouldn’t be a gentlemanly thing to do at all. And let me tell you, baby, here in San Francisco they are impressed with how gentlemanly I am.”
“I am sure they are. I’m sure they’re impressed with just about everything about you, but I am not. You left your dog on my porch without asking me and now you have sent Mr. Reed over here with a silver fork. He thinks we’re engaged!”
“I cannot do anything about what Asa Reed thinks but I am sorry about Eller,” he said with no trace of remorse. “I should not have left her without consulting you. I will never go to San Francisco and leave her with you without asking again.”
“I took her to the pound.”
“You did not.”
“I could have. I might yet.”
“Sure you will.”
“When are you coming back? Or are you?” Probably Rita May was out there with him.
“Of course I’m coming back. Maybe sooner than I thought, since you care.”
“I don’t care. Except Miss Caroline has me decorating the carriage house for you and I need to know how long I have. She wants it done by the time you get back.”
“I swear that woman has been trying to get control of my environment for ten years. I guess she’s finally accomplished it.”
“That’s what happens when you move into someone else’s house for free. Anyway, she put me in charge of it.”
Lucy backed up and sat down on the stool. She hated to admit it, but it was fun sparring with him since he was two thousand miles away and couldn’t touch her.
“I want you to give me that gong in your living room. I need it.”
“I am not giving you my gong. Now answer me. When are you coming back?”
“When I’m done.”
“Which will be?”
“About a week. Give or take. Hey, I’ve got a great idea. Why don’t you come where I am? We could pick out some curtains and kiss some more. Plus, these people are not fun.”
“I am not coming there. We are not going to kiss. And the correct phrase is window treatments. Or draperies.”
“I’m not saying that. A man starts saying window treatments, and the next thing you know he’ll be figure skating and painting ceramics.”
“I am going to hang up now,” Lucy said.
“I called you fourteen times yesterday and sent you twenty-three text messages.”
“I am aware. I deleted them without reading them. If you have anything to say about what you want your surroundings to look like, you’d better tell me right now because I am not talking to you again.”
He sighed. “Okay. I want my workout equipment in that room downstairs where Tolly had her bedroom.”
“A home gym. Miss Caroline is going to love that.”
“Spring it on her before I get back, if you please. Plus, I don’t need a bedspread. I went to a store and told the woman there I liked a comfortable bed and she hooked me up with some stuff. It cost enough to feed a third world country for a year. I’m going to have to use it for the rest of my life, and after. I’m going to have my coffin lined with it. Who knew sheets and stuff cost so much?”
“Me. I knew. Most people know.”
The conversation continued in a similar vein, and Lucy had hung up before she realized she had not properly addressed that he was trying to make people think they were a couple.
She was considering calling him back when the front door opened and in walked Sandy from the bakeshop with a chocolate cake.
“Lucy!” she said as she rushed to the counter. “Look what Brantley Kincaid sent you! He is so precious. What a precious thing to do. It is perfectly fresh too. I don’t know why I let him talk me into putting everything else off and making your cake immediately. But I did. I guess I am just an old soft romantic. And he says it isn’t your birthday, even. You are a lucky girl!” Sandy looked at her cell phone. “Oops, gotta go! My pecan pies are nearly done, and I can’t trust anyone else not to let them burn. Enjoy!”
And Sandy was gone without ever having given Lucy a chance to speak. She looked at the enemy cake, with its creamy piled-high swirled frosting. She should take it straight to the dumpster—but what a waste. On her way home she would take it to the carriage house for the painters. For now, she would exile it to the top of the filing cabinet in her office. Out of sight, out of mind, not on her thighs.
She couldn’t help but glance at the front door. What next? Or maybe that was the end of it.
Marcia Tate, owner of the Blossom Shop, was what was next—with gifts and painful memories.
She breezed in carrying a bouquet of pink sweetheart roses and a carved Jack-O-Lantern.
“Delivery for you, Lucy!” Lucy liked Marcia but she was the nosiest person in the downtown merchant association. And she didn’t have to sound so surprised, never mind that Lucy had never gotten flowers before.
Lucy sniffed the roses and tried to ignore the Jack-O-Lantern. “I didn’t know you made deliveries yourself, Marcia.”
“I don’t.” She placed her burdens on the counter. “These were special circumstances.” She looked pointedly at the Jack-O-Lantern. “I’m to tell you that I carve Jack-O-Lanterns all the time—that they’re my biggest seller in October. I pointed out that this is November but he wanted it anyway.” She shrugged her shoulders.
There was no point in pretending to be coy about who he was. “Have you ever carved a Jack-O-Lantern?” Lucy asked. “Apart from that one?”
“Of course. I have kids. I was a kid.”
“I mean for a customer?”
“No. Do you want to tell me the story behind it?”
“No.” Lucy laughed.
“Will you?” Marcia coaxed.
“No.”
“Can’t blame me for being curious. When I asked what he wanted on the card, he said he didn’t need a card, that you’d know who was sending you presents.” She pointed to the roses. “He wanted tulips. I had to remind him that tulips are not in season and this isn’t Nashville or San Francisco.”
“I’m sure you did a fine job of that, Marcia. I’m sure he’ll keep his flower seasons straight from here on out.”
“So . . .” Marcia leaned on the counter. “That Brantley. He’s a charmer. Always was. Didn’t the two of you date some back in the day?”
Lucy frowned and shook her head as if puzzled, but she knew exactly what Marcia was referring to. “What day would that be, Marcia?”
“I seem to remember him taking you to one of those summer dancing school cotillions at the country club. I was a little older than you, but I was there. Maybe the last time I went.”
Lucy frowned some more as if she was trying to puzzle it out and then let a light dawn on her face. “Oh!” She brushed her hand in the air as if she were clearing away a spider web. “It was summer cotillion. My first summer here. Aunt Annelle had sent me to cotillion class, and I didn’t have anyone to invite. I asked Brantley to go
with me as a friend. I’d been palling around with him and Missy all summer.”
Annelle would not have allowed fifteen-year-old Lucy to go to the dance with just any eighteen-year-old, but this was Brantley Kincaid: quarterback, acolyte, and professional charmer. It hadn’t hurt that he was the son of Eva and Charles Kincaid and grandson of Caroline and Judge Alden Brantley.
It hadn’t been a real date, though she had wanted so desperately for it to be. She would have never had the nerve to invite Brantley if Missy hadn’t prompted her, no matter how much she had wanted to. Missy had no idea of Lucy’s feelings for Brantley. She only wanted Lucy to go to the dance and had pointed out that Brantley wasn’t dating anyone. Once she had resolved to invite him, Lucy decided she was just going to ask, with no caveats or disclaimers. She would simply ask him to the dance the same way dozens of other girls were asking dozens of other boys. And Brantley would simply say yes or no. End of story. If he said no, she would not die. Her parents would return to the country and take her away in less than a month and he would be leaving for Vandy soon thereafter. She would not have to live with the humiliation for long.
But all her resolve melted away when the moment came to invite him. She had stammered and led with saying that Missy had suggested it, that she knew it wasn’t a real date, but since they were friends, it might be fun, and on and on and on until he laughed that sweet caramel laugh, laid an index finger on her cheek, and told her of course he would take her.
She’d been ecstatic. It had been so easy to forget how she’d issued the invitation. Annelle had taken her to Birmingham to shop for a dress for her pudgy little body and it had turned out, for once, to be a dress that made her feel pretty. She spent days daydreaming about how he would see her in a whole different light and end the night with sweet kisses and proclamations.
And truly, the night had started off like her fantasies. If at eighteen Brantley had been gorgeous in his khaki shorts and golf shirts, he was dazzling in a tuxedo. And he’d brought a nosegay instead of a wrist corsage like most of the other girls had. With her white dress and bouquet of orchids and calla lilies, she’d felt like a bride. He was attentive, funny, and seemed to be happy to be there.
And the dancing had been wonderful. She moved so easily in his arms; she had credited the lessons she’d had all summer until she and Missy had swapped partners. It was Brantley who had made her a good dancer. She’d never danced with such ease before or since—well, except for that night in the bar in Savannah and more recently at the Follies party.
But later that night it had all come crashing down. She was returning from the restroom to where Brantley was waiting a discreet distance away when she saw them. To this day, she did not know the name of the girl he had been talking to but she was wearing a blue dress, an indication that, like Brantley and Missy, she had just graduated from high school and this would be her last cotillion. The moment she saw her, Lucy felt childish in the white dress that the younger girls were required to wear.
“Are you dating Lucy Mead?” the girl had asked.
“No,” Brantley said. “Lucy’s a great kid but we’re just friends.”
In that moment, for the first time, Lucy understood the meaning of a broken heart.
“Just thought I’d ask. I am not one to move in on somebody else’s territory. Some of us are going out to my parents’ lake house after the dance.” The girl gave him a look that meant business. “Why don’t you come after you take Lucy home?”
Brantley laughed. “Maybe I will. I’d have to go home and get my swimsuit.”
“Maybe you won’t need a suit,” the girl said and the two of them laughed together.
The bottom fell out of Lucy’s world. What a baby she had been to think he could want her. This girl could give him what Lucy could not even consider. Even if she was ready to have sex, she was too fat to take her clothes off.
Grateful for the potted plant that had concealed her from them, Lucy fled back to the rest room and hid in a stall until her breathing evened out and her face cooled down. More than anything, she wanted to go home, but there were rules for this dance. No one left early without a good reason and advance permission—unless the undertaker was picking you up.
Right now, that didn’t sound like a bad alternative.
When she came out again, Brantley was standing alone and he smiled at her like she was the one he’d been waiting for all his life.
Like he’d smiled at her in Savannah, at the Follies, and two days ago.
Marcia brought her back to the present. “Yes. That would have been my last cotillion. I remember now. I was excited not to have to wear a white dress. I had that dark purple organza. My mother wouldn’t let me have black sequins.”
“I had forgotten that Brantley took me. It was nothing.”
“Wasn’t it right after that that his mother and grandfather were killed?”
“Yes,” Lucy said. “Three days later.” The next time she had seen him, it was at Christ Episcopal Church before the funeral. He had accepted her condolence hug but he’d been hollow eyed and empty.
“So . . .” Marcia had a sly look about her. “Jack-O-Lanterns and roses in November from Brantley Kincaid. What could that mean?”
“It means Brantley and I are going to work on a project together. Strictly professional.”
“Oh.” Marcia looked disappointed and somewhat skeptical. “Any chance you will tell me what that project is?”
“None. You’ll know pretty soon.”
In about a week. Give or take.
Chapter Ten
Lucy loved book club . . . usually. It didn’t even matter to her that she was the only one who ever read the book and they never got around to talking about it. There had been a time when Tolly always read the book too, but those days were over. In the space of one year, Tolly had taken in an orphaned teenager, married Merritt High football coach Nathan Scott, moved her new family into a big rambling house, and sent Kirby off to college.
No matter. Book club had never been about books; it was a time for wine, food, and gossip with her three best friends.
Tonight she dreaded it. Not only was she bone tired from decorating Brantley’s carriage house, she was pretty sure she was in for the grilling of her life—though she had told them all repeatedly that there was nothing going on between Brantley and her. After swearing them to secrecy, she had even told Lanie and Tolly what Missy already knew—that she and Brantley would be restoring the Brantley Building together.
The rumor that she and Brantley were a couple had ripped though town like a rabid dog out for blood. No doubt, between Mr. Reed and Marcia, the news had made it to the state line by now. Even Miss Caroline had given her a couple of knowing smiles and last night Charles Kincaid had shown up at her door to check the antifreeze in her car. “I know you’re busy getting that place squared away for my boy,” he’d said. “They’re giving a freeze warning tonight, and I thought I’d make sure you’re good to go.”
And it had gotten cold, so cold that she let Eller in her bed and caught herself almost wishing the rumor was true.
She blamed it on Brantley’s bed. Just that afternoon, after the painters finished, she had hung drapes and unpacked his bed linens. He had not been kidding. No doubt he had gone to a very high end bedding store. When she’d finished making the queen size bed, it was piled high with duvet, blankets, throws, and pillows—many, many pillows—in a decadent combination of chocolate silk, caramel cashmere, and champagne Egyptian cotton. When she thought she’d seen it all, she found the feather bed for the top of the mattress. She had teased him unmercifully about the self indulgence of that bed, and he’d admitted he was a little embarrassed about the number of pillows, but they were necessary for the “sink effect.”
And, yes, she had talked to him; she had talked to him every night. She’d had to; she had decorating questions to ask. It couldn’t be helped.
That was a lie. He didn’t care what she did to that carriage house but she kept
answering that phone because she was weak, weak, weak! She was just so tired of being mad. And she had to find a way to work with him. Maybe it was for the best that they had been talking.
However, the phone was one thing. She would get hold of herself before he came home. There would be no touching, no time spent alone stretched out on the sofa, and definitely no kissing.
Of course, she was assuming he still wanted those things, which he probably didn’t. She parked in the driveway of Tolly’s new house and laid her head on the steering wheel. If only she could forget how he tasted. If only she could get that bed out of her mind.
And she had to. She could not risk it again.
She should get out of the car. She was late. She had dropped Eller by home and walked her but there had been no time to change out of the silk dress she’d worn to meet with the sales rep for imported tile. The guy had been young, Italian, and extremely good looking—if you were the kind to like dark coloring instead of warm sweet butterscotch and caramel. Hell and double hell. She should have said yes to dinner with him. Yet, here she sat.
Tap, tap, tap came the knocking on her window and Lucy jumped a foot off the seat.
Oh. Only Nathan. She opened the door and got out.
“You okay?” he asked. “I saw you sitting there with your head down.”
“Tired,” she said. “I’ve been working a lot.”
“I heard that.” He nodded. “And now it’s freezing cold. But it’s supposed to warm up at the first of the week and stay nice through Thanksgiving.”
“Where are you off to?”
He held up a stack of DVDs. “I’m going to meet Harris and Luke at Harris and Missy’s house. After the kids settle down, they’re going to watch game film with me.”
“I thought that was over for a while,” Lucy said as she moved toward the house. The Merritt Bobcats had gone to the regional championship but had lost in the finals last week.
“It’s never over,” Nathan said as he got into his truck. “Tell Brantley I said hello.”
Not him too!
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