He couldn’t.
Buck pulled into the driveway and cut the Blazer’s engine, having to cross over the steering wheel with the wrong hand to reach the key. He sat there regarding his home for a long moment, a faint frown between his eyes.
He had no idea why he had been fantasizing about Devil Anse’s long-legged brat; the old man had put the idea into his head with his free trial offer, damn him. And for all her rough upbringing, Miss Scarlett O. Scraggs was fantastically tempting.
Buck got out of the Blazer. The cold wind almost blew him onto the front porch. Once inside, the warmth of the house enveloped him, along with strong tantalizing odors. He remembered he hadn’t made any arrangements about what they were going to have for dinner. His stomach rebelled at the thought of another pizza.
He started down the long hallway, stopping abruptly at the light coming from the parlor.
He stepped inside. There stood the big blue spruce Christmas tree, fully decorated. The strings of Christmas tree lights that embraced it sparkled and blinked.
It was the first time in years that Buck had seen a Christmas tree with seemingly every last one of his mother’s collection of ornaments on it, including the paper garlands he and his sister had made in the first and second grade.
With all the stuff on it the tree should have been a mess. Instead, every branch, almost every needle, was so covered with decoration that the great blue spruce tree radiated a remarkably homey, jumbled sort of – well, beauty.
If you were familiar with the Grissom family ornaments you could just stand and look at the tree for hours, he thought, remembering the story behind each item fashioned by children’s hands, each faintly crazed old glass ball, the grandparents’ German imported Father Christmases holding their blown-glass miniature trees, the now less-than-sparkling gold and silver tinsel ropes that came from the long-closed Nancyville McCrory’s.
Someone had done a good job. With the strings of lights, the tree blazed happily.
At that moment the damnedest, most bizarre apparition appeared from around the other side of the tree. Startled, Buck could only blink.
It seemed to be some sort of lumpy pink satin specter, drooping around the bottom, wearing a flappy straw hat with satin flowers.
When it saw him standing there the banshee recoiled in horror. Then it whirled, scuttling for the dining room with faint, ratlike squeaks of alarm.
Buck stared after it. The little sister? Then what the hell was she doing dressed up like Halloween? He started after her.
The odors in the far end of the hall were even more tantalizing. Before Buck could throw open the kitchen door, though, it swung out and some strange girl – woman – stood in the door with the kitchen light behind her. A ravishing female in a dark shirt, tight jeans, her dark hair pulled back with a ribbon.
“Hel-lo,” Buck said. He stepped back in appreciative surprise.
It was undoubtedly somebody who’d come with Judy Heamstead to bring the church clothes. But new in town; Buck had never seen her before.
“Don’t be down on Farrie,” the willowy figure cried. “She didn’t mean any harm to the tree, she just wanted to fix it up. She’s never seen anything like it before!”
For a moment he stood staring. “Farrie? Farrie?”
Even in the glaring kitchen light he couldn’t believe it. It was, he realized with a sinking feeling, Scarlett O’Hara Scraggs.
“It will be all right,” she was telling him rapidly. “You’ll feel better about it when I feed you dinner!”
Dinner? In a daze Buck gazed past her. If the Christmas tree wasn’t, by some miracle, a mess, the kitchen certainly was. Everything seemed to have been pulled out from where it belonged and then emptied, dropped, or spilled in a different place. Still, when he sniffed the air it smelled wonderful.
Buck’s moment of hope vanished with Scarlett’s next words.
She touched him on the arm, gazing up at him somewhat anxiously. “Don’t look like that,” she murmured in her husky voice. “You’re gonna like it. I cooked every bit myself.”
Nine
“The girl from the church showed me how to get the meat out of the freezer and thaw it,” Scarlett said. “That was the biggest part of the job.”
They were seated, Scarlett and Farrie and Buck, at the big mahogany table in the dining room. Through the sliding doors the Victorian parlor looked better without the clutter of cardboard boxes. The bright glitter of the huge Christmas tree reached almost to the ceiling.
“I was supposed to put the meat in the microwave thing, but she’d left by that time and I couldn’t get it to work. Anyway,” Scarlett added, looking down at the assortment of food on the table, “ten pounds of hamburger is a lot. When I got it thawed out I knew I was just going to have to keep cooking.”
“No problem.” Sheriff Buck tried awkwardly for a piece of meatloaf with the fork in his left hand. “I can’t get over it. Everything’s so delicious.”
The meatloaf slipped and landed on the table-cloth beside his plate. Scarlett tactfully picked it up and put it on her own. She’d been watching the sheriff closely from the moment they’d sat down, but he seemed sincere. Of course he’d been a little surprised that she’d cooked dinner, even after Scarlett had explained that she’d learned it all from the cookbooks they’d taken from the clothes boxes that afternoon. He’d looked tired when he came in and Scarlett saw at once he was out of sorts: Demon had left her marks all over his uniform, and he’d had some sort of accident as his arm was in a sling. Sheriff Buck went right into the dining room, pulled up a chair, and sat down.
Now, Scarlett saw, he’d certainly been hungry in spite of his hurt arm. He’d had a helping of the Italian spaghetti with meat sauce, two big servings of Spicy Shepherds’ Pie, a slice of House and Garden’s Heirloom Recipe Meatloaf, and a cup of homemade chili. That left only the Swedish meatballs to go.
Farrie, too, hadn’t taken her eyes off him. Scarlett picked up the bowl of meatballs and shook her head at her sister in warning. She knew Farrie wasn’t thinking about whether or not the sheriff liked the food.
Marriage. That was the only thing on Farrie’s mind. It was right there in her face. Sooner or later Sheriff Buck Grissom was going to wonder why her little sister kept staring at him like that.
“Take off your hat,” Scarlett told Farrie, frowning. “People don’t eat dinner with their hats on.”
Without shifting her gaze, Farrie reached up and pulled off the hat with the rhinestone pin and peach satin roses. The sheriff wasn’t watching; he was having trouble with the bowl of meatballs. The brown, glistening globes in what the cookbook described as authentic Swedish gravy kept bouncing away from his probing fork. He wasn’t at all good at using his left hand; the tablecloth around his dinner plate was spattered with food.
Scarlett picked up her own fork. “Here, let me,” she said.
He started to object, then watched as she scooped a serving of meatballs and gravy onto his plate. “The dinner is delicious,” he said with an effort, “I’m not kidding. I can’t believe you taught yourself to cook like this out of a book.” He looked down the table, hesitating. “You don’t have any – ah, vegetables, do you?”
Scarlett was cutting a meatball in half for him, and stopped abruptly. “Vegetables? I just cooked up all the meat, I didn’t think about any vegetables! What kind of vegetables do you want?”
“We have iced tea,” Farrie piped.
The sheriff looked across the table, his eyes resting on the too-big dress that hung drooping around the child’s arms and neck. “Does she have to wear that thing?” he growled.
Scarlett studied her sister. “That’s the first pretty dress Farrie’s ever had. If it bothers you, I can take it away later on when she goes to bed.”
Buck leaned over his plate. “Damned if I can make up my mind, everything is good. But what I had before is, I swear, the best chili I’ve ever tasted.”
Scarlett held out her fork to him with a piece of mea
tball on it.
“I like to cook,” she said simply. “I already know how, a little. But it was better to find a book with those things in it since I had to use up all that hamburger.”
He studied the fork. “I’m not doing very well, am I?”
“There’s a lot on the table,” she admitted.
Slowly, the sheriff opened his mouth and Scarlett popped a piece of meatball into it.
It was a perfectly ordinary thing to do, to offer to help him eat when he couldn’t use his right hand. But Scarlett was suddenly and strangely aware they were close enough so that she was looking right at the sheriff’s long eyelashes. Which curled up and were a dark red color, like his hair. His eyes were bright blue. Up close Buck Grissom had creamy smooth skin. She was particularly struck by his mouth: wide and full, with something downright attractive about it even as he chewed the meatball.
Across the table she knew Farrie wasn’t missing a thing. But Scarlett couldn’t tear her eyes away.
Never in her life had she been so close to a man and so mindful of how good-looking he was. And how warm, she thought with a sudden gulp, and how big!
Sitting there, Scarlett felt a fascinated rush of excitement from the top of her head down to her feet. She could hardly move.
At that moment the sheriff looked up, expecting another meatball. And their eyes met.
There was a strange silence.
Scarlett sucked in her breath. Good Lord, from the way his eyes widened, and he sort of stiffened, she could tell that he felt it, too!
They just sat staring at each other. Finally Buck said, his eyes never moving, “You don’t have to feed me.”
Scarlett still held up the empty fork, forgotten. “I don’t mind,” she whispered. “I like looking after people.”
“I can see that.” He had a peculiar expression on his face.
“Why,” Farrie said loudly, “don’t you feed him some meatloaf?”
They both jumped.
“Well,” Farrie explained, “he didn’t hardly get to eat any of his own meatloaf. It kept falling on the table.”
A scowl settled on Buck’s face. He looked around, seemed to shake himself, then lurched abruptly to his feet.
“Dinner was fine,” he announced hurriedly. “I enjoyed it very much. Right now I think I’ll go make myself some coffee.”
He crossed the dining room, and at the door he turned.
“I’ve got some paperwork to do, I’ll be in the den.” He looked everywhere but at Scarlett. “You two can just watch television or whatever it is you want to do.”
After Buck had left, Scarlett and Farrie sat for a few minutes in silence.
Finally Scarlett said, “You can help me clean away these plates and take them into the kitchen.”
Farrie got up from the table. “We don’t have to wash them, Scarlett. They got a dishwasher in there.”
Something inside Scarlett snapped. She didn’t know what had brought on her sudden bad mood, but it was certainly there.
“Yes indeed, Miss Smarty, and if you know how to work a dishwasher you can just go right ahead and do it!” She picked up Buck’s plate and scraped what was left of the meatballs and shepherd’s pie onto hers. “Otherwise you can come on with me and I’ll wash, and you wipe, and try not to break any of this good china.”
Farrie had listened with an open mouth. Now she put the big hat with the roses back on. Under it, she pouted.
Scarlett decided to ignore her.
It was late when they got the kitchen cleaned up. When she began dinner Scarlett had found everything she needed, but after washing the dishes she was not so sure how to put it all back. It was not easy in the Grissoms’ big, fancy kitchen with built-in cabinets, two pantries, convection oven, the microwave, and assorted appliances.
When they were through, Farrie wanted to go into the Victorian parlor and sit under the Christmas tree rather than go upstairs and watch the television in the sister’s room. Somewhat reluctantly, Scarlett gave in.
The big high-ceilinged parlor was so bright with the Christmas tree that they didn’t bother to turn on other lights. After some trial and error Scarlett figured out how to turn on the radio in the stereo console. She sat down beside Farrie on the floor.
Since Christmas was only a few days away the local radio station played mostly Christmas carols. In alternate strings the red, green, blue, and white lights on the tree blinked on and off.
Outside it was sleeting again. Icy rain threw itself up against the glass of the parlor windows with a faint hissing sound. When the furnace cut on it added its warm, muted whooosh.
Farrie leaned forward, hugging her knees, her pixie face lit by the flashing lights of the tree. Scarlett was glad her little sister wasn’t trying to talk about anything. Everything that Farrie wanted to say was in the air anyway.
Scarlett stared up at the big tree remembering one particular year they’d had to leave Catfish Holler at just about Christmastime for some reason that no one ever explained, but probably because the law was after the Scraggses. With two of the Scraggs uncles they’d gone over the mountains into North Carolina to stay a week in a motel. It was a bad place. The rooms in the old cabins looked clean but stank so much they could hardly breathe.
On top of everything else the motel had been full of hookers. When their uncle Lyndon Baines Scraggs wasn’t around to keep an eye on things, Scarlett sat in the middle of the motel bed and held Farrie in her arms, listening to the loud music, the doors slamming until almost morning. Scarlett had been about fourteen then. She hadn’t been able to show her face outside their room for truckers chasing her, wanting to give her money for what they thought she was selling.
No, Scarlett thought as she studied the back of her head, Farrie didn’t have to say a word. She could almost hear her say: We could stay here, Scarlett. It’s up to you.
Scarlett bit her lip. It was true she would do almost anything for Farrie. It had been that way ever since her sister was born. But nobody could ever accuse Scarlett O’Hara of being talked into a crazy idea; she was too smart and stubborn for that.
She leaned forward, clasping her own knees in her arms. It was pretty cold-blooded to consider marrying someone just to have a roof over their heads. The only trouble was, when she was around the sheriff she didn’t feel very cold-blooded at all.
She shut her eyes for a moment. Mercy, just thinking about Sheriff Buck’s curly eyelashes, wide mouth, and determined chin filled her with the strangest feelings! When Scarlett opened her eyes Farrie was studying her. Why did her sister always have to look as though she could practically read her mind?
“He likes you, too,” Farrie told her. “You could see it when you were feeding him meatloaf.”
“Meatballs,” Scarlett said. “Not meatloaf.”
Farrie waited.
“All right,” Scarlett said, frowning, “just don’t harp on it. I’ll see what I can do.”
When Buck came out of the den at eleven the Christmas tree lights in the parlor had been turned off. It was quiet, no interminable Christmas carols from Nancyville’s AM radio station, no female voices. No giggling. They’d finally gone to bed, he told himself.
As he always did before he turned in, Buck bolted the downstairs doors and turned the furnace thermostat to sixty-five degrees. By the time he’d got upstairs the house had already begun to cool.
The sheets were fairly cold when he climbed into what was, he’d always been told, his maternal grandfather Blankenship’s Lincoln-style bed. It took a moment for Buck’s body heat to warm it up. That gave him plenty of time to lie in the dark and listen to the wind pound the sleet against the northeast side of the house with a hiss like the sea hitting the shore. Then the wind, moaning in a low, wintry voice.
God help those without shelter on a night like this, both man and beast. That was what his dad, Sheriff Buck Grissom, Sr., always said.
Around the holidays Jackson County had the homeless coming over the mountains on the interstates
from cities like Nashville. Sometimes there was a problem with families sleeping in cars or in old pickup trucks. On a night as cold as this it could be dangerous to pull off the highway to some supermarket parking lot to sleep. Half the homeless heading south for Atlanta or Florida didn’t have warm clothes, much less blankets. Buck thought about getting up and calling the jail, checking to see if anybody’d been brought in.
In the next instant he rejected the idea. There was a directive out to the department about taking the homeless to shelter; he’d written it himself back before Thanksgiving. The night shift could handle it, Buck told himself. No need to jump out of a warm bed as his dad always had to check on every little thing downtown.
Buck turned over on his side and shut his eyes. He didn’t want to think about the homeless, he didn’t want to think of vagrants out in a night of wind and bitter cold. Nor the condition of the Scraggs sisters when he’d brought them home: Scarlett in rubber sandals and a thin cotton dress, the younger one not much better off in sneakers and an old discarded football jacket. Old Devil Anse made money from his rackets; there was no excuse for anyone bringing up their own kin like that.
Cursing his need to get some sleep, Buck flopped over on his opposite side. And suddenly jerked up in bed holding his bad shoulder.
“Confound it,” he yelled. His mistreated arm throbbed painfully. He considered getting out of bed and putting the sling back on. Only briefly.
Gritting his teeth, Buck slid back down in the bed again. With his left hand he carefully pulled the covers up to his chin and closed his eyes. He kept his eyes closed determinedly as the wind lifted something loose outside the house and banged it across the lawn. A shutter thumped loudly. Or it was the unknown thing again, making an extended trip across the frozen grass outside. Buck told himself he wasn’t going to get up.
Somehow, even with all his fretting, he managed to drift off to sleep. Unfortunately, he had one of the worst dreams of his life.
He was dancing, and Buck was no dancer, at a wedding reception where half the guests were troll-like children running around wearing hideous peach satin dresses with big, floppy hats.
Moonlight and Mistletoe Page 7
