Susan Phillips - Ain’t She Sweet?

She started to point out that he’d managed to return to the States-his book jacket said he was now an American citizen-but she’d only sound as though she was trying to defend herself. He uncoiled from the doorway and wandered over to a wall unit that held a wet bar. A wet bar in Diddie Carey’s living room…

“Would you like a drink?” It wasn’t the invitation of a good host but the softly spoken gambit in a cat-and-mouse game.

“I don’t drink anymore.”

“Reformed?”

“Hell, no. I just don’t drink.” She was on a roll, peggin’ the old laugh-meter. She was killing herself here.

He poured out a few inches of what looked like a very expensive single malt scotch. She’d forgotten how large his hands were. She used to tell everybody who’d listen that he was the biggest sissy in town, but even then, those meat-hook hands had made her look like a liar. They still didn’t seem to belong to someone who’d recited sonnets from memory and occasionally tied back his hair with a piece of black velvet ribbon.

One night a bunch of them had left school late and spotted him on the intramural field with a soccer ball. Soccer hadn’t caught on in Parrish, and they’d never seen anything like it. He’d bounced the ball from one knee to another, off a calf, a thigh, keeping it in the air until they lost count. Then he’d begun dribbling it down the field, running at full speed, the ball right between his feet. After that, the boys’ opinions of him had changed, and it wasn’t long before they’d invited him to join them at the basketball hoop.

“Three husbands, Sugar Beth?” He curled those workingman’s fingers around a cut-glass tumbler. “Even for you, that seems a bit extreme.”

“One thing never changes about Parrish. Gossip’s still this town’s favorite pastime.” Cool air brushed her belly as she slipped her hands into the pockets of her black leather jacket and pushed it back. Her cropped candy pink T-shirt had the word Beast written in glitter script over her breasts. It was a little flashy, but it had been marked down to $5.99, and she could make just about anything look trendy. “I’d appreciate it if you’d get that chain off my driveway.”

“Would you now?” He sank into one of the leather chairs without inviting her to do the same. “You have a wretched track record with husbands.”

“You think?”

“Word travels,” he drawled. “I believe I heard that husband number one was someone you met in college.”

“Darren Tharp, all-American shortstop. He played for the Braves for a while.” She executed a nifty tomahawk chop.

“Impressive.” He took a sip from his drink, the tumbler nearly swallowed by his palm, and regarded her over the rim of the glass. “I also heard he left you for another woman. Pity.”

“Her name was Samantha. Unlike me, she managed to graduate from college, but it wasn’t her degree that attracted Darren. Turns out, she had a natural-born gift for fellatio.”

The tumbler came to a stop halfway to his lips.

She gave him her best Southern belle smile, the one that went from here to there without coming anyplace close to sincerity. With a few adjustments-and if Diddie hadn’t possessed such a hang-up about Atlantic City-that smile could have put something more impressive than a homecoming crown on her head. “I guess brains can only get a girl so far.”

Byrne had no intention of letting her sidetrack him. “Apparently you took off to Hollywood with your settlement money.”

“I earned every dollar of it.”

“But you weren’t flooded with movie offers.”

“And aren’t you just the sweetest thang, taking such an interest in me.”

“Surely I heard this wrong. Your second husband was some kind of Hell’s Angel?”

“That would have been more exciting, but I’m afraid Cy was just a stuntman for the movies. Extremely talented-right up to the day he killed himself trying to jump his bike from the Santa Monica pier onto the deck of a luxury yacht. It was a film about the evils of drug smuggling, so I tell myself he died for a good cause, not that I wasn’t smoking the occasional joint myself back then.”

“And more than a few in high school, as I recall.”

“A mistake, Your Honor. I thought they were just funny-smelling cigarettes.”

He didn’t smile, but she hadn’t expected it from that granite-jawed face.

She’d left Cy a few months before that fatal stunt. No girl on earth had a bigger talent for marrying cheating losers than she did. Emmett had been the exception, but then, he’d been seventy on their wedding day, and age begot wisdom.

“After that, people seemed to lose track of you for a while,” he said.

“I worked in the restaurant business. Very exclusive.”

She’d started off as a hostess at a decent L.A. restaurant but had gotten fired for mouthing off to a customer. Next she’d worked as a cocktail waitress. When she’d lost that job, she’d served up lasagna at a cheap Italian restaurant, then gone on to an even cheaper burger joint. She’d bottomed out the day she’d found herself studying a help-wanted ad for an escort service. More than anything else, that had made her realize it was long past time for her to grow up and take responsibility for her life.

“Then you snagged Emmett Hooper.”

“And you didn’t even need the Parrish grapevine to hear about that.” Her smile hid every drop of pain.

“The newspapers were quite informative. And entertaining. A twenty-eight-year-old waitress becomes the trophy wife of a filthy rich seventy-year-old retired Texas oilman.”

An oilman whose investments had gone belly-up even before he’d gotten sick. Emmett had been her dearest friend, her lover, and the person who’d helped her finish the job of growing up.

Byrne tipped his drink toward her, looking like a bored, but very masculine, Gucci model. “My condolences on your loss.”

The lump in her throat made it hard to come up with a smart-ass response, but she managed. “I appreciate your sympathy, but when you marry someone that old, you kind of know what’s coming.”

She welcomed the contempt in those jade eyes. Contempt trumped pity any damn day. She watched him cross his legs, the movement an unsettling combination of feline grace and male strength. “We used to call you the Duke behind your back,” she said. “Did you know that?”

“Of course.”

“We all thought you were a pansy.”

“Did you now?”

“And stuck-up.”

“I was. Still am, for that matter. I take pride in it.”

She wondered if he was married. If not, the single women of Parrish must be lining up at the door with coconut cakes and casseroles. She moved toward the fireplace and tried to look assertive. “I’m sure it’s just entertaining the knickers off you to block my driveway, but the fun’s gone on long enough.”

“As it happens, I’m still enjoying myself.”

He didn’t look as though he knew how to enjoy anything, except maybe conquering India. As she gazed at his immaculately tailored clothes, she wondered who’d done the dirty work of setting the posts in concrete on such short notice. “Don’t you think it might be embarrassing when I call the police?”

“Not at all. It’s my land.”

“And I thought you were such an authority on Parrish. My father deeded the carriage house to my aunt in the 1950s.”

“The house, yes. But not the driveway. That’s still part of Frenchman’s Bride.”

She snapped upright. “That’s not true.”

“I have an exceptionally fine lawyer, and he pays attention to things like property boundaries.” He rose from the chair. “You’re more than welcome to look at the survey yourself. I’ll send over a copy.”