Pamela Browning - Down Home Dixie

Not that any relevant part of him was listening.

Dixie was gazing up at him, the moonlight reflecting in her blue, blue eyes. He longed to run his hands through her sweet-smelling hair, press his body close to hers and whisper softly in her ear.

She saw his intent and she did not back away.

Even though he’d known her only a bit longer than twenty-four hours, even though when they’d met he’d been wearing a Yankee uniform.

“Oh, Kyle,” she said, exhaling his name on a long breath. Before she could tell him to stop, he did what was possibly the stupidest thing in his life, considering that he quite possibly still had a girlfriend back in Ohio.

He swept her up his arms and kissed her….

Dear Reader,

I recently attended a Civil War reenactment near Charleston, South Carolina, and found myself caught up in that long-ago time. The costumes, the encampment and the battle itself made me stop and think about my ancestors who were around during The Late Great Unpleasantness, as we Southerners still refer to it.

I wondered how many of the present-day soldiers on the battlefield were descendants of men who fought in that war and if any of them were related to me. Why did these men become reenactors, anyway? Why didn’t they want to forget that awful conflict that took such a toll upon both the Union and the Confederacy? As I seriously considered these questions, my hero, Kyle Tecumseh Sherman, took shape in my imagination. He appeared full-grown, a descendant of the Union general William Tecumseh Sherman. He even looked like him! I knew right away that Kyle would be dedicated to preserving the memory of all who fought in that war, North and South.

already created a heroine who was made to order for Kyle. She’s Dixie Lee Smith, sister of Carolina Rose Smith in my book Down Home Carolina Christmas. Dixie was named for both the lost Confederacy and the South’s most revered general, Robert E. Lee. It was inevitable that when Dixie Lee Smith and Kyle Tecumseh Sherman met, sparks would fly.

And they did—all kinds of sparks, including the kind that light a fire too hot to quench, a fire that I hope will warm your heart as it does mine.

With love and best wishes,

Pamela Browning

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Pamela Browning spent a lot of years living and rearing a family in a charming South Carolina town that was nothing like Yewville. No one in this book bears any resemblance whatever to persons living, dead or comatose, except for Muffin the cat, who will never reveal her real name. Never. If she wants her catnip mouse refilled on a regular basis.

Pamela enjoys hearing from her readers and invites you to visit her Web site at www.pamelabrowning.com

This book is dedicated to battle reenactors

and the people who support them.

They keep history brilliantly alive for all of us.

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

You wouldn’t expect to find a confused and disoriented Union soldier rambling around the parking lot of the dentist’s office, but that’s exactly what Dixie Lee Smith saw in the dwindling hours of a beautiful spring Saturday afternoon in Yewville, South Carolina.

As she slid behind the wheel of her car, she noted that he was tall. He was handsome. He was uncommonly pale, even for a Yankee.

She turned on the car engine. And then she shot him.

Looking incredulous, he braced his back against the trunk of a nearby oak tree, and slid slowly to a sitting position on the ground. A dark stain—blood?—marked his upper left chest beside the toothbrush sticking out of his pocket. The toothbrush bore the dentist’s logo: Gregory Johnson, D.D.S., Yewville, SC.

How could she have shot the man? She didn’t even have a gun. Still, there had been a terribly loud bang, and no one else was around. Horrified, she scrambled out of her car.

“Are you in pain?”

“No. And yes. It’s not what you think,” the man said, using the tree trunk to pull himself up.

“What do I think?” Dixie said, not quite believing she’d asked such a stupid question. Her excuse for her own present befuddlement was that she’d been pumped full of lidocaine after being talked into two fillings when all she wanted was her teeth whitened. It tended to numb her all over, lidocaine did.

“I only lost my balance,” the soldier said. He cupped a hand around his jaw as if it hurt. “Well, I was shot, but not really. Don’t worry about it. That noise scared me, that’s all.”

He must be joking, she thought, taking in the elaborate epaulets and dashing sleeve insignia on the blue uniform. He’s not making sense. On the other hand, she probably wasn’t, either.

Uppermost in Dixie’s mind was that when some years ago her father had been administered morphine for postoperative pain, he was certain he’d spotted Senator Strom Thurmond attired in a Batman outfit reclining on a cloud outside his hospital window. He’d insisted the senator had been eating a chocolate banana on a stick like the ones they sold at the Southern Confectionery Kitchen right here in Yewville. It had taken a heap of talking to persuade Daddy that Strom Thurmond was still in Washington and not hitching rides on stratocumulus Batmobiles.

So maybe this was the same kind of thing. However, did hallucinations go to the dentist? And concentrate on their jaws when they’d been shot in the chest? He said he hadn’t been shot. Or did he say he had? Dixie was growing even more confused.

The man lurched on wobbly legs toward a vehicle that appeared to be a cross between an ice-cream truck and the local coroner’s van. He dug his car keys out of his pocket.

“Your car backfired,” he mumbled. “You’d better get it checked.”

Well, that would explain the loud bang. She’d had the Mustang’s carburetor adjusted yesterday.

“Shouldn’t you see a doctor? For that chest wound of yours? There’s a hospital here, eighty-eight beds and a good emergency room.”

The man regarded her balefully. “I need a motel where I can stay for the night. I’m not really hurt. I’m a Civil War-battle reenactor, and the blood is fake.”

Okay. How was I to know? “The Magnolia Motel’s out on the bypass. They should be able to fix you up with a room.”

“I checked there on my way into town. They’re full up.”

“Oh, must be another tour bus. Lately the Magnolia never has vacancies on weekends.” The fact that the town water tower was painted like a giant peach but more closely resembled a fuzzy pink derriere had something to do with the recent increase of tourism in these parts.

“Are there any other hotels in town? I’m desperate.”

She’d like to help him out, but that uniform turned her off, as it would any respectable Southerner even so long after what was still referred to around here as the War of Northern Aggression. Or as he called it, the Civil War, though Dixie was quite sure that there had been nothing civil about it.