JoAnn Ross - Southern Comforts

“Welcome to the Magnolia House,” the man behind the hand-hewn counter greeted her. He looked around thirty, with friendly blue eyes and tousled blond hair. His soft drawl gave evidence of local roots.

After introducing himself as Jeb Townely, her host, he filled out the paperwork quickly, then carried her bags up to her second-floor room.

“I hope you’ll be comfortable here,” he said as he opened the door. More flowers bloomed in vases on a small cherry writing desk and atop the dresser. There was a tray with two glasses, a bottle of mineral water and a tin of cookies on the table. The bed was canopied, and like the rest of the furniture, appeared to be a genuine antique.

“I think I may just stay forever.” Chelsea could feel the tensions of her day melt away as she drank in the cozy ambiance of the room.

“I know the feeling.” His smile deepened to reveal the dimples on either cheek. “Magnolia House has been in my family for nearly two hundred years. After three failed peanut crops in a row, I decided the green thumb possessed by all the other Townelys just passed me by. So, I opened the house up as an inn, and—” he rapped his knuckles on the desk “—so far, so good.”

“I don’t know a thing about the hotel business, except for having stayed in too many over the past few years. But I think you’ve done a marvelous job.”

“That’s real nice of you to say, Miz Cassidy.” He handed her the key. “If you need anything else, I’ll do my best to oblige. Just dial the operator. Anytime day or night.”

“Don’t tell me you operate the switchboard, too?”

“No. I hired a nice widow lady who likes a chance to talk to people,” he said. “But, since I live here, I’m usually around.”

“Doesn’t that make for a twenty-four-hour day?”

“Sometimes. But I like making people comfortable. Besides, although my daddy couldn’t teach me farming, he did manage to drive home the lesson that no southern gentleman worth his salt shirks his responsibility.”

“Didn’t the Tarleton twins say much the same thing? At the barbecue at Twelve Oaks? Right before they went rushing off to get themselves killed in the war?”

“Chivalry is not always as easy as handing out battle site maps and delivering ice to rooms,” he allowed with another friendly grin that had Chelsea thinking he might have been a bust at growing peanuts, but Jeb Townely was a natural-born innkeeper. “You all take care now,” he said as he left. “And, Dorothy, tell your mama hey for me.”

“I’ll do that.”

Chelsea thought she detected a lack of enthusiasm in Dorothy’s tone at the mention of her mother, but knowing that she was expected at Roxanne’s for dinner, she didn’t dwell on it.

Chelsea took less than five minutes to hang up tomorrow’s suit and freshen up. Then they were on their way again.

Roxanne’s Tudor house was set in the center of a rolling green lawn that could have doubled as a putting green. Pear trees sported fluffy spring blossoms, daffodils lined the sidewalks in a blaze of saffron and gold and the dogwoods were beginning to bloom. Chelsea remembered Roxanne saying something to Joan Lundon about a new house she’d bought.

“I’m amazed anyone would be willing to give this up,” she murmured.

“Ms. Scarbrough has always enjoyed a challenge. And Belle Terre certainly is that. Personally, I think she’d be better off taking a page out of Sherman’s book, torching the place and starting over.”

“But that wouldn’t play well in a documentary.”

Chelsea’s dry tone earned a faint smile. “I suspected I was going to like you,” Dorothy said.

As she got out of the car, instead of the traffic and siren sounds she was accustomed to, Chelsea heard mockingbirds and wrens flitting from branch to branch in the maples flanking the driveway.

The muscle that had formed a steel band around her forehead loosened. Perhaps Mary Lou was right. Perhaps a change was just what she needed. And where else better to recharge her internal batteries than in a friendly southern town that defined serene?

Chapter Five

If the outside of Roxanne Scarbrough’s home reminded Chelsea of an English manor house, the foyer was reminiscent of Monet’s gardens at Giverny. Flowers bloomed everywhere, on the floor, the walls, and along the molding at the top of the high foyer ceilings.

Although she hated to give the unpleasant lifestyle expert credit for anything, Chelsea had to admit that she was very, very good at creating a picturesque and inviting stage for herself.

“Ms. Scarbrough always has drinks in the front parlor before dining with guests,” Dorothy informed her as she led the way across the sea of pink marble scattered with antique Aubusson rugs.

The room was small. And decidedly feminine, more boudoir than parlor, which was why the man standing beside the fireplace seemed so rivetingly male. He was turned toward Roxanne, engaged in conversation, allowing Chelsea to view only a rugged profile. He held a glass of amber liquor; the cut crystal looked dangerously fragile in his long dark fingers.

When Roxanne murmured something that made him throw back his head and laugh, the rich dark sound stirred deeply hidden, but strikingly familiar chords inside Chelsea.

“Well, we finally made it,” Dorothy announced their presence, her matter-of-fact tone sounding like a strident, off-key note in the lush intimacy of the scene.

Both Roxanne and the man turned toward the door. As his too familiar, darkly mocking eyes locked with her wide, disbelieving ones, Chelsea drew in a sharp, unwilling breath.

For an unmeasurable time—it could have been seconds, or an eternity—they just looked at one another across the lushly romantic room. He lifted his glass in a mock salute.

“Hello, Irish.” His smile was more challenge than greeting.

The name was one he’d sometimes called her on those rare light, almost comfortable moments, after the hunger had been temporarily satiated. But there was nothing comfortable or light about her feelings as she heard it now.

He knew! The words ricocheted in her head as she glared back at him. From the wicked gleam in his eyes, she guessed he’d known she was going to be here, and was enjoying this moment considerably.

Her temper rose. Although it took Herculean effort, she managed to force it down, turning her anger from heat to ice. “Hello, Cash.”

The voice she heard coming out of her mouth could have belonged to her mother. Although Deidre Whitney Lowell would eat her quilted Chanel handbag before ever permitting herself to be openly rude, she could, with a brief, dismissing glance or a murmured statement, make her target all too aware of her extreme displeasure.

Having been on the receiving end of that chilly disapproval more times than she could count, Chelsea knew it well. Well enough to have no difficulty imitating it now.

Roxanne’s suddenly sharp gaze swung from Cash to Chelsea, then back to Cash again. “I had no idea that you two were acquainted.” She did not sound overly thrilled by the discovery.

“Chelsea and I are old college friends,” Cash revealed. Although he was talking to Roxanne, his gaze stayed on Chelsea’s face. “From Yale.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?” There was a challenging, almost petulant edge to the older woman’s voice. “When I first mentioned that Ms. Cassidy was my biographer?”

“We were discussing Belle Terre at the time.” His gaze, as it moved to Roxanne, was as mild and unruffled as his tone. “I didn’t see any point in getting sidetracked with inconsequential issues.”

So now she was an inconsequential issue? Even though she told herself that he wasn’t important enough to be able to hurt her, Chelsea’s chin came up. “I thought you were living in California.”